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Chapter Text

Kaeya breathes slowly, carefully; shallow breaths that minimise the rise and fall of his chest. His ribs still ache, even with the extra care, aftershocks of a blow still skittering across the bone, pressing harsh, heavy hands into his chest and pushing down.

He feels brittle, fragile.

It’s as though any wrong move may split him apart from the inside out – that his careful breathing may push his lungs a little too far out, that they may press against the spiderwebbed lattice of his insides, and then push and push at the weakened bones until each of them gives way beneath the pressure of his breath.

He grits his teeth, and carefully pokes at his chest, biting back the immediate whine of pain that rises in the back of his throat. He grits his teeth and pushes through it, continuing to probe at the sensitive areas. He pushes down gently when the pain hits its peak, ignoring the way something inside him flinches back from the sensation and then returns, snapping its teeth. Nothing moves beneath his hand, his bones remain sturdy and his heart continues to thump a bruise into his ribcage.

Kaey slumps back, sighing even as the impact of rock on his back causes a sharp jolt to travel through his chest. He drops his hand to the sodden ground beside him, the strength holding it up leaving him as the fear begins to ebb and pass. Not broken, probably just bruised…something of a miracle considering the sheer weight of Diluc’s claymore.

The rain continues to fall in sheets around him, heavy enough that it’s like one large, watery curtain descending from the heavens above, thick enough that he struggles to see five feet in front of him. Though the difficult with seeing forward may be more to do with the gaping wound in his head than the thickness of the rain.

After several minutes of squinting into the downpour, ears straining for the slightest sound of footsteps, he gives up; there are no pursuers, at least, not yet. He tilts his head back instead and stares at the sky. He counts the stars rather than the seconds, eye dancing across the horizon, tracing the constellations that his father- Crepus taught him. The rain soothes his skin, cleansing him of the soot and ash that stained his skin, mixing with the blood and tears that have begun to dry on his face.

Still, when the rain begins to slow, falling quieter than before, the dirt beneath him turned slick and dark, he heaves himself to his feet. His chest continues to ache, but there is something of a reassurance in the knowledge that his ribs aren’t shifting around in his chest looking for a vital organ to burrow into. Only the rain had kept him in place before, knowing that travelling in such weather would only be signing his own death certificate, and that the Knights would be similarly reluctant to make chase in such shitty weather.

But the easing of the weather and the clearing of the sky heralds the dawn of a new day; a day where the Knights of Favonius will turn out in droves to search for the rat that had lived among them for years, the one that sat beside them in class and trained at their sides. Their cavalry may be diminished, but some horses still remained. With that knowledge, the imminent threat lingered; the cavalry could reach him within the hour, even with the distance he’s placed between himself as Dawn Winery, and, in turn, the rest of Mondstadt.

He entertains, for a moment, the thought of turning right back around and walking straight into the middle of Mondstadt, just to see what everyone would do. Perhaps the city would be abandoned, with everyone joining the manhunt for the traitor in their midst – he discards the thought as soon as it arrives, something like nausea twisting in his gut at the thought of returning home only to find the friendly faces shuttered against him.

His only remaining option lies ahead of him, the peaks of the mountain lost amongst the clouds and greyness of dawn.

The climb is harder than he expected. The breathlessness returns with a vengeance, the thin air escaping his lungs too quickly for him to feel as though he’s really catching his breath. It’s more like he's gasping for air and still coming up empty, drowning on dry land. He exhales and his breath clouds, curling around his face like dragon’s breath. He pauses, and the sound of his own harsh panting reflects back at him off the sheer walls of rock that stretch up on either side of him.

He pushes on a moment later, despite how every part of him screams and begs for a longer moment of respite; part of him longs to lay in the snow and allow all of his worries to melt away, perhaps even allow the next snowfall to cover him entirely. For Kaeya to cease existing completely, just as Diluc and Mondstadt intend.

He pushes on, upwards, heedless of the ache in his legs, the pain in his lungs. His face burns, hot and cold warring over the skin of his face; it’s as though the ice has turned on him, leaving his face a scorched, clammy mess as he hauls himself over another ledge, further up the mountain.

He grits his teeth harder, hard enough that it begins to hurt, and continues the scramble upwards. It is never high enough, always too close to where the boldest Knight may climb, one that might consider the mountain and its peaks and actually think. One that might put two and two together and have an idea; one that might lead a search part up here, intent on bringing their traitor to justice. The clench of his jaw pulls the skin taut over his jaw, yanking at the ragged edges of his face and the remains of his eye socket, tearing the flesh further apart.

His fingers twitch around his hold on the clifface, nails claws deeper into the rock as he forces himself to grip on, resists the urge to reach up and palm at the wound. He wouldn’t dare to even skin his fingers over the edge of the injury even if he were on solid ground and not clinging to a sheer cliff of rock, twenty feet from the unforgiving ground below. The risk of introducing the dirt and bacteria caught beneath his nails and in the grooves of his hands is too great.

He pulls himself over a final ledge, settling with his feet hooked over the edge as he pants, attempting to get the oxygen flowing to his brain again. The wind is bitter this high up; the bright sunlight does nothing to dispel the chill, but Kaeya simply leans back, hands digging further into the snowdrift. It satisfies some primal part of himself to have snow surrounding him like this, and he flops back, careless of his injuries but uncaring as the cold envelops him in a gentle embrace. If he were a little more hopeful, he might even believe the cold was doing something to soothe the injuries rather than just numbing them.

He shifts, and something resists, pressing back into his thigh. He runs a palm over his leg, only to still as his fingers reach his pocket. He fiddles with the edge of it for a moment before giving into the urge and pulling the bauble loose. Its energy thrums against his fingers, the cold blue of it reflecting the sunlight really quite prettily – quite unfairly, actually. The ice of it licks at his skin, something distinctly wrong about the way it tries to twine with him, attempting to slip in alongside the ice that already runs in his veins.

He tips his head back and laughs. It pulls at his face, and he feels even more skin give way. Maybe the burn was the start of something new, for something else to emerge from beneath his skin and reveal it was living within him the whole time; that he was not himself, ever. He can almost imagine grabbing at the loose flaps of skin, digging his claws in and pulling until it all fell away and revealed the monster beneath – the one that will no doubt creep beneath the beds of Mondstadtian children and haunt their darkened alleyways for the next few months.

He laughs until he's dizzy. Until the breathless is getting to him and the sound of his laughter has grown so loud in the echoes that it makes his head hurt. Perhaps this is what it is to go insane – less than a day, and he’s already there.

“I hope you're laughing,” he tells the sky. He tells the stars too, though they have long since hidden themselves from the sun’s light. He says it vaguely heavenward, to whatever higher, cosmic entity is looking down on him right now. Perhaps they agree with the joke, perhaps they're laughing about it with whoever a god may count as their friends. He swings a leg back and forth, kicking over empty air and a thousand-foot drop.

He’s all for constructive criticism, and whoever thought that this would be a funny joke should know that it didn’t stick the landing. It died upon landing, a mangled mess of flesh and bones that everyone grimaced at. A sad death for a sad, pathetic little joke. A Vision for the last hope of Khaenri’ah, what comedians. Maybe the heavens won’t even entertain him, perhaps they’ll just smite him then and there. The end of Kaeya: atop the mountainside, nothing left but a sizzling pile of ash; it’ll be the most merciful death any Khaenri’ahn has ever received.

He grips the Vision tighter, uncaring for the way it tries to pull him in, power wrapped enticingly around his fingers – though it’s not at all enticing, because everything about it is wrong and it threatens to set his whole being alight. The glass is smooth between the pad of his thumb, and the eye continues to wink at him as he presses his thumb into the centre.

He pushes and pushes – a Vision is indestructible, but Kaeya is nothing if not patient.

“I hope you're laughing,” he tells the sky again, quieter this time. It doesn’t echo around like his laughter did. The glass under his thumb is cold. It prickles along the ends of his nerves, stabbing out and out, over and over again. It grows faster as he continues to press, as though the Vision has a heart, one that beats and pulses power around its small bauble rather than blood around a body. It thrums in his grip, and he almost convinces himself that it truly does have a heartbeat when he clenches his fist tight enough to feel the drumming of his own heart.

It is a war of attrition. An immovable object faced with an unstoppable force.

Like with everything else, it simply takes the right pressure applied at the right point. A single weak spot…and everything else crashes down around it. He presses into the centre of the Vision again, a game of back and forth, squeeze and release that he continues to entertain.

The air chills around him, and something changes for a moment- a flicker of something else that he doesn’t quite recognise, hands curling around the Vision.

It shatters a moment later. He pulls his hand back, admires the small, pinprick hole in the very centre of his Vision. The glow dims slightly, though it doesn’t fade to the grey of a dead Vision. Shame. He grins nonetheless, triumphant in his small victory. He flips it over, watches as fluid drains from the bauble. It drips and drips, seemingly never ending.

He watches it drain until the sun teases at the horizon again, a puddle of blueish fluid soaking the snow beside him.

He only pauses when dusk is turning the sky purple and the sound of footsteps on the snow reaches his ears. He doesn’t turn, shoulders tensing as the new person steps closer and closer–

He twists quickly, faster than is natural, bursting into movement with all the power of a tightly coiled spring. He barrels into the chest of his soon-to-be attacker with a flail of hasty limbs. It’s nothing like the poise he was trained to possess, nothing graceful about his movements as he fumbles through his shirt for a knife in lieu of his usual sword. The person doesn’t move, doesn’t even make a sound as they both hit the ground, hard.

Kaeya pauses, hand still inside his shirt, hand curled around the hilt of a small dagger, and simply takes in the person he's currently crouched over like a half-wild beast. Hah. Probably not totally inaccurate.

Looking at the man’s face gives him no clues as to who his attacker might be. He’s wearing a mask, bird-like in shape and covering most of his face. It narrows to a point over his nose, leaving his mouth exposed, but even that gives Kaeya no clues as to who this strange man is – his lips are cracked and spread into a wide grin that shows far too many teeth. It unsettles him so terribly that Kaeya completely freezes, pausing all attempts to slit this man’s throat.

He doesn’t move off the guy, though, keeping one knee firmly pressed into his sternum. He may not have moved to attack yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. For all Kaeya knows, he’s simply waiting for an opportunity to present itself, and his luck hasn’t turned yet. Kaeya isn’t going to be the one to give him that opportunity.

But he also doesn’t look particularly bothering, as though Kaeya is hardly a threat worth considering. He finds that a little insulting, somewhere, in the back of his mind. He may be on the leaner side, but he still carries weight and muscle, evidence of his dedication to training. And yet, the stranger acts as though he’s having a perfectly calm day, content to just lie in the snow with a teenager-adult crouched on his chest.

“I don't think you're one of my strays,” the man says. Kaeya startles a little at the rasp of his voice, lurching backwards only to remember where he is a second later, leaning back in with an arm over the man’s throat to overcompensate. He takes a little satisfaction in the way the man chokes at the added pressure. He’s disgruntled when the stranger continues to grin, and Kaeya gets the sudden impression that the choking noise was simply to satisfy him and not because the man felt any threat.

“I'm not a stray,” he retorts hotly, remembering that the man had insulted him only moments prior.

“Are you not?” The man speaks easily, only confirming Kaeya's suspicions that the wheeze was simply to play into the role of a submissive captive, and not because the man’s airways were actually at risk of harm. “I wasn’t aware of Dragonspine’s thriving indigenous population.”

“Oh, yeah?” He shoves down on the man’s throat, just because he can. “What are you, some kind of Dragonspine expert?”

The man remains silent. His grin is telling. Smug and self-satisfied. Kaeya finds his lip curling.

“Oh, give me a break. No-one studies this place, hardly anyone explores it, and you're happy to sit and lie to my face about being an expert? I’d know if you were.”

“Oh, really?”

Kaeya pauses, frowns. “Yeah, really. Where’s your permit?”

The man stills then, limbs locking tight. Hah, good. Kaeya would laugh in his face if he weren’t busy trying to figure out how he can escape this with his life intact – there's something dangerous about this man, and it is only by his grace that Kaeya is still breathing, despite tackling and restraining him. Despite his own, considerable, size and strength, in comparison to this weedy man, Kaeya is certain he could be tossed aside once the man tires of him.

“Hm.” The stranger’s grin wavers. “Well, that seems to be something I’ve forgotten – tell me, is it Mondstadt or Liyue that overlooks the personhood of Dragonspine?”

“Both.” He presses a little harder for a moment, before slowly, quietly releasing the pressure entirely. He hesitates for a moment before creeping backwards so he’s no longer pinning the man down. He crouches a small distance away, careful not to turn his back to the man or the sharp drop of the cliff edge.

The man sits up, light blue hair clumped together with snow. Kaeya might feel sorry if the man hadn’t snuck up on him, but even a word of greeting rather than just slow, approaching footsteps does wonders in assuring someone you're not actively out to get them. He watches the man hunch over, cough once, twice, then turn to face Kaeya.

“Would I be correct in assuming you are not here to check the status of my research permits?” he asks. Kaeya wants to scoff, or make fun of the man – what a strange priority to have, especially when a permit is so easy to get, especially on this side of the border with Mondstadt and its sympathy for anyone and everyone. Except him and his kind, he remembers bitterly.

“Not anymore.” A few days ago, maybe. But even then, he’d have to be doubtful of the legality of whatever this man is doing to even think of bringing it up to someone else. Any and all Dragonspine trips were, until last night, his responsibility and his responsibility alone. He was the best suited to the harsh climate, and all stress training done at the base of the mountain range took out most of their current Knights, to date, he was their only exception. He’s sure there’s plenty of Knights questioning that ability right now, coming to their own conclusions.

To question the permit of someone at the top of Dragonspine would mean trekking up and down it every other day, and there was no Knight other than Kaeya willing to do such a thing on the regular.

“Hm, surprising. Promotion?”

He scowls. “No.”

“Ah, fired?”

“Also no.”

The man stares at him. At least, Kaeya thinks he's staring. He can't exactly see the man’s eyes behind his mask.

“Well, aren't you just an interesting little conundrum?” The man watches. “Not here to check my permit, but asking after it anyway. Not promoted, but not fired, and yet your job description seems to have changed. Tell me, Ragnvindr, what has changed for you recently?”

Kaeya gapes at him. “How-”

“How do I know who you are? What a boring question from something so interesting. Be a little more creative.”

“Did you want something?” he bites out. He’s rather tempted to attack the man again, and mean it this time. Maybe take a chunk out of him; he’s asking for it with that cocky attitude of his.

“Curiosity drove me here,” the man tells him. “Tell me, if your men, highly trained and somewhat capable, returned from a short patrol to tell you there was something cackling madly in the mountains and that they were reluctant to approach, what would you think? Or if there were reports of laughter which continued for longer than humanly possible? Or perhaps you would rather explain the localised snow storm around here – have there been any freak weather phenomenon like this on your previous trips up the mountain?”

Kaeya swallows. Feels his throat click with the motion.

The man tilts his head to the side, bird-like. “Nothing more to say?” he asks. “You were chatty only a few moments ago; did I say something to get on your nerves?” The way he smiles as he says it suggests to Kaeya that he wouldn’t particularly care if he did. He's just needling at him, poking and prodding to try and find a weak point, see what gives way. “Tell me, disinherited heir, what are you doing on this mountaintop? You missed your father’s funeral.”

“Inviting the wrath of the gods.” Kaeya tells him shortly, and turns away. Something in him feels raw and hot. The man’s poking has succeeded. He doesn’t care to continue to face such a rude man, content to let him stew in the silence of a turned back and cold shoulder. He had made no move towards him even after Kaeya released him, not even a vaguely threatening gesture sent his way. He feels somewhat safe, even with a potential madman at his back.

The man laughs, a genuine sound that startles Kaeya into turning back towards him. “Oh, truly? Tell me, what is it that you’ve done – so dramatic too! If the gods cared, all of us would have been struck down long ago.” He grins, sharp and wide. Kaeya smiles back at him, hesitant, if only because the sudden oddity and excitement, so different from the previous mockery, are as contagious as they are startling. “Oh, go on, please, tell me what you believe may have angered the gods so much.”

“Achieving the impossible,” Kaeya shrugs, and gestures half-heartedly to the puddle of Vision-fluid, still steadily leaking from the bauble. It teeters near the edge of the cliff, but the man hardly spares him a cautious glance before he's scurrying over to investigate.

It’s then that Kaeya clocks the lab coat the man is wearing, which…makes sense. Any scientist he met worth their salt was at least a little crazy, and this man certainly ticks the crazy box. Jury’s still out on whether he’s actually clever or just insane.

The man putters around for a moment, picking and plucking at the snow until he unearths the Vision from where it was buried. When he does, he stills completely. Both he and Kaeya watch as the Vision continues to weep fluid, the shiny, almost metallic substance sliding over his gloves and down his wrists, before dripping to the ground. It looks like he’s slit his wrists, bleeding mercury rather than blood.

“Huh.” The man says. His head turns to the side, the angle just right for Kaeya to catch a glimpse at the eye behind the mask, a flash of red there and gone again. “A conundrum indeed. However did you manage to break this? In fact, however did you manage to acquire such a thing? I rather thought you were…not regarded highly by the gods.”

“A cosmic joke.”

“Hah! A joke indeed, to hand such a gift to an abyssal creature such as you...” he trails off, then mutters “the Tsaritsa must have something in mind for you indeed” ominously, and then stands suddenly.

He strides over to Kaeya in a few short moments. A hand in thrust in front of him, palm up, fingers splayed out. The metallic sheen of Vision-fluid continues to shine on his fingers. Some drips onto Kaeya's knee, staining the fabric of his trousers. “Well, come on,” he says when Kaeya hesitates for too long. “There are things for you to be doing, and I intend to see what that is.”

Kaeya continues to sit in the snow. Something in him rankles at having the man so close, some long-buried instinct that is always right whenever it deigns to raise its head and grumble. “How can I take the hand of a man I do not even know the face nor name of – you know so much of myself, and yet you continue to obscure your own nature.”

“My face is not something for young eyes, and look at the damage done to yours already,” the man tuts. “But, Young Ragnvindr, I am surprised you do not know my name. Have you not heard of me already? I was told my fame precedes me,” he frowns. “I’m a little hurt, honestly.”

“I am not a Ragnvindr.”

“Ach, always focusing on the wrong things,” the man scolds, shaking his head. “Il Dottore? The Doctor?” It takes a moment for Kaeya to realise that he's prompting, expecting it to cause some sort of revelation within his mind. “Oh, for crying- the Fatui Harbingers, pray tell, you have heard of us, have you not?”

The Harbingers. Of course. “Who hasn’t?”

“That’s more like it! Now, how does an exclusive offer sound, hm? You come back with me and explain just how you did this, and I might take you back with me as a…ahm, oh what is it – an apprentice! Yes, oh, this is great, people have been on my back for years about taking an apprentice. Obviously, I was waiting for someone like you to come along, right?”

Kaeya stares at this strange man and his outstretched hand. Considers this one-way ticket to Snezhnaya that’s currently being dangled in front of him, an offer and a deal all the same. Thinks of the house that is no longer a home, a city that is no longer his own. He doesn’t have anywhere else in the world to belong; the closest nation is Liyue, and he’s too recognisable to the vendors, years of visits with Crepus doing a damage that he wasn’t even aware of.

The fingers of the outstretched hand wiggle. “Offer expiring in five, four, three…”

Kaeya takes his hand and allows himself to be hauled to his feet.

The man – the Doctor is in his face a moment later, head tilting like a bird once as he looks him over, hand on his jaw to turn his face from side to side. A careless thumb against the edge of his ruined eye makes him grit his teeth and bite back a whimper. He grits his teeth harder when the thumb presses in, harsh and then gone again as the Doctor leans back.

“Hm, yes. I do believe you might be my most promising investment in a while.” The Doctor grins. “We shall have fun together, you and I.”

“In there.” The Doctor orders. He gives little care for the stares their entrance to the camp has drawn. Kaeya feels the weight of every pair of eyes here, and the Doctor could not care less, stood impatiently, hand on his hip as he holds the flap of a tent open.

Kaeya considers the dark, confined space once more, and then considers the oppressive air of the camp. Remaining outside would mean disobeying the Doctor’s direct orders, and also subjecting himself to more scrutiny from more of the Fatui. He thinks he recognises a few of them from arrests. He’s sure they recognise him too.

He ducks inside, into a dark tent that smells strongly of medicine and disinfectant.

“Ach, Ekaterina, must you always keep it so dark in here,” the Doctor grumbles.

There’s a faintly scuffle from further in the tent, in the darkest depths of it that Kaeya's eyes have not yet adjusted enough to see through, and then light floods the interior, blooming outward from the lamp a young woman now holds.

“Apologies, Doctor, I wasn’t expecting any visitors so late.” The woman blinks at him, then again, before her eyes widen and she drops the lamp on the nearest table and scrambles for something else. When she turns back to him again, there's a mask obscuring the majority of her face. “Sir,” she salutes the Doctor. “Were my services needed for something.”

The Doctor hums. “Ekaterina, meet my new protégé. Protégé, name pending, meet Ekaterina.” Name pending?

He steps forward, manners kicking in as he extends a hand towards her, tilted gently at the wrist. He’s close enough that he can see her widened eyes behind the eye slots in her mask. “Pleasure to meet you, Ekaterina.”

The Doctor titters behind him. “Such a gentleman, how wonderful. Now come on, over here before you bleed out and keel over. A dissection is fun, but I am far more interested in what you can do alive.” He raps a knuckle against the metal table he’s stood beside, and Kaeya hurries to comply with his order, hand slipping loose from Ekaterina’s lax grip.

He sits on the table at the Doctor’s direction, though he does so slowly and with suspicion. Suspicion that only grows when Ekaterina appears at his side, holding a roll of doctor’s tools. It unravels, revealing far too many cutting devices that glint menacingly in the low light.

“How many of those are for me?” he cracks, wincing as nervousness bleeds through into his voice.

“More, if you continue speaking, brat.” Kaeya tenses at the Doctor’s words, not relaxing even as the man huffs a sigh. “Oh, relax, have you never heard a joke before? You're an investment, and a protégé, something that you need to be alive for.”

Kaeya pauses, glances at Ekaterina, then back at the Doctor. “I have literally no way of guaranteeing if you're telling the truth or not.”

“Tsaritsa’s tits, are you going to be this difficult the whole time?” He complains. “I thought having a protégé was meant to make everything easier. Someone to push the work off onto…at least that’s what Pulcinella’s been telling me.”

“Never trust a politician,” Ekaterina chirps dutifully, like it’s a common sentiment around here.

“And aren't you right there,” the Doctor mutters, and selects a…pair of tweezers. Even these look menacing, gleaming and oddly sharpened edges coming towards his face so fast that he flinches backwards, nearly toppling all the way off the table. Only the Doctor’s hand gripping his shoulder keeps him from embarrassing himself further.

The Doctor sneers at whatever expression Kaeya's wearing. “Hush, now, don't look at me like that, you brat.”

“Easy for you to say,” he eyes the tweezers sceptically. “You're the one with the torture devices.”

“They aren’t – torture devices, really.” He looks sideways at Ekaterina. She shrugs, which is followed by the clinking of metal as all the tools she's holding clatter against each other. “Honestly, what is it with today’s youth, all so obsessed with violence.” He mutters something beneath his breath in another language. Kaeya doesn’t understand the words, but he understands the intention of the insult. “I’ll have you know these-” he shakes the tweezers at Kaeya “-are a registered piece of medical equipment. Which I am trained and certified to use.”

“Who certified you,” he scoffs, “another madman?”

“Hah! He has jokes!” The Doctor grins, and leans back in. “Now stay still, your face is in such a sorry state that it’s making me feel bad. And let me tell you, that is not a common occurrence.”

“It is not,” Ekaterina agrees. She continues to stand beside the Doctor, back ramrod straight and so entirely unaffected by this despite her overall normalness. It makes Kaeya wonder how she ended up here.

“if I leave you like this,” the Doctor continues. The tweezers move in close again, and Kaeya looks into the man’s face, away from the hands and…whatever they're doing. The words give him something to centre himself on. “The wound is going to fester, and then you'll probably get sepsis, and that is a very nasty way to go. It is a slow and painful death, and as interested as I am to see how your antibodies would react to such a serious infection, I'm not interested in losing such a fascinating person in such a mundane way.”

The Doctor’s fingers dig into his chin a little, not tight enough to bruise but enough to keep Kaeya where he wants him as he tilts his head back. He grits his teeth, swallows hard enough that he’s certain everyone else in the tent heard it.

“Tell me,” something cools brushes against the exposed flesh on his face. “How much of this can you feel right now? Any pain? Any sensation at all?”

“Something cold.” It’s hard to speak with something holding his jaw in place, making his words come out muffled.

The Doctor hums at the response, leaning a little closer. This close, he can see scratches marring the otherwise smooth surface of his mask. None of them are deep enough to be seen from afar, but this close, he can see the faint grooves in the mask’s finish. It almost looks like someone’s clawed at his face before, successfully or unsuccessfully. He tries not to consider the implications of that too deeply, considering his current position and how easy it would be to slot his nails into those same grooves right now.

“Some nerve damage then, rather significant if there’s such a lack of pain in the surrounding area. Unless it was simply the cold that numbed it,” he mutters something Kaeya can't understand, then. “Was there much sensation in the area before you came into contact with a cold environment.”

Kaeya scrambles through his memories, attempting to remember anything past the haze of panic and adrenaline is difficult. “No.” he says, quite sure that it’s true.

The Doctor hums again. “Can you blink for me? Both eyes if you could.” Kaeya does, and the Doctor hums again. The sound of it is beginning to set Kaeya on edge, hands curling around the sharp edge of the metal table.

That cold feeling passes over his face again before the Doctor is pulling back to inspect his work from further away. Ekaterina stares at the side of Kaeya's face too. With the mask in the way it’s hard to tell what she's feeling, but the stiffening of her shoulders is a dead giveaway that it’s nothing good.

The Doctor continues to poke and prod at his face, occasionally retreating off to the side before returning the tweezers to his face once more. A few more times, Kaeya flinches at the sudden intrusion into his personal space, eye flitting towards the Doctor, expecting to see more than he does.

Ekaterina stands silent vigil the whole while, numerous instruments held in her grasp. None of them are reached for, nothing other than the tweezers is used.

When the Doctor leans back this time, he hums in satisfaction rather than consideration. Kaeya's not sure how he can tell the difference. “Ekaterina,” he holds out a hand, a silent order for something else. Kaeya fears for a moment, then, that another of those tools is about to make an appearance, perhaps begin to slice at his skin to peel the layers of it back?

Instead, Ekaterina re-rolls the tools and sets it aside before disappearing somewhere Kaeya can't track her. She reappears a minute later, holding a small glass vial in her hand which she hands off to the Doctor before resuming her position.

“All right,” the Doctor turns to him, vial in hand. “Lucky you, you're getting to be one of the real patients this is being used on – don't worry! This has all been tested, I can assure you it’s perfectly safe for use, even better than most on the market!”

“Most what on the market?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the Doctor sing-songs, and leans in to begin applying it to his face. The grip tightens then, harsh enough that Kaeya becomes certain there will be five finger-shaped bruises along his jaw for the next few days.

“Your bedside manner is atrocious.”

“Well, there’s a reason I didn’t go into healthcare, brat. And it’s not just the warrants for my arrest.” The Doctor holds his hand out to Ekaterina casually, as though that isn’t a horrifying thing to drop mid-treatment. His jaw is released from the Doctor’s grip as Ekaterina retrieves whatever it is he’s requesting. “Stay put,” he orders, “you're getting bandages on that.”

Kaeya obediently stays put, biting his tongue as the Doctor begins to wind the bandages over the side of his head, awkwardly leaning forward to allow the Doctor to secure the bandages properly. The silence only lasts for so long before Kaeya's opening his mouth again, curiosity niggling at the edges of his mind and forcing him forward.

“Why take me as your…protégé?”

“You're interesting, and I intend to find out more about your…nature.” The way he says it is purposeful, and Kaeya doesn’t quite understand what he means until he looks to the side, finds Ekaterina's shoes. She's still here, stood just off to the side, dutifully quiet but listening to every word spoken.

“You’ve already said that,” Kaeya pushes. “What do you mean?”

“It means you are a curiosity, a mystery to be unravelled.” The Doctor winds another stretch of bandage around his head. The pressure of it against his skull increases. “Why come to Dragonspine? It is a famously inhospitable place, and even with your past experiences with the mountain range, that doesn’t mean you would be able to survive here for an extended period of time. Especially not with your lack of gear. Someone like you should have been long-dead before I reached you. And yet there you were, day two of your isolation atop Dragonspine, perfectly fine, not a single symptom of cold exposure. Lucid, despite the significant blood loss. And, of course, the impossible achieved in that time.”

Ekaterina shuffles her feet. The Doctor stops and steps back, releasing Kaeya entirely. He tilts his head up, wincing at how it strains his neck after so long looking down. The bandages scratch his face, making the uninjured skin itch. His injured skin is indifferent.

“Any other hidden injuries?” the Doctor probes. His head is tilted to the side, a bird-like mannerism that reminds Kaeya of the pigeons that tend to cluster all over Mondstadt. He doesn’t voice this comparison aloud, certain that the Doctor would forgo any previous promises and kill him on the spot.

“My ribs,” he says. “Bruised, I think. Not broken.”

“Boring,” the Doctor sighs. “Ekaterina, take care of him and his ribs. I’ll be elsewhere.” He disappears from the tent with a swirl of his lab coat, ignoring Ekaterina's sharp “yes, sir” as he leaves.

She turns back to him, awkwardness hanging heavy in the air between them. Kaeya stares at her, and she stares back through the eye slots of her mask. She looks like a cicin mage, is definitely dressed like one – the kind that like to make nuisances of themselves around Mondstadt but aren’t a danger to every person that passes by. He’s only heard of them attacking after being provoked, normally by some overconfident Knight or adventurer. Ekaterina doesn’t seem the slightest bit like a cicin mage.

“Do you mind if I take my mask off?” Ekaterina asks. “It’s too dark in her, I can't see a damn thing in it.”

Kaeya doesn’t point out that it’s her own fault the tent’s so dark. “Um, no?”

Ekaterina sighs in visible relief, wrenching the mask from her face and practically throwing it across the tent. Without the mask, she looks tired, and hardly older than he is. He glances over at where her mask balances on the edge of a nearby table, curious if he could take a closer look or if it’s taboo to touch another’s mask. The Fatui seem to have an odd etiquette around masks that had never been broached in briefings, only touched upon in a short order: do not remove.

“Yeah, yeah, protocol, whatever,” she waves him off. “’Don’t take a mask off unless ordered to or given permission by a higher-up.” She pauses, then squints at him. “You probably count as a higher-up, right?” She doesn’t wait for him to respond, moving on before he even has a chance to answer, mouth moving rapid-fire. “Yeah, probably. Boy, you're gonna be the talk around camp come morning. I'm sure you saw everyone outside, gathered around the fire?”

He manages to sneak in a nod this time.

“Ugh, such gossips. They’ll be chattering away about it all night I bet. Working hard or hardly working.” She scoffs. “I mean, it is quite impressive, you've managed to catch the attention of the Doctor.” As she talks, she moves closer again, closer than she was before. “Just, wow. The only thing that normally manages to catch his attention is test subjects, and you seem to be something- someone he’s not doing that to – can I lift up your shirt to look?”

Kaeya blinks, slowly sinking back out of the haze he had settled in. He looks at Ekaterina, only realising that she's asked him a question when she continues to look at him expectantly.

“Uh, sorry, what was that?”

“Can I lift your shirt?” She gestures. “So I can check your ribs. I don't have to, but if the Doctor finds out that I just neglected you after he gave me direct orders…he probably won’t be happy about it.”

“Go for it.”

“Thanks.” She lifts it abruptly and without any more preamble. She does it methodically, working carefully but firmly across his chest, far surer in the motions than any of Kaeya's half-assed poking earlier. And she chatters the whole while. “You know, I thought the same thing as those guys when you were first brought in. That you were just another experiment, some anomaly he’d found wandering the peaks of Dragonspine without a family to miss them, and he wanted me to do a preliminary check-up. You know, make sure you wouldn’t kick the bucket before we made it back to Snezhnaya and the real fun could begin.”

Kaeya swallows, visions of what fate might have found him if he were just a little less ‘interesting’. He’s dealt with his far share of the missing person’s reports that cross his desk every now and then. Most of them remain unresolved, with the victim presumed dead. With the heavy Fatui presence on Dragonspine’s peaks, he's beginning to put together the pieces of what might have happened to those people. It’s rather easy to dispose of a body on Dragonspine, just leave it outside and nature will take care of the rest.

“Not that any of that matters anymore.” Ekaterina drops his shirt down. “Good news for you! You're not destined for a fate worse than death!” Kaeya snorts as she does jazz-hands, which, combined with the deadpan delivery of the ‘good’ news is enough to make him laugh.

“How wonderful.”

“Hm. Certainly wonderful for you as you're all fine here. Bruised ribs, sure, maybe don't move around too much or do any strenuous activity for the next few days and you'll be all fine in no time.” She pops to her feet, dusting her hands off as she wheels around. “If you need anything else, well, you can find me here. Day in, day out. I even sleep here.”

Kaeya frowns. “Aren't you a…cicin mage?” He imagines that must involve some kind of field work.

“No.” She laughs. “Wanted to be, once, and I've got all the trimmings for one,” she gestures at her uniform. “But I'm ‘far more useful in a medical tent than on the field. Disruptive behaviour isn’t tolerated here, so you're lucky we’re even giving you this second chance’,” she quotes, words rehearsed like she's parroting something heard many times before. She then looks at him again and winces.

“What a nice way to tell you you're shit at your job.”

“Hah, I know. Still have a job, at least. But it’s just glorified desk work most days. Or acting as the Doctor’s assistant when he needs it.” She sighs again, looking rather weary before a cheery expression slides over her face. It’s a little creepy. “Right, well, it’s past my bedtime and I'm sure someone will need help at some ungodly hour of the morning, so,” she points to a corner in the tent, “there is a cot for you there. I’ll be in the back if you need anything else.”

She douses the lantern as she leaves, a rustle of fabric accompanying her movement into the very back of the tent. Kaeya sits on the metal table for a moment longer, blinking slowly as his eye adjusts to the low light, squinting to see into the very depths of the tent in an attempt to locate the cot Ekaterina had mentioned.

After several minutes of pained squinting, he gives up and stands, carefully feeling his way towards the corner Ekaterina had pointed at.

Kaeya blinks, waking slowly. The sun streams in through a small gap in the tent’s door, sliding over the side of his face. He stirs a little, reluctant to wake when the bed beneath him is so comfortable, moulded around his shape, and the air is cool enough to be comfortable.

“Ah, good, you're awake.”

And he is. Very much so. He bolts up a second later, quick enough that his vision darkens and the blood rushes to his head. He groans, clutching his head and glaring through his fingers, towards where he thinks the Doctor might be sitting.

“Don't hurt yourself, brat,” the Doctor says, just as Kaeya's vision returns to him completely. Or as completely as it ever will, now. “There, there, did you have sweet dreams?”

“Did you need something?” He bites out, angry at the Doctor for ruining what was a perfectly good morning.

“Yes, but I can give you a moment to reacquaint yourself with the land of the living if necessary.” The man sits back in his seat...which he has dragged to be directly beside Kaeya's cot. Creep. “Go on, take all the time in the world.”

“What did you need,” Kaeya asks.

“To speak on my proposal a little more thoroughly. I am aware that I was…sparse with the details last night, and I don't like setting up transactions where either party feels as though they're being left in the dark. Causes…a few sticky situations.”

“You want me as an apprentice,” Kaeya says bluntly. “Is there any more to it?”

“Oh, there is plenty more to it, brat. Do you not care for the terms of this apprenticeship? Perhaps to know what the end-goal of such a thing is? Or are you so desperate to escape this false homeland of yours that you will take the hand of whoever extends one to you?”

Kaeya grits his teeth and turns his head away. The man is attempting to get beneath his skin again, as he did the day before. He seems to revel in it, and Kaeya refuses to give him such satisfaction.

“The end goal,” Kaeya says. “What is it?”

“There are empty seats amongst the Harbingers. Some train a successor, but I have always set my sights higher than that. I am confident you have the abilities to fill one of those seats. Perhaps even balance the…nature of another successor. Who knows! Such a fascinating experiment, no?”

“You want me to be a Fatui Harbinger,” Kaeya says, deadpan. If the man expects him to believe that, he has another thing coming. “I don't even speak Snezhnayan.”

“That will be no issue. You're a fast study with languages, no? Proficiency tests in Liyuean, Inazuman and Fontainian show you are something of a polyglot.” The Doctor smiles. “How did I get those scores? Well, there are some things I must keep secret from you, otherwise the magic loses its spark.”

Kaeya closes his mouth again. “Would the apprenticeship be with you, then?”

“Who else?”

“But why take me on?” he asks. “You famously don't work well with people. The Doctor works alone, and is seen alone. There may be a team of assistants that run around after him, but that is all they are: assistants. Not anything more, but to train me as an apprentice that would one day ascend to the ranks of the Harbingers suggests that we would be equals.”

The Doctor tuts. “So now he remembers his lessons.” He shakes his head. “The truth is, brat, that all of my current assistants fear speaking their mind to me,” he says, almost sound as though he’s…complaining? “They may be far below me, but science is a collaboration! How are my ideas meant to grow and expand if it is only one man feeding into them. They're great, top of all of their fields until I snatched them away for my own labs, but it’s really boring when not a single one of them wants to engage in a little bit of friendly back-and-forth. Honestly, you'd think my lab is a library with how silent is. Not a single peep out of any of them – where’s the explosions? The fun?”

“And- what, I'm your solution to that?”

The Doctor nods.

“And how do you know I didn’t fail every class I took?”

The Doctor gives him a sour look, somehow. The mask obscures his face, but Kaeya still gets the distinct impression that he's looking at Kaeya with disdain. “I think we both know the answer to that, brat. You're an anomaly even amongst the people of Mondstadt, someone that stands out from the bunch. You're incredibly smart, and yet little attention was paid to you.” The Doctor frowns, “Being forced to live in someone else’s shadow forces you to be the very best, doesn’t it? To strain and push yourself far enough that there might be a moment of recognition for you.”

Something in Kaeya rankles at the almost-sympathetic note in the Harbinger’s voice. He is not someone that wishes to be comforted by a Harbinger of all people.

“You outshone your brother in so many ways, but all of that was overshadowed by him making captain at such a young age. Tell me, I'm right, aren’t I? The attention was piled onto your brother, and sure, you weren’t neglected, but you also weren’t the star of the show. Just the adopted Ragnvindr trying to stand out, but not too much, because no-one should look at you too closely.”

“You don't know anything about me or my- my family,” Kaeya snaps. “How is this meant to sway me to your side?”

“I'm not trying to sway anything. All I am offering here is an opportunity: one that will bring you attention and respect in equal measures. Everything you strived for before. None before you have received the opportunity you seem so ready to scorn. You would be my apprentice, working at my side from the moment this deal is sealed; do you know how many would kill for something like that?”

“Many, I'm sure.” Kaeya frowns. “If I were to accept,” he hedges, “are there any guarantees that there won’t be too many issues.” Bringing in an outsider always inspires resentment and suspicion, especially if said outsider seems to be getting everything you could have ever dreamed of.

“You received the Tsaritsa’s blessing already, even if you defied it in the same breath.” The Doctor indicates his Vision, sitting on the table beside Kaeya's cot, something he hadn’t noticed before. It no longer leaks, some kind of seal patching the hole in it. “There is no more permission I need.”

Kaeya sits and thinks. The Harbinger watches him the whole while, grinning with a mouth full of shark’s teeth. It’s as though he already knows that Kaeya has been caught, hook, line and sinker. He’d grabbed at the first opportunity that presented itself to him, even when that opportunity was offered by a strange, bedraggled man on a mountainside.

“You will be taken care of,” the Doctor says. “Every need of yours will be attended to, provided you uphold your end of the deal.”

“I want a written document for each of us to sign,” Kaeya decides. “Legally binding.”

“That can be arranged.” He sighs, weirdly dreamy “Ah, Pantalone will be so pleased to do such a thing for me. He always enjoys when I speak legalese to him.”

Kaeya grimaces at the weird smile that overtakes the Doctor’s face, leaning back from the odd sight. It’s unnerving.

It means he flinches when the Doctor thrusts a hand out, fingers splayed out in a weird, almost-recreation of their first encounter. “Do we have a deal?” he asks, head tilting to the side.

Kaeya takes his hand cautiously, but grips it firm when they shake on it.

“Wonderful,” the Doctor’s teeth flash in the light as he grins. “I can't wait to see how this plays out.”

Chapter Text

Nothing really seems to happen for the next few days, even after sealing the deal with the Doctor. He remains on the mountain, mostly hanging around inside of Ekaterina's tent and watching the way she treats the few patients that visit her.

He’s content to flip through her medical textbooks, studying the various intricacies of life. All of it is in Snezhnayan, shockingly, so he mostly looks at the pictures and puzzles his way through what the words could be. He has a Mondstadtian to Snezhnayan dictionary she dug up from somewhere, but he still has to ask Ekaterina what a character means on occasion. He’s mostly content to figure it out himself, happy to occupy himself with this latest puzzle of learning an entirely new language in a completely new alphabet.

He stares at the books harder whenever a patient pays a visit. Even that focus is unable to distract him completely from the way they stare at him. Their eyes are heavy on his back, even when he turns away from them completely, out of sight out of mind, right? Except not, because he can still sense them; can still feel the urge to curl up tight and snarl and snap at them until they go away. He doesn’t, of course. None of that would help with the rumours flying around the camp, and he’s certainly not looking to add any more fuel to the fire.

He sticks to the medical tent, even as Ekaterina encourages him to get a little sunlight. The silent, judging stares from inside the tent are terrible enough, but the judging stares and scathing whispers are even worse to endure. Still, she kicks him out sometimes, forces him into the sunlight and the fresh air. He skulks around the edges of the tent when that happens. Ignores the other Fatui in the camp and counts down the seconds until he can return inside.

He’s deemed the new experiment, Dottore's new brat. There are several other things he can only catch bits and pieces of, the Snezhnayan spoken too fast and too unfamiliar for him to translate the nuances of it. None of it is complimentary. He doesn’t need a fluency in the language to understand that, the scathing tone and sharp eyes are enough of a hint for him. He’ll keep his distance, as long as they keep theirs too.

Eyes follow behind him in his waking moments, and even when he sleeps he cannot escape the piercing stare of the dreamworld. He dreams in indistinct blurs, black and white, but he knows what colour the shades of grey are. He wakes sweating and shaking from dreams that refused to resolve into a greater quality than masses of almost-colour and motion.

It’s as though he's watching memories replay through a fogged window, desperately wiping condensation away to no avail; it’s frosted on the outside, leaving everything as incoherent shapes.

He reads by candlelight, hands shaking as they turn the pages. He leaves sweaty marks on the corners as he thumbs at the paper anxiously. The diagram of an eye stares back at him from the page. Accusing. The labels and lines peel back the layers of flesh and viscera that brings the world into focus. The candlelight warps the shadows across the page; they grow long and twisted, and the eye twists beneath their influence, snarling into a picture of anger.

He snaps the book shut. Louder than he intended. He sits and shakes. His hands sweat on the hardback cover. A skeleton grins up at him from the cover, boasting itself as The Most Comprehensive Guide to Human Anatomy. There are no eyes in the skull, but he can feel them watching him anyway, a perfect pair.

His face itches with the thought, and he longs to rip the bandages from his head. To see how mangled his face has become. The darkness at his right has become second nature, over the ten days of his isolation within this tent. The ladies in town had always cooed over him as a young teen, nudging Crepus and commenting on how he had such handsome boys.

Wrapped in gauze like some medical mummy, he’s certainly drawing eyes, but for all the wrong reasons. The other Fatui in camp look at him with pity in their eyes, derision, that such a weak thing might have garnered some favour from their esteemed Lord Harbinger.

He falls asleep with the candle dying beside him and the textbook clutched in both hands.

He wakes with his heart in his throat and a patient watching him from across the room. Ekaterina beckons him over when she notices him stirring. He ignores her for a moment, smoothing his hair back, until her beckoning becomes insistent enough that he stands and makes his way over to where she's sat on a stool at her patient’s feet.

“Brat,” she says in Snezhnayan. “What do you think of this man’s injuries?” She’s begun to speak with him in Snezhnayan. Some sort of exposure to the language is always good, but he sometimes feels like he’s been thrown in the deep end, floundering for anything to grasp onto, left struggling to parse the meaning of a language which, up until a few weeks ago, had been entirely foreign to him.

He replies in halting Snezhnayan. “Which are the affected areas?”

“His hands,” she says, gesturing as she speaks. He follows the path and takes in the patches of pale and reddened skin.

“Mm.” He leans closer, even as the man grits his teeth at Kaeya's proximity. He pushes the man’s head to the side, settling into a clinical detachment, something he’s seen both Ekaterina and the Doctor do. His ears are in a similar state as his fingers. “How long were you out in the elements for?”

“Two hours,” the man grits out. “Maybe three.”

Kaeya hums again. “Can you feel your fingers?” A nod. “Any areas of tingling?” Hesitation. A small nod. “Where?”

“On the tips of my fingers,” the man huffs, then turns to Ekaterina. “Can I go? Or do you want your new pet to poke at me a little more.”

“That little pet is also here,” he bites back. Little pet is a common nickname around the camp, overheard whenever he’s carrying supplies between the tents. Ekaterina insists that if he doesn’t wish to leave the tent often, then he can be helpful and transport her cargo in her stead. Kaeya thinks she's just too lazy to do it herself. “And you've been stupid enough to get frostbite. You're Snezhnayan, aren’t you? What kind of Snezhnayan gets frostbite so easily?”

“Watch your tongue, pest.” The man begins to rise, only for Ekaterina to shove him back into his seat on the metal table.

“Sit,” she orders. “And behave.” Kaeya wasn’t aware that the Fatui grunts were trained like dogs, but the man sets his jaw mulishly and contents himself with glaring at Kaeya. He doesn’t make any further moves, even as Ekaterina disappears to find water and a kettle. Lukewarm water to slowly warm the frozen skin; slowly, so no further damage occurs.

Great, nasty blisters rise as his hands slowly warm. He glares at Kaeya the whole while, as though his stupidity is Kaeya's own fault. He snarls at him under his breath, gritting his teeth and ignoring the daggers shooting at his back.

He returns to his textbook as the man sits and sulks. Not much to do when both hands are occupied with a lukewarm bowl of water. Serves him right.

He skips over the eye, straight onto the heart. Engrosses himself in the flow of blood through the body, the pathways of the heart and the inner mechanisms that allow it all to beat in sync. Superior and inferior vena cava. Aorta. Sino-atrial node. It blends together in his mind in a way that makes him confident he could never have been a doctor. He’s not quite sure what a QRS wave is, only that it can be observed through an electrocardiogram.

The bed dips beside him, and he looks up to find Ekaterina there. She doesn’t look at him, eyes trained on the book in his grasp instead. He looks across the tent, finding the observation table empty. Their grumpy patient is gone, returned to the cold wilderness of Dragonspine, no doubt.

“You were out in the cold for far longer than he was,” Ekaterina says, out of nowhere. She still doesn’t look at him, finding something fascinating in the edge of a page as she begins to toy with the paper. The edges are soft, and Kaeya realises that it’s probably from this exact habit, watching the way her thumb brushes back and forth over an edge that has long since been worn smooth.

“I was.”

“And yet you had none of the symptoms he had. Someone like you, out in the cold with little protection for so long…you should have died long before the Doctor found you.” She looks at him then. There’s something unreadable in her eyes. “But you didn’t.”

“No.”

Her eyes search his own for a moment. He stares back, unblinking. Maybe she registers the star in his pupil, the uncanny brightness to his eyes. Perhaps she's been observing him the whole time, watching him from across the tent like another one of her patients. She knows a little psychology; she’d confessed it to him on an evening where it had been just the two of them and a pair of warm drinks. Something of a hobby, she had said, something to pass the time while I wait for the longer recovery times to be over.

He finds he doesn’t care all that much if she's been psychoanalysing him from across the room. He’s not sure what's going on inside his brain most of the time. Maybe a little insight would be useful. Introspection, and all that.

“What’s the prognosis then, doc?” he asks.

She hums. Her eyes are still fixed on him with that unreadable…thing behind them. “Results inconclusive.”

He laughs a little. The tension bleeds from the air. She smiles a little back at him. “Suppose you'll have to observe me a little bit more. Pick my brain apart with your psychology tricks.”

Ekaterina pauses. “I wasn’t-”

“It’s fine if you were,” he assures, even though he’s not entirely sure of that himself. Is it fine? Maybe. He’s not really sure. They're something approaching friends, he's not sure the kind of boundaries to put in place. Friends let their friends practice their hobbies. Ekaterina's hobby just happens to be of the psychological, brain-picking kind. “Not sure there's much going on up here. Reckon the infection in my eye has reached my brain and killed all activity.”

“There is no infection in your eye.” She rebuts. “I've done excellent wound care on it. Miraculous, given the state you arrived in. It was practically beyond repair, more a gaping hole…” she trails off. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he repeats. He's still not sure if it is. Maybe, maybe not. He can't summon much energy to mind either way. The lack of sleep seems to be catching up with him.

He turns the page of the textbook. He hadn’t read much of the previous page, but the Snezhnayan was beginning to blend into one, large mass of ink. The next page is a detailed, double-page spread of the entire skeleton. There’s coloured tabs littered all over the edges of the pages, notes written neatly on the small strips of colourful paper. He flicks at one absently.

“This is my favourite page,” Ekaterina confesses. He turns to look at her. She laughs and looks away. “I always wanted to be a doctor. This was the closest my parents could get me, I guess.” Kaeya looks at the page again. Some of the paper tabs are older, the writing a little more crooked, slightly less neat. Written by a younger hand. “I changed my mind pretty quick, decided that if I couldn’t heal people, then I could probably break them apart just as easily. I was strong enough to do it.”

“And here you are anyway,” Kaeya mutters.

“Here I am anyway.” Ekaterina agrees. She sounds sad. Kaeya turns another page.

The tent flaps swish open, and Ekaterina is there to assist her newest patient as they stumble through, nose bloody and arm hanging loose at their side.

Kaeya watches for a moment. Dislocated shoulder, possibly a broken nose. He recites the diagnosis to Ekaterina dutifully and then returns to the book. He ignores the staring as best as he can. Better than he had a week ago, unused to so much attention. Now, the heavy rest of eyes on his back is second nature. The standard rather than an anomaly.

It takes nearly another week for the Doctor to reappear. As seems to be becoming customary with him, he appears while Kaeya is still asleep, waiting at his bedside for him to wake.

When he does, squinting open an eye that firstly registers the light flooding into the tent and secondly the man sat at his bedside, he doesn’t spring up in panic like the first time. Instead, he sits up slowly, the softness of sleep determinedly clinging on as he brushes the grime from his eye. He and Ekaterina had spent time talking the previous night, huddled together over mugs of hot chocolate, each of them spiked with fire-water.

The Doctor is grinning at him when he finally turns his attention towards the man. Kaeya grimaces at the sight, not awake enough for the Harbinger’s particular brand of shark-smile. “I have a gift for you,” he says, equally ominously.

Kaeya stares at him for a moment longer, eyebrow climbing higher the longer the seconds tick on. “Okay?”

“Honestly, the youth these days,” the Doctor makes a grab for his hand, tutting when Kaeya pulls back, tucking the vulnerable limb beneath his blanket. “You could be a little more gracious, I’ve brought you a gift.” He reveals his hand then, rather like a magician pulling a handkerchief from his sleeve, the Doctor reveals a scrap of fabric in the palm of his hand. He dangles it in Kaeya's direction.

“I hope you don't expect me to just take that from you.”

The Doctor bristles, the fur collar of his coat ruffling around his neck. The scrap of black fabric swishes from side to side in the air. It shimmers a little, catching the light just-so. Kaeya follows it for a moment, curiosity beginning to itch beneath his skin, but resisting the temptation to reach out and take it. He doesn’t know the Doctor's motives with this offering; for all he knows, it’s some kind of trap that the Doctor is simply waiting for him to walk into.

“I’ve never done anything to harm you,” he snaps.

Kaeya frowns at him. “Do you think I’m deaf? I hear the talk around the camp, and what it is that you do to people- those unfortunate enough to run into you when they're down on their luck and looking for salvation, kind face or not.”

The Doctor ceases his offence for a moment to laugh to himself. “It is hardly my fault that they were so desperate for a warm place to rest their head that they failed to read the fine print.” The piece of fabric continues to swing in front of Kaeya's face, inching closer, as though the Doctor is hoping that he might just hypnotise him with it. When Kaeya continues to refuse, he huffs a sigh. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dissected on my table already.”

“Comforting,” Kaeya mutters. It is also true – there is nothing protecting Kaeya here; for all he knows, the people of Mondstadt have already labelled him a lost cause and pronounced him dead. With nothing to lose, he reaches out and takes the fabric from the Doctor's outstretched hand.

It spills out over his own hand, loose edges falling between his fingers. The silk is so light that he worries it might slip away entirely. The thin threads on either side of the main square of fabric begin to hint at what this gift might be.

“An eyepatch?” He questions. It’s not like the one he’s used to wearing, this one has far more material, loose and draping. Only the top half seems to be fitted in a way that would ensure no slipping, with the rest left to float freely, more a veil for half his face than an actual eyepatch.

“Good to know that eye is still working,” the Doctor clears his throat. “You can keep your bandages off after today. The covering isn’t a requirement, not permanently at least. This eyepatch is for your comfort more than anything else, though I recommend you wear a medical eyepatch beneath this one, at least for a few days. Doctor’s orders.”

Kaeya bites back the question of how the hell did you even get a medical licence? and instead returns his attention to the eyepatch. It’s…oddly touching, that the Doctor had thought of his comfort, at least a little. Though he’s not sure where the man might have obtained this; two red eyes peer at him through the slits of the Doctor's mask whenever he catches the angle just right and manages to look beyond. So this eyepatch cannot belong to him. A friend? Do Harbingers have friends, or do they just associate with other Harbingers? This silk certainly feels expensive enough to belong to a Harbinger.

“Thank you,” he manages.

“Don't mention it,” the Doctor brushes him off immediately, turning away from his bed and towards the tent’s entrance. The line of his shoulders is stiff as he jerks his head back around to Kaeya. “Seriously, don't mention it. Can’t have the other underlings think that I’m favouring you.”

“They're already aware of that.” Kaeya tells him, dry. Is the man truly this oblivious to the goings-on of his own camp?

“Oh, really?” The Doctor peers at him. “Was it your own boasting, or Ekaterina's gossiping that gave the game away?”

“Neither.” He’s hardly spoken to the other Fatui in camp, let alone taken the time to boast about gaining a Harbinger’s favour so quickly. He’s quite confident that would only end with him as a smear on the ground. “I still live and breathe, which is apparently enough to prove favouritism.”

The Doctor frowns at him, as though he might be lying. Kaeya starts to bristle under the scrutiny, hands bunching into the fabric of his bedsheets. Then, as though nothing had happened at all, the man is grinning again. “Ah, never mind that. Now, would you like to see my latest project? Hah, what am I saying, of course you would. Tell me, have you started getting cabin fever in this tent yet? I've been told you hardly leave it, except when Ekaterina forces you to, and even then you do not stray far from it, is there something about this tent that is comforting to you?”

Kaeya blinks at him, slow. “I prefer not to be outside. Your grunts have a staring problem.”

“Yes, I know,” the Doctor hums. “So are you not going a little crazy in here, because you don't seem all that eager for an expedition of discovery. Honestly, it’s a wonder you aren’t depressed yet in all this darkness. I've told Ekaterina so many times that it’s bad to keep it so dark in here, it’s like walking into a morgue. Terrible for morale, let me tell you.”

Kaeya stares at him.

“Well, hop to it,” the Doctor gestures for him to get up, beckoning him towards the metal table. Kaeya trudges after him slowly, reluctant to subject himself to whatever it is that the Doctor wants now. “We’ll get those bandages off of you,” the man tells him, “let the skin breathe a little. Allow the healing to take whatever route it wants now that the worse of the damage is dealt with.”

Kaeya doesn’t know what it is that he's talking about. He wasn’t allowed to change his bandages for the first few days, pain making his hands shaky and the wrappings too loose, and after that it had become part of the routine to allow Ekaterina to check up on him before re-wrapping everything again.

A pair of scissors make a schick sound just out of his field of vision. He finds himself preferring the few moments where the couldn’t see the scissors when they begin to make their way towards him, long, sharp blades glinting threateningly at him. the Doctor grips his face, preventing any further escape. Kaeya simply has to watch as the scissors inch closer and closer, until his eye automatically closes at their proximity.

The first cut only loosens the bandages a little. The second means they begin to peel away from his skin. With the third, they fall loose completely, settling around his shoulders and trailing down his back. Some fall to the floor. He opens his eye again, flinching away as he registers the pressure of the Doctor's hand over his injured eye.

“Relax,” the man mutters. “Just taking the cotton pad away and then you're all good.”

The pressure moves away a moment later, and Kaeya relaxes as the Doctor moves back, appraising him from a distance. “Everything seems to be as good as it’s going to get,” he tells Kaeya. “It’s unlikely vision will ever be regained in that eye, though the nerves of the skin around don't seem to be completely wrecked. You felt the pressure of me touching that side of your face, correct?”

Kaeya nods.

“Good, good. There is potential for the skin to recover, though I wouldn’t hold my breath on the eye following suit.” The Doctor pauses, and turns away.

Kaeya turns his gaze downwards. The change isn’t as jarring as one might expect. He already wore an eyepatch, cautious of how his family and friends might react to his cursed eye, bearing his Father’s warnings in mind. As such, the darkness on one side is familiar, even if the lack of eyepatch is not. There is no overcompensation to be done, nothing to accustom himself to. The loss of that eye is not as traumatic as it might be for another person…so what is it that has him feeling so torn up?

He jerks his head up as something moves beside him. The Doctor stands awkwardly beside him, tension lining his body as he extends a hand, and in turn, a handheld mirror. He looks up at the Doctor. “If you want to look,” he says, head turned away.

Kaeya feels something drop in the bottom of his stomach at the Doctor's avoidance. Before, nothing had made him avert his gaze, taking in every detail of Kaeya eagerly. And with the man’s off-hand comments, he’s certain his work is rather gruesome. So for him to look away in this moment, is his face really so beastly now?

He takes the mirror without a word of thanks, gripping it tightly as the Doctor turns his back, fussing over something in Ekaterina's medical kit. He has enough presence of mind to register that she’s going to be pissed about that later, but not enough to ask the Doctor to stop so he doesn’t have to be the one to reorganise it to her standards again.

He raises the mirror to his face slowly, and stares into it for a long moment. He turns his head from side to side mechanically. He pokes at the skin with his free hand, watches the way it distorts the scarring, before dropping his hand completely.

He places the mirror facedown on the table beside him, careful not to drop it with too much force. He’s had enough bad luck recently, he doesn’t need it following him around for the next seven years too.

The Doctor only turns towards him slightly to offer a packaged medical eyepatch in his vague direction, turning away again as soon as Kaeya takes it from him. His hands may shake as he slips it over his head, but he doesn’t fumble, even when knotting the ties of his gifted eyepatch, double-knotted for security.

He clears his throat, successfully catching the Doctor's attention and is subsequently handed a pair of thick, snow boots. They're nice, nicer than the standard issue winter boots every Knight receives. They reach higher, too, stopping just below his knee. They're fitted too, suspiciously perfectly around his ankle, which many shoemakers had complained was far too slender for any shoes to fit properly.

He laces them slowly, allowing his trembling fingers a few moments more than he usually would, fumbling over a few of the ties before he stands. The Doctor watched him the whole while, stood impatiently at the tent’s entrance as he waits for Kaeya to catch up.

He follows him out into the daylight, sticking close to the Harbinger’s side. Close enough, in fact, that the fur ruff of the man’s coat tickles against the side of his face. He ignores the sidelong glances they receive as they leave the camp. The Doctor nods to the two Fatui agents stood either side of the entrance.

Kaeya nods at them too, watches how their eyes widen a little, before returning to the impassive gaze of before as they nod back.

And then they're into the wilderness of Dragonspine. Few words are exchanged between them, mainly because the howling of the wind would make it impossible to hear anything. For all Kaeya knows, the Doctor has been talking to him this entire time, and the wind has simply been snatching any hint of sound away before it can reach his ears.

He continues to follow behind the Doctor, hanging off the edges of his coat as they descend the mountain. The snow only increases in intensity the further they go, flurries kicking up around them. He's grateful for the snow boots now, kicking through knee-high drifts of snow without any worry of it melting and dripping into his boots. It allows him to just enjoy the chill of the air on his skin as it whips past him.

It’s a long while into their trek when the Doctor falls back, walking beside Kaeya rather than ahead of him. “I hear your Snezhnayan is coming across nicely,” he says, almost shouting to be heard over the wind.

“Ekaterina says so,” he replies mildly, speaking in Snezhnayan casually, as though they have been doing so the entire time. “Though I'm better at the spoken aspect than the reading or writing.”

“Mm.” He can feel the Doctor staring at him. “That seems to have been a common trend in your language studies,” he comments. Kaeya chooses not to question how he knows that, certain he’d rather not know and more focused on understanding the Snezhnayan over the wind. “Some of your patients have complained to me about your bedside manner. Says it is rather…lacking.”

“I am not their doctor.”

“No, you are not.” He can feel the Doctor continuing to watch them, stare heavy on his back. “You are smart, certainly. You would make a fine doctor, a capable one. But that is not what you are destined for, not if I have any say in it.” Those few words remind Kaeya of why it is that he's here. Of what it is that he's agreed to. For a sickening moment everything else fades away, leaving him feeling unstable and dizzy. A moment later, his senses return to him, and he continues on after the Doctor.

He hurries enough that he almost slams straight into the man’s back when he stops, hurriedly pulling up at the last second and skidding a little in the snow.

“Tell me,” the Doctor says, “what do you see in front of us.”

Kaeya stares, lost for words, at the swirling mass of snow ahead of them. “A snowstorm,” he realises aloud, though it is not a normal one. No, this one is far too condensed to be a normal snowstorm, contained within a small area. “Localised to…something. Is it moving?”

“No. It has remained in position this entire time. Any men that I send in return with injuries more severe than should be possible for the time spent inside, if they return at all.”

Kaeya frowns. “Must be some kind of enhanced effect of the snow. Or some kind of time dilation within the storm itself. Did any of the agents say that they felt they had been inside for far longer than they actually had been?”

“No,” the Doctor says slowly. “Though I never asked them. Most of the time the frostbite caused too much pain for them to be very lucid on the return journey.”

Kaeya pauses, and side-eyes the man as best as he can. He had noticed the staggering number of patients coming to bother Ekaterina for frostbite treatment, and her complaining that it was worse than usual, but he had just assumed it was her complaining for complaining’s sake, or people becoming too complacent with their continued success on the mountain, and thus leaving them more vulnerable to its dangers.

He turns back to the snowstorm when it becomes clear the Doctor isn’t going to give him any further clues. This is a puzzle for him to work out, a test. Something that the Doctor has set him to examine something about him. He’s determined not to fail it.

He steps forward, hesitating, before continuing when it becomes obvious that the Doctor isn’t going to stop him.

He circles the storm, treading over ground with a thinner snowfall than the rest of the mountain. Absorbing energy from the surrounding area? Energy cannot come from nothing, so there must be something powering this storm, meaning there is potential for it to die out completely once the snow here has been entirely drained.

He only reaches the halfway point of his circuit when he has to stop, lest he find himself at the bottom of a very tall cliff. He peers over the edge with irritation, glancing back at the Doctor and considering for a moment…no, probably best not to.

Still, he allows himself a moment of weakness, kicking at the snow and tipping it over the edge of the cliff. And pauses. Because this cliff is actually quite familiar. He should know, seeing as he spent more than an hour hauling himself up its sheer face, searching desperately for handholds that were few and far between.

He turns back to the storm, reaching a hand out in its direction, allowing the cold air to tease over his fingertips. He ignores the startled shout the Doctor lets out as he sinks his arm into it, up to the elbow. The snow twists over the skin gleefully, a burning warmth starting up beneath his skin that makes him laugh.

He spares only a single look for the Doctor – still making his way towards Kaeya – before stepping into the snowstorm completely, finding himself enveloped within its icy walls. The glee only continues to spread, becoming infectious as he continues to laugh, becoming pitched and manic as he treks further inside, seeking whatever it is reaching out towards him. The wind whips loose strands of hair around his face, tugging even more loose from his braid and allowing it to fly free.

The snow rises on either side of him, deep snow drifts only deepening the further he pushes into the storm, working towards the centre. He parts it before him easily, tugging on the impulse and ignoring the ache from exercising a scarcely used muscle, focusing instead on whatever is pulling at him.

He listens, carefully, cocking his head this direction and that. He plucks at the ley lines beneath his feet, feels them reach out, welcome him back into their embrace, thrumming like a guitar string and purring like a cat. A rumble of glee rises in his own throat, laughter petering out as he focuses.

The leylines thrum, pulling him forward, snow parting around him like the sea, cascading backwards. He spares a moment to hope that the snow doesn’t pile right out of the snowstorm and onto the Doctor, certain that the man wouldn’t be pleased at such a result.

With the guidance of the leylines and his own sway over the snow, it doesn’t take long to find what it is that he’s looking for. His first hint that he’s arrived at his destination is the calm he stumbles into, finding himself in the eye of the storm, watching the eyewall swirl around him, thick and violent. The next hint is the leylines withdrawing, returning to their low, calm thrumming now that he’s reached his goal.

He crouches, scooping the small, innocuous pile of crystals up, holding them close to his chest. Some of them are as span the entirety of his palm, from the heel of his hand to the point of his middle finger. Others are barely the size of the nail on his pinky finger. He holds them are carefully, precious things that they are, and turns to make the trek back out, only to find the winds still around him, the snowstorm entirely dissipated.

He winds his way back through the path he created, looping around a few times until he finds the way out. When he does, the Doctor is waiting, one hand on his hip and a foot tapping against the ground. Kaeya freezes, feeling inexplicably like a teenager caught sneaking back into the house – Crepus never caught him, Kaeya was smart enough to evade him if he planned on staying out late, but he's certain this is the feeling that crashed over every other teenager that didn’t manage to pull a fast one on their parents.

“Well,” the Doctor sighs. “I suppose it is a good thing my hypotheses were correct. What would have happened if the storm killed you?”

“It wouldn’t have,” he snaps, the giddy feeling from discovering the crystals waning. “It was…friendly.”

“The snowstorm was friendly.” The Doctor traces his eyes over Kaeya, frown deepening.

“Yes. And I figured out the cause for you,” Kaeya bites. “This is where the Vision broke; the eye formed around the remnants of Vision-fluid. It was feeding off the power of the crystals that formed, and gathering snow within to use as a secondary source. That’s why there's so little around here, despite the heavy snowfall elsewhere. The same volume of snow has been reaching here, but it was absorbed into the storm to form that,” he gestures at the towering pile of snow where the storm used to be.

The Doctor stares at him a little longer. “You said it produced crystals.”

“Yes,” Kaeya replies, hesitating for a moment before uncurling his hands from where they rest against his heart, revealing the crystals.

“Oh my,” the Doctor steps closer, a smile beginning to curl over his face as he takes in Kaeya's spoils. “Those are rather magnificent, aren’t they. However did you manage to find such small ones?” He pokes at one of the smallest ones, sending it tumbling further into the centre of Kaeya's palm. He resists the urge to snap at him and pull the crystals back towards himself. They aren’t his, no matter how much he longs for them to be.

“I…” he trails off before answering the question, eyeing the Doctor warily, wondering how much he can say before the man decides a vivisection will be more valuable than his life. “I could sense them.”

“Hm.” Eyes on him, considering. “I suppose the path you carved wasn’t with the use of your Vision?” He tilts his head to the side, indication where the bauble still hangs off his hip.

“No.” The thing is dead, no more power coming off of it, nothing offering to meld with the cryo in his veins. Just how he likes it. He keeps it at his hip, an excuse for whatever power he pulls forth, for the lack of a winter coat, and the chill of his hands. None need to know it’s nothing but an ornamental bauble, for appearance rather than function.

“As I thought.” He raises his hand towards the crystals, though all he does it curl Kaeya's hands around it a little more firmly. He pauses and stares at Kaeya a little longer. “Is there a functional reason for the,” he gestures to his head, “or is it aesthetic?”

“What?”

“The…are they ears?” The Doctor circles around to his side, peering closer at his head. Kaeya freezes solid so quickly that even his breath becomes caught in his lungs. “They’re rather like a hare’s, too long to be similar to a rabbit.”

Kaeya stares ahead for a moment, mouth opening and closing. “It’s hair.” He answers dumbly.

The Doctor tuts at his side. “I'm going to ignore that, brat. Do you really think I'm stupid enough to believe that?”

“No.”

“Good.” The Doctor reaches forward, and then pauses. “Do you get sensation from them?”

“Do I- what do you think,” he snaps. “You just asked me not to think of you as stupid and then you ask such an idiotic question!”

Silence.

“I suppose I deserved that,” the Doctor mutters. “Well, do I have permission to touch or is it something…taboo?”

“It’s not taboo,” he steps away before the Doctor can move, “but I would prefer you to keep your hands away.” He purses his lips. “And to not mention this to any of your research assistants.”

“Hah, I would never dream of such a thing. If I did, they’d all want a piece of you.” Kaeya doesn’t say a word. “What, surprised? Come on, brat, did you really think I wasn’t aware? I was beginning to think there was nothing special about you beyond a slight influence over the cold, just enough to make yourself immune to it and nothing more.”

“You knew,” he says, flat.

“Of course I did. You have done a commendable job of hiding it – Ekaterina is none the wiser, if that comforts you, and the pair of you have been living in close quarters for quite a few weeks now. My eyes are sharper than hers, and there are gaps in the mask you wear.”

Kaeya is uncertain of what to say, pouring the crystals into the pouch the Doctor offers in a sullen silence. It’s only made marginally better when he's handed said pouch, entrusted with its safety on the return journey.

“Do you need a covering,” the Doctor asks, gesturing at his head again. “Or can you hide them in some way – are they plaited into your braid normally, or something else?”

“Something else.”

“Ooh, touchy,” the Doctor laughs. “You can leave it as you want, but in approximately five minutes everyone’s going to know your secret.”

Kaeya looks up, unaware they had gotten so close to the camp without him knowing. He freaks out quietly and subtly, smoothing a hand over the side of his head, sensing how everything melts back into the humanoid form he’s become so fond of. He can feel the Doctor watching him, fascination heavy in the silence.

“Are the pointed ears a choice or the default?”

“A choice.”

“Hm. Interesting.”

No more is said as they reach the camp. Kaeya enters it as the Doctor's shadow, so close to his side that he's almost disappearing into his coat with each step. The Fatui watch him carefully, registering the shift, watching how the Doctor easily accepts him beneath his wing and at his side, averting their eyes quickly when they realise he's watching.

Kaeya holds his chin a little higher as he enters the Harbinger’s tent at the very centre of the camp.

“Keep your chin up like that,” the Doctor tells him. “Shoulders straight, spine straight,” he says, poking Kaeya into position. The flip from utter silence, interspersed with only a few questions, to this sudden poking and prodding and…etiquette lesson is jarring, but he dutifully follows along anyway.

The Doctor steps back with a satisfied nod after a few moments.

“Good. Give them something to respect, something to fear. None of them are going to stop looking down on you, let alone begin taking orders from you unless you make them look up to you. They believe they have discovered all that you are: an injured not-quite-adult that was pitied and taken in. You are my protégé, begin to act like it.”

“Yes, sir.” He almost twitches into a salute, muscle memory beginning to kick in, before he stamps down on the impulse.

“Ugh,” the Doctor recoils, “don't do that. Never do that again, I'm not old enough for that yet.” He pauses, halfway turned away, “And no more ‘Doctor’ either. Dottore is just fine, use it. Now, hand me those crystals.”

Kaeya hands them over, still reluctant to part with the pouch. He’s slightly appeased when the Doctor – Dottore – only takes a small one before handing the pouch back to Kaeya. He's then disappearing across the tent, well-lit unlike Ekaterina's, to a workbench, complete with test tube racks and numerous petri dishes.

He follows behind Dottore, standing at his shoulder, peering curiously into a few of the petri dishes. The Knight’s new Chief Alchemist had a few similar ones in his lab, but Kaeya had little opportunity to drop by and nose around, mainly because he kept the lab locked, unlike his predecessor, whose security was woefully lacking.

Those petri dishes had been sat in a little rack, one apparently meant to incubate them. The Chief Alchemist had been more than happy to explain what he was doing with them – they all had patches of bacteria, but some of them had ‘plaques’ which were holes in the bacterial lawn, formed by phages; the dishes were  apparently meant to test the efficacy of phages on specific strains of a disease. Apparently, they were a new area of research being pursued by several Amurta students in Sumeru for medicinal purposes.

The dishes on Dottore's workbench looked nothing like those ones. They had been innocuous, fascinating but overall just a normal thing to stumble upon inside a lab. These ones seem alive. He watches as one ripples, something like flesh flickering over the agar of the plate.

He returns his attention to Dottore just as the man begins tapping against the crystal. Kaeya watches, mildly fascinated by whatever it is he's doing as he chips a piece off and drops it into a tube with some kind of acid in it. Or, he assumes it’s an acid because of the violent reaction it begins having a moment later.

Dottore hums, and looks at him. “What do you think?”

“I don't do chemistry.”

“You do now,” Dottore frowns. “What do you think of it. Anything about its properties…observations, anything.”

Kaeya hesitates, looking back at the whole crystal, then to the test tube again. A blue precipitate has formed at the bottom of the test tube, sparking the few memories he has of advanced chemistry. He grimaces at the memory, swallowing back his revulsion; he can hardly remember any of it now, just the suffering he had endured during classes and exams, only to wipe it from his memory as soon as he knew he’d never return to it.

“It’s formed a blue precipitate…” he begins, slowly. “In an acid of some kind?” Dottore nods. “Precipitates…form in hydrochloric acid, with hydroxide ions as the reactants.” Another nod. “Blue precipitate is formed by copper ions. Meaning there is some part of this crystal that contains copper, even if it’s a small amount.”

“Very good,” Dottore grins. “And to think that your chemistry exams went so awfully.”

Kaeya pauses, then frowns. “Did you steal my academic records?”

“I did nothing. One of my agents on the other hand…well, you know how there’s always at least a few Fatui diplomats in Mondstadt. Rather easy to say that they were curious on the education system, and really, the security at the school is so lax…it was hardly stealing at all. Just a mild snatching.” Dottore frowns at him then. “Don't tell me you're upset; it’s one less thing to prove that you were ever there in the first place. If you have truly upset as many people as you believe, then I'm sure they will be doing their best to erase any memory of you too.”

Kaeya shutters, and backs up a step. He had a family portrait in Dawn Winery. A small one, certainly, but it had been precious to him. The massive one in the hallway was done when Diluc’s mother was still alive, featuring only her and Crepus, but the one of the three of them, all of them smiling at the painter even though it made Kaeya's cheeks ache for days afterwards…he had loved it.

“So we have a chemical property of this.” Dottore turns the remaining chunk of the crystal over, both of them watching the way light refracts off its surface. “I’ll run it through an NMR when we return to Snezhnaya, but for now, tell me, what is it that drew you to these crystals specifically. Many exist all over Dragonspine, and yet you were like a man possessed trying to reach these ones.”

“I just had to have them.” They called to me, didn’t seem like an appropriate answer.

“Hm. And the truth?” Of course the Doctor and his sharp eyes caught that momentary hesitation.

“I could sense them. They felt familiar.”

“And do you know why that is,” Dottore asks. He sounds as though he knows the answer already, leading Kaeya from clue to clue in an attempt to get him to figure it out.

“No.”

Dottore sighs. “I suppose I can’t expect you to work everything out for yourself.” He pushes the crystal back towards Kaeya, offering it up. “This is the same kind of crystal that abyss mages use in their staffs. I would know, I’ve tested them myself, but any I've managed to collect faded away a few hours after they were taken. After the death of the abyss mage, obviously.”

“Of course.” Kaeya repeats. “No self-respecting mage would allow their staff to be taken and then go on living.”

Dottore eyes him. “I was going to suggest you attempt to make some kind of conduit for yourself, but I can’t have you killing yourself if it gets taken.”

“A living mage does not allow for their staff to be taken. It can be recalled at any moment, unless the mage is…otherwise occupied or dead. It exists in a space between realities, and can be summoned at will.”

Dottore hums. “You're an interesting conundrum, do you know that?”

“I do.”

“Good.” He presses the crystal into Kaeya's palm. “We’ll begin work on your conduit when we return to Zapolyarny.”

Chapter Text

Twelve days later, the camp is in a flurry of motion when he wakes, and even Ekaterina is bustling around the tent. He sits up, rubbing at his eye, before swinging his legs over the bed to begin tying his laces.

“Did something happen?” he asks, watching as Ekaterina rolls bandages tightly and pushes them into a metal container.

“The Doctor decided that he’s had enough of Dragonspine,” she snaps, frustration colouring her tone. “We need to be off this mountain and in Liyue by this afternoon apparently, not that he thought to tell anyone, so we’re all running around, and even then he’s going to be the last one ready to depart and no-one can say anything because he’s the one in charge.”

Kaeya pauses, and looks up. “I can go help him.”

Ekaterina stops, completely frozen over her workstation. She turns just as suddenly, halfway across the room, then shoving her hands onto his shoulders with such force that he almost falls backwards. “Do you have a death wish?” She yells, shaking him back and forth twice, to emphasise her point.

“I’ve been in there several times recently,” he points out. Which is true.

Dottore had continuously sought him out for his insight on different projects of his, slowly guiding him towards whatever conclusion it is that he wants Kaeya to reach. It feels more like a new teacher feeling out his strengths and weaknesses, but it also means Kaeya gets to poke around in his lab and satisfy his natural curiosity. And if he's going to be the man’s protégé, he should probably also have some knowledge of what it is he's going to be doing for the next however long.

“You don't touch the Doctor's shit,” she tells him, whispering now. “That’s how you die.”

“I poke around in his lab frequently,” he points out again. “He’s been inviting me to see what he's cooking up in there.”

“I- agh,” she releases him to drag her hands down her face, eyelids pulling down and exposing the pink flesh beneath her eye for a moment before snapping back up again. “Whatever, he likes you enough. Sure, go help him. See if we can get out of here on time or if we’re going to miss the last boat again.”

Kaeya really does sympathise with her, feeling a little sorry that she has a boss with such a spontaneous schedule, but surely if this is the norm then you would live your life halfway packed away so you're ready to shift at a moment’s notice. Which is apparently all the notice Dottore gives them.

“Go,” she flaps a hand at him. “Take all your belongings with you, your bed is being deconstructed in the next five minutes.”

“Want me to do it for you?” he offers.

“No. Go.”

“Going, going,” he apologises, backing up and out of the tent into a camp that’s in even more of a frenzy. The agents dashing past him don't even spare a moment to glare at him, as has become customary. Instead, they're too busy rushing around, tending to horses (where did they get those?) and collapsing tents.

The only tent still completely standing is Dottore's, right at the centre of camp. He lets himself in without a sound, beginning to poke around in the piles of cases that have begun to pile up all over the floor. There’s samples he's not ever seen before, ones that pulse and breathe, held in stasis within tubes of fluid. He’s careful with those ones, wary of smashing them.

“Brat,” a hand closes around the back of his neck, pulling him back from the next crate he was leaning towards. He stiffens at the touch, but allows Dottore to pull him away from the fascinating pile. “It is customary to announce yourself before entering someone’s private quarters.”

“This is a lab,” he points out.

“Don't start,” Dottore shakes him a little using the grip on his neck before releasing him completely. Kaeya's beginning to figure the man out a little; the grip on his neck, something becoming more and more common, is never tight enough to hurt, not even tight enough to truly restrict his movement if he wished to escape. It seems to be Dottore's version of an affectionate gesture. “You are well aware that this lab doubles as my private quarters.”

“Terrible work-life balance right there, Doc. Work-life balance, you ever heard of it?”

“Yes.” Dottore points at a stool and Kaeya obediently sits there, scuffing his feet back and forth while Dottore bustles around. “Was there something you needed – don't touch that.” Kaeya pulls his hand back from the nearby crate, glaring at Dottore's turned back.

“I wasn’t going to touch anything.”

“Sure,” something clinks and Kaeya perks up, turning in Dottore's direction, watching as he packs rack after rack of test tubes into a crate. “At least make an attempt at a believable lie if you're going to do it straight to my face.”

“Straight to your back,” Kaeya corrects.

“Don't test me, I’ll send you to help with the horses if you continue like this.”

Kaeya frowns. He likes horses and they like him. Dottore threatens him with it like it’s some kind of punishment, but to Kaeya there's little better than a good hack in the middle of nowhere. Other than maybe a good glass of wine.

“What kind of horses do you have?” he asks instead.

“The horse kind.”

“You're no fun,” he complains, heaving himself to his feet. Dottore doesn’t protest when he wanders over to the bench, watching how the man packs the test tubes in ordered lines, before seizing a travel rack for himself and beginning to copy him. “Aren't you a scientist, you're meant to encourage questions.”

“I am a scientist, not a school teacher pretending to be one.” Dottore snorts.

Kaeya grimaces at the next few test tubes, watching as something squirms around inside. He's suddenly incredibly glad for the bung in the things, watching how tendrils slither over the inside of the glass.

“Where the hell did you even find half this stuff?”

“Here.”

“Oh, yeah, because Dragonspine is known for its abundant flora and fauna. Give me a break.”

“There is plenty to find if you know where to look.”

“And you haven’t shared that with me? Didn’t you recruit me specifically because you wanted to discuss findings with me?”

“I recruited you for your unique perspective on specific topics. That does not mean I will discuss everything with you.”

Kaeya pauses, and looks at Dottore from the corner of his eye, even as they both continue to pack the sheer number of tubes the man has managed to amass in…however long he’s been on this mountain. Dottore twitches, as though he can sense Kaeya watching him, and he is- was a younger sibling. It’s in his blood to be annoying, an artform he perfected over several long years through trial and error.

Dottore seems to find his annoying habits amusing. Something that frustrates Kaeya to no end as he continues to test boundaries, attempting to find the line that crosses over into too much, but either Dottore has infinite patience (unlikely) or the man continues to shift the line to accommodate him (even more unlikely), leaving him stumped.

“Are you not going to tell me everything?” He pesters. “I thought we’d sit around and gossip and do each other’s nails and discuss whatever crime against humanity you're going to commit next.”

Dottore pauses properly then, halting his test tube packaging. “Don't say that again.”

“Say what?”

“I don't like that,” Dottore frowns, face sour as though he just sucked on a lemon. “Why are you being so relaxed about the human experimentation, that’s wrong. Don't do it.”

Kaeya pauses too, staring at him. “I'm not even allowed to joke about it? You're the one that actually does it.”

“No joking about human experimentation,” Dottore says, putting his foot down because apparently Kaeya has found the line and crossed it. “You can joke about it in…twenty years.”

“I’ll be nearly forty!”

“Keep packing,” Dottore turns away from him. “That’s what Ekaterina sent you here for, isn’t it? To help me with packing so we might leave on time.”

“Um, yes?” He’s not even surprised anymore – still reeling over Dottore putting his foot down over that – the man seems to have a preternatural sense for the motivations of everyone around him. It would be terrifying if Kaeya cared more.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Dottore tells him. “Their departure time is normally two hours before the time I actually want to leave.”

“Why?”

“It means they're ready when I want to leave. If I gave them the actual time, no-one would be ready – they always overrun on the original time I give them anyway, surely some of them have begun to wonder about the simple scolding I give out each time; consistent failure to meet my demands results in harsher punishments.”

“Ekaterina said you missed the last boat once.”

Dottore coughs, sounds like he's choking and dying for a moment. Kaeya glances over, mildly worried that the man’s just inhaled some toxic fume and is about to keel over. “Ah, yes. That one was a…regrettable excursion. I had some matters to attend to in Liyue Harbour before we could depart and it…overran. My companion was rather lax with his time keeping; so, again, not my fault there.”

Maybe Kaeya's going insane, but he's certain that the back of Dottore's neck is beginning to turn red.

“A companion?” He questions, not missing the odd phrasing. “A friend or business partner?”

“Both.” Kaeya opens his mouth to question further. “I see what you're doing, brat. Keep your questions to yourself, I shan’t be answering anymore of them this morning.”

“But I wanted to know about your research,” he protests. “What’s so fascinating about this mountain?” No answer. “Please, what is it that’s here that you can’t find anywhere else? Is it the life here? I know there’s rumours of Durin still being alive somewhere here, but I personally think he’s way too large to be surviving, I mean, the amount of prey he’d need to be just barely living would be astounding, so we’d definitely be noticing the lack of fauna around here. Is it the plants here? There’s a few weird trees, I know that much, but I don't know much about the trees themselves, just that they're here-”

“Enough,” Dottore cuts him off, shutting the final box with a sharp click. “I highly doubt you have any interest in ancient writings or historical sites. Untranslatable, meaning we don't know who made them and can only estimate the timeframe of their creation, of which the error is in the thousands of years.”

“I do like history.”

“Your grades don't suggest that to me.”

Kaeya grimaces. “History taught by schools is rarely unbiased, or true. The shit they taught us was horrific. I slept through as many classes as I could.”

“I figured, your grades were shockingly poor.”

“Oh, no, I did great on all my assignments. My teachers just didn’t appreciate the point of view I would take on an argument and docked points for it.”

“A teacher that hates free-thinking, colour me surprised,” Dottore deadpans. He thrusts the two chests of test tubes, stacked, into Kaeya's arms before he can formulate a response, knocking the wind out of him. “Take these out to the wagon. Whoever’s attending to it should know how to secure them.”

“I'm just here for cheap labour,” Kaeya mutters, turning away. “Unpaid labour, I might add.”

“You get a paycheque when you quit annoying me,” Dottore responds. Both of Kaeya's hands are occupied so he can't even stick a middle finger up at the man’s back. He’d probably still see it.

The wagon’s parked just outside the tent, manned by two agents who look bored out of their minds. They jump to attention as Kaeya steps out, only to fall right back out when they realise who it is. He quirks an eyebrow at them, holding the crate out meaningfully, allowing his grip to loosen and watching as they both scramble to grab it off of him.

“Brat,” the taller spits in Snezhnayan.

“Piece of shit,” Kaeya spits right back, before turning and disappearing into the tent again.

“Don't aggravate my agents.” Dottore chides.

“They aggravated first,” Kaeya complains, taking the next set of crates the man waves towards. “Besides, you asked me to act like your protégé, you're not exactly known for your kind words.”

Dottore pauses, back still turned. “Touché. Don't let any other Harbingers hear you using that language.”

“There’s no other Harbingers here.”

“There will be when we’re back in Zapolyarny. I’d rather not have to come and rescue you because you picked a fight with someone else’s agents.”

The agents are silent the rest of the time, slowly loading the wagon with Dottore's kit.

Kaeya's beginning to see the issue with not getting out of camp in time. Dottore allows no-one other than himself inside his tent, and to pack and load it all up takes double the time than it’s currently taking, with Kaeya acting as errand boy, ferrying boxes and bags back and forth.

When the first wagon leaves and another one pulls up, Dottore makes his first appearance in the sunlight, beginning to berate the few nearby, unoccupied agents for their idling when there are still jobs to be done. He mutters beneath his breath about them for a long while after, casting curses in their direction. It gets to a point where Kaeya is seriously worried for their health.

“Don't aggravate your agents,” Kaeya mutters to him.

“I’ll do what I damn well please,” Dottore bites back. “If they want to stand around like fools then I shall call them such.”

“You were just telling me to be nicer, maybe try it yourself.” He can feel the fearful gaze of the nearby agents as they load up the wagon, scared to stop for even a moment lest the Doctor turn his ire on them. “Your agents might actually like you then.”

“I don't need my agents to like me.”

“You are an incredibly sad man,” Kaeya tells him. He watches Dottore twitch from the corner of his eye, a smile beginning to curl over his face, involuntarily.

“Go grab something else, brat. I tire of you chattering in my ear.”

“Whatever, old man.” It’s worth it, if only to watch the agents to turn matching looks of terror in his direction.

The walk down from what had to be Dragonspine’s highest peak is long, made only longer by the winding route they're forced to take to accommodate the horses and the wagons filled with Dottore's research.

Kaeya treks the whole way on foot, near the front of the pack, sandwiched between Dottore and Ekaterina. Both of them are silent the whole while – hell, the rest of the detachment is near-silent too, with only the occasional murmur of conversation breaking out before it dies a few moments later.

It leaves Kaeya with far too much time to think – more time than he's given himself to think recently – so he occupies himself with other things. It’s an easy trick to pull the moisture from the air and shape it into small crystals, floating in the centre of his palm.

He shrinks and grows it, pulls it out in different directions and then flattens it completely. He makes it into a cylinder once, reshaping the entire inner structure of the ice, breaking and reforming the intermolecular connections to shape the frozen water to his will. It passes the time a little quicker, and though he can feel people’s eyes on him, none of them break the silence to speak to him.

He drops it when they near the base of the mountain, hand falling back to his side, fingers pleasantly chilled. Only then does Ekaterina sidle closer to him, close enough that they can speak in whispers and not be overheard.

“How were you doing that?” she whispers, fascination clear in her voice.

“Just breaking and reconnecting the bonds in a different way,” he tells her. “Water molecules bind together in a uniform way, so it’s pretty simple to reconnect them differently if you know how they connect in the first place.”

He watches as Ekaterina frowns. “I've never met a cryo allogene that could do that before.”

“Darling, you've never met someone like me before.”

Ekaterina wrinkles her nose. “Don't call me darling again,” she tells him.

“Noted.” They walk in silence for a few moments.

“How long have you had your Vision for?” she asks, when the silence stretches for too long.

“A month?” He frowns, thinking. “I got it the day before I arrived at the camp.”

“Huh,” he looks over at Ekaterina's small exclamation. “I thought you'd have had it longer, you seem so connected with the ice to have had it such a short time.”

Ah, shit. He hadn’t considered that. “Oh, haha,” he brushes it off, hoping that his laughter isn’t too strained, “I’ve always liked the snow. My- father could hardly get me out of it as a child.”

“I guess that makes sense…”

“Yeah,” he scrambles for something else to distract her with so she doesn’t really how terrible of a lie it is. He looks around, as though his surroundings might offer salvation, only to see Dottore beckoning him forward. “Oh, the Doctor wants me, speak to you later!”

He hurries forward a few steps, slowing once he reaches the Harbinger’s side. He tenses as a hand comes up to the back of his neck, though it simply rests there rather than gripping. “Be more careful with your words, brat,” Dottore tells him. “You may escape scrutiny from most, but Ekaterina is smarter than most. She will figure something out if you do not watch what you say.”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Obviously not.” Dottore scoffs. “Anyway, that wasn’t all I wanted you for, one moment,” a hand disappears into the inner folds of the man’s coat, the other hand remaining on the back of his neck like Kaeya might run away – run away to where, he isn’t sure, but he doesn’t try to slip free of the touch. The easy contact has become oddly comforting. “Here. Put this on.”

Something cold presses into his hands, and when he looks down, he finds a mask, similar to the one that every other agent in this detachment is wearing. “What’s this for?”

“For your face,” Dottore tells him. “You are a frequent visitor to Liyue, no? We will be moving through the Harbour to a ship, and I doubt you want someone to recognise and send word to the Knights of Favonius before we depart.”

He shudders at the thought. “No, thank you.”

“Good. Put it on.”

Kaeya obeys, fumbling for a moment before he finds the clasping mechanism of the mask, slipping it over his face and reclasping it shut. It’s a little tight around the corners, digging into his face a little, but it’s loose around his eye, which is all he can ask for. Even if the tiny slits in the mask make it difficult to see anything.

“I can’t see anything,” he complains.

“Yes, you can. Don't be a brat.”

“I have half the vision you do. What if I can't see, huh?”

“Then you trip and fall.” Dottore shrugs. “Either way, suck it up. You walk in there bare-faced, you're as good as found.”

Kaeya doesn’t have anything productive to say to that, so he scuffs his feet and sulks the rest of the way to the Harbour. He’s glad for the mask when he enters its gates, though, glancing around and recognising far too many of the vendors for his own comfort. He can only hope the long, Fatui-emblazoned cloak does a good enough job of disguising the Knight’s uniform he wears beneath it.

To his good fortune, every person on the street seems more than happy to avert their eyes as the Fatui detachment moves through the streets towards the Harbour. It’s quiet enough to hear a penny drop, accusing, suspicious eyes following their every move. The silence is only broken by the clop of horse hooves against the cobbles and the squeaking of wagon wheels, and even that feels too quiet.

Only the docks continue to bustle around them. The workers remain unafraid of the Fatui in their midst, far too busy to bother about the group waiting to load their ship. Fatui are shoved aside and shouted at as any other inconvenient citizen would be.

Kaeya peers around the docks curiously – he may have visited Liyue many times with Crepus, but he was never allowed to explore the city, nor was he permitted to visit the docks. It was too dangerous or too busy, a place where a child or teenager could be lost far too easily, disappearing into the crowd, or maybe even stolen away by a desperate crew looking for a few more workers.

Watching the organised chaos is interesting. As is listening to the shouted conversations of the dock workers. There seems to be little care for how loudly they're speaking of sensitive topics, and by the time their ship is pulling into port he’s heard three separate accounts of adultery be confessed, a small scandal about the parentage of the new baby of someone’s friend’s sister’s cousin’s daughter, and a little tidbit of gossip about a recent disagreement within the Qixing.

“Brat,” Dottore summons him, gesturing him forward with one sharp motion. They step up the gangplank ahead of the rest of the Fatui. Kaeya does a small, internal celebration at being spared the manual labour, and then mentally apologises to Ekaterina when he glances back and sees her being loaded with crates to carry.

He’s guided down into the bowels of the ship and into what looks to be the Harbinger’s office. He peers around at the walls of it with curiosity, poking at one of the trinkets on a nearby shelf and finding it glued in place. Well, that’s one way to avoid smashing anything on the ground when the ship rocks.

He looks back up, finding Dottore sat at his desk and watching him carefully, hands steepled together, index fingers pressed against his mouth. He indicates the chair across from him and Kaeya pulls himself away from the shelf of curiosities to drop into the chair.

“Your Snezhnayan is coming along nicely,” Dottore tells him. “I was considering getting you personal lessons, possibly a tutor, but you seem to be excelling simply with exposure to the language. The written aspect can be worked on easily enough; you seem to have a natural talent for languages.”

“Thank you?”

“There is, however, a more pressing matter.” Kaeya watches Dottore's fingers press together a little more before relaxing entirely, the steeple falling apart as the man leans closer, across the desk. “I may find your attitude amusing, while many might see your responses to me as inappropriate, they are helpful more often than not, as such, I have allowed this behaviour to slide. Until now.”

Kaeya leans back with a frown. He’d certainly been taking a few liberties with how he spoke to Dottore, but that was mainly because he was matching energies with the man, responding how he was spoken to. It had been a long-running issue, one his teachers would bring up over and over, and yet he showed no signs of improvement. He was more surprised Dottore hadn’t put his foot down earlier than this.

“You may continue to speak with me as you currently do, but such behaviour will not fly with the other Harbingers, am I clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good. You may be under my protection as my protégé, however, my power is not infinite, and it would only take you irritating the wrong person at the wrong time for everything to go terribly wrong.

“How have you survived so long then?” Kaeya jokes. “I don't think I've heard a single please or thank you from you this entire time. You're telling me you’ve just…not offended the other Harbingers?”

“I am more powerful than any of them are.” Dottore says. “I am the Second, there are few that rank above me, and I show them an appropriate amount of respect for their stations.”

“And I have to respect every one of them,” Kaeya says, “because I am below their stations.”

“Precisely.” Dottore sighs. “Don't fret so much, I have…taken it upon myself to request some etiquette lessons for you when we return to the Palace.”

Etiquette lessons? Kaeya stares at Dottore, aghast.

“Don't look at me like that, brat. I am doing you a favour with this, you know, as much as it pains me to ask something of him.”

Kaeya perks up a little at the resentment that creeps in at the end, mixed in with something else that he can't quite decipher. His radar begins going off, alerting over and over that there's potential gossip and blackmail awaiting him here. He grins a little, watching the man across from him. He doesn’t seem to realise just how much he’s given away with those few words.

“Who is it that’s giving me these etiquette lessons?” he inquires, as neutrally as possible. He doesn’t quite hit the mark if Dottore's suspicious look is anything to go by.

“The Ninth,” Dottore tells him. Ninth, Ninth. Now, where has he heard that before?

“The Regrator?” He realises aloud, slowly grinning more and more. “The one you hate?”

Dottore frowns. “Reducing our relationship to mere hatred is an egregious oversimplification.”

“Apologise, this man with which you have a complex relationship, is the one you are asking to give me etiquette lessons?”

“To my chagrin, he is the one best equipped for such a thing. Rosalyne would have been a good choice, but her patience is far too thin and her temper too volatile to allow for it to be productive. Pantalone at least pretends to have the patience of a saint, and he deals with his clients easily enough.”

He files Rosalyne away too, noting the touch of fondness that colours Dottore's tone as he utters her name. Interesting.

“And what does the Ninth do?” Kaeya asks. “Your whole thing is the weird freaky experiments, and I know…Pulcinella? The Fifth, is a mayor of some kind.”

“My thing is not…” Dottore sighs. “Pantalone is a banker of sorts. He gives loans to the wealthy and has a few experiments with alternative currencies in the works. Beyond that, his work is a mystery to me. I am not an economist.”

Kaeya hums. “I suppose I’ll just have to find out for myself, then.”

“I suppose,” Dottore says, suspicious, then abruptly “There is nothing more I require of you today, though I will see you tomorrow morning for a writing lesson. Until then, your accommodations are two doors down from this office, and should contain a new uniform for you to change into. Please, take liberties with the shower too. And burn that godawful uniform once you're done.”

“It’s not that bad.” Kaeya protests, even though it really is that bad. There had been no spares at the Dragonspine camp, leaving him only able to wash a few things every now and then; even less when Ekaterina discovered that he’d been bathing in cold water and had forbade him from doing so anymore, ignoring his protests.

Dottore levels him with a look. “If I see those clothes of yours again I will be throwing them overboard, ocean pollution be damned.”

“Yes, sir,” Kaeya says, just to annoy him, and hightails it out of his office before Dottore can launch a retaliation at him.

“Brat,” Dottore greets him upon opening his office door and already finding Kaeya inside, continuing to peruse his shelves from when he was so rudely interrupted the day before. “It isn’t polite to just let yourself into another person’s office,” a pause. “Especially as I am rather certain that I locked this room last night.”

Kaeya shrugs. “Maybe you didn’t. Forgetting things in your old age?”

Dottore clicks his tongue, but says nothing more until he's sat at his desk. From there, he watches as the man produces small, thin books, laying them across the edge of the desk closest to Kaeya.

He resists for a moment, eye darting back to the trinket he had been admiring (from afar, because whatever is sticking the things down is strong) and considering whether it’s worth it to investigate this new thing that Dottore seems to be giving him. The last gift wasn’t so terrible…so maybe this one will be just as good?

Mind made up, he turns away from the shelves and towards the desk, perching on the edge of it rather than sitting in the chair. Disapproval radiates from Dottore, but Kaeya ignores it, picking one of the booklets up and flipping it open.

“You're joking.”

“I am not,” Dottore replies, mild. Kaeya can feel the way he's being laughed at. “Handwriting is important. Neat handwriting even more so, especially if you are going to be a Harbinger one day.”

“This is insulting.”

“Everyone has to start somewhere. There's no shame in it.”

“It says this is for five- to eight-year-olds!” he protests. Protests that, apparently, fall on deaf ears as Dottore simply chuckles.

“I doubt you could write even your own name in Snezhnayan right now. Ergo, you are currently matching the level of a four-year-old. Take the compliment.”

“What compliment? That you're comparing me to an eight-year-old rather than a five-year-old?”

“Exactly. Sit.”

“I'm not a dog,” Kaeya protests, and sits on the edge of the desk, spine twisted awkwardly to lean against the desk, just to irritate the Doctor.

He’s slightly appeased by the fancy pen he's handed, enjoying the sleek feel of it in his hand and the way the ink glides across the page. He feels a little spoilt, but the sheer number of the pens – which are obviously expensive – just sitting around in a mug on Dottore's desk has him pocketing the fancy pen when the man dismisses him.

He's back again the next morning, once again poking around at the trinkets, this time looking at the ones on the wall behind Dottore's desk.

There’s a click of the door, then a heavy sigh. “Brat,” Dottore greets him – despite Kaeya's best efforts, Dottore hasn’t managed to come up with a better nickname for him, nor has he shown any signs of picking out the new name he mentioned several weeks ago – sound tired as hell.

When Kaeya looks around, the Doctor looks no different to before.

“Morning, doc,” he greets, cheery. “You put new locks on the door last night.”

“I did.” Another sigh. “I thought it might keep you out, foolishly.”

“Your locks are a little…” Kaeya trails off, “shitty. Every other cheap lock is like them – you unlock one, you've unlocked them all.”

Kaeya may not be able to see Dottore's face, but he gets the distinct impression that the man is raising an eyebrow at him as he rounds the desk.

“And what lock might present a challenge to you, then, oh great lock-picker.”

“I don't know,” he shrugs. “Haven’t found a lock that doesn’t like me yet.”

“Mm.” Is Dottore's only answer, though it sounds more thoughtful than usual. Still, a few more handwriting booklets are pushed across the desk to him, and that’s what Kaeya spends the next several hours occupying himself with. And pocketing another of the fancy pens at the end.

It takes nearly an entire week for them to reach Snezhnayan waters. There aren’t any markers, but the air is cold above deck, every breath filled with frost. He bothers the Doctor less, standing out at the very back of the boat, enjoying the chill on his skin and ignoring the confused, sometimes hostile, looks he receives from the agents steering. All of them are bundled up in furs, with Kaeya making his appearances in nothing more than the standard-issue Fatui uniform.

It’s most peaceful in the early hours, where the sky is still dark, not yet beginning to lighten with the first rays of the sun. Only the nightwatch is on deck at that point, and they're all content to leave him to his own devices, soaking up the cold like a plant might soak up the sun.

When they get closer to the mainland ice floats begin to form in the sea around them, a few smaller floes bumping against the side of the ship on occasion.

Ekaterina finds him out there one morning, sliding up next to him silently. He's seen her a few times since they boarded the ship, but nowhere near to how often they used to see each other. Kind of hard to escape each other’s company when you're sharing the same tent, but now, after a few days apart, he realises that he missed her, just a bit.

“I saw a whale earlier,” he tells her when it’s clear she isn’t going to be starting a conversation any time soon. Who knows, maybe she came out here for silent company, away from…whatever kind of medical set-up she has onboard. “Just off in the distance as the sun was rising.”

Ekaterina sighs, a small, wistful sound. “I'm sad I missed that.”

Kaeya hums. It had been quite beautiful. He's never seen a whale in real life before, only reading about them or seeing one of the scarce few photos that exist of them. Majestic creatures that dive to great depths but must resurface for air lest they suffocate in their natural habitat. Some say they were once able to breathe beneath the waves, but then did something to offend the Hydro Archon, and she cursed them to always resurface for air.

Obviously, Kaeya knows that’s not true. No Archon has that much control over creatures, even if they live within their domain. The Anemo Archon does not control the birds, and the Geo Archon has no part in the life of burrowing animals.

“We might see another,” Kaeya offers, though they stand there for the next two hours and no other animals surface. Not even a bird flies over the waves; not a single call breaks through the air, only the crash of waves and the slap of water against the sides of the boat.

“I doubt we’ll see anything this close to land,” Ekaterina tells him eventually. “The ice grows too thick here too quickly so most animals don’t risk coming this close, even for the possibility of human scraps.”

Kaeya stands there, wind ruffling through his hair and watching as the boat pulls into dock. The port is all made of grey stone, sheer walls coated with ice and the ground covered in a thin layer of snow, churned into slush by the numerous boots trampling over it.

There’s a whistle from the water, and Kaeya looks down, watching as a slender, grey shape slips past the boat, followed by another and then another. One of them surfaces and he watches as it breathes out through a blowhole, though its far too small to be a whale, and has a slender horn poking from the front of its face to boot.

He stares, blinking a little to make sure his eye isn’t playing tricks on him. When the animals continue to swim around together in a pod, he turns away from the railing, searching around to see if there’s anyone to ask just what the hell is in the water.

He startles a little upon realising that the deck has become swarmed with activity without him even noticing. Agents are shuffling down the gangplank, bags slung over shoulders and arms laden with boxes. He weaves his way through the crowd to the opposite side, peering over it and into the main port.

Agents shove crates into carriages and wave them on, bags still slung over their shoulders. Some greet families, and he watches a man pick up a small child and swing it around in a circle, the small thing screaming with delight the whole while as its mother watches on. It’s…nice. Kaeya had never really given much thought to the fatui beyond what everyone else thought of them too; they were just something they had to put up with, people that weren’t human because they weren’t from Mondstadt.

Looking back, Kaeya can see how terrible that perspective is. He wasn’t from Mondstadt and he still viewed the Fatui as people without families to return to, families that missed them while they were working abroad.

Someone steps up behind him, though Kaeya doesn’t startle. Even over the bustle, he’d heard the shuffling of feet making way, the short, respectful greetings delivered to the Harbinger as he approached Kaeya. The hand settling on the back of his neck only confirms it.

“Taking in the sights?”

“Something like that,” Kaeya replies, before slowly turning in the Harbinger’s grip. It slides down onto his shoulder as he faces the man, Dottore tilting his head to look down at him, head cocked to the side.

“I hear you've been enjoying the fresh air, grow tired of the handwriting lessons?”

“A little,” he admits. “It makes my wrist ache.”

“Only because you were moving through the books as though you were competing with something. You have all the time in the world to practice, you know. All you're going to be doing for the next long while is writing.”

Kaeya grimaces. “Tell me there will be at least a few fun things.”

“There will be plenty of fun things,” Dottore's hand squeezes his shoulder. Just like Crepus would. “There will also be lab reports to be written after said fun things, something that I do believe I can get my new protégé to do for me. Ah, I'm beginning to understand why the other Harbingers were so eager to snag one of their own now.”

“Like hell I'm writing your reports for you.”

Dottore looks at him. “We’ll see- now! Off to the Palace, hm? The docks are lovely, sure, if you like the stink of fish and the yelling of men, but I much prefer the peace of my lab. And,” Dottore sounds almost excited here, voice taking on a strange, gleeful edge, “I have a project I'm sure you'll be quite excited to start on, hm?”

The man releases him suddenly and disappears from the boat, and Kaeya do nothing but follow behind him.

When he reaches the bottom of the gangplank, Dottore has stopped, but only to speak to another person, this one similarly dressed. Another Harbinger, he realises.

He turns away, hiding a laugh and smile in the shoulder of his uniform when he notices Dottore stooping over to speak to this man, nodding rapidly as he chatters. To the other man’s credit, he just takes it in stride, eyes flicking towards Kaeya as he approaches.

“Ah,” the new man cuts Dottore off, stepping towards Kaeya. He pulls up a step or two away from the strange man, cautious of moving closer. “You must be the Doctor's new protégé, yes?”

Kaeya stares at him, and then turns an accusing gaze onto the Doctor.

“Hey, hey, cool it,” Dottore laughs. “Gossip spreads like wildfire here, and you are certainly a popular topic. First of your kind! I've heard there’s already bets on how long you're going to survive.”

Kaeya's frown deepens.

“Well, a good morning to you, son,” the short man pushes in, and Kaeya redirects his attention to the Harbinger(?) in front of him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you and I'm certain we’ll be working together in the near future.” He winks, an overexaggerated gesture that has him leaning even closer to Kaeya. Kaeya doesn’t even smile at him, overly confused with this entire situation.

He looks at Dottore, looking for anything. Guidance, help, a rescue of some kind – he’d take anything at this point, honestly.

“Well,” the man clears his throat, glancing at Dottore from the corner of his eye. Dottore doesn’t even tilt his head towards him. Awkward. “As I said, nice to meet you…”

“Brat.” Dottore supplies.

The man turns to him, mouth slowly beginning to droop open. “You cannot be serious. I'm vetoing that immediately you can't- cannot saddle someone with such a-”

Dottore laughs. “Ah, Pulcinella, please.” He grins, all shark-like and sharp. “His name is confidential information, and currently that is all I've come up with. I'm a busy man.”

Pulcinella – Fifth of the Harbingers, Mayor – purses his lips but says nothing more, turning back to Kaeya with a glint in his eye. Kaeya immediately dislikes it, resisting the urge to back up a step, if only because this man looks like he can smell weakness, and Kaeya doesn’t want to let him sink his claws into any vulnerable part of himself.

“Well, hopefully next time I meet you Dottore will have found a better codename for you,” he says. “However, this was only a short social call; ah, the bustle of city life, hm? Always something to do and somewhere to be!” He waves a small goodbye and is then hurrying off, swallowed up by the crowd a few moments later.

“Ugh,” Dottore says, waiting until Pulcinella is far enough away that he should be out of earshot, though there's no telling with those long ears of his. Maybe he can hear everything. “Trust him to show up right as we dock. Honestly, not even giving you any time to settle in. Nosy Rooster, sticking his beak where it doesn’t belong.”

“It was…fine,” Kaeya tries, though even he can't deny the stiffness of his voice. The Doctor doesn’t even deign his poor attempt at a lie with a response. Kaeya sighs; fair enough.

Chapter Text

Dottore's lab is somehow exactly as Kaeya expected it to be, and yet nothing like it at the same time. He had expected some dark, dingy room in the basement, tucked away out of sight. Some nasty little secret closely guarded by the Fatui, held away from prying eyes so no-one knows what’s going on there.

It’s in the basement, but Kaeya suspects that’s because there's nowhere else that could contain the utterly massive room that he's let into. It stretches further than some of the fields at the Dawn Winery, large desks scattered across the room, interspersed by everything a scientist could ever dream of.

It’s also remarkably clean. The walls are a pale cream, not a single stain marring the paintwork. Is it really that clean, or do people regularly come in to repaint the walls?

There’s also a lot more people inside the lab that Kaeya was expecting. Dottore has little tolerance for other people, preferring a silent environment as opposed to one filled with chatter. Talking echoes off the walls and into the cavernous ceiling, only heightening the volume further.

All of that chatter falls silent the moment Kaeya steps through the doors, following close on Dottore's heels. Every eye in the room turns on them, scrutinising, examining. It’s far worse than any of the staring he had endured at the camp; those stares had been hostile, sure, but here he can feel the way he’s being mentally picked apart, each of the scientists scanning him over, one question running through their minds: lab subject or lab partner?

Dottore dismisses the staring with a wave of his hand, though no-one actually returns to their work. They continue the motions, but all eyes continue to rest on Kaeya. When he stares back, they puff up and hunch over their work, as though he might steal their idea with a mere glance.

Suspicion grows and spreads then, Kaeya's footsteps echoing in the silence. Dottore doesn’t even flinch, cloak sweeping behind him majestically as he turns critical eyes upon each of his underlings. Kaeya watches him for a moment, before cautiously taking a leaf from his book.

Give them something to respect, something to fear, Dottore's words echo in his ears.

Another man catches his eye as Kaeya passes his workbench, and he turns in his direction, giving him a wide, shark-smile. His teeth aren’t as sharp as Dottore's, but it sends those nearby stumbling back, scrambling to turn back to their work. He allows himself a small feeling of satisfaction, grinning at several more scientists before he's being ushered through a door and into a smaller, private lab.

Now this lab is far more what he expected from the Doctor. Not quite dark, but not bright either. Dim enough that the eyes don't strain. It’s also like a bomb has gone off. Everything strewn anywhere, sliding off the edges of desks and onto the floor. Stacks of books on any free surface, wobbling dangerously high, shifting in some invisible breeze.

“Keep doing that,” Dottore tells him.

“What?”

“Whatever you did to the underlings,” Dottore says, slowly. “Keep doing it whenever you see them.”

“Okay…” he frowns and doesn’t tell the man that he just mimicked what he does. Would probably be too much of a boost to his ego to know that.

The books are mostly in Snezhnayan, though a few Sumerian textbooks peek through here and there, though Kaeya doesn’t have a first clue on the language so he has to leave them be, picking through the few ones that he can read. There's even a Fontainian guide on mekas.

“Brat,” Dottore summons him and he turns, surprised, meka book still open in his hand. “Come here.”

Kaeya would protest more, but Dottore is stood over a desk, peering at something there, and his curiosity can't let him ignore it. He sidles up beside him, leaning in equally close, so he and the Doctor are both staring at the array of materials spread over the, relatively, clean desk.

“How does it look?” Dottore asks.

“How does what look?”

There’s a click of a tongue, and one of the branches is being seized, held close to Kaeya's face for inspection. “These. I had them sourced this morning, fresh, for your perusal.”

“How did you source them this morning. We got back this morning.”

“Some of my assistants are efficient in their work. Now tell me if you think you can make a conduit with this type or if we need to search for another source.”

“A…conduit,” Kaeya had forgotten that, just a little bit. “You actually want me to make one? I don't even know how!”

The mask tilts towards him, something that Kaeya now recognises as the man looking at him. He can feel the scathing retort building and sense the irritation. “What, didn’t they teach you this at Abyss craft camp?”

“No! I wasn’t taught anything – I'm entirely self-taught, old man!”

Dottore pauses. “Hm. Entirely self-taught?”

“Yes,” he snaps. “No-one’s going to train a kid without a Vision on how to use his unexplainable ice powers.”

Another hum. “Figure it out.” He discards the branch on the desk, turning away.

“What?”

“Figure it out,” Dottore repeats. “Are you deaf and blind?”

“I don't have the first clue on how to make a conduit. Every Fatui mage uses a conduit, can't you just show me those schematics?” Kaeya can feel the panic building in his chest, uncertainty with this whole thing rising as Dottore keeps his back turned towards him. If he fails at this, is that it? He can't be thrown out here, he can't trip at the first hurdle. He refuses.

“Those have a mechanical basis,” Dottore's head tilts, looking at Kaeya. “Though I suppose you may use them for reference for your own design.”

Kaeya exhales. “Thank you.”

“I expect a full schematic. High enough quality that it could be published if this project is successful.” Published?

“And if it isn’t successful?”

“Then you try again. Don't tell me you’re one to give up after the first attempt, brat.”

“Of course not!”

“Good,” Dottore spares him a small smile. “Come on, let’s go dig those schematics out of the archives for you. Though I expect you to work without a crutch after this first project.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Brat.”

The door to Dottore's private lab swings open, hinges squeaking. Kaeya doesn’t look up, too used to terrified research assistants braving the depths of the Doctor's private lab to ask for guidance or help with some project or another.

He continues drawing out the final few details of his first prototype, notes littering the pages with theories and considerations for materials and weights and other calculations that will hopefully produce the perfect conduit. He’s not expecting it to be perfect the first time around, but he’s hoping that it might be close enough that he only has to do a few tweaks after the stress testing.

“The Doctor's out,” Kaeya tells the new arrival. “He won’t be back for another twenty minutes.”

“Oh, I know,” Kaeya pauses, frowning. “I came here to see you.” The new arrival speaks with the same voice as…

“Dottore?” He spins his seat around to stare at the man, confused. He’d snuck out the back way to avoid his assistants and any questions they might have had, and should have returned the same way, not through the main door. “You're not meant to be…back yet.”

The man in front of him is undeniably Dottore. Same hair, same clothes, same stance. There’s a specific way the man carries himself, exuding all power and control, a large presence in any room he steps into despite his slim frame. Only, the mask he wears is different. Rather than the sleek, ornamented bird mask his mentor usually wears, this one is nothing but smooth metal, shining dully in the light.

“No, he should be gone for another twenty minutes,” the Dottore-look-alike chirps. “But when we all heard that he’d brought a new project back to the Palace, well, we've just been dying to meet you!”

“I'm not one of his projects,” Kaeya corrects. “And I've been here for two weeks without seeing…any of you.”

“I know,” the Dottore-look-alike bemoans. “He’s been hiding you away, and keeping us away too.”

Kaeya's frown deepens. “And why has he been ‘keeping you away’?”

“Because he's a rude old man that never learned how to share,” the Dottore-look-alike sniffs. “We’re one and the same, but he refuses to share his best advancement yet! Tell us, how did you manage to convince him to take you on? Was it at a scientific conference? What were you presenting?”

The look-alike steps closer and closer as he speaks, stopping a few paces from Kaeya. He leans back on instinct, covering his schematics with his body.

“Nothing.” Kaeya says. “He didn’t ‘find me’ anywhere.”

“Mm. Lie, but I suppose I’ll let that slide for now.”

Kaeya bursts. “Just who are you?”

“Me?” The look-alike presses a hand to his chest – same dramatic mannerisms – and gasps. “Don't tell me…he hasn’t told you about us?” Another gasp, a pained sound. “Oh, my, what a cruel Doctor we have here, wounding us in such unforgivable ways.”

“Yes, yes,” the back entrance has silent hinges, so Dottore can come and go without anyone realising. “How cruel of me.”

“Doctor,” Kaeya greets. He’s never been so glad to see the man before, but anyone that can give him an explanation and potentially save him from this maniac is a welcome sight. “You're back earlier than expected.”

“Hm, well, I heard news of a segment sneaking his way into my personal lab,” Dottore's hand settles on his shoulder, slowly turning towards the ‘segment’.

“Is he a clone?” Kaeya whispers, not particularly quiet about it.

“A segment,” Dottore corrects. “They represent different parts of my life. They're supposed to make things easier on me, but they do nothing but make my life more difficult than it needs to be.”

“You didn’t need to run back here to defend your apprentice,” the segment sniffs. “I wasn’t about to harm him, we were only curious on what might have caught your eye where so many failed before.”

Dottore seems to be gearing himself up for some more scathing comments, but Kaeya is far more interested in the segment in front of them, wary of letting Dottore chase the man (clone?) off before he can get any answers. “Wait, so if they're all from different points in your life…is there a child version of you running around somewhere?”

“No-”

“Yes!” The segment contradicts Dottore before he can even finish, bouncing forward, closer to Kaeya. He smiles a little at the segment’s antics, finding this one far cheerier than the original. The cloud of misery Dottore carries around with him is part of the charm, but he also finds himself grinning back at this excitable version of the man. This must be him when he was younger, though it only makes him sad to wonder what snuffed the spark out of him so thoroughly. “Oh, we were so cute when we were younger. Oh, you should just see him! Dot’s mean and keeps him all locked away so no-one else can see how cute he was a child. A real shame, you know, people might actually like him if they could see that.”

“He doesn’t need people to like him to do his job.”

The segment and Dottore both blink at him, before the hand on his shoulder squeezes. “Seems you're already learning, brat.”

The segment stares at Kaeya before turning to Dottore. “Why didn’t you tell us about him? We had to find out you even had an apprentice from the Regrator!”

“And why were you talking to the Regrator?” Dottore asks, dry.

“Oh, haha! You know, the usual. Funding requests, all that sorta stuff.” There’s something flushed about the segment’s face, ears tinged a dark pink as things begin to slot into place in Kaeya's mind.

“Mm.”

“Oh, be quiet,” the segment snaps. “We all like the Regrator. If you didn’t like him, then we wouldn’t either. Examine yourself first, asshole.”

“Unless you're out of my office in the next ten seconds I'm going to assume you're volunteering yourself for some nice, up close and personal examination yourself. And whatever segments you've left outside my lab door, giggling like schoolchildren.”

The segment pouts. “You're no fun,” he protests, but disappears when Dottore takes a threatening step forward, hinges creaking as the door slams shut behind him.

The hand leaves Kaeya's shoulder a moment later, leaving a patch of cold air behind. Despite himself, Kaeya can't help the shiver, turning in his seat to watch the Doctor wander over to his desk and collapse into his chest.

“That was interesting.”

“Shut it, brat.” Dottore pulls the nearest stack of papers closer to him, something that Kaeya has never seen him do before. “Sometimes, scientific discovery isn’t worth it, and you only find out after you've created something terrible.”

“They didn’t seem all that terrible. I mean, there’s child versions of you running around. What an idea! Honestly, I can't even believe that you were a child once, have you not always been a miserable old man?”

Dottore doesn’t respond to his prodding, still pretending to read a report. As though he can see through those stupid slits in his mask.

He blinks, eyelashes brushing against the skin of his cheek. He stares at the ceiling, and the ceiling stares back, stars swirling across the canvas of deep blue, constellations mapping out the very edges of all existence.

Someone sings beside him, and though he doesn’t know the words, his heart recognises it all the same. He longs to turn his head, to catch even a single glimpse of the one that croons such soothing words at him with such painful softness, but he remains pinned to the bed, arms outstretched and legs neatly crossed at the ankle.

The false sky winks down at him, and for just a moment he feels as small as a bug, pinned beneath a microscope and examined beneath the light.

He blinks again, and smooth silk sheets pool around him, and the stars fade into non-existence, replaced by the heavy fabrics of his bed canopy. The song continues to echo in his ears, though when he turns his head no-one sits beside his bed. Just empty darkness.

He wraps himself tightly in his duvet and shivers.

The first physical prototype of his conduit is beginning to take shape beneath his hands when Dottore sneaks up behind him on silent feet and presses a hand into the back of his neck. He just about shoots into the air, turning fast enough that he nearly trips over his own feet and faceplants.

The hand gripping his shoulder prevents most of that embarrassment from happening, but he can still feel his face warm.

“Did you need something?” he snaps, once he's recovered enough that his voice doesn’t shake.

“Yes. I've just received word that someone has misplaced the Jester’s personal commission,” Dottore's mouth forms a thin line around the words. Oh, fantastic. Someone’s being killed today then. “And he apparently wants an update on its progress right now.”

“That’s…a shame?” He stares at Dottore. “I don't know what you want me to do about it.”

“Nothing. I will be sorting it myself. If anyone comes looking for me while I'm going, tell them I'm busy and do not want to be disturbed.” Oh, great, whoever fucked up is getting dissected, not killed. Wonderful.

“You got it.”

He watches Dottore leave, stalking out with fury written into every line of his body. Ouch. Hopefully none of his assistants try to grab his attention; Kaeya would hope that they have enough sense not to do that, but with some of the gossip he's overheard from around the lab leaves him genuinely worried for their mental states. Maybe they’ve huffed too many chemicals over their lives, or too many failed experiments had tipped them over the edge, but whoever came up with the new apprentice is the Doctor's illegitimate child is dying the moment either he or Dottore get their hands on them.

The prototype fails to hold his attention, and with Dottore gone…he eyes the man’s desk chair, far more plush than his own.

It’s worth it. It is so worth it, even if he dies for this. Why can't he have a chair this comfortable? He spends most of his day hunched over his desk on a wobbly stool that leaves much to be desired with the available back support.

He pokes around on the man’s desk, sifting through various papers, uncaring of the mess he leaves behind. Dottore hasn’t cared about him going through his stuff before, and if he really cared enough to keep information from him, he’d learn to lock his drawers and filing cabinets.

One of the documents snags his attention for more than a moment – a report from a detachment in Liyue, one studying the numerous ruin guards that frequent the area for unknown reasons. It’s a request for more materials and soldiers; a typical request, but the part that catches his attention is the reasoning.

They're experiencing frequent attacks, apparently. Destruction of their water supplies and weaponry. The water can be easily replaced with more funding, but the weapons can only be replaced a few times – something they’ve already done – before the Liyuean officials begin to get suspicious of weapons stockpiling and refuse further sale.

Someone destroying Fatui camps in the Liyuean wilderness sounds like a vigilante, or someone with a personal vendetta against the Fatui.

The hinges squeak and he looks up, an excuse already prepared and on his lips for Dottore. He falters when someone else shoulders their way into the private lab. An eye finds his own, and he pauses with a rebuke on his lips, every sensible thought falling from his head as he considers the star-pupil staring back at him from a face that is not his own.

Kaeya frowns.

“You are not the Doctor,” the stranger says. Kaeya reconsiders that classification a moment later, eyes sweeping over him as he sets the report aside. This is the Jester, the Director of the Fatui Harbingers. Kaeya is incredibly aware that he should be showing some kind of deference, maybe even awe? Or would he prefer quaking fear? Men in high positions of power often see themselves as more god-like than they are, though he doubts this specific man dares to tempt fate again.

“Obviously not,” is the first thing he says, any thoughts of deference tossed aside in favour of…that. He cringes silently, internally, so the Jester may not sense that weakness and pounce on it.

He remains seated as the man stalks towards Dottore's desk, and only meets his cold eye when he looms over it. He raises an eyebrow as the man continues to stand there, as though casting a shadow over Kaeya is meant to scare him into obedience.

(He hardly spares a thought for the fact that Dottore is going to kill him when he gets back.)

“You are…the new project he picked up while in Mondstadt, then.”

“Not a project.”

The smirk that had begun to play on the man’s lips falls away as he looks back at Kaeya. He watches a muscle flex in the Jester’s jaw, nose flaring as he inhales sharply.

“Are you privy to the knowledge of when the Doctor will return?” The Jester changes tack, pursuing a different line of questioning.

Kaeya carefully doesn’t answer whenever you've left, and instead replies, “Are any of us privy to the inner workings of the Doctor?” No laugh. Wonderful. Rude and lacking a sense of humour. “No. He didn’t say.”

More staring. More looming. Kaeya wants to snap at the old man when several minutes tick past in this way – is he going to stand and wait until Dottore comes back? Because there's no way that he's ever returning if he catches wind of the Jester in his lab, which he will because every single one of his employees is a terrible gossip. They’ll be tripping over themselves to be the ones to tell him.

“Your attitude is unbecoming of you,” the Jester informs him. He watches Kaeya carefully, as though expecting him to prostrate himself before the Harbinger and thank him for such invaluable knowledge. The Jester frowns deeper at Kaeya's lack of response. “It’s only made worse by the way the Doctor favours you. There are many outside of this room that would kill for your position.”

“They’d have to succeed in killing me first to take it.”

The Jester grunts, and moves away. Kaeya returns to poking through the reports on Dottore's desk, finding several copies of official documents. Each of them denies the request of extra supplies (other camps attacked and destroyed?) and instead orders the detachments to return. He can only assume that another copy will be making its way into this pile over the next few days.

Something creaks in the office, the sound setting off alarm bells as he looks up. His eye pins on the chair the Jester has just lowered himself into. It is not Kaeya's chair, but the Cursed Chair that he's only ever seen Dottore use for performance reviews. The chair is old and rickety, on the verge of falling apart. In fact, it has fallen apart during every single meeting that Kaeya witnessed, leaving the scientists mortified and furious.

“I wouldn’t sit there if I were you,” he says, slow.

“You would prefer me to stand as I wait?” Absolutely yes. Even if you deserve that chair collapsing underneath your weight you pretentious asshole.

“That’s an entirely different sentence you've come up with there.” He shrugs, and stands, “If you want it to collapse with you still sitting on it, go ahead, but I've had to rebuild that chair five times in the past week already. And I started getting lazy after the second time.”

“Do you regularly order your superiors around?”

“If I know more about something than they do, then I might choose to advise them. But if you want another stick up your ass, feel free to keep planting it there.”

The Jester stands, interrupting Kaeya before he can reach his desk. Kaeya doesn’t move, even as the Jester pushes into his personal space, far too close. He tilts his head back, just enough to catch the Jester’s eye. “Are we going to have a problem?” he asks. “Because I don't think the Doctor will be too willing to deliver your commission if he finds out that you've harmed one of his investments.”

“If you think even for a moment that the Doctor will listen to you over me then you-”

The door slams open, and one of the segments rushes inside, followed soon after by the Doctor himself. Kaeya uses the momentary distraction to slip around the Jester and return to his desk, working dutifully on his prototype by the time Dottore turns his eyes on him.

“Ah, Jester, I wasn’t aware you were waiting for me. Good timing on your part! Your commission has just been finished up.” The Jester grunts, ambling towards Dottore. “I do hope you weren’t waiting long, were you?”

“No,” the Jester lies. “I was speaking with your new investment to pass the time.”

Dottore stands still, head tilted in Kaeya's direction. Uh-oh. “Ah, yes. I'm sure he was welcoming and polite.”

“Hm. His manners could use some work.” Uh-oh. The stare against the side of Kaeya's head begins to burn.

“Right, that’s being worked on.” Dottore smiles, teeth clenched together and lips spread wide. “Now,” he claps, “this here is your commission, made exactly to your specifications. And this one is more than happy to ship it wherever you might desire.”

The Jester nods as the segment flits over to his side, looking miserable but not protesting. Kaeya can only wonder what that one did to deserve this. Despite having everything he came for, the Jester doesn’t move to leave, glancing back at Kaeya, again. “Does Her Majesty know about…this?”

“Of course.”

“Hm. Just remember to feed him.”

“Excuse me,” Kaeya stands, chair screeching back across the floor. “I am right here, listening to what you are saying. And I am an adult-” he ignores Dottore's muttered not quite and ignores that the man has also somehow grabbed a birth certificate of some kind “-and am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you.”

The Jester looks unimpressed, and barely spares Kaeya a glance before he's turning that one-eyed, starry stare back onto Dottore. “I mean it.” Kaeya falls back into his seat, turning away from the two Harbingers and kicking his boots up onto the desk, just because he can; and because it irritates Dottore to no end.

This seems to be some sort of goodbye, because the Jester leaves not long after, door swinging shut behind him, barely open long enough for the segment to scurry out behind him.

“Would it kill you to be polite?” Dottore sighs.

Kaeya shrugs.

Dottore sighs again, a sharp, cut-off thing, before he grabs Kaeya's ankle and yanks him from his seat. He squawks as he hits the floor, turning to follow behind the Doctor. He shows no care for the violence he just inflicted on his protégé.

“I'm sending you for etiquette lessons tomorrow,” Dottore tells him. “With the Regrator.”

Kaeya freezes the coffee in his mug as retaliation.

“Dottore!” Was the only warning Kaeya and the man in question got before the doors swung inwards, each of them bouncing off the wall with a resounding crash that sent Kaeya's teeth rattling in his skull.

He's not sure what he expected from his first interaction with the Regrator. In all honesty, he’d expected Dottore to just shove him outside of the lab with a few instructions on how to reach the man’s office and leave him to struggle. It’d probably be funny to him if he got lost and was late as a consequence.

Whatever it was he expected, it wasn’t the Regrator showing up to Dottore's lab to personally escort him to his first ‘etiquette lesson’.

“Regrator,” Dottore greets, smile sharp and much quieter than the other Harbinger. “You're early.”

“Well, you know how the saying is: if you're early, you're on time, if you're on time you're late, and if you're late, you're fired.”

Dottore snorts. “No wonder you have such a rapid turnaround with job listings.”

The Regrator is…far too normal to be a Harbinger. He’s lacking a mask, for one. The scientists outside the door might not wear masks, but the heavy-duty goggles they wear fulfil the same purpose. But this man doesn’t wear a mask, only a pair of silver-rimmed glasses, and elegant glasses chain looping around his neck, ornaments swaying as he steps forward.

“Oh, I know you aren’t talking, hah! The employees you ‘fire’ don't even get to step out of the building alive!” Despite the venom of his words the man keeps a pleasant smile on his face, disarmingly gentle. It sets everything in Kaeya on edge, mind struggling to resolve the two conflicting sides into one being.

“And you bankrupt every ex-employee you have,” Dottore bites back. He's grinning too, shark-sharp, all flashing edges.

Kaeya pauses, hesitant to move from his corner of the room. He's heard murmurings of the fights between the Doctor and the Regrator, though he's not witnessed one in the few weeks he's been in the Palace. They're disgustingly devastating, apparently, and often leave weeks’ worth of repairs in their wake. Kaeya isn’t entirely certain how Dottore, a weedy twig of an old man, and the Regrator, someone who just screams silver-spoon, cause such destruction.

“Hah! You're lucky I haven’t bankrupted you yet…several outstanding loans hanging over your head at the moment,” the Regrator pauses, thoughtful. “Though, I will be needing to add another five million mora to that debt.”

Kaeya gapes. Five million mora.

“What for?” Dottore asks, the picture of innocence. Which means he knows exactly what he's done.

The Regrator is across the room in a moment, seizing the front of the man’s labcoat in one gloved hand, yanking. Kaeya watches as Dottore is forced to stand on his tiptoes to avoid being choked out by his own shirt collar rather than the Regrator’s shaking fists.

“You know exactly what for,” the Regrator growls. All that calm and kindness from before has disappeared, replaced with a deep fury that has even Kaeya inching away, chair rolling back on its convenient wheels as he attempts to escape the path of destruction. “Or have you somehow forgotten about your little venture into one of my vaults?” Silence. “What, did you think I wouldn’t notice? You know I recently commissioned a Fontainian researcher for his top-of-the-line new invention.” More silence. “Don't tell me you haven’t heard of it, dear? It’s a rather ingenious combination of a Kamera and an immobilised meka.”

“Five million is pocket change to you, ‘Lone,” Dottore laughs. He sounds more than a little nervous, laughter a bit desperate. Kaeya can feel eyes on him, as though he's going to get in the way of justice. The Regrator shakes Dottore back and forth, something which the Doctor does absolutely nothing to stop. “Come on,” he whines, “I didn’t think you'd notice!”

“Wouldn’t notice?” The smile is back. Kaeya doesn’t like that, he doesn’t like that at all. This man is downright terrifying. “Dear, did you really think I wouldn’t notice five million mora missing, hm?”

“Haha, Pantalone, of course I knew you'd notice. But we can talk about that later,” Kaeya watches as he rests a hand on ‘Pantalone’s’ wrist, stroking back and forth. He raises his eyebrow, judging. “For now, have you met my newest apprentice yet?”

“Newest? I wasn’t aware you had more than one,” the Regrator replies, though his hand is beginning to loosen its grip on Dottore's front. Kaeya's surprised there are tears in the fabric. He also can't help but feel a little betrayed as the Regrator turns his eyes on him – this is the man he's meant to be having etiquette lessons with? He's going to be eaten alive – and also like he's being used as a human shield to allow Dottore to slip free from the man’s grasp at last, darting over to stand by Kaeya. Well, at least he's still within the firing line, even if Kaeya's set to be executed beside him. “But, no, I haven’t met him yet.”

The Regrator smooths a hand over his cloak, tugs at the cuffs of his sleeves, before extending a hand to Kaeya. “A pleasure to meet you, though I must admit I've heard plenty about you through the metaphorical grapevine before now. Quite a mouth on you, hm? I hear you had a right old go at poor old Pierro.” Kaeya frowns at the man, though he still shakes his hand. “The Jester,” he clarifies.

“Trust that to be the one thing you know about him,” Dottore mutters. The hand on his shoulder squeezes.

“I've found it’s a quality one develops when they spend an extended period of time around you, Dot.”

“He was like this before I picked him up.”

“And were his clothes in such a sorry state then, too?” The Regrator frowns, plucking at the standard issue uniform Kaeya's wearing. “I mean, really, dear, he's meant to be your apprentice, not just a random recruit that’s taken to hanging around in your lab.”

“His clothes are fine.”

“I beg to differ,” the Regrator replies, still looking at Kaeya with sympathy in his eyes. “Childe is better dressed than he is right now.”

“You take that back,” Dottore hisses, the hand on Kaeya's shoulder tightening even further.

“To revoke that would be lying to your face. Haven’t we promised not to do that to each other anymore?” The Regrator simpered.

“And what do you want me to do about it? Drop all of my work to run around clothes shopping with my apprentice? My stakeholders would kill me.”

The Regrator levels Dottore with a look. “We both know that you do whatever you please. If you wanted to drop everything and run off to the wilderness for a month, everyone would be helpless to stop you. I mean, for crying out loud, Pierro told me he had to remind you to feed your apprentice? Feed him? Is he your first pet or something, have a little more respect.”

“He has been feeding me,” Kaeya volunteers. “Regularly.”

“Mm.” Is the Regrator’s only response. “Then it’s decided, I suppose. I shan’t be taking him for an etiquette lesson today, Dot.”

“I beg your par-”

“I shan’t be doing that because I will instead be taking him clothes shopping. Something you are far too busy to do, apparently.” He sighs. “Probably for the best looking at your wardrobe.”

Kaeya watches as Dottore flushes. “Some of those things are only for wearing in private.”

“Oh, I’d hope so, dear.” The Regrator smiles, then turns to him. “Well, come on then. I may be less busy than our esteemed Doctor here, but I do have a few afternoon meetings today.” Another pause as he turns to Dottore. “May I borrow him for those too, I do believe it would be beneficial for him to see the admin side of Harbinger duties.”

“Oh, no, no,” Dottore steps up, all fear from before forgotten, no longer using Kaeya as a human shield as he points a finger in the Regrator’s face. “I see exactly what you're doing here, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Oh, won’t you?”

“He’s my apprentice, you can't steal him!”

“We can share. A fifty-fifty split, hm?”

Pause. “Seventy-thirty.”

“Oh my, how generous of you to give up so much so soon! You're practically giving him away at this point, but, I don't mind if I do. I've heard he's rather clever, with a silver tongue on him to boot.”

“Seventy to me, idiot.” Dottore hisses. “Take it or leave it.”

The Regrator considers him. “Sixty-forty. Sixty to you.”

Kaeya watches Dottore consider it, confused how this has turned from etiquette lessons, to clothes shopping, to…Harbingers fighting over who gets to ‘keep him’ most of the time?

“Deal.” The pair shake on it before the Regrator turns to him, that same placid smile on his face. Kaeya shudders at the sight of it, aware now that it’s hiding a devil beneath the sweet façade. Still, he takes the outstretched hand, because he's already made a deal with one devil, so why not two?

The Regrator pulls his from the lab in a swirl of dark furs and finery. Kaeya hardly hears the doors shut behind them, their exit far quieter than the Regrator's entrance. He only has a moment to brace himself for the usual bustle of the lab, shrinking away from the firm grip the Regrator has on his arm. Only…the lab is silent around them.

Every single scientist and research fellow is turned in their direction, not a single bit of work being done. Some look on with open curiosity, others watch them with trepidation. The Regrator ignores them completely, continuing on like this is business as usual. Perhaps it is business as usual for the Harbinger – they're not exactly subtle, and wary eyes follow wherever they go.

With the Regrator's quick pace and Kaeya's stumbling footsteps hurrying after him, attempting to keep as close as possible, they're out of the lab in a few moments and powering on up the stairs to the ground floor of the Palace.

“Really,” the Regrator shudders, drawing his cloak closer around his shoulders. “He needs to invest in some kind of heaters. God knows he could make them himself. Oh, he could make the best on the market if he wanted to, but no, it must remain below freezing in that hellhole at all hours of the day. Ugh, the feel of cold metal on skin,” the man glances at him from the corner of his eye and coughs, cutting himself off. “I'm certain he does it to keep any sane people out of his basement.”

Kaeya has no opinion on the matter, not one that he voices at least, because he likes the coldness of the basement.

He casts his eyes around them instead, eyeing the tall archways they pass beneath. He tries, for a moment, to figure out where in the Palace they are, only to become hopelessly lost after another two turns and giving up.

“And you!” the Regrator continues, turning in a whirl of fabric to pin Kaeya beneath that intense stare once more. “Do you have no other clothes? No coat? Tell me, where are your quarters so we may fetch your coat before we depart. I'm becoming rather fond of you and would prefer it if you didn’t freeze to death outside.”

Kaeya always though businessmen were reserved in their speech, preferring only to talk when it would benefit them, wary of saying too much and agreeing to an unfavourable deal. A cold face is one that benefits the best of businessmen. The Regrator, an apparently famed businessman, one of the richest people in Teyvat, does not seem to know when to stop talking.

“I don't have a coat.”

“No coat?” the Regrator exclaims. “Oh, my, tell me, dear, you do have a bed to sleep in, yes?”

“…Yes?”

The Harbinger purses his lips and stops in the middle of the corridor. Kaeya slows beside him, glancing around at the few agents slipping past them; does the Regrator not care for the scene he is causing, or is he unaware of it? Kaeya can see a few agents stopping to watch them, neatly tucked behind a pillar so the Regrator cannot see them, but Kaeya can still see them perfectly fine.

“Are you certain? Only, your response has caused doubt in my mind, and if Dot is failing to provide adequate accommodation I am more than happy to supply some myself. Of course, this would come with an additional pledging of your service to me, not entirely, of course. Dottore would never forgive me if I stole you away entirely.”

“I have a room,” Kaeya defends. His room is more than enough; larger than any he’s ever had before, with a bed grand enough to fit three people beside himself, each of them with room to roll about and never come into contact with one another. “Just…not a coat.” He doesn’t mention that the lack of coat is not the oversight or negligence the Regrator is likely picturing, but he also doesn’t feel like explaining the details of why he doesn’t need a coat to brave the Snezhnayan weather. From the few minutes he's spent interacting with the man, Kaeya's certain he wouldn’t let go of it until he had an answer. Like a dog with a bone.

“Well, I'm certainly not going to take you out in this weather without a coat. Allow us to divert for a moment and we can continue once you're sufficiently dressed.” The Regrator mutters a few more things beneath his breath, Snezhnayan words Kaeya hasn’t heard yet, meaning they're probably swears.

Kaeya's pretty sure they're going the opposite direction to before, ascending three long, grandiose staircases that leave Kaeya feeling a little winded as he attempts to keep up with the Regrator's fast pace. The corridors twist in upon themselves, blending into each other as Kaeya continues to get even more lost.

The longer it takes to reach…wherever the Regrator is taking him, the more suspicious Kaeya becomes of the man.

Dottore seems to trust this man, or he was at least willing to hand Kaeya over to him for the rest of the day. But knowing Dottore, this entire excursion could be some kind of test, something to see how he reacts under pressure. Maybe he's attempting to gauge Kaeya's perception skills, or even to see if he's capable of surviving the Fatui itself; he's been relatively sheltered within the depths of the lab, where few dare to venture in fear of the Doctor. Perhaps this is Dottore's version of a stress test for Kaeya.

The Regrator is charming and kind as he greets every agent they pass. He seems to be well liked, but it is in his best interest to charm anyone set in front of him so they might hand their mora over a little easier. He is a manipulator at heart – like recognises like, as much as Kaeya despises it – and someone with such underhanded business tactics should not be trusted at face value.

The Regrator's sigh pulls him out of his head. “Staring at me with such open distrust, really, you must learn to hide such opinions better. I'm sure you can learn, but if you're watching me with such suspicion already, then I fear I have far more work ahead of me than I initially anticipated.” The man smiles at him softly. “Oh, really, come now, I've done nothing to harm you, have I? And believe me, if I did, Dot’s vengeance would be swift. My life is valuable and I am no gambling man, I prefer to keep my head rather than lose it over a petty grudge.”

“Not much of a grudge if he's willing to split me with you.”

“Oh-ho, sharp eyes! Oh, what else have you noticed? Please, do tell. I promise not to take offence to whatever you say.” Kaeya remains silent. “Ah, you're no fun, but I am beginning to see why our dear Doctor likes you.”

The man slows to a stop in front of a pair of large, ornate doors. He does it so abruptly that Kaeya almost walks straight past him, coming to a sharp stop as the man offers him a hand, crooked at the wrist. Kaeya stares at him.

“It just occurred to me that we did not have a formal introduction, and, well, my teacher would be rolling in her grave if she knew my manners had grown so abhorrent in her absence.” Another smile. “We’ll be spending plenty of time together, so we should get friendly, no? As such, I insist you call me Pantalone, though, perhaps not when we’re with guests. On such occasions you may call me the Regrator, or Ninth if that is more to your tastes.”

Kaeya takes his hand slowly, shaking it twice, nice and firm; strong enough to show you're a worthy business partner, but not harsh enough to threaten injury or seem brutish.

Pantalone does the same to him. The whole way the man carries himself – the formality of introductions, the strict adherence to manners, the way he talks – all lend credence to Kaeya's previous theory on the man being some kind of nobility. Not Snezhnayan, though, because despite the man’s best attempts, there's still the hint of an accent lingering on the edge of his words.

It’s as the expectant silence stretches that Kaeya realises Pantalone is waiting for him to share his own name.

“I have been instructed not to share my name,” Kaeya says, eventually, when the silence is turning from awkward to catastrophic. The man has been kind to him so far, but Kaeya has also been following his unspoken rules thus far. He's not certain if refusing this courtesy will be the thing that sours the good mood.

“Yes, I'm rather aware of all the secrecy around your identity,” the man winks at him, as though they're both in on some big secret. He watches as the man slips a key from his sleeve and slots it into the keyhole. “I hope you don't expect me to call you brat. I shall leave Dottore to his questionable naming conventions, but I refuse to participate. He's got all the other harbingers calling you that, you know. You're the hot topic of conversation at the moment, everyone’s talking about you, about who’s going to meet you first and so on.”

“I've already met the Jester and the Rooster.”

“Oh, I'm aware.” The lock clicks and Pantalone ushers him into the room beyond, which turns out to be an office. Pantalone's office, he assumes. “I wasn’t joking when I said Pierro told me about you. He was really quite offended. Though, between you and me, I think he found it quite charming too. And the Rooster didn’t meet you, he met the Doctor, and you just happened to be there too.

Kaeya stands awkwardly in the small receiving area, glancing around at the empty coat hooks. Only a scarf dangles from one, tucked far in the corner and gathering dust. The entryway widens out into the rest of the office, divided by an archway. The floor is marbled and a fire roars in the fireplace, allowing some warmth into the room. Everything is gilded and shining, all far too fancy for Kaeya's taste.

He doesn’t get long to peer curiously around at what he can see of the office before Pantalone's reappearing, sweeping a cloak around Kaeya's shoulders and busying himself with fastening the chain over his neck to prevent it from slipping off.

“There we go,” Pantalone dusts his shoulders off, smoothing his hands over Kaeya's arms. He stands stiff under the attention, unused to people in his personal space, even after several weeks spent with Dottore doing just that. “Much cosier, and much smarter too without us able to see the rags you wear beneath it.” Kaeya takes a little offence at that. His uniform is perfectly maintained. “I feared I would never have a use for this cloak when Dottore snatched the last project spot up, but here you are! And it’s a perfect fit too, ah, how wonderful.”

Kaeya's ushered back into the hall outside, watching as Pantalone relocks his office door behind them. “Can never be too careful,” he tells Kaeya, tapping the key against the side of his nose before vanishing it back into his sleeve.

The cloak he’s been gifted is a light grey, only barely lighter than the white cloak Pantalone himself wears, though it’s far shorter. Pantalone's drags along the floor, but his curves inwards, with odd cuts in the fabric, making it look feathered at the ends. He swallows and draws it closer around himself, eyeing Pantalone carefully, wary of this new gift and its strange patterns. The fur ruff at his neck is nice, at least, bringing him comfort as he pulls it closer around his face, even if he doesn’t need the warmth it offers.

“Tell me,” Pantalone says, after an extended period of time. Long enough that they're outside the Palace and on its grounds, headed towards the main gates. “Have you ever been involved in a business?”

“What?”

“Ah, I just feel as though I've seen you before. Did you ever attend the international conference? I do believe the last one was hosted in Liyue a few years ago. It’s where people meet to discuss potential trade deals with new partners.”

Yes. “No.” He lies. He’d been only once, a few years ago when Crepus had decided they were old enough to attend with him. Trust that to be one of the few times a Harbinger was in attendance.

“Hm.” Pantalone considers him for a moment longer before shrugging. “So? Have you ever dealt in a business deal, any kind of financial transaction beyond the one you have with a vendor.”

“Somewhat.”

“Splendid, we’ll finish our business in the city and then you can come back for my five o’clock meeting with me. It’ll be good experience for the work you'll be doing for me in the future.”

Kaeya stops and stares after Pantalone, only briefly, because the man has long legs and a fast pace, but enough to allow him to gape in a mix of shock and frustration.

A pair of guards open the gates for them as they approach, Pantalone thanking each one by name. A little creepy, but they seem to appreciate it.

“What do you mean?” Kaeya finds his words eventually, falling back into step with the Harbinger. “I don't- business deals?”

“Yes,” Pantalone peers down at him. “You are aware that I deal with the finances of the Fatui, yes?”

“Yes.” Kaeya grits out. “That doesn’t explain why I need to be attending meetings with you.”

“Dottore agreed to give me some of your time. Ergo, you will be working with me during this time. I certainly will not be coming down to the lab to work on projects with you during that time, you will be coming to work on what I do.”

Kaeya ignores the people around them as he glares at Pantalone. They give them a wide berth anyway, allowing them easy passage through the busy streets.

“Ah,” Pantalone stops, ignoring Kaeya's glare completely. “This is us, through this door right here, thank you very much.” A blast of warmth hits Kaeya so suddenly he feels dizzy, a bell tinkling above his head, then again as Pantalone enters after him. The shop they’ve entered is hot, bright, and cramped. All of Kaeya's worst nightmare joined together in this unholy union.

“Lord Harbinger!” A woman appears from thin air, startling Kaeya halfway out of his skin while she just smiles placidly at him. “What a pleasure to see you today, how may I assist?”

“I'm here to acquire a new wardrobe for my young friend here,” Pantalone rests a hand on Kaeya's shoulder, still smiling at the woman. Kaeya's heart feels like it’s about to burst free from his chest, and it’s the only reason he doesn’t immediately shrug the touch off. He's still irritated with the man. “He’s been left to the mercy of my dear friend for far too long. We’re here to rectify that today, if possible.”

The employee nods consideringly, eyeing Kaeya.

“Your friend has a rather distinct streak of destruction,” the woman agrees, frowning at Kaeya. “Is there a particular image you're looking for, or are you open to suggestions?”

“One image in mind, the rest is up to you, Anya. I trust your tastes.”

“I would hope so, Lord Harbinger, you've been coming here for long enough already,” she laughs with Pantalone for a moment before turning back to Kaeya. “I would say light shirts, and something dark to offset. Perhaps gloves too?” She steps closer. “How sensitive to the cold are you? A sleeveless shirt would suit you well, but the climate here is unforgiving. Unless you intend to spend most of your time inside?”

It takes Kaeya a moment to realise that she's actually asking him. “I'm not sensitive to the cold at all.”

He can see Pantalone frown at him from the corner of his eye.

“Ah, well, in that case may I direct you to these shirts over here,” she guides them over, Pantalone's hand still resting on Kaeya's shoulder. “Please, call me over if you need any help. Lord Harbinger,” she turns to address the man, “I will be at the front counter for consultation whenever you're ready.”

“Wonderful, thank you Anya.” Pantalone turns to him. “Pick whatever you like while I speak with Anya. Don't bother with the price tags, I’ll be footing the bill today.”

“I’d hope so,” Kaeya mutters. “Not like I'm being paid.”

“Not being paid,” Pantalone frowns. “We’ll rectify that when we return. If things go smoothly we should have a little spare time before my meeting.”

Kaeya hums, not replying verbally until Pantalone takes the hint and goes to find Anya. It’s unsettling when they keep staring at him from across the shop, whispering between themselves conspiratorially. He eyes them warily as he picks a few things out, laying them gently over his arm, aware that some of these things probably cost more than his entire wardrobe.

When he's picked through everything possible and has nothing else to look at, he stands in the middle of the shop, feeling a little lost and confused.

“Are you done?” Anya appears beside him, easily taking the clothes from him. “A fine selection, I like your taste,” she smiles at him. “Now, these are standard fittings, so should already fit you, however, Lord Harbinger and I have something else for you. This one will need to be fitted to your proportions, so will take a few days and requires your measurements, is that all right?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Good, right this way, please.”

He's gestured up onto a little podium, both Anya and Pantalone staring at him as he's measured. It’s a little awkward, and he has to resist the instinctual urge to draw his arms in close and shield himself from all this attention. He stands taller, chin held up and back straight. He's not sure if it comes off as confident or overcompensating. He hopes for the former.

“Are you sure you won’t be a little…cold in these picks?” Pantalone asks. He glances over, having to look past Anya to see Pantalone. The man’s picking through some of his chosen clothes, frowning at the plunging neckline on several of the shirts.

“I can find an undershirt that suits his tastes, Lord Harbinger,” Anya says. “You are all done, hop on down.” He does, thankful to escape that discomforting experience. He shakes it all off and slips his cloak back over his shoulders, drawing the fur ruff tight around his neck.

“Mm.” Pantalone watches him. “I suppose Dot found you halfway up Dragonspine, is the weather here something you are accustomed to?”

“I spent a lot of time on Dragonspine,” he replies.

Anya watches him curiously, before abruptly turning away as she notices his eye on her and disappearing into the racks of clothing. Pantalone follows his gaze.

“You don't need to worry about her,” Pantalone tells him.

“Worried?”

“She's good at secrets. It’s her business to know things about people,” he laughs. “Did you think I only came to this shop for clothing? People grow loose with their tongues when they're somewhere like this. Look at it, it’s homey, warm and cosy, as though you were in a home away from home. And the clientele I'm interested in doesn’t consider Anya as someone to care about. Who does she have to tell if she hears something she shouldn’t?”

“Don't share secrets that are not your own,” Anya reappears, scolding.

“Apologies, dear.”

She frowns at him. “I would believe you more if that were genuine.” She turns her back on the Harbinger, back towards Kaeya. “I picked out a few items,” she hands them over, “and this too. You have the figure for it, I believe it would suit you well.”

He takes the corset a little awkwardly. “Aren't corsets for women?”

Anya scoffs. “You are narrow-minded, Child of Freedom.”

Kaeya frowns right back at her. “I am no Child of Mond.” He steps closer. “Don't presume to know everything about me just because you know something.”

“Corsets can be worn by men too,” Pantalone intervenes, pulling Kaeya back from Anya. “It’s a form of shapewear, something to create a smarter appearance. Of course, they can be worn as fashion statements too, and that is becoming increasingly popular here. Just try it on, if you dislike it, you don't need to get it.”

He's turned around and pushed into a changing room, the curtain sliding shut with a scraping sound of metal on metal. He stands there for a second and breathes. In and out. Why had he gotten so angry? It was like a flashfire, springing from nowhere to snap at Anya. It was rude of her to assume, but it was ruder still for him to retaliate.

He sighs, and sets to stripping the uniform off, considering the array of shirts and trousers and undershirts in front of him.

It takes nearly an hour, and several rejections from both Anya and Pantalone, before he settles on something that everyone agrees on. The corset is unfortunately comfortable, and Anya was right about it. She gives him a smug look as they're rung up, and Kaeya does his best not to feel sick at the amount of mora handed over at the end of it all. Pantalone throws several pairs of silk gloves in too, all white, of course – Kaeya's beginning to sense a theme – simply justifying that it adds a certain elegance.

Pantalone forces him back into the changing rooms before they leave, insisting that he change before their next stop – next stop? He thought this was their only stop before they returned to the Palace, but apparently Pantalone had gotten it in his head that Kaeya's shoes were unacceptable and must be rectified immediately.

He follows behind the man, clad in his new clothes, Fatui uniform thrown in some bin in the back of Anya’s shop, and tries not to drag his feet as he's ushered into a shoemaker.

He gets no input on the shoes in here, nodding as Pantalone selects a pair of dark dress shoes, which seem to have genuine gold in their stitching, and a pair of…combat boots?

He tilts his head and stares at them. “Is white not the worst colour for boots like these?”

Pantalone hums. “If you were neglectful, certainly. But I expect you to perform regular upkeep on these. The first thing a person looks at is their shoes. You may think that they are smart if they show up in a nice suit, perhaps an expensive one, but have they considered their shoes? If the toe is scuffed or the leather dull, then they are negligent in the upkeep of their own belongings. Their mora is just as much a belonging as their shoes are, and I do not wish to partner with someone that has such bad habits already.”

The shoemaker stares at Pantalone a little for that, lacing Kaeya's boots for him. He had said he could do it himself but the shoemaker insisted, swatting his hands away any time he tried to take over.

“Walk around in those,” he tells Kaeya, dropping his foot to the floor abruptly. He winces at the jolt, but stands as instructed, pacing a small circle around the shop. Pantalone and the shoemaker watch him the whole time, staring at the way the boots move. The leather creaks, obviously new, but it doesn’t rub, yet.

“We’ll take them both,” Pantalone decides, and hands over another extraordinary amount of mora.

“See?” Pantalone pats him on the shoulder, drawing him close as the crowds swarm around them, the rush of people heading home uncaring of the Harbinger in their midst. “That wasn’t as bad as you feared, was it?”

Kaeya grunts.

“Cheer up, we've got a meeting in fifteen.”

The meeting had been hell on earth. All he was able to do was stand just behind Pantalone's chair, watching over his shoulder as documents exchanged hands and terms were argued and dismissed. It was a little fun to watch the confident young man that first walked in crumble to a sad shell of his former self as the time dragged on.

At least, it would have been fun if Kaeya hadn’t felt the same way towards the end, listening to Pantalone talk through the terms of their loan and the shares he would hold of the business for such number of years. He could have sworn the young man was crying by the time he left, though he didn’t sniffle.

Dottore had allowed him to vent his frustrations for exactly thirty minutes before throwing a ball of paper at his head and telling him to shut up or get out.

Kaeya scowled at his back and froze his papers to his desk before returning to his conduit. He could test it right now, but he was freaking over the details, even with Dottore approving the blueprints and lecturing him on his reluctance. He can go fuck himself, Kaeya doesn’t want to make this again if it explodes.

He runs into another Harbinger when he's leaving Pantalone's office to return to the lab. It had been two hours of nothing but dining etiquette. He’s not sure why so many kinds of spoons or forks exist, but he's decided not to question it too much lest his head start spinning again.

In his distraction he rounds a corner and runs straight into another person.

He steps back, a little dazed and aching slightly, apology halfway formed as he presses a hand to his chest. It feels like he ran into solid brick.

He clamps his mouth shut as soon as he looks up, biting his tongue to prevent any sound from escaping him. The man before him wears possibly the most stupid hat in existence, the width of it taking up far more space than is necessary, and probably wider than this man is tall. He feels like he's choking on his laughter, a singular tear welling up in his eye.

“What’s your problem?” the man bites out, voice sharp. Kaeya puts together the visible ball joints on the man’s elbows and the stupidly large hat, abruptly recognising the Balladeer from Dottore's descriptions and sobering rather quickly. The man is volatile and prone to fits of anger. Someone you don't want to annoy.

“I don't have one,” he bites back, briefly closing his eye and wondering what death might feel like. He steps back, hopefully out of range, but the man can probably fling his hat like a frisbee. Maybe it kills on impact and that’s why he wears the stupid thing.

He peeks his eye open, watching as the Balladeer looks him up and down, sneering. “You're Dottore's new project.”

He sighs. “Still not his project.” The Balladeer just stares at him, still sneering. Is his face stuck like that or is he just constantly annoyed? “Fine. Whatever. Greetings, Oh Mighty Harbinger, I apologise if I have disturbed your afternoon, please, let this humble one pass so he may scrape and bow his way out of your glorious presence.”

The Balladeer’s lip curls.

“You're definitely Dottore's new project.”

“Am I really that famous?” Kaeya grins.

“Infamous,” the Balladeer corrects.

Kaeya frowns at him and his sour disposition. He's too short to be intimidating, and too slim to actually be threatening. It’s like a kitten hissing at you from the side of a road. Cute, but also a little sad. “What was it that gave me away?” he asks. “Wait, no, don't tell me. Was it my dashing looks? Or the irresistible charm of my voice?”

“Your utter lack of respect.” If possible, the Balladeer scowls deeper. “I don't have time for this, move aside.” He doesn’t wait, shouldering past Kaeya. It’d probably make him stumble, if the Harbinger wasn’t a head shorter than him and half his weight.

He's surprised the man isn’t ridiculed more. There’s nothing to him and the stupid hat surely means he's predisposed to mockery. He throws his own sneer at the Balladeer’s retreating back, risking a few gestures that would disappoint…well, someone, probably. Maybe Dottore? Probably Pantalone.

When the Harbinger has disappeared around the corner he returns to his trek back down to the lab. Why Dottore and Pantalone insist on working as far from each other as possible, he doesn’t know. They're always up in each other’s space, wouldn’t it be more convenient to work close to each other? More convenient for him, at least.

Chapter Text

Childe.

It’s a name he's heard often. People don't often meet him without somehow mentioning this other person, at least once. It feels as though he's being haunted by a man he's never met. He's Pulcinella’s apprentice, another participant in the same project as Kaeya. There’s three of them, apparently, each of them preparing to take on the mantle of Harbinger when necessary, though one is training to directly take over another, still-living Harbinger’s position, and isn’t currently in Snezhnaya.

Childe is the only other one in Snezhnaya, haunting some part of the Palace that Kaeya hasn’t stumbled upon yet.

That part is likely the training grounds. He has his own cohort, apparently. People years older than him that he's supposed to train. For anyone else, he doubts it would work, but Childe's apparent bloodlust seems to be serving him quite well so far. He's excessively violent, Pantalone has complained, with worse manners than even Kaeya. He had offered similar lessons to Pulcinella, but the man apparently likes Childe as he is, all violent tendencies and unchecked rage. Sounds like the guy has problems. Ones that Kaeya would prefer to stay far, far away from.

He's the youngest lieutenant in history, and might be the youngest Harbinger ever, beating the Knave out by nearly a decade if he continues on his current path. He's climbed over the bodies of his fellow comrades, his ruthlessness spoken about like he's some kind of legend. Several of the most notorious gossips in the lab refuse to even speak his name, afraid that it may summon him to wreak havoc on them instead.

Dottore is simultaneously fascinated with Childe and yet disdainful of him at the same time.

“Pulcinella treats me like I'm some kind of damn healer,” had been Dottore's response when Kaeya dared to ask. It had been that moment where he regretted even bringing it up, watching the way the pencil Dottore held began to bend, the sound of cracking wood reaching his ears. “If his apprentice wants to get himself into stupid shit, let him! If he wants to bleed for it, even better! Maybe he’ll learn his lesson that way. I don't want him brought to me to be pieced back together.”

“You are a Doctor,” he had reminded.

“Not that kind of doctor. I'm the kind the takes things apart to figure out how they work, not the one that stitches everything back together to try and get them to work again.”

“Typically, the understanding of how something works comes from the ability to put it back together,” Kaeya had volunteered, and then been immediately silenced by the snapping of Dottore's pencil and the glare he couldn’t see but could feel radiating in his direction with murderous intent.

Kaeya had left him to it then, continuing his careful testing of the conduit, pushing more and more power through it to see what the limit of the crystals might be.

Still, despite Childe's infamy around the Palace, similar to Kaeya's own and yet wildly different, the two of them have never crossed paths. He barely knows what he looks like, with the only description he has coming from a research fellow. He’d been asking around the lab, curiosity and boredom both gnawing at him, and each person he asked had pointed him in the same direction.

The man he asked has looked at him with wide, haunted eyes. “Childe? Why do you want to know what he looks like?”

Kaeya had shrugged. “Let’s call it morbid curiosity.”

The research fellow had stared for a little longer, before realising that Kaeya was serious and that he wasn’t leaving. “I don't know, really. There’s…recruitment posters of him. He's got a boyish charm to him, apparently. I don't remember that, though. I was,” he swallows, “I was out in the field, and I knew Pulcinella’s prodigy was with us. I didn’t expect him to be a kid. I didn’t expect him to have such horrid eyes, either. Have you ever been to the markets?” Kaeya shakes his head. “Well, his eyes have the dead, hopeless, lightless look of every dead animal there. It’s like there's nothing inside him at all. I quit the moment we returned, transferred here. The kid doesn’t like it down here, tries to avoid it as best he can, apparently.”

The research fellow hadn’t anything else to offer after that, just shaking over his experiment. Kaeya had felt bad enough that he didn’t question him further, just got up and left him to his nervous breakdown. He hasn’t seen him around the lab since.

Pantalone's assistants were even more dramatic than Dottore's. It seems the whole Palace thrives off of gossip, secrets making their way from the basement to the highest floor.

“Oh, Childe?” One of Pantalone's paralegals responds. “Why are you asking about him?”

Kaeya shrugs. “Morbid curiosity,” he repeats.

She stares at him for a moment longer before nodding. “Fair enough, I guess. I can't say I've ever met him. There’s the posters obviously. People think he's charming, or something, so they put him on all the recruitment posters. The marketing department were really proud of that one, and it’s definitely increased intake.” She shrugs. “Something about a pretty face that the general population just can't resist.”

“I thought he was creepy?”

She laughs. “If you're talking about his eyes, yeah, they can be a little creepy apparently. I dunno, like I said I've never met him. Everyone says there's no spark in his eyes, but the posters are just posters, not photos. I think there’s been a little artistic liberty taken; from what I've heard, he's way too happy in all the depictions of him.”

“That’s…weird.”

“He's the youngest lieutenant in history,” she shrugs. “Was there something else you needed or are you just here for gossip? Because the Regrator’s gonna be back in twenty minutes for his next meeting and if you're not gone, he might want to keep you for it.”

“Thanks,” Kaeya says, and disappears as quickly as he can. He resolves to avoid Childe for as long as possible, unwilling to meet such a strange character.

Maybe his wondering and questioning about Childe was some kind of homing beacon to a vengeful god out there. Some higher being that wanted to inflict suffering upon someone else, just for their amusement. Or maybe he just cursed himself by thinking about the lieutenant too much. Maybe he really does appear to those who say his name, there was just a delayed effect, here.

He startles as the lab doors slam open, jerking his head up from where he was working.

“Lord Harbinger!” An agent cries, not one of Dottore's own. They know better than to charge in like that. “It’s- the Rooster needs your aid, it’s-,”

“Let me guess,” Dottore rises from his desk slowly. “Lieutenant Childe has hurt himself again?”

“He's bleeding out,” the agent insists, urgency colouring their voice. “The Rooster is worried for his safety!”

“Bring him in,” Dottore sighs. “Brat, I expect your assistance here.”

“Mine?” Kaeya protests. “I know jackshit about medicine!”

“You're about to learn something.” He pulls sterile gloves on, nodding his head towards the box, indicating Kaeya should do the same. He does so with a huff, grimacing at the feeling of the nitrile gloves against his skin.

“Doctor!” Pulcinella staggers into the lab, visibly struggling beneath the weight of another body.

Dottore snarls something wordless and angry before striding across the lab to relieve Pulcinella of his burden. The person flops about like they're already dead and Kaeya feels a little sick.”

“Don't look so green, brat. He's still kicking.” He dumps this person – Childe – on one of the mostly clear tables, sweeping the rest of it onto the floor carelessly, ignoring the rattle of materials hitting the ground and papers fluttering in his wake. “We have perfectly capable healers upstairs, Pulcinella,” Dottore complains. “There is no reason for you to continue bringing him to me.”

“Ah, but that is where you're wrong, Doctor.” Pulcinella looks far too cheery right now, despite his student continuing to bleed out on the table, making small groaning sounds as Dottore prods at him. “No other person in Zapolyarny holds his medical records. You are the only person that has access, so, pray tell, how may I take him to another healer when you refuse to share his records?”

“His records contain sensitive information.”

“His is particularly sensitive,” Dottore snaps back, before turning to Kaeya. “Brat, congratulations! You get to learn how to stitch a wound today.”

Kaeya peers over Dottore's shoulder. He has basic first aid training, including the basics of suturing. This wound looks a little too big to reasonably stitch up, but Dottore is the one with a not-medical-doctor doctorate, so he listens to the man when he's sent to grab a medkit and then sidelined.

The needle is quickly sterilised before Dottore leans over the patient. Kaeya leans in too, eye fixed on how the Doctor begins pulling the wound shut, watching as he deliberately slows his stitching to allow Kaeya to observe, before quickening it again. Despite his protests that he's not a medical doctor, he does it quickly and skilfully. Enough so that any threat of Childe actually bleeding out quickly dwindle.

“Hey, you're new,” the voice, hoarse and strained, draws Kaeya's attention back to their patient’s face. His eyes are half-lidded, but still open enough for Kaeya to observe possibly the bluest eyes he's ever seen. He grits his teeth as he realises Pantalone's paralegal is right and that he actually is attractive, freckles spattered over the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks, giving him that boyish charm that apparently drew crowds to join the Fatui. It’s disgustingly effective, despite the blood smeared across his chin and dripping from a split lip.

Childe grimaces again as Dottore continues to stitch him up, and Kaeya returns his eye to the lesson in front of him, watching the skin of his stomach pull together, closing up over his insides.

“Oh, wow,” Childe's hand taps against his face, nails picking at the edge of his eyepatch and he smacks it away on instinct, turning his head to glower at the sheer audacity of it all. “You have an eyepatch! Oh, man, that’s so cool – do you still have your eye or is it just an empty socket underneath? Oh! Would you let me stick my fingers in there if I asked nicely enough?”

“Childe,” Pulcinella warns from the corner of the room he's retreated to. Whatever previous appreciation Kaeya had for Childe's attractiveness shrivelled and died the moment he opened his mouth. He sighs and returns to studying the Doctor's work. All men ruin it the moment they open their mouths; they're always far more attractive before they start talking.

“I was just asking!” Childe defends, somehow finding the energy to wriggle despite some of his guts still threatening to spill out into the open. Kaeya leans over him, planting a hand firmly on his chest to keep him in place, fixing him with another glare for good measure.

“Keep still,” he bites. “And for your information, I still have an eye. Even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t let your grimy fingers get anywhere near my eye socket.”

“My fingers aren’t grimy!”

“That’s what you took from that?” Kaeya almost leans back, hissing a disgusted breath out between his teeth. Only Dottore's wordless growl stops him, and he presses down on Childe's chest a little firmer, grinning at the slight wince it produces. “Your hands are covered in blood,” he points out, “were you finger-painting with it while you awaited rescue?”

Childe continues to try and sit up, despite Kaeya's hand planted firmly against his chest –still a suggestion, but one that Childe is ignoring to his own detriment. Kaeya presses his forearm against Childe's neck, pushing him back down onto the table hard enough to make him wheeze. He applies just enough pressure to make Childe away that it is his neck at risk if he continues to act up.

Childe glances down, though he can't quite see Kaeya's arm with how his head is leaning against the table, before looking back up at Kaeya. Rather than giving up, or frowning, or beginning to sulk, he instead starts to grin. That is nearly enough to get Kaeya to give up completely, just walk out into the wilderness and become some hermit or local legend. Dottore's presence at his back and Pulcinella’s stare from across the room is the only thing that keeps him rooted in place.

“You know,” Childe manages, past the pressure on his neck, “I’ve always wondered what it was like to be choked out.” Kaeya freezes. He watches Pulcinella crumple in on himself in the corner, and Dottore mutters something angrily behind his back. “And to have someone like you doing it…” Childe trails off suggestively, still talking despite the murderous aura Kaeya is pretty sure he's radiating at this point. “Well, it’s quite an experience, and I don't even know your name yet!”

“You think you deserve to know my name?”

“We are having a moment.”

“We are not having a moment.”

Childe blinks at him, unfairly long lashes batting prettily at him. Kaeya grimaces. “Oh, please, dear saviour, won’t you allow me to know your name so I may thank you?”

“He is not the one saving your life, ungrateful brat,” Dottore snarls. Childe pales – somehow, despite the astonishing amount of blood he’s lost – meaning he still has some survival instincts knocking around in that head of his. “Watch your tongue or you'll be seeing if your saviour knows how to stitch you back together.”

“Sorry, Doctor.”

Dottore grunts, which is all the reassurance Childe needs before he's back to pestering Kaeya again.

He copes by slowly pushing more of his body weight onto the man, fascinated with how he continues to talk even when he realistically should not be able to draw enough breath to do so. Kaeya almost begins to feel bad when he's wincing between every word, before reminding himself that he could easily spare himself and just shut up.

Dottore moves away, returning a moment later dragging something across the floor with a terrible screeching sound. Kaeya flinches away, enough that Childe manages to wriggle free and attempts to spring free of the table. Dottore outright snarls at him and slams him back down into the table.

“What don't you understand about stay put? Did your last battle knock the last bit of sense from your head?”

“I don't know, did the mould finally make its way into your brain?” Childe snarks, apparently feeling well enough to try and fight Dottore. Despite this apparent wellness, he's still dangerously pale from blood loss as Dottore ignores him in favouring of hooking him up for a transfusion. He wrangles Childe easily, despite his protests that he's fine and that he doesn’t like needles, only for the Doctor to slip the needle into his elbow easily, similar to how Kaeya had watched a veterinarian inject a feral cat.

Dottore turns. “You,” he points at Kaeya, “are supervising him. You,” he turns and points at Pulcinella, “are coming with me. I know what you're doing, and we will be talking about it.”

“Dottore,” Pulcinella says, placating as he makes his way towards the man. “It is a good idea and you know it.”

“It would have been a better idea to run it past me before you went over my head.” He points to the storage room. “In there, now.”

Pulcinella gives him an insulted look, but leads the way into the storage room anyway, only pausing to give Childe one last meaningful look before he disappears, Dottore giving Kaeya a similar one and then locking the door behind himself.

“So,” Childe starts. “You know what they're talking about in there?”

Kaeya scowls at him. “What, do you think I'm psychic? No I don't know what's going on in there.”

Childe stares at him, dull eyes even blanker than before. “Really? You're not psychic. Colour me surprised.”

Kaeya huffs and turns his back on him, supervising duties be damned. A minute passes in silence before Kaeya gets suspicious of what Childe, who has so far been unable to stay quiet or sit still for even a moment, might be doing to occupy so much of his time.

He glances back at his patient, only to find him poking at the needle in his arm, wiggling it around and watching with fascination as it moves beneath his skin. It’s enough to make Kaeya feel a little ill. He stares for a long, long moment before coming back to his senses and realising that he's probably going to rip it out if he's not careful, leaping forward to slap Childe's hand away.

“Are you an idiot?” He yells.

“No more of an idiot than you are. Are you seriously telling me you spend all your time in this dingy basement? When was the last time you saw sunlight?”

“I wasn’t aware you got much sunlight in Snezhnaya.”

“Oh, hilarious.” Childe frowns at him. “How are you not insane? Or are you insane right now and acting normal? Wait, let me guess,” Childe squints at him. “No, nevermind, I can’t tell. Are you going insane down here? Where’s the thrill of it all? The adrenaline? Don't you want to get out and fight? Really gets the blood pumping, y’know, great for fun.”

Kaeya stares at Childe. He feels like he's going insane the longer he has to talk to this insufferable creature.

“To be fair,” Childe tilts his head near a ninety-degree angle. “You don't look like you’ve fought a day in your life. You're like…a scrawny little lab rat. Hah! How does Dottore think you're gonna keep me in place if I really wanted to leave?”

“I’ll freeze you to the table.”

If anything, Childe gets even more excited at the threat. “Really? Don't you need there to be some kind of water to freeze me in place? Wait, I didn’t see a Vision on you when I came in.” Kaeya helpfully doesn’t tell Childe that he was busy bleeding out and dying when he came in here so he highly doubts he was noticing much of anything.

“I keep it hidden,” he responds, which is true. It’s more convenient to hide it away than explain why it’s got a massive plaster slapped over its side.

“Really? That’s cool, most allogenes I know like to show their Vision off. Wait, where do you hide it…hmm, I can't see any obvious lumps in your outfit. How are you not cold wearing that? It’s freezing down here, and there’s no heaters, so you gotta be cold but I can't even see any goose-”

Kaeya freezes his lips together, sitting content in the peaceful silence for several long minutes, able to easily tune out the muffled anger that Childe is sending his way.

“The convenience of the human body,” he tells Childe, leaning close, “is that there is always a source of water nearby.” He draws a finger lightly over the inside of his arm, circling gently around where the needle inserts itself. “I could freeze the blood in your veins if I so wished. Create a clot of permafrost so solid that it’d act just like a blood clot and kill you. It’d look natural.” He draws back with a smile, watching Childe's face.

“Brat,” Dottore's voice floats over from the door to the storage room, and he twists around to see the two Harbingers watching him. Dottore's face is passive, while Pulcinella watches him a little more carefully, eyes widening when Kaeya grins at him. so much for that kindly grandfather persona he kept trying to push in Kaeya's presence. “Don't threaten the patients.”

Kaeya sighs, and melts the ice from Childe's lips, returning the gift of speech to him once again.

“What were you chatting about?” Is the first question out of his mouth.

“A deal.” Dottore grunts, sitting down at his desk. His fingers lace together, hands steepling as he fixes Kaeya beneath his stare. “You have yet another Harbinger vying for your presence, brat. Aren't you lucky?” He says it like it’s the worst idea he’s ever heard, and Kaeya is inclined to agree with him.

“You?” He asks Pulcinella, incredulous.

The man looks like he's severely regretting his decisions right now, still watching Kaeya warily, keeping a careful distance from him. As though a few feet between them is going to make a difference.

Pulcinella coughs, glancing away, wringing his hands. “Yes. Ah, well, it was a small agreement made amongst a few of us – Dottore not included as we doubted he’d ever be one to participate in this particular project – that if another candidate of sufficient strength was found, that they would be partnered with Childe.”

“Partnered?” Childe asks, sounding devastated. “You mean, he's the one I have to fight now?”

Pulcinella closes his eyes. “Yes, Childe.” He holds a hand up to silence the protest already forming. Kaeya watches on, fascinated. “Anyone else that you've so much as sparred with has come out with severe injuries. There have been several early retirements thanks to you.”

It’s Kaeya's turn to look horrified. He's the one being tossed to this maniac, like a bone to appease a wild dog? He despairs. This is it, this is how he dies, at the hands of some lunatic that the Fatui managed to find.

“Their injuries weren’t that serious.”

“It is more than we can justify,” Pulcinella continues. “You have the luxury of receiving the Doctor's treatment when necessary. Those that you…harm do not. They must go to the clinic that provides healthcare for the entire Palace. They are overworked, and have threatened to strike if you are not dealt with.”

“Pulcinella and I have come to an agreement,” Dottore intervenes. Kaeya remembers that he is also complicit in his suffering and turns his glare onto the man. “My brat has a better constitution than any other recruit here. Than most of the lieutenants here, in all honesty. The two of you are…a near-perfect match. It’s the only logical conclusion.”

“No.”

“Absolutely not.”

Kaeya scowls at Childe, and Childe scowls right back.

“Ah, and look at how you're already getting along,” Pulcinella claps his hands together. “I can just sense it! This is just the beginning of a wonderful partnership.”

Kaeya flexes his hands and considers wringing Dottore's neck.

Kaeya stares at Dottore from across the lab, seated at his own personal desk, conduit laid in front of him. There's nothing more to be done, no more tweaks to be made, no alterations to the design or path of energy flow. It’s as complete as it’s going to get without field testing.

But right now he has a point to make.

“You don't intimidate me, brat.” Dottore doesn’t even bother to turn away from his experiment, addressing the empty air just above his flask.

“I'm not trying to intimidate you.” He slumps down on the desk and freezes Dottore's mug to the desk. The liquid within remains liquid, but the mug will be immoveable for the foreseeable future. He hides a grin in the crook of his elbow and returns to glaring at Dottore.

“Oh, yes,” Dottore nods along, steam hissing around his face. “Of course, silly me. The last two hours of you sat huffing and glaring at me is a sign of affection.”

“I just don't understand why you'd do this to me,” he complains. “I'm going to die.”

“You are not going to die,” Dottore sighs. “Honestly, don't be so dramatic. Even if you do, momentarily, cease living, I will be able to bring you back, easy as anything. There’s nothing to fear. Besides, this is the perfect opportunity to test your conduit.”

“Childe's going to tear me to pieces.” He continues. “It’s like you don't even care. I'm your apprentice, your only apprentice!”

Dottore grunts, sympathy drying up. “Find someone else to cry at, brat.”

“Fine,” he stands, conduit in hand. “Maybe I will.”

Kaeya's spent enough time in Pantalone's office by now to become a familiar face to all of the staff there. It means he gets let in even when the Harbinger himself isn’t there, and spends nearly an hour moping on the small fainting couch the man keeps in the corner of the room, beside the fire, conduit abandoned on the floor beside him.

“Ah,” the door clicks shut. “Hello. I wasn’t aware we had a meeting today.”

“We don't.”

“Mm.” There's the sound of fabric moving, and then footsteps across the floor. Pantalone sweeps into view, sans his outdoor coat, dressed down to only the suit he wears beneath. Kaeya watches as he perches delicately on the very edge of the couch, holding his hands out towards the fire, warming his fingertips. “Is there something upsetting you, dear?”

Kaeya remains silent. It feels a little stupid now that Pantalone's actually in front of him and he's realised he's currently sulking like a child.

“It’s nothing,” he moves to sit up, only to find Pantalone pushing him back down until his head rests against the small pillow again.

“Now, I've told you before, if you want to get away with lying to me, you need to do it better than that. Now, tell me truthfully this time, what is upsetting you?”

Kaeya snorts derisively. “Dottore.”

“Mm, yes. He can be quite frustrating at times. What is it that’s he's done now?”

“He- he and Pulcinella have decided that it’s beneficial for me to go and get fighting experience,” he scoffs. “And they're just partnering me up with Childe and to hell with the rest of it.”

Pantalone sighs. “I assume Dottore didn’t inform you of this decision beforehand?”

“No.” He slumps further into the little couch, only startling briefly when Pantalone lays a hand over his shin and begins to rub it soothingly. He relaxes into it quickly enough. “I don't even like Childe.”

Pantalone hums in response. The warmth of his palm against Kaeya's leg is…strange. The man has touched him before, both Dottore and Pantalone are tactile, but Dottore's contact stops at the shoulder, only ever holding Kaeya there, pulling him closer or keeping him in place in his own weird little display of affection. Pantalone is far more practiced with it.

Both of them stare into the fire for several long moments. Kaeya wouldn’t be able to tell anyone how long he sat there for, allowing himself to be soothed by the comforting touch and the flickering motion of the flames. He often comes to sit with Pantalone when the lab grows too much (much to his chagrin, Childe had been right that spending too much time in the basement would send him insane), but the man is normally working when he does that, allowing Kaeya to sit and sulk or rant until he's calmer and more open to whatever solutions Pantalone may offer.

“What is it that makes you dislike Childe so vehemently?” Pantalone asks, after an indeterminable amount of time has passed and the fire has begun to fade. Pantalone stokes it himself, carefully adding another log before returning to Kaeya. “If I am correct, today would have been the first time you have met each other face to face. I understand he can be rather abrasive, but this…partnership offers the opportunity for you to leave the Palace a little more. You have complained about feelings of confinement, and yet you snub the first solution that presents itself to you. So,” Pantalone turns to face him properly, ceasing the soothing motion to lay his hands in his lap. “There must be something else about him.”

“He asked about my eye,” Kaeya admits, feeling disgustingly exposed by the confession. He can't bear to look Pantalone in the eye, averting his gaze to try and re-disguise the open wound he just revealed. Several moments of silence follow his words, and when he gathers the courage to look back at Pantalone, the man is watching him with a patient expression. When he sees Kaeya looking, he gives a small nod of encouragement. “And…” he breathes out a little funny, feeling vaguely sick. “He asked if he could stick his fingers in the empty socket? If it existed.”

He turns his head away again, hand automatically raising to brush over the silk of the eyepatch he wears. It’s different to the one Dottore first gifted him, fitted around the edges and lined with gold. It had been a gift from Pantalone, nearly a month after he had first begun taking lessons from the man. It remains his favourite, despite the numerous eyepatches now in his possession, one for every event imaginable, and then more.

Pantalone hums again. Kaeya can feel his eyes on the side of his head, though he doesn’t quite have the confidence to turn to face him again, feeling as though he's just plucked an exposed nerve like a string. He continues to rub a finger over the silk, drawing it in circular motions over his cheek.

“Unfortunately, such behaviour is not unexpected from Childe. He has a…complex history.” Kaeya scoffs. “He was born and raised Snezhnayan, from a family out in the sticks. Destined for nothing, a nobody that would live out his life perfectly content with it, and then die in the same place he was born. And then the Fatui received reports of an excessively violent youth, out in the middle of nowhere. Agents sent to monitor the area returned maimed, some near death. Pulcinella followed after them shortly, and returned with a fourteen-year-old child in his wake. He is currently the youngest lieutenant in Fatui history.”

“So he had a tragic childhood,” Kaeya snarks. “Big deal.”

Pantalone smiles, laughing softly. “Surely his rude behaviour cannot be the only thing that turned you away from this partnership before it had the chance to begin. Your own behaviour was rather close when you first arrived here, though your manners are much improved now, thanks to my tutelage.”

“There’s no-one here for you to boast to,” Kaeya reminds him.

“I'm aware.” Pantalone smiles again, soft and genuine. “Come now, entrust me with whatever is burdening you. What else is there about Childe that unsettles you so?”

Kaeya pauses there and considers it. Dottore figured Kaeya's secret out alone, and he's almost certain that Pantalone isn’t far behind him. Still, he can't bear to just thrust it out into the open and allow for the judgement to fall on him. He’s not certain how he’d feel if Pantalone turned away from him, but he's sure it would crush him.

Without that knowledge, how can Kaeya explain the uneasiness that had settled itself in Kaeya's bones when Childe had invaded the lab and refused to budge even after he was gone. There was a creeping feeling that followed behind him, an air of wrongness that had lingered for hours after he left.

He had dreamed that night too, of unsettling things that stalked in the darkness. Of creatures which stank of iron and rot and violence. Of a distant, echoing cry that heralded something far larger than Kaeya could ever hope to subdue.

It had left him disoriented and sleepless for the rest of the night, and he's beginning to feel the effects of that now, as he sits in front of a fire, a comforting presence beside him and a soft pillow beneath his head. Even his conduit thrums soothingly from its position on the floor.

“There’s something about his eyes,” Kaeya settles on. It’s a half-truth, at least. The eyes unsettled him, though it was not the full story.

“Yes,” Pantalone says, “you do have a point there.” He doesn’t call Kaeya out on the lie, so either he doesn’t notice it (doubtful) or it’s a good enough diversion that he won’t push further (more than likely). “His eyes are a little unnerving, like a fish on market day.”

He hadn’t considered it earlier, too preoccupied with Childe's irritating nature and the way his guts were threatening to spill out of his abdomen and all over the lab floor, but, “It’s like the light refuses to reflect in his eyes,” he murmurs, before abruptly cutting himself off with a yawn.

He presses the side of his face into the cushion beneath his head, frustrated with his own exhaustion.

“Tired?” Pantalone asks, no judgement in his tone. He doesn’t wait for a response before leaning in, peering at Kaeya's face. “Mm. You're too young to be frowning so much, and worrying yourself sick over this will do no-one any good, you know.” Pantalone's hand brushes against his face, feather-light, barely there. “You must take better care of yourself, dear. I am rather fond of your company and would rather you didn’t work yourself into an early grave.”

“You'd still have Dottore.” Kaeya mutters.

Pantalone smiles at him. “Not quite the same, dear.” He moves away. “Feel free to nap there, god knows you don't get enough sleep already and I’ve no meetings for the rest of the day.” He huffs. “Honestly, I have half a mind to go right down there and ask Dottore if he was thinking at all. You are an adult, even if it’s just barely, and you should get to make your own decisions about how your career here progresses.”

“It’s fine,” Kaeya waves the concern away, feeling so incredibly comfortable on this little couch that he doesn’t even take offence at being told to take a nap like a child. “I'm gonna beat Childe up anyway. I've got a conduit now.”

“I noticed.” Pantalone says. “It’s really quite elegant, I may have to consider commissioning one for myself once you're out of the testing stage.”

“Thanks.”

Pantalone hums, and the sound of pen on paper starts up soon. The pen clicks against the rings Pantalone wears. Papers rustle as they're set aside in exchange for new ones. The noise, quiet and comforting, is enough to lull him to sleep.

When he wakes, the fire in the grate has burnt low, only embers remaining. The room is darker than before, moonlight beginning to creep in through the window and across the floor. Despite the late hour, the scratching of a pen still resonates in the room.

Kaeya sits up slowly, staring at the coat that slips and pools in his lap. It had been laid over him like a blanket. Confused, he looks towards the desk, finding Pantalone already watching him.

“Did you sleep well?”

Kaeya blinks. “I, yes?”

Pantalone hums. “Good,” he pauses. “Your, ah, your eyepatch is a little twisted,” he gestures vaguely at the side of his face, looking uncharacteristically awkward. Kaeya turns away as soon as he speaks, righting the eyepatch as best as he can without a mirror to aid him, smoothing over the fabric quickly so it lays flat against his face.

Kaeya frowns at the cloak in his lap – Pantalone's cloak – and turns towards the Harbinger. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You needed the sleep,” he answers simply, flipping another page.

“You have a strict schedule you stick to,” Kaeya argues. “You're beyond your curfew.”

Pantalone pauses, arching an eyebrow at him. “I have a curfew, do I?”

“Not like that,” Kaeya rushes, embarrassed. “Just, you like to stop work at a specific time every day. It’s far beyond that now.”

“I do appreciate having a good work-life balance, yes,” Pantalone agrees. “However, I do on occasion indulge the littlest bit of overtime, as you are seeing now. I had work to be done which could not wait, thus your presence here was no imposition.”

Kaeya doesn’t respond.

“Come sit,” Pantalone says, indicating the chair across from his desk. Kaeya doesn’t move, suspicious that he's just being brought closer so he might be roped into helping Pantalone with work. Pantalone frowns at him. “That wasn’t an option.”

Kaeya rises with a sigh, deliberating for a moment before scooping the cloak up with him, laying it gently over the back of the chair before he sits down.

Pantalone watches him over the rim of his glasses, folded hands supporting his chin as he studies Kaeya, work pushed aside. “You were…rather upset when you entered my office earlier. Don't argue, we both know you were. I only wish to ask if you feel better now with more rest.”

Kaeya frowns at the desk. “A bit.”

“That’s good.” Pantalone says, soft. Something in Kaeya rankles at being treated like some unpredictable wild creature, like he needs to be soothed. “With the return of calm, do you have any more insight into what caused you to grow so upset at the notion of working with Childe? You will still have responsibilities with me and Dottore, so it’s not as though you will have to spend all of your time with him.”

“He’s strange. I told you this already.”

“And I allowed you the lie because you were obviously exhausted,” Pantalone fixes him with a stare. “That is no longer the case. Something closer to the truth, if you will.”

Kaeya considers it for a moment. “Do you know why I met Childe today?” He asks, redirecting the conversation with a question. Pantalone's eyes narrow, meaning the trick hasn’t gone unnoticed – Kaeya would be surprised if it had, Pantalone had been the one to teach him the nuances of such a trick – but he allows the flow of conversation to be diverted onto other routes.

“You met him alongside Dottore,” Pantalone says. “So I would assume he was in the lab, presumably with Pulcinella as you mentioned him earlier. The only time he ever ends up there is when he's injured, so I assume he needed medical attention?”

“He’d gotten himself ripped open, like some idiot.”

Pantalone hums, allowing Kaeya a moment to realise how harshly he had spat those words out.

“It’s a…past-time of his,” Pantalone says, eyes dropping from Kaeya to return to the form in front of him. “Much to Pulcinella’s chagrin. Childe claims that it allows him to test his strength and endurance. He wishes to see how much pain he can withstand before it becomes too much, so he goes searching for camps of Abyssal monsters and their ilk.”

“That’s insane.”

Pantalone finishes with the form, discarding it without a stamp of approval. It’s another plea for supplies, similar to the ones that Dottore has been inundated with these past weeks. More destroyed camps. They’ve already lost three separate research projects to the path of destruction being cut through Liyue’s countryside, and it seems as though it’s reaching the Chasm and borders of Sumeru beyond that.

“Many of us have a loose relationship with sanity, “Pantalone reminds him. “Childe's tether is just…slightly more strained.”

“And Dottore wants me to partner with him.”

“Child,” Pantalone abandons his documents once more to return his focus to Kaeya, “you must know by now that Dottore holds a certain level of fondness for you, even if he shows it in a…strange way.” Kaeya nods, a little stiff. “I have grown fond of you too, and if Dottore had consulted me on this decision, I would have been inclined to agree with him. Neither of us wish to do anything that will put you directly in the path of harm. In fact, I believe this is Dottore's way of ensuring you remain unharmed. If you can defend yourself, there is less reason to worry.”

“Didn’t seem very worried when I last spoke to him.”

“That is because Dottore has the emotional maturity of a teenager,” Pantalone replies with a wry smile. “He feels things strongly, and that scares him sometimes. He likes to keep it all close to his chest lest it be used against him.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Me and the Doctor have been friends for a very long time. And it is my business to know people.”

Kaeya scoffs.

“Now, seeing as you are here, and showed such concern that I am here past my usual time, how about helping me out with some of these forms? Just summarise them as you see fit, with a small evaluation of the benefits and drawbacks to accepting the deals.”

Kaeya considers fleeing as Pantalone pushes a hefty stack, pen, and notepad across the desk towards him. Alas, he also remembers Pantalone's willingness to chase Dottore down the corridors of the Palace, uncaring for onlookers and their judgements as long as it meant wrangling the Doctor.

“Happy to help.” Kaeya sighs, and gets to work.

Kaeya hefts the weight of his conduit in his hand, gloved fingers running over the whorled wood. It reaches out towards him eagerly, twining with the power than thrums in his veins. His Vision hangs at his side, empty and useless, but a good decoy nonetheless.

Childe takes his pausing for hesitance, giving him a cocky grin from where he stands across the training field. The triumphant tilt of his head makes it seem as though he has already won. “Come now, comrade,” the self-assured way he speaks only steels Kaeya's resolve to beat the insufferable little shit into the ground. “I promise I’ll be gentle.”

There’s a tittering of laughs around the training field, agents and lieutenants alike gathered at the sidelines to witness the fight. A showdown between two Harbinger apprentices, one monster of the Fatui, and another new, unknown contender. Kaeya can already see the way the crowd is swinging, had overheard the murmurs of pity, many commenting on how his sight would be a weakness.

As reluctant as he had been to fight Childe, the cold of the open air fills him with a certain energy that the lab had deprived him of. It may be chilled by snow, deep beneath the surface and hidden from the Sun’s meagre warmth, but nothing can compare to the frost that hangs in the air here.

Kaeya breathes out slowly, watching Childe carefully. Childe watches him right back, hand tight around the grip of his bow.

Childe tenses, body dropping lower to the ground before he pushes forward, snow scattering in his wake.

Kaeya meets him head on, hardly surprised by the dual blades that clash against his conduit, cutting deep into the wood of it. They're hydro constructs, pulled from the moisture of the air. The speed with which he draws on it is impressive, and Kaeya allows himself a moment longer to admire their form before he's shoving forward, pushing more of his strength into this battle of wills.

Childe's eyes widen, obvious from this close, taken aback at Kaeya's obvious strength.

He grins despite himself, pushing down before springing back, yanking his conduit with him, skidding back across the icy ground, drawing it around the heel of his boots to ensure stability. Stability that Childe doesn’t have as he charges after him, boots slipping in the slick trail Kaeya left behind him.

He recovers quicker than Kaeya anticipated, on him a moment later, one of his blades nicking the edge of his ear. He ducks, hissing at the sting, before ramming the round edge of his conduit up into Childe's stomach.

Childe chokes on his breath, but presses on anyway, one of his blades twisting within the trunk of his conduit with an ominous, cracking sound.

Kaeya only has a moment of reprieve before his conduit snaps clean in two, coming away in either hand.

Everything stills, even the whooping of their onlookers quiets for a moment as the two participants stare at each other.

“Whoops,” Childe laughs, uncaring. “Guess you should have made it out of a better material. Don’t worry, many have lost to me before, you won’t be the first, nor the last!” He holds a hand out, as though waiting for Kaeya to concede the match and take the loss with grace.

“Did you think that was the only trick I had?” Kaeya asks, tilting his head to the side. Childe's face twists, panic, then anger flashing across it. Kaeya doesn’t hang around to see what he settles on, drawing himself into the leylines and reappearing at Childe's back, hand outstretched and fingers flexed as the air hums, responding to his call as the ice solidifies into a polearm.

He swings it as Childe's side, just as his opponent begins to turn, catching him off-guard and flinging him to the ground. He freezes the dual blades and shatters them for good measure, stalking towards where Childe lays, prone on the ground. His urge to put the little shit down momentarily pushed aside, mildly worried that he may have broken Childe's stitches open.

His worry was for nought, apparently, as Childe launches himself out of the snow and back onto Kaeya, hands gripping his wrists tight enough that he drops his weapon, the pair of them crashing back down to the hardened ground, beginning to roll across it as Kaeya thrashes to break free and Childe curls his nails in tighter, snarling in Kaeya's face.

“You may have some tricks,” he snarls, breathless, “but you're still inexperienced!”

“Who said that?” Kaeya asks, twisting his wrists sharply, breaking free of Childe's grip and flipping them over, straddling Childe and pinning him to the ground. “I may have trained for my entire life, and you would never know of it.”

“Liar,” Childe snarls, lunging for his throat again. Like a dog with a bone.

Kaeya pushes him back down to the ground, and they roll again. He can't imagine what this looks like to their onlookers – their feared lieutenant reduced to squabbling with the apprentice of another Harbinger, the pair of them fighting like schoolchildren in the dirt.

He snarls and lifts Childe by the lapels of his coat, slamming him back into the ground, dazing him for a moment. Icicles sprout from the ground, pinning Childe in place as Kaeya presses closer, the two of them nose to nose.

He breathes heavily, panting as he struggles to breathe. Childe is in a similar state, his breath misting in front of his face where Kaeya's doesn’t, face flushed with exertion. It makes his freckles stand out against his pink skin, a feature Kaeya hadn’t noticed before, despite how close he got while Childe was playing patient a few days ago.

He smirks when he notices the bruising on Childe's neck, almost hidden by the high collar of his shirt. Kaeya's pretty certain he's the cause of those bruises, and Childe seems pretty desperate to cover them if he's wearing such a high-necked shirt. Is he reluctant to share that he can be defeated?

Something sharp presses against his neck. It’s then that Kaeya realises his momentary distraction allowed Childe to summon another weapon to his hand, this one a small knife. He hadn’t pinned his hands, a mistake he won’t be making again.

“Clever,” Kaeya concedes, pushing closer to Childe still. He can feel blood bead up at his neck where the knife digs in further, watches Childe panic, eyes widening and breath sucking in with a quiet gasp, hand jerking as he goes to pull the knife back. Kaeya frowns at him, “Not brave enough to go through with it?”

“Surrender.” Childe bites out.

“Certainly.” Kaeya says, slowly raising both his arms, pulling back from Childe's face.

He grunts as Childe grabs his wrists again, spinning and slamming him into the ground chest first. What a sore winner. “Bitch,” he wheezes out. “I’d surrendered already, this is unnecessary.” His words are mostly drowned out by the cheers of the crowd, all of them roaring in support of their youngest lieutenant.

Childe hauls him up a moment later, brushing the snow from Kaeya's shoulders. He smirks, noticing that Childe has to reach up to do so, though that smirk falls as Childe leans in closer.

“They like the show of it.” He murmurs. “And who am I to deny them that?”

“You almost lost to me,” Kaeya hisses back. “Let’s not forget who was on their back first.”

Childe flushes, embarrassment tinging his ears a bright red. “But you lost and I won, so what does that matter?” Childe sticks his tongue out at him. Kaeya's overtaken with the strange urge to grab it and yank it from his mouth, something dark crooning that such an insult cannot be ignored.

He pushes the urge aside, ignoring the childish motion. “Take this seriously,” he snaps.

“If I was serious, you'd already be dead.” Childe turns away, waving dismissively at Kaeya from over his shoulder. He starts, anger boiling beneath his skin and turning his vision read, prepared to take off after his opponent. He’s only halted by Dottore's hand on his shoulder, keeping him firmly in place.

“You did well,” Dottore says, squeezing his shoulder firmly. “Though…” he turns to look at the abandoned, mangled mess of Kaeya's conduit, “your project could do with some work.”

Kaeya sighs. “I know. I already have some ideas on reinforcing it against future attacks.”

“Good,” Dottore squeezes his shoulder again. “You are quite evenly matched with Childe. A little more training and I am certain you could surpass him.” Dottore releases his shoulder, and Kaeya takes the opportunity to gather up the wrecked remains of his weapon before Dottore is steering him back towards the Palace.

Snow falls from Kaeya in clumps, sliding down his shoulders and drifting from his hair. It’s beginning to melt, soaking into his clothes so they stick uncomfortably to his skin. The adrenaline rush of wrestling with someone on the ground may have been fun, but it wasn’t worth this.

He leaves a trail of half-melted snow through the foyer and down the side corridor that leads to the lab. He would normally care about the mess he's leaving behind for some unfortunate soul to clean up, but he's too occupied with the broken weapon in his arms and the beginnings of a new design starting to take shape in his mind.

“A refinement of your little disappearing trick and you could be truly formidable, too.” Dottore muses. “A way to take your enemies off-guard, though it would only work the first time. After that, they might begin anticipating it and working out counter-measures.”

“Blinking,” Kaeya corrects without thinking.

“Pardon?”

“It’s called blinking,” Kaeya says. To prove a point, he does it, escaping Dottore's grip and reappearing on his other side. He hears the Harbinger sigh.

“Don't make a habit of that,” is all Dottore says, sounding exasperated.

“Why not?” Kaeya blinks down three steps, putting himself ahead of Dottore.

“You’ll hurt yourself.” Is Dottore's simple answer. The old man descends the steps slowly, as though wary of the snow on his boots making them slick and easy to slip on the smooth stairs. Kaeya has no such cares, hopping down the steps, freezing his boots in place the moment he lands.

He hops down another step, choking and almost dropping his mangled conduit as something grabs onto the back of his collar. He squirms, trying to break himself loose. Alas, Dottore's grip is unwavering, scruffing Kaeya like he's some unruly kit. He's only returned to the ground once they reach the base of the stairs, thankfully before they're in view of the lab.

“I’d rather you didn’t break your neck,” Dottore tells him with a pat on the shoulder. “Now, I have other matters to attend to, but I expect the second prototype of your conduit to be in progress tomorrow morning. I want a full blueprint, with notes – Snezhnayan this time if you would.”

“If I write in Mondstadtian, less people will be able to read and steal my concept.” Kaeya counters.

“No-one is going to be stealing your concept. I doubt anyone could replicate the process required.”

“All the better to keep it secret then.”

Dottore stares at him, and Kaeya stares right back. Neither of them give in for several long moments.

Dottore sighs, apparently giving up. “I want the materials used in Snezhnayan. Any details you deem to be too sensitive for others to read, you may write in whatever language you wish.”

“Whatever language?”

Dottore pauses, his head turning in the way that means he's looking at Kaeya from the corner of his eye. He can sense the judgment radiating from behind the mask. “If that is what you wish to do.” He continues on into the lab, and Kaeya hurries to keep up with him, jostling the conduit in his arms. “I won’t be back in the lab until tomorrow morning, and I really do mean that you need to have a new prototype. Preferably one almost ready for field testing.”

“Yes, sir,” Kaeya salutes him, before darting off into the lab, out of Dottore's reach. A few of the researchers turn to stare as he tears past their desks, but they return to their work just as quickly when they realise who it is.

With Dottore's request – demand – in mind, Kaeya stays late in the lab. He’s there long after everyone else locks up, only one brave assistant poking their head into the private lab to notify Kaeya that they're locking the main doors of the lab too, to keep out any curious passersby.

Kaeya doesn’t particularly care. He has his own set of keys that let him go anywhere in the lab, and anywhere he can’t get with his keys, he has a nice set of lockpicks that can get him in just as quick.

He writes his notes in messy, scrawling Mondstadtian, content to let whatever curious eyes roam over the work attempt to decipher the chicken-scratch. As far as he’s managed to gather, the majority of Dottore's team are either Snezhnayan natives, or Sumerian academics that were expelled or reprimanded by the Akademiya. He hasn’t sniffed out any ex-Haravatat students yet, so his secrets are safe like this.

The blueprints leave him working until the early hours of the morning, splotches of ink decorating the desk’s surface, but thankfully none of it made it onto the designs themselves. He squints, eye aching as he yawns. Dottore will probably make him redo the designs when he sees the chicken-scratch, but it’s good enough for the current hour.

Several joints crack as he stands, and several more vertebrae in his spine pop as he stretches. He leaves the small lamp on as he wanders towards Dottore's personal stock room, unlocking the door before pushing his way inside and flicking the lights on.

The bright fluorescence burns his eye for a moment before it subsides, and he’s able to rummage through the various boxes and cabinets and drawers of materials that Dottore keeps squirrelled away for his own personal use.

The main stock room is larger than this one, but it only contains the most basic of materials. If any of the researchers want a restricted chemical they have to apply for it through Dottore, a process which can take weeks or months. A process that Kaeya can bypass entirely, easily given free reign over the private stock room by the Doctor within his first week in the Palace. Kaeya's still not sure if Dottore was interested to see what he would create or how he would kill himself with unlimited access to dangerous materials.

He drops several crystalfly cores into a pouch, before turning to the large crate pushed into the very far corner of the room. He hops up onto the stool beside it, pulling the lid back and sticking his hands into its depths, feeling around. He gets a few weak pulses of power, attempts to reach out and form a connection, but nothing that immediately snags his attention.

Shit.

He bites his lip, rocking back on his heels as he stares at the ley line sprouts. All of them have been in the storeroom for too long to have the same efficacy as a freshly harvested one. Meaning they're useless to him. He slumps over the crate a little further, knocking his head into the solid wood a few times, waiting for an idea to drop into his head.

Dottore wants a near-functioning prototype tomorrow – today? He's not sure what time it is – and he can’t deliver that unless he has the required materials.

He bites his lip harder, and turns around. Unless…

He blinks over to the other side of the stockroom, pulling a drawer open and watching the leylines branches rattle around. They're thinner and smaller than he’d like, but as long as one reaches back…

There. He reaches into the very back of the drawer, pulling one of the larger branches free. And apparently one of the fresher branches. It still resonates, reaching out towards him, twining easily with the power beneath Kaeya's skin. It’s responsive, yes, but that doesn’t guarantee that it can survive the accelerated growth.

He returns to his desk, lamp still glowing softly, illuminating only the blueprints and the splintered remains of his conduit, laid out across the desk, pieced partway back together as a reference.

He lays the twig on the desk too, settling back into his chair slowly as he stares at it, plucking at the strings connecting the two of them. He breathes out slowly, and reaches forward, resting his hand gently on the bark, and plunging his senses deeper within. The energies running there react eagerly, wrapping around his fingers, running over them smooth as a river, pooling the palm of his hand-

“What’re you doing?”

Kaeya jerks, hand clenching and ice rupturing from the floor of the lab. He turns, half-formed conduit in hand, levelled right at…he sighs, Childe's face.

“You,” he snarls. “What are you doing here?”

Childe laughs, hands held up in surrender but otherwise not moving. Kaeya smirks as he realises he can't move anywhere, penned in by the ice spikes surrounding him. One presses into the hollow of his throat, just close enough to dent the skin but not sharp enough to break it.

Kaeya flicks a finger, and the point sharpens, pressing in closer until blood begins to bead on its icy surface. Childe stops laughing.

“It’s a serious offence to break into these labs,” Kaeya tells him, circling around behind the lieutenant. The ice crawls up Childe's legs, locking him further in place. If Kaeya listens hard enough, he can hear Childe's heart beating, can sense the pulse of it in his throat through the ice there. “I suppose you should be counting yourself lucky that it wasn’t the Doctor that found you here. His punishments are…far more severe.”

“And this isn’t?” Childe wriggles, risking his neck to see if he can break his legs free.

Kaeya tuts at him, and the ice climbs over his knees. “If I were to be more severe in my punishment, you would already be dead.”

Kaeya watches, head tilted, as the connections are formed in Childe's brain. The momentary flash of realisation, quickly replaced by irritation, then morphing into guilt. Interesting.

“Is that what you used to make your weapon?” Childe asks, nodding at the abandoned branch on Kaeya's desk. The motion causes another dribble of blood to be released from his neck, and Kaeya pulls the shard back with a sigh. He’s stubborn enough to decapitate himself on that, and Kaeya would rather not be implicated in his murder.

“What do you care?” Kaeya stalks back to his desk, hand running over the ruined conduit. “You didn’t seem too bothered when you wrecked my last one.”

Childe wilts. “I am sorry.”

“Are you?” Kaeya watches him. “Or are you just sorry that it’s not all working out perfectly for you? What, did you expect to prance on down here, apologise for destroying my conduit, and then everything would be all sunshine and rainbows?” Childe doesn’t answer, but his silence is answer enough. Kaeya laughs. “Oh, that is gold, let me tell you. What, did you think we’d be the best of friends if you apologised? Newsflash, asshole, you’ve just created more work for me. This is an inconvenience – the weapon was in the testing stages, and just damaging it would have been enough for me to evaluate its performance and make improvements, but now because of your colossal blunder I have to start from scratch all over again.”

“I,” Childe pouts at him. He’s flushed bright red, practically glowing with it in the darkness. Kaeya wouldn’t be surprised if the heat of his face didn’t start to melt his ice. “I didn’t realise it was so fragile. I’d have been more careful if I knew.”

“Really?” Kaeya blinks closer, taking satisfaction when Childe jolts back from their sudden proximity. “You really want me to believe that? You felt it splintering and you had no care, you split the damn thing into two pieces!”

“That’s why I'm here to apologise!” Childe yells back, frustration overtaking his guilt as he jerks forward in his icy prison. Kaeya curls his lip and thickens the ice until it’s locked around his arms. “I- the adrenaline of the fight makes me lose control sometimes, and I didn’t realise until afterwards that I’d messed up! It was uncalled for to ruin your weapon, and uncalled for to humiliate you when the fight was already over! Please, I'm sorry, I just want to make this up to you.”

“And why would you want to do that?”

“We’re meant to work together, right?” Childe pleads. “It’ll be better for both of us if we can get along. If we’re just at each other’s throats the whole time, it’s going to help no-one. It might even get someone killed if we’re sent on any missions. Teamwork is important, and you can’t do that with someone you don't know or trust.”

“I don't know you at all,” Kaeya replies. “How might I trust you then?”

Childe stops, and looks at him for a long moment. “I’ll show that you can trust me.”

“Hm.” Kaeya considers him for a moment, the way he’s turned from guilty to aggressive back to guilty again during this conversation. The way his lightless eyes stare into Kaeya's own. It’s unsettling, to have the eyes of a dead man watch him so intently, but this pitiful display this evening is enough that Kaeya wants to give him a chance, if only so he can embarrass himself and amuse Kaeya in the process. “And how might you be doing that?”

“You’ll see.” Childe grins.

…Ominous. But enough for him to release Childe. He turns away, allowing the ice to shatter into dust. He hears Childe's body hit the floor with a loud thump, quickly followed by a muffled groan. He can’t help the smile that pulls at his lips. When he tilts his head back towards Childe, the lieutenant is still splayed out on the floor, groaning quietly.

“Out,” he commands, pointing at the door. “I don't have time for…whatever it is that you're going to do this evening. I have business to take care of before I can spare time to entertain the likes of you.”

“All right,” he turns back to his work as Childe begins to get up. Fabric rustles, and then silence falls again. No retreating footsteps, nor any closing doors. “I’ll…see you later?”

Kaeya breathes out through his nose, bending further over his work. A clear dismissal, one so obvious that even Childe should be able to take the hint. “I suppose.”

He waits for the door to shut behind Childe before he gives in to the urge to thump his head against his desktop, mindful not to spill his inkpot all over his work. Trust him? Oh, yes, certainly, let’s begin trusting the maniac that has only shown interest in violence and bloodshed so far. There’s no way this could go wrong!

He thunks his head into the table a few more times, and considers killing whatever god wove his fate.

Chapter Text

Kaeya makes it to the lab before Dottore the next morning. He pauses in the doorway, still propping it open with his boot. It had been suspicious that the lab was already unlocked when he arrived, but he had assumed Dottore was getting a head-start on his day. He should have known better. It’s a miracle to see Dottore before midday.

“You.”

Childe startles back from Kaeya's desk, retreating from it completely, a guileless smile on his face. “Morning,” he chirps, all too happy about…something. Kaeya frowns deeper at that response. Where has the fear from last night gone? Has he forgotten how easily Kaeya had him pinned and at his mercy?

He steps forward, allowing the door to swing shut behind him with a heavy thud. He knows better than to leave it propped open while arguing; if he’s not careful, the gossips will have the news spread all over the Palace by lunch, and he really doesn’t want to deal with that headache.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, advancing another step. Childe doesn’t retreat, meeting him with a cocky tilt of the head. “Did I not tell you I was busy?”

“It is no longer last night,” Childe grins. “And I have the day off today, so what better way to spend it than getting to know my new partner?”

“You got a day off?” Kaeya arches an eyebrow. “What’d you do to deserve that? Or is that just a more polite way of saying you got kicked out – what’d you do, maim another recruit?”

Childe frowns at him, silent for a moment, then, “Are you raising both eyebrows, or just one?”

Kaeya gapes. “What?”

“Your- eyepatch,” Childe gestures, covering one half of his face with a hand. “It hides half of your face. Are you raising one eyebrow at me when you do that or both?”

“One.”

“Huh.” Childe stands aside when Kaeya pushes past him, towards his desk and the almost-finished conduit laying atop it. He kicks his stool out from beneath the table, the sound of its wheels rolling over the ground loud in the sudden silence of the lab. He gets suspicious after too many moments of silence, turning to watch Childe.

“Did you need anything else?” He asks.

Childe looks up, surprised. He then frowns, tapping his chin in thought. “How do you wink?”

Kaeya flattens his mouth into a sour line and turns back to his work.

“I'm just asking! The only other person I know that wears an eyepatch is Signora, and she's scary.”

“I could kill you where you stand,” Kaeya threatens. “Does that make me just as scary as Signora?”

“Hah, I could’ve broken out of your trap easily!”

“Then why didn’t you?” he asks, then turns back to his work, hoping that if he’s rude enough Childe will eventually give up and leave.

Childe's feet scuff over the ground, and Kaeya thinks for one glorious moment that he's leaving, only to be disproven a moment later when he appears in Kaeya's peripheral, heaving himself up onto his desk, sitting there quite contentedly. Kaeya glares at him.

“I wanted you to feel as though you had the upper hand in our conversation, of course!” Childe answers, kicking his feet back and forth. His heels bang against the leg of the desk with each swing, and Kaeya finds his patience and tolerance quickly evaporating.

“Oh, yeah?” Kaeya turns to him, carving knife in hand. “You looked pretty scared last night, all wide-eyed fear,” he grins, tapping the flat of the blade against the side of his face, watching as Childe momentarily shuts down, before attempting to respond again. Kaeya doesn’t give him the chance. “I think you were quite scared, because no-one’s managed to trap you like that before, hm?”

“And how would you know that?” Childe retorts hotly, “You've been here for a few months and you're already walking around like you own the place. Just because Dottore is the one mentoring you doesn’t mean you're untouchable you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Kaeya stands, leaning into Childe's face. They're close enough that their noses almost touch. “But I have power to back up that confidence. You may have a reputation for being bloodthirsty and undefeated in combat, but my reputation is that no-one knows anything about me. What do you think they're saying that this new, nameless person came out and almost defeated the undefeatable? Is the unknown not scarier than that which is known – you're a show pony, Childe, everyone knows your tricks, they're just not good enough to beat them.”

Childe seethes at him, a muscle in his jaw flexing as his eyes dart from Kaeya's eye, to his eyepatch, then back again.

Kaeya tilts his head at him, bird-like, just how Dottore does. Smiles, sharp and shark-like. He watches Childe's throat bob when he swallows.

“Are you wondering what’s beneath?” He asks, quiet. Childe looks to his visible eye, chest hitching. Kaeya leans in closer, so close that it’s almost a lover’s embrace, his mouth right beside Childe's ear. Childe doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even move to retaliate with violence, which is what Kaeya had been expecting. “Have you heard what they say about me? Or did you seek the rumours out after our first meeting? Some think that I'm cursed, others think I'm so horribly mutilated that I cannot bear to show my face. What is it that you think lies beneath my eyepatch? Do your fingers itch to lift it and take a peek, to be the only one to know what lies beneath?”

“I don't want to play these games.”

“Hm.” Kaeya retreats slowly, seating himself back on his stool, still watching Childe. The other man fidgets in his seat, fiddling with his gloves. He refuses to even look in Kaeya's direction.

“Am I still less scary than Signora?” He asks, prodding further even when Childe has begun to retreat. “If you're brave enough, feel free to keep asking questions.” He laughs, “I might even answer them.”

Childe doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t move either. Kaeya can't be bothered to move him from his spot, and he’s stopped that incessant kicking, so he returns to his work. Dottore had requested that it be finished before he returned, and Kaeya isn’t looking to disappoint him.

He carves the lines slowly, gentle, pushing them into the wood with more of a request than a command. It takes the branch a moment to accept the knife, though it gradually begins to open beneath his blade, exposing the fleshy blue cambium, and then the sapwood when he digs deeper.

Rather than dust or splinters arising from his carving, the branch instead begins to weep, sap spilling over his fingers and staining them blue as he works. He’s careful, feeling out each twist of the rune before he carves it, aware of how easily this could backfire on him if the branch suddenly decided to reject this intrusion and retaliate.

He pauses when he finishes the first one, wiping the blade and gently setting it aside. The sap on his hands has begun to congeal, hardening into a thin layer that bends when he presses his thumb into the engraving. The flesh seems to pulse beneath his thumb, taking on the small heartbeat that pulses beneath the skin there.

He rests, feeling as the power slowly drifts from him into the carving, imbuing an otherwise decorative element with a protective purpose. The thumping of a heartbeat soon transitions into a buzzing beneath the bark, the leyline reaching out towards him eagerly, searching for more of that power. It’s already self-sustaining, so this reaching is nothing more than greed, but he’s content to feed it for a little while longer.

He smiles a little as he opens his eye. The difficult part is done, now; the hard part will be convincing the leyline to unlatch itself before it drains him dry of everything he is. He casts a short glance at Childe, and cuts the flow off quickly, unwilling to have any slips like the one he had with Dottore.

Kaeya inscribes another rune, able to move quicker now that the leyline has accepted the intrusion as a part of itself, less likely to mount an attack against something it recognises as foreign.

“What are you doing?”

Kaeya hums. “Find your voice again? I thought I’d scared it off for good.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Childe scowls.

“Mm, now that’s not very polite, is it? I thought you wanted to know what I was doing?”

Silence. “I do.”

“Well,” Kaeya brushes a tender hand over the surface of the conduit, feeling rather pleased with this new prototype. “Seeing as my previous conduit was so easily destroyed, I am implementing certain…protective measures. These help with that.”

“How?”

Kaeya sighs. “Are you going to question everything?”

“Is that not how you learn?” Childe asks. “I'm curious, my Mama says so.”

“Mn.” A kind way to tell a child that he's too nosy for his own good, perhaps. Or a response when too many questions are asked to divert the child and give the parent a break from the repetitive ‘why’s.

“She also thinks it gets me in too much trouble.” Childe scowls, and looks away. He begins to kick his legs back and forth again, heel colliding with the table leg every other swing. Thump. Thump. Thump. Kaeya feels his eye twitch.

Childe doesn’t even seem to realise he's doing it, which is incredible. How can he not feel the way he's making the table shake? “She was always telling me off for running into the woods rather than fishing with my father and brother.” He smiles, previous…whatever apparently forgotten, and turns to Kaeya. “What about your mama? Does she live nearby?”

“No.” Kaeya answers. She’s too far away for Childe to even begin to comprehend. “She’s dead.”

The kicking halts.

“Sorry.”

“You weren’t to know.”

Kaeya avoids eye contact, knowing the pity that would await him there. The sadness, and attempt at empathy; the awkwardness that follows, no matter what response Kaeya gives, no matter how delicately he attempts to skirt around the topic. He’d given up being sensitive to others when they pried too closely a long time ago.

He inscribes another three runes before Childe speaks again. Several times during that long stretch of silence, Kaeya had almost thought Childe was going to speak up again. Almost wanted him to gather his courage and speak rather than just bobbing his throat and opening his mouth just to gape, soundless.

The only respite in this awkwardness is that the kicking has yet to restart. The table is stable once more, and Kaeya works quickly, unsure how long this might last. The main stem of his conduit is slowly overtaken with sigils, each of them glowing with his power. It’s getting to the point where Kaeya is running dangerously low on energy, and also beginning to run out of ideas of what else to fortify his conduit against.

“What region are you from?” Childe asks. Such a simple question and yet such a long build-up. Was that what he was going to ask the whole time, or had his mind drifted to other family matters first? Perhaps that’s what instilled such hesitation in him – just because he lacks a mother doesn’t mean he lacks any other family members, but perhaps Childe has marked it off as dangerous territory and is simply deciding to steer clear? “You have a weird accent, I can’t place it.”

“Is that how you ask all your questions – insulting someone and still expecting to receive information? No wonder your reputation portrays you as brutish and insensitive.”

Childe sighs and doesn’t rise to the bait Kaeya had thrown at him. “Are you seaside or inner? Or one of the really northern settlements?”

“What?”

“Are you from one of the cities? Or a seaside town – oh, imagine if we were neighbours this whole time! Though…with your accent I don't think you could be. I’d remember someone with such a distinct accent, I think.”

Kaeya pauses, unsure if Childe is pulling his leg or not. “I'm not Snezhnayan.”

Childe pauses too, staring back at him. His mouth just slightly, closes, then opens again, unfortunately. “You're not? But…where did Dottore find you then?”

“Outside of Snezhnaya.”

“But you only came here, like, four months ago! Did you have a Snezhnayan tutor in your…home country?”

“I did not.” He considers, then turns to Childe. “How do you know how long I’ve been here for? We only met a few days ago.”

“Oh, uh, Pulcinella mentioned it.”

“Hm.” Kaeya isn’t inclined to believe anything Childe says anyway, but the growing flush on his face makes him almost certain that Childe is lying. Seems he wasn’t the only one to do a little investigation prior to their meeting.

“That’s not what matters,” Childe says. “What’s important is that you've only been speaking Snezhnayan for four months, and you're better than some of my recruits. And they don't speak any other languages!”

“I speak several languages,” Kaeya tells him. Dottore may have warned him to keep his cards close to his chest and reveal little about his history, but surely a little boasting can be excused. Especially because his breadth in languages means no-one can successfully pin him to one location. “Five, if you want to be exact.”

“Five?” Childe gasps, wide-eyed with excitement. “Comrade, you must be joking. No-one can speak that many languages.”

“I can.” Kaeya replies simply.

Childe frowns, and then twists fast enough that his back cracks with the motion. Kaeya cringes backwards, away from the maniac sat on his desk like a heathen. “Huh,” he says, leaning awkwardly over half the desk to peer at Kaeya's schematics. “I guess that explains this writing, then. I thought your handwriting was just really fucking bad.”

“You're not supposed to be reading those.”

“C’mon, what am I gonna do? I can’t even understand what the Snezhnayan parts mean – I'm useless with machines, or science of any kind. My job here is to kill things, and I'm happy with that.”

“What a sad way to live your life,” Kaeya tells him. Childe shuts up at that, finally, and they don't speak again for a long while.

“Brat,” Dottore greets when he enters the lab, slowing considerably when he takes in Childe, still sat on the edge of Kaeya's desk despite it being several hours and that being an incredibly uncomfortable thing to sit on. “Brat the second.”

“Doc,” Childe says, far too excited. “I was wondering where you were.”

“And I'm wondering why you're here.” Dottore rounds his desk, slowly setting a bag down. Kaeya perks up at the sight of it, ears pricking at the sound of metal clinking. Dottore turns to him, “Brat?”

“He invited himself.” He sighs, and gives Dottore his best long-suffering look. It’s hardly been a few hours, he’s not sure how he’s meant to survive a week of this.

“Hm.” Dottore turns his attention back to Childe. “Last I remember, you were banned from my labs, outside of life-ending situations, for numerous crimes. You caused three explosions. And then flooded the entire basement.”

Childe freezes up beside him, every joint locking in place. Kaeya hears his throat click. “Aha, yeah. I promise not to do that again?”

“I do believe you promised not to cause any harm last time you visited here.” Dottore gives him an unimpressed look. “I think we both remember how that panned out.”

“I’m on my best behaviour this time, sir!” Childe straightens up and gives Dottore a salute. Kaeya watches the Harbinger recoil a little, disappearing inside his coat and using his chair as a shield, as though Childe is about to leap up and start calling him honorifics. “This won’t take long, promise, and then I’ll be out of your hair again.”

“This?”

“Me and…uh,” Childe glances at him, waiting for a name. Kaeya gives him nothing. “Your…apprentice? We have a deal.”

“I see,” Dottore turns his gaze back on Kaeya. “Brat, a word, if you would.”

He stalks from the room, into the stockroom next door. Kaeya pulls himself from his chair slowly, reluctance weighing his bones down as he pulls himself away from his work and towards whatever scolding is awaiting him behind that door.

“Sorry,” Childe whispers. Kaeya spares a moment to glare at him before following after Dottore.

“Why have you brought that menace into my lab?”

“I didn’t want him here either,” Kaeya snaps. “He broke into the lab last night – I threatened him, and he apologised, and then he kept apologising over and over and he wouldn’t leave until I agreed to his stupid wager.”

“What have you been learning with Pantalone?” Dottore snarls. “Do you even know the terms of this wager? What does he gain to benefit from spending time in this basement? He hates it down here.”

“You think I don't know that already? It’s half of what he talks about.” Kaeya bites back, then slowly collects himself up. Arguing back and forth will do nothing but further inflame tempers. He continues evenly. “He wants to prove that we can trust each other enough to work together. He had the day off today, so he decided to spend it here, for some reason.”

“A day off?” Dottore asks. “He’s never had one of those before.”

“Maybe Pulcinella was feeling nice.”

“Hah! When the permafrost melts. That man is all work, work, work. No such thing as a day off to him, so why would he give Childe a day off…” Dottore trails off, gives him a meaningful look, and then smiles. It’s been a while since that shark-smile has scared Kaeya, but right now it downright terrifies him. “Oh-ho, funny, funny, hah!”

“What?”

Dottore waves him off.

“What? What does that mean?”

“Don't worry about it brat, as long as you know what you're doing, everything will work out just fine.”

“The hell is that meant to mean?” He shouts, only for Dottore to shut the door in his face.

Kaeya doesn’t know what he’s doing. Things are not working out fine.

He cradles his head in his hands as Childe continues yapping beside him. He’d thought the week-long absence had been Childe giving up, tossing this little project-wager aside in favour of more interesting pursuits. He was wrong, because Childe returned (apparently from a mission out to the edges of Snezhnayan borders) and hasn’t given Kaeya a moment of peace since.

He’d let him speak for an hour without interruption, certain that he’d run out of steam eventually. At first, it had been mildly interesting. Reports of unusual activity had pushed the Fatui higher-ups into sending one of their more capable units – Childe – out to investigate, and, if necessary, eliminate the growing dissent. Childe had found nothing of suspicion, just a town of people living out in the sticks and uninterested in the sudden Fatui presence in their lives.

Dottore had escaped the lab more than three hours ago, now. Kaeya had watched him leave with a mixture of empathy and irritation that the Doctor would so easily abandon him.

The mildly interesting, verbal report of what mission Childe had been on – which was probably confidential, but if the two of them were to have any kind of partnership, Kaeya imagines they will be receiving similar information soon – had ended too soon, and quite a long while ago now. Instead, he’s being treated to a plethora of useless facts about Childe's life, interspersed with cautious, probing questions about Kaeya's own.

(“I have five siblings. Two older and three younger. Do you have any siblings?”

“Not anymore.”

…

“I'm from a fishing town, Morepesok. Have you heard of it? No. Well, I guess that makes sense, it’s pretty small and you're not from Snezhnaya. I like ice-fishing there when I go home, nice and quiet, lots of time to think. Have you fished before?”

“Yes.”

“Did you like doing it? Maybe we could go ice-fishing together at some point!”

“No, thank you.”)

Despite the short, clipped answers Childe continues to receive, he continues to ask his questions. He doesn’t seem to care that he’s causing Kaeya considerable irritation and stress, yammering on while Kaeya stares at the small, uncomplicated meka in front of him and wonders how he’d gotten to this point. Dottore doesn’t even deal with mekas very often – that’s the domain of another Harbinger, and yet Dottore thought it would be useful for him to learn how to disassemble and then reassemble them.

He would cry, but then Childe might start showing concern, and Kaeya would probably have to kill him at that point.

Childe disappears for three days before he reappears again, shadowing Kaeya as he moves around the main lab.

Dottore had, recently, begun to delegate management tasks to Kaeya. He’s not certain what the Harbinger’s motive for it is, but perhaps it’s to humiliate Kaeya. None of the researchers want to listen to someone several decades their junior, and certainly not someone that doesn’t have a clue on any of their areas of specialisation.

That day goes a little better, the fellows and their assistants more willing to cave to his demands and terms when Childe stands at his back, staring at them with his dead-man’s eyes. He doesn’t say a word either, which successfully creeps Kaeya out, his discomfort only growing the longer Childe follows him around, silent as a ghost, and simply intimidates everyone within a certain radius. He’s almost at the point where he’s going to beg Childe to start talking again when he realises the lieutenant has disappeared.

It doesn’t take long to locate him, not with the loud explosion that rocks the lab and the shock of ginger hair standing at the epicentre of it all.

He promptly kicks Childe out for the day, telling him shortly that he cannot under any circumstances step foot into the lab for at least the rest of the week. Kaeya's almost hoping that Dottore will permanently bar Childe from entering any of the labs.

All he gets for the trouble is a lot of apologising to the researcher whose project has been irreversibly damaged after three years of work (bad), a thorough dressing-down from Dottore for allowing it to happen while he was supervising (terrible), and then an order to keep Childe within arm’s reach if he’s ever in the lab again (horrific).

“How do you suggest I do that? I can’t control him – as much as you like to compare him to a dog I cannot put a leash on him.”

Dottore shrugs. “Keep him close however you like. Hold his hand?”

Kaeya recoils. “I am not holding his hand.”

“You act as though it would kill you, when in fact it might save you from being blown to pieces next time you decide to let him roam free in the lab. Lots of dangerous chemicals around here not suitable for the young ones.”

“You let me use those chemicals.” Kaeya says.

Dottore stares at him for a moment. “You are not Childe. I am certain you would not attempt to drink sulphuric acid, him on the other hand…less so.”

“I'm not holding his hand.” Kaeya puts his foot down.

“Link arms, then,” Dottore sighs. “Or fashion a child harness that would fit someone of his size. I don't care what happens as long as you don't let him blow anything up again.”

The cherry on top of his whole day is Childe waiting outside the lab doors for him, sitting on the bottom step and succeeding at looking like a kicked dog. It takes every ounce of patience and resolve in Kaeya's body to not immediately flee into the sanctuary of the lab when Childe perks up at his appearance, hopping to his feet as though he hadn’t looked to be contemplating suicide a moment prior.

Kaeya's not certain that this partnership is going to survive very long. Either he’s going to kill Childe, or Childe is going to kill him.

“I am this close to killing him, I really am,” Kaeya complains.

“That is a little extreme,” says Pantalone. “But, I suppose I can understand, in a way. Dottore and I had a…tumultuous start to our working relationship, too.”

“You and Dottore have a very different relationship to what me and Childe do,” Kaeya corrects.

Pantalone just smiles at him, nodding along amicably. Kaeya narrows his eye, recognising the tactic as one Pantalone uses on particularly disagreeable clients.

“Don't patronise me,” he grumbles, slumping over the desk, head cradled in his hands. He must be a truly pitiful sight, because Pantalone doesn’t even chide him on manners or etiquette, or even ask him to take his elbows off the table. That only makes him feel a little more depressed.

“I'm going insane, ‘Lone,” he complains. He feels like he might start screaming or crying, maybe both, if he doesn’t continue to tamp down his frustration. He doesn’t want it all to boil over and him have a meltdown in the middle of Pantalone's office. He doesn’t think his pride would ever recover from such a blow, especially because Pantalone would be too nice about it. Maybe he should just disappear into the wilds, never to return. “He’s just always there. He used to only visit on his days off, but now he’s visiting after he’s finished with his duties for the day, which end much earlier than my work does. And Dottore doesn’t even stick around when he appears, he always has some excuse – a meeting, a project to oversee, someone needing his help,” Kaeya scoffs. “He hates giving help.”

“Is he doing anything bad?”

Kaeya pauses his wallowing for a moment to be confused instead. “What?”

“Is Childe doing anything to purposefully disturb you while you're working, or is he just speaking with you?”

“Disaster follows in his wake. He blew up a project the other day and Dottore yelled at me for it.”

“Yes,” Pantalone sighs. “I am aware. We…spoke about it. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”

Kaeya thinks for a moment. “I guess not? Explosion aside, he just doesn’t know a single thing about science. He keeps trying to mix things together to find out what happens. I’ve had to lock the chemicals away so he doesn’t make chlorine gas! I've fucking baby-proofed the lab so he doesn’t kill us all!”

“You were just as inexperienced as him a few months ago,” Pantalone reminds him, one judgemental eyebrow rising with perfect poise. Ugh.

“He’s making my life a living hell. He's starting to haunt my dreams.”

Pantalone gives him another judging look, though this one is more concerned than the one before it. “Have you considered that he is attempting to befriend you?”

Kaeya halts his misery to laugh at Pantalone. “What? What could have possibly given you that idea.”

“Childe is the youngest member of the Fatui,” Pantalone says. “He’s been here since he was fourteen. Not much opportunity to make friends when your peers are decades older than you, those close to your age are under your command, and your only superiors are the Harbingers. You are someone close in age to him and at a similar ranking. Is it so surprising that he might want to be friends with you?”

“He threatened to kill me!”

“Yes, you mentioned. But he’s had ample opportunity now and he's not made any indication that he intends to follow through with that threat. Knowing him, he probably considers that a friendly jest between comrades.” Pantalone sighs. “Just, give him a chance, for me, please? As much as I enjoy your company, it’s not healthy for your only friends to be two Harbingers. Me and Dot are much older than you.”

“Ekaterina’s my friend.”

“You see Ekaterina once a month, at most.”

Kaeya frowns. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

Kaeya…tries.

He doesn’t hate it. Not completely.

Childe can be funny, he supposes. He laughs with reckless abandon, so hard that his eyes squint shut and he begins to cry a little bit. It’s endearing, in a way, that he can find such small things so funny. It’s contagious too, until Kaeya's having to abandon whatever he's working on to laugh with him, fearful that he may wreck whatever delicate thing he's creating.

He’s insightful, has a natural grasp for things that Kaeya lacks. It’s irritating sometimes when Kaeya sits and agonises over something for hours, close to tearing his hair out, before Childe just opens his mouth and says something like, “oh, yeah, why don't you try…” and it works, and solves problems Kaeya didn’t even realise he had.

“Why didn’t you join with Dottore?” Kaeya asks one day. “He’d love to have a mind like yours.”

“Yeah, to dissect, maybe,” Childe shudders. “I like my brain where it is.”

“He doesn’t dissect everything he's interested in. How do you think I ended up here?”

“You stowed away on his ship and repeatedly broke in here until he agreed to take you on as an apprentice?” Childe guesses. “I don't know, you never told me how he picked you up, Pav.”

“I've told you to stop calling me that,” Kaeya sighs, turning back to his work. “I'm going to start ignoring you when you do. I refuse to respond to such a ridiculous nickname”

“But it fits so well! I can’t start calling you brat like everyone else, it’s just rude. And you're not a brat, you're just sarcastic.”

“I'm aware. Don't worry, the nickname hasn’t given me a complex. Yours on the other hand just might.”

“I like peacocks,” Childe tells him. “They know they look good, all those feathers are just stunning, and they love to show them off.”

“You think I look good?” He asks, casting Childe a sly smile. It’s enough to make him flush bright red, scarlet enough to rival even the ripest tomatoes. Kaeya laughs at his stupid face. “Where have you even seen a peacock, anyway. As far as I know, they don't live in Snezhnaya.”

“Oh, yeah, and you've seen one in real life too? Where are you from then, Natlan? Sumeru?”

“You're never going to guess where I’m from,” Kaeya tells him.

“I could guess right and you wouldn’t even tell me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Fine, how about this,” Childe shoves himself into Kaeya's view, sticking his hand out and in front of the soldering iron he's using. Kaeya squawks and pulls it back before the boiling solder can scald the idiot – he’d be a big baby about the whole thing, and Kaeya really doesn’t have the patience to listen to him whine about his small and easily preventable burns for the next few days. “How’s another wager sound?”

Kaeya gives him an unimpressed look. “You haven’t even succeeded with our previous one.”

“Haven’t I?” Childe grins at him, “You let me in the lab without complaint now,” he says, ticking it off on his fingers. “Everyone in the lab knows we’re friends, you willingly tell me what you're working on when I ask now, and you listen when I tell you about my day.”

“I was always listening.” Kaeya says without thinking.

He grimaces and turns away from Childe's smug grin, placing him firmly in his blind spot as he attempts to continue working. He can still feel it though, so it’s only a few seconds before he’s caving and giving in.

“I'm not agreeing to shit until you tell me what the conditions are.”

“You tell me where you're from, and I stop calling you Pavlín.” Childe sticks a hand out at him, wiggling his fingers when Kaeya continues to hesitate. Like that’s meant to be enticing.

Kaeya frowns. “I lose on both fronts here, no matter what. Why should I take this deal?”

“Because you're going to continue to refuse to tell me where you're from, and I'm going to continue to call you Pavlín. At least this way, if I ever do find out where you're from, I can find you next. Then I won’t have to call you Pavlín anymore. Eventually, you win.”

“Hah.” He grips Childe's hand, hard enough to hurt. “You're never finding me.”

And it’s true. Kaeya doubts there’s any memory left of him in Mondstadt. His entire legacy will have been wiped clean. There will only ever have been one Ragnvindr son, one heir to the Dawn Winery. One prodigy, and no-one stood in his shadow.

“Don't look so sad,” Childe bumps his shoulder. “Everyone’s started calling you Pavlín already, it’s too late at this point.”

“It’s better than brat,” Kaeya concedes, accepting defeat.

Pantalone smiles at him over the rim of his mug, delicately taking a sip of his tea.

“All right, don't look so smug about it,” Kaeya grumbles, slumping back in his chair. “I told you so, or whatever. He wanted to be friends.”

“I am not so childish as to say something like I told you so. Though I was right.” Pantalone smiles at him. “You’ll allow this old man a little satisfaction in his being right, won’t you?”

“You're not that old.”

“Older than you might think,” Pantalone smiles at him. “But I appreciate your attempt.”

Kaeya frowns.

“Come now, don't look so despondent. The two of you are friends, are you not? Is that not a good thing? If you can get along with him, spending so much time together should be less tedious than before.”

“Yeah.” Kaeya admits. “I guess it’s a good thing.”

“Since when did a meeting require this much dressing up?” Kaeya complains, shuffling around when Pantalone instructs him to. “This is a little ridiculous. I look stupid. I feel stupid.”

“You do not look stupid,” Pantalone chides. “Anya worked very hard to get this put together for you. Some of the materials used in it are so rare and expensive they had to be specially ordered.” He makes a satisfied little noise. “There, you'll certainly be turning heads like this, very handsome.”

Kaeya shies away from the compliment, turning away when Pantalone continues to smile at him like some…proud parent.

“Still doesn’t tell me why you're dressing me up for a meeting. Surely this is best reserved for more formal occasions.”

“While I would normally agree with you, this meeting is something of an exception. We are not going there to close a business deal, we are going there to network.”

“Network,” Kaeya repeats, unimpressed.

“Look as sour as you want, it’s one of the most important skills in business,” Pantalone sniffs. “Without connections, you will never find anyone willing to back you on your more adventurous business ventures. And without that, you're worse than stranded. Now, how is the fit of everything, not too snug? Not too loose?”

“It’s fine.” He rubs his thumb and forefinger together, uncertain of the gloves and their silky texture. “Do I need to wear the gloves? I'm just going to get them dirty doing something.”

“You will be keeping those gloves clean,” Pantalone tuts. “Having something in white in such a clean state is a status symbol – all the nobles love a long white cloak that drags over the ground.”

“Sound awfully inconvenient,” Kaeya snorts. He follows when Pantalone beckons, tugging at his gloves self-consciously when they step into the corridor. There’s no-one around, yet, but he still feels overdressed and a little uncomfortable in his own skin.

“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it. All the dirt and slush on the ground means that most people wear darker colours – harder to see if there’s a stain. But if you're wearing flawless white? It’s obvious you can afford to spend a pretty penny on your cleaning. Everything is about appearances – what do you look at first when meeting a business partner?”

“Their shoes,” Kaeya dutifully repeats.

“And why is that?”

“Because anyone can buy a nice suit. Only the truly diligent care for their shoes, most think they're out of sight and out of mind.”

“Very good, dear,” Pantalone pats him on the shoulder. “We might make a businessman out of you yet.”

“Mm.” Kaeya thinks of another businessman he’d rather not meet under any circumstance. “I’d rather not.”

“Don't tell me the dear Doctor has managed to sway you over to his way of thinking?” A new voice asks, heels clicking behind Kaeya so suddenly that he spins, hand brushing over his hip where he normally carries a concealed dagger. Pantalone had made him remove it, promising him a different, more discreet holster for the next time he wears this ensemble.

“Signora,” Pantalone greets the woman warmly, which – Kaeya finds himself shrinking back a little, hoping to hide himself and his knee-jerk reaction behind the bulk of Pantalone's cloak. This is Signora? The Harbinger that people spoke of in whispers, fearful of the ears in the walls, even in the privacy of their own dorms. She picks off those that are unsatisfactory to her, a brutal dictator of a superior, one that only the most unfortunate get. You need to have been cursed in a past life to receive such a punishment. Or so the healthy, active rumour mill in Dottore's lab says.

“Lady Signora,” Kaeya greets, when the pointed silence drags on a little too long and he realises that Pantalone has been staring a hole into the side of his head for a while now – how would he know, he can't even see the man. Signora watches him coolly, her singular eye piercing. It’s almost enough to make him shudder. “A pleasure to meet you on this fine afternoon.”

She sniffs, and turns back to Pantalone. “Passable, I suppose. For what I've heard of Dottore's brat, that was exceedingly polite of him.”

Great.

“Well, the two of us have been working tirelessly to remove the worst of his habits, many of them instilled by Dottore himself,” Pantalone laughs, a light, polite thing that is not at all how he usually laughs, and shakes his head a little. Kaeya watches him carefully, slowly straightening his shoulders and back, holding his chin high. Almost regal, if he can say so himself. “Isn't that right, Pavlín?”

Kaeya watches Pantalone for another moment longer before returning his eye to Signora. “Yes, Pantalone's tutelage has been incredibly valuable. He truly has my gratitude for taking me under his wing when I first arrived here.”

“Mm.” Signora stares at him, before turning and continuing on, heels clicking against the tiled floor. Each step is like a gunshot, and Kaeya watches several recruits spot her and spin in the opposite direction, escaping her as quickly as their legs can take them. He expects them to do the same, only Pantalone follows behind her, casting Kaeya a small smile as they round several corners.

When she enters a room – something Kaeya can only imagine to be her office – Pantalone doesn’t do the sensible thing and turn around. Instead, he walks right on in, holding the door open for Kaeya to follow dutifully behind. This is the person Pantalone wants him to practice networking with? He’s never met a colder person, and yet this is where Pantalone wants him to begin. He sends a short prayer up, though he’s long-since accepted that whoever’s receiving them is promptly throwing them aside.

“Please,” Signora says, “have a seat. And some tea, it’s specially imported from Inazuma – I find it rather delightful, the taste is truly electrifying.” She smiles then, painted lips pulling back just slightly to reveal too-white teeth. He finds it unsettling, like how a predator may bare their teeth before taking a chunk out of their prey.

He sits, because it is polite, and because he is scared of Signora. He hardly notices the small shards of glass crunching beneath his feet until Pantalone pauses and raises a boot to inspect the glittering shards embedded in the base.

“Something go wrong recently?” Pantalone questions, as though this is business as usual. And he certainly acts like it, seating himself with all the grace of a noble, pouring tea for all three of them.

Kaeya holds his teacup as he was taught, for lack of anything else to do with his hands, and anxious to stave off any fidgeting that may arise if he were left to his own devices.

“Ah,” Signora sighs, as though she may have forgotten the glass. Now that Kaeya looks, it’s truly unmissable, shimmering shards strewn over every part of the office, creating a delicate carpet of crystal for people to walk over. “There was an…incident with my previous chandelier. Please, let me know if you spot any blood, my guest was not as fortunate as I, and I do believe the cleaners haven’t managed to scrub all of him from the tiles yet.” She smiles again.

Kaeya sits a little straighter in his chair, momentarily struck by the realisation that Signora probably killed her last guest. He could have very well sat in the same chair that Kaeya is currently sat in. He looks upwards as carefully as possible, searching for a chandelier above his head.

“They haven’t replaced it yet,” Signora says, noticing his looking. His eye snaps back to her, suddenly feeling very guilty. He sips at his tea, which doesn’t help as a crackle of electricity bursts over his tongue. He swallows the mouthful and sets the teacup back down, unwilling to set off a superconduct reaction within his own stomach. “You have nothing to fear. I do believe the Doctor would kill me if I ruined his latest project.”

“I’d have to agree with you there,” Pantalone laughs. “He’s become rather…protective of this one.”

“Oh, I know. He doesn’t want any of us to meet you.” Signora looks at him again. He cannot help but feel rather like a bug, one of the rare butterflies that rich collectors pin to a wall to show off to all their guests. He feels similarly immobilised and helpless when that one-eyed stare turns on him. “Pierro met you, of course. Goodness, he complained enough about that encounter we were all sick of hearing your moniker – I'm glad you got a new one, brat is hardly going to inspire fear in any of your underlings.”

“That’s all the invention of Childe,” Pantalone tells her. “Rather apt, though, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes,” Signora nods along. For a meeting arranged with the sole intention of him networking, he cannot help but feel as though he’s been dragged along to a mother’s meeting – one with gossip and wine rather than the book club type. “He has the elegance for it, though he needs a little more confidence to be a true peacock.”

“I do believe you’ve scared all that confidence right out of him,” Pantalone laughs. “He is not normally so…quiet.”

“It is best to evaluate one’s companions before speaking carelessly,” Kaeya adds. “To do so could close avenues that one did not realise were open to him at all.”

“Well said,” Signora says with an approving nod. It’s enough that Kaeya relaxes a fraction, settling into his seat just a little more comfortably. “Your silver-tongue is admirable, though its tricks will not work on me. Anything you may try, I have already done more successfully than you could ever dream.”

“Oh, certainly.” Kaeya smiles. “I can only bow to your superior knowledge, especially with the evidence of so many years behind one such as yourself.”

Signora stiffens, the skin around her eyes pulling tight even as she continues to smile. Pantalone smiles beside him, likely not missing the subtle jab Kaeya just landed.

“Sharp-tongued too,” Signora comments, before returning her attention to Pantalone. “I suppose it’s a good thing you managed to steal him away from Dottore. A sharp wit like that would go to waste in his basement, used only to eviscerate those that displeased him.” She pauses. “I heard he was dressing the poor boy in rags, is that true?”

“They weren’t rags, they were standard issue uniform.” Kaeya defends.

“No, no, Pavlín, you don't need to defend his actions. The clothes he gave you do not deserve to be called rags; that is too high of a compliment. For someone of your standing you should have been dressed in finery. Oh, Rosalyne, it was a tragedy, and he was content to simply let it continue on as it had. If it weren’t for me, he would still be dressing like that.”

Kaeya crosses his arms. He hadn’t minded the uniform, it made it easier to blend in with other recruits when he wandered the Palace, listening for gossip. Now, his clothing marks him as other, something to be avoided. Recruits mind their conversations around him, cautious of whose ear he may be whispering into.

But Signora is nodding along. “His face is far too lovely to be wearing those rags – honestly, I've told the Tsaritsa that the uniform needs an overhaul. I understand that the black and red is for ease of concealing stains, but really, would it be so difficult to get some kind of ceremonial uniform? A white one perhaps, oh that would be lovely, don't you think? Even Mond has ceremonial armour for their knights, and their Archon hasn’t returned for centuries.”

Kaeya straightens, staring at Signora.

“Is something the matter?” She asks, “Do you have a suggestion on what the ceremonial clothing should look like? If it’s good, I’ll be sure to take it to the Tsaritsa Herself.”

“You called it Mond,” he says. A small detail, certainly, but the smallest details are the worst offenders most of the time. And he knows he’s hit the nail on the head when a subtle tension lines every part of her body. “None but the Children of Mond call it that.”

“And you called it by the same name.” Signora smiles. “Seems both of us have had a…slip of the tongue.”

“Hm.” He settles back in his seat. She continues to stare at him for a moment longer, eye narrowed. “So it would seem.”

“How curious,” Pantalone looks between the two of them. “Perhaps I should have introduced the two of you earlier. Ah, wonderful! What a sense of kinship this meeting has evoked, hm?”

Kinship is one way of phrasing it. He’s certain Signora is thinking the same thing with the scathing look she sends him.

“Now,” Pantalone claps his hands together. “I have a small business proposition for you, it’s Pavlín’s first semi-independent project and I was wondering if I would be able to get some backing. See, he had a wonderful idea of buying out and taking over bank branches in other nations and I was hoping for your input on the matter.”

“Oh?” Signora looks at him, animosity forgotten and interest piqued. “You’ve tried to make your way into several other nations already and have been rebuffed at every turn. Would I be correct in assuming this is your next attempt?”

“Oh, yes, Pavlín?” Kaeya looks up. “Would you like to explain the concept?”

“Mm. The concept comes from several other business models. Many will buy out factories or companies in countries they want to begin selling in. Often, companies will take over manufacturing in that nation to avoid high import tariffs that may otherwise impact on their products, reducing profits. A similar concept could, theoretically, be applied to banking too, especially with the privately owned banks within several nations. Of course, there are nations without such banks, but even gaining a small foothold in a few nations could be enough to allow entry into the rest.”

“How fascinating,” Signora turns to Pantalone. “You truly have stretched your luck to obtain such a…valuable person.”

“Ah, Signora, I know that look,” Pantalone laughs. “Hands off, I don't think our dear Doctor would be amenable to divvying his time up any further.”

“Ach, he’s divided between two parties at best. You and the Doctor were always going to end up co-parenting the brat, no matter what else happened. His business sense could be entirely non-functional and you'd still keep him tucked carefully beneath your wing.”

“I am not being co-parented,” Kaeya interrupts.

Signora looks at him, then Pantalone, and bursts into laughter. “Oh, my! Pantalone, you sneaky little creature – you've kept him in the dark and now look at the fool he's made of himself!”

When Kaeya looks at Pantalone, the man is murmuring something inaudible under the sound of Signora's laughter and slowly flushing. “Personal matters are hardly relevant here.”

“Hardly relevant?” Signora turns to Kaeya, “Tell me, Pavlín, what do you know of the relationship between our dear Doctor and Regrator?”

Kaeya leans back, unsettled by her sudden mania. Having all that intensity directed at him is unsettling at best, downright disturbing at worst. “That it’s a complex one?”

“Complex?” Signora snorts, an entirely unladylike sound that Kaeya could never have imagined her before this very moment. Her terrifying reputation is slowly falling apart in front of his eyes and he's really not sure what to do about it. Childe isn’t going to believe anything he has to say. “That’s one way of putting it, here,” she lunges across the table and grabs Pantalone's hand, dragging it, and by extension Pantalone, towards herself.

“Now, what is this?” She asks, shaking Pantalone's hand in Kaeya's direction. He's baffled by the direction this has taken, glancing at Pantalone as he attempts to gauge the man’s reaction. He looks resigned, if a little ruffled.

“Pantalone's…hand?”

“Yes, now, do you notice anything odd about his hand?”

“No…?” He can't even see Pantalone's hands for the gloves he wears.

Signora tuts. “Honestly, I take back anything complimentary I said to you before. Really, look here, see the bump in the leather? That’s not a knuckle, so what could it be?” She doesn’t even wait for him to respond before she's pinching the fingers of Pantalone's glove and pulling it free.

“A…wedding ring?”

“Oh, he finally gets it,” Signora sighs out dramatically, releasing Pantalone. She chucks his glove after him, which Pantalone swiftly slips back on, though not before Kaeya registers thick scarring over his knuckles and the large starburst shapes over the back of his hand, disappearing beneath his sleeve before Kaeya can look any further. “Now, who might he have married?”

There’s only one answer, but… “No,” he gasps, turning slowly in Pantalone's direction. “You, don't you hate each other?”

“Not as much as they like everyone to believe,” Signora taunts. She’s less of a fearsome Harbinger and more of an irritating relative at this point. “Their fights are essentially fore-”

“I think that’s enough Signora, he is still young.” Pantalone sighs. “Ah, I should have predicted this disaster – introducing the two of you was a mistake, and this is something that I cannot allow to continue.” He stands. “Come, Pavlín.”

“And come back whenever you like,” Signora invites, watching him with far warmer eyes than she first had. “I've heard rumours of the gossip in the basement. I'm certain we can…trade stories.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Kaeya smiles. “I’ll have to take you up on it at some point.”

“You're shitting me,” Childe says.

“I'm not.”

“No, absolutely not. There’s no way Signora invited you for gossiping.”

“But she did,” Kaeya grins.

“No, everyone's scared of her! She's horrid! Everyone says so, all her recruits are terrified of what she might do if she even overhears them gossiping.”

“Well, it’s true, no matter how much you try and deny it.”

Childe gapes at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish. A rather stupid fish. Being friends with the idiot is worth it, if only for moments like this.

“Absolutely not,” Childe denies. “I don't believe you.”

“You can come along with me,” Kaeya offers. “I'm sure she’d just love the company.”

“No way. You get yourself killed by yourself. I like living.”

He takes back everything nice he's ever said about Childe. It is not a good thing that the two of them are friends. It just means his losses hurt all the more, and he has to face the mockery with a straight face and resist the urge to just start strangling him because they're friends now.

Snow continues to steadily slide off of him as he walks through the lab. Every eye is averted from him, none looking to attract his wrath.

Small clumps of snow litter the ground behind him, marking where he's stepped. His boots don't slip, though they're equally soaked. It’s only because he's become accustomed to freezing his every footstep to the ground that he remains upright and doesn’t embarrass himself further.

He thinks if he slipped over at this moment, he’d simply lie down and accept his fate. Perhaps he could ask the assistants to trample him to death. It’d be less humiliating to die in such a way than to be forced to continue on as he is. Alas, the researchers continue to do nothing more than stare at him. Not a single offering to end his suffering makes its way to him before he's shouldering through the doors into the private lab.

His showing up like this should be a common enough occurrence to them at this point – Childe seems to delight in tossing him into snowbanks at every opportunity, as though soaking his expensive clothing is the highlight of his day. Knowing him, it probably is. He should be thankful Kaeya cannot be stricken with cold, otherwise he’d be bedridden with pneumonia a hundred times over by now.

Dottore watches him trudge in, and the segment stood at his shoulder watches Kaeya too, though with far more glee.

“Someone’s seen better days,” the segment laughs. Kaeya ignores him, which only seems to spur the segment on further. “Someone shove you into a snowbank or did you jump in there yourself?”

“I was tripped into one, actually.” He corrects, carefully leaning his conduit – far more robust than his previous one, and yet to break – against the edge of his desk. His cloak continues to shed snow over the floor, but he’s given up with attempting to stop it. Maybe he’ll freeze it into ice once it’s melted and hope Childe slips and breaks something next time he bursts in here.

Kaeya approaches the desk when Dottore gestures him over, clearing a small spot on the edge so he might perch there. The segment continues to grin at him, sharp and shark-like, though not quite as terrifying as Dottore's; a little hard to be intimidating when your face looks as though it has been smoothed over, wiped clean of any distinctive features. He knows it’s a mask, but it still makes all of them look like clowns. Dottore has refused to take his constructive criticism onboard.

“The prodigy’s doing?” The segment smirks. “I’d have thought he would get bored of you by now, how long has it been again? Two months? Three? You're showing no signs of improvement, no advances towards actually beating him, so what keeps drawing him back to you?”

“Perhaps I have some unique trait,” Kaeya smiles thinly at the irritating segment. “I hear it’s a rare thing around these parts.”

“I'm surprised Pulcinella is happy to let you continue fighting his prodigy. Surely he has better things to do than fight you.”

“Surely you have better things to do than clean-up, and yet…” Kaeya lets his words trail off meaningfully, watching as the segment stiffens, snarls something wordless, and storms from the lab without another word. The door rattles in its frame, echoing loudly around the lab.

Dottore sighs. “Must you provoke the segments?”

“That one provoked me first,” he defends. He pokes through the papers on Dottore's desk, messier than usual, watching the man carefully for any reaction. When he's given none, he continues to flick through the papers absently, skimming the information within without really taking any of it in. “It’s not like any of your segments could fight Childe.”

“Mm. They're stronger than you'd think.”

“But not as strong as you?” Kaeya asks.

Dottore grins at him. “To make them as strong as me would be asking for a coup. Their purpose is to remain below me, I don't want to go giving them any ideas of rebellion, hm?”

“I suppose not.” More camps destroyed, an intrusion on some of the Fatui exploration teams in the Chasm. Reports of disruption to supply lines. A controlled chaos that threatens to break free of the careful constraints currently imposed upon it. Dottore won’t discuss it with him, and Pantalone redirects the conversation whenever he brings it up. The stress lining their faces gives away more than their words, betraying an…anxiety over this continued nuisance.

Any attempts to quash whatever pest continues to bleed the Fatui dry has proved unsuccessful. The lucky teams return alive. The unlucky ones must be pieced back together before being shipped back to their families. The unluckiest are never recovered at all. He’d suggested sending Childe after the culprit, but that idea had been quickly shut down, a staunch refusal – the problem remained outside of Snezhnaya, and as long as it remained that way, it was neither his nor Childe's concern.

“And how is Childe?” Dottore asks. He signs something, setting it aside to let the ink dry. A supplies request, one that Dottore has, surprisingly, granted. “Still as infuriating as ever?”

“And creepy,” Kaeya nods. “There’s something wrong with him, you know. I thought he was just awkward and all he knew to talk about was…fighting and killing things. Pantalone said that’s all he's been doing since he was fourteen. But we can have actual conversations, and he still freaks me out.”

“Yes,” Dottore's voice is painfully dry. “I am aware. You really made sure to emphasise how wrong and naturally blue his eyes were. And how straight his teeth were, how sharp his canines were. Oh, and how could I forget about his unnaturally long eyelashes which are far too nice for someone of his demeanour.”

Kaeya squints at Dottore. “I don't like the tone you said that in.”

“Why don't you go bother someone else then?”

“Can’t.” He accidentally unearths once of Dottore's long-abandoned projects, tilting his head almost a full one-eighty in an attempt to decipher what might be writing, but also might be abstract art. “Pantalone's in a meeting all day, he specifically told me not to bother him as he was with a prestigious client.” He scoffs.

“Mm, yes, he mentioned that this morning.”

“Don't do that.”

“Do what?”

Kaeya frowns at him. “You know exactly what.”

“That is where you are wrong, brat. I don't have a single clue as to what you might be referencing.”

“Don't- talk about the fact that you saw him this morning. You've been in the office all day, so the only time you might have seen him is…” he trails off, waving a hand helplessly. “You know.”

“This did not make you so uncomfortable before Rosalyne’s meddling.” Dottore comments. “Or your continued…gossip sessions.”

“Well, sorry,” Kaeya huffs. “I just don't like it. It’s like when you become aware your parents are having sex.”

“Oh my, Pavlín, did you just admit to seeing us as parental figures?” Dottore sniffs dramatically. “Well, I was never certain that I’d have children, too messy, you see. But if that’s really what you want, I am certain that papers can be-”

“No. Nope.” Kaeya stands, halfway to the door before Dottore can finish speaking. “Goodbye.”

“I’ll be sure to let Pantalone know later,” Dottore calls after him, beginning to cackle before Kaeya even gets the chance to slam the door behind him. He freezes Dottore's coffee into his mug, and then the mug to the desk for good measure.

He looks up, finding the entire room staring in his direction, flushes hotter, and leaves as quickly as he can before he manages to embarrass himself further. He's going to wring Childe's neck when he gets the chance; this is all his fault…somehow.

Childe sends a wave of water over the entirety of the battlefield, soaking everything in range, including Kaeya himself. He grits his teeth at the laughter that follows, glaring at Childe through his now-wet hair, trailing over his face and sticking uncomfortably to his skin. It’s easy to freeze it all into a thin sheet, shedding the flakes when he shakes.

He’d learned quickly to get rid of any water on his skin as quickly as possible after Childe had fashioned them into living restraints, water moving too swiftly for Kaeya to freeze and break free. That had been a laughably pathetic defeat that day, one that Childe refuses to let go of, despite the time that has passed between then and now.

Childe pulls Kaeya's attention back as he slams his dual blades together into a double-headed spear, twirling it between his hands, more like a performer than a soldier. One of the onlookers whoops at the move, raising a wave of cheers from the crowd at the cocky showmanship of their golden boy. Kaeya scowls at them over his shoulder; he’d lost his patience with Childe's posse of fans that followed him from battle to battle incredibly quickly, and his patience has only worn thinner since.

An arrow whistles past his ear, and he turns back to Childe. “Eyes on me, comrade,” Childe croons, yanking his spear from the ground as he slings his bow back over his shoulder. “Or is there someone on the sidelines attracting more attention than yours truly?”

“Aw,” Kaeya tilts his head. “Jealous? Want a little more of my attention, dear?”

“I want whatever you're going to give me and more,” Childe grins. “Bring it on.”

Kaeya blinks, reappearing at Childe's side, ducking over the sweep Childe aims at his head, sliding to the side before kicking Childe in the back of the knee, watching as he buckles. He’s not quick enough to roll away, Kaeya snapping at his heels the moment he attempts to regain his feet, planting a boot in the centre of his back.

Childe falls limp, only to twist around a moment later and grab Kaeya's ankle, yanking him into the snow alongside him. Kaeya struggles, both of their hands locked together as they wrestle for a moment, Kaeya only managing to maintain his position on top for a moment before Childe is flipping him, pressing his hands back into the ground above his head.

“Well, lookie at what I've caught here,” Childe grins. “If it isn’t our dear peacock. Where’s all that flair and pomp gone now?”

Kaeya grins as water begins to curl around his fingers, wrapping further up his arms. Another attempt at binding him, one that won’t work this time. The water is too sluggish to escape his coaxing, willingly giving in, solidifying. He claws at Childe with the new gauntlets he's fashioned for himself, laughing as Childe jerks back, before returning the attack with a grin of his own.

“That one’s new! Where’d you find that trick?”

“Hah, you think I'm close to running out of ideas? I'm not a one-trick pony, Lieutenant.”

“Well neither am I,” Childe yells, charging forward once more. It takes nothing for Kaeya to sidestep him, sending a volley of icicles at his heels, watching as Childe hops over each one, yelping a little when one of the sharp edges grazes too close. He’s so occupied with that, he fails to notice the short wall that Kaeya trips him with.

“There,” Kaeya settles on his chest, pinning him down with the entirety of his body weight. It’s not difficult; for all of Childe's strength, he has a lean build, thinner than Kaeya's own. “Ah, don't you just look so precious like this,” he hums, dragging a gauntleted finger down the side of his face. “Mm,” he laughs a little, watching as Childe's face progressively grows redder and redder in his rage, kicking up the snow around the pair of them in his attempts to break free. “I think I could get used to this. Tell me, do you still want everything I can give you, dear?”

Childe snarls, and heaves upwards, the sharp, sudden movement enough to knock Kaeya loose, landing the pair of them back in the snow where they began. Kaeya pants, watching as Childe's breath clouds in front of his face. He’s bleeding, a short, thin cut dripping down the side of his face where Kaeya had touched him just a moment before. No doubt the blood is already beginning to freeze in the subzero temperatures out here.

“I don't want you holding back,” Childe pants, answering Kaeya. “I haven’t held anything back yet, so don't taunt me like that!”

Kaeya wheezes a little as Childe's entire bodyweight makes contact with him, winding him when he impacts the ground. He struggles, only to pause at the thin pressure of a hydro blade at his throat. He goes lax, tapping out when Childe doesn’t falter, remaining wary until Kaeya concedes.

Only then does he stand, offering a hand.

Kaeya shakes his head, shattering the gauntlets before he accepts the offer, allowing Childe to haul him to his feet.

“Better,” Childe compliments, his smile genuine. “Though, I can still take everything you throw at me. Such talk, and yet you still admit defeat at the end of every match.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t be a peacock if I couldn’t see my own splendour, would I?”

“Oh?” Childe laughs. “Are you finally beginning to accept the moniker, Pav?”

“Not that horrific nickname, no. Pavlín…perhaps I could get used to it, I suppose.” He squeezes Childe's hand before letting go, unsure how long the two of them had stood there holding hands, half of the Fatui’s recruits watching them. He feels his face grow warm, watching as Childe's pale skin flushes a delicate pink as he seemingly comes to the same conclusion, glancing over his shoulder at their onlookers.

“Ah, I, uh, better get to,” he jabs a thumb over his shoulder, suddenly awkward, retreating into himself as he refuses to meet Kaeya's eyes.

“Go reassure your adoring fans,” Kaeya takes a step back. “I'm sure I’ll see you this evening.”

“Don't you know it! Tell me, how’s the project?”

“Worse,” he grits, frustration bubbling back up as Childe reminds him of his last fuck-up and subsequent exile from the lab. “Especially after you set fire to half of my product.”

“I’ll find a way to make it up to you!” Childe yells, even as he's already making his way towards the recruits. It’s an obvious dismissal, though Kaeya continues to watch him for a moment longer before turning to retrieve his conduit and trek back to the Palace.

For as much as he's heard of Childe's accomplishments as the youngest lieutenant in Fatui history, he hasn’t actually seen any of those accomplishments first-hand. He had been content to leave it as an idle curiosity, poking at it on occasion when he found himself bored and with little to do. Was he a taskmaster? As feared as Signora? Perhaps he was kind to his recruits, enough that they like him, but firm too, so that they succeed when taken to the battlefield.

It’s this absent curiosity that eventually leads him to the small training field that Childe has claimed as his own for the morning. It had been easy to snag a copy of the schedule, though less easy to wake up at the crack of dawn to track Childe down and watch him work.

The early morning light is cold as it shines over the Palace walls, bringing no warmth with it, even as it rises higher. The snow reflects the light harshly, harsh enough that Kaeya finds himself squinting against the glare, watching as Childe puts his recruits through their paces.

Some of them are sluggish, exhaustion evidently dragging at their bones as they stumble over their feet. Though, it only takes the sharp bark of an order from Childe and they're straightening up, blinking their eyes wide as though that might inspire a little more wakefulness.

It’s fascinating to watch him work. Kaeya hadn’t understood Childe's fascination with finding him in the lab at all hours just to sit and watch him work, though he’s beginning to understand the appeal stood on the other side. It’s incredibly different to what Kaeya does with himself everyday, incredibly involved with the recruits, slipping through the crowd, correcting stance and posture like its second nature. Kaeya's own work keeps him isolated and in a dark room for most hours of the day. Childe's is seemingly the opposite.

To see him so dedicated is a treat too. There’s fewer smiles that Kaeya is used to, aside from the encouraging near-grimaces he shoots at faltering recruits, and he shouts orders like he was born doing so. Most lieutenants don't bother to rise for the early morning drills, delegating the task to a trusted subordinate, taking the luxury of a lie-in. Kaeya believes it’s laziness on those lieutenants’ behalf, growing comfortable in their position of power, certain that nothing could ever unseat them.

Childe, apparently, agrees with Kaeya's assessment. He rises with the sun, and doesn’t retire to his rooms until late in the evening. When his recruits are busy with other work, he’s not found to be idling in an office, running around to assist other lieutenants instead. Though Kaeya personally believes that’s done in an effort to sate the violence that runs alongside the blood in his veins rather than from any altruistic beliefs he might hold.

“Are you not cold, boy?”

Kaeya jolts at the sudden intrusion on his peace, glancing over. Pulcinella looks back at him, smiling softly, all grandfatherly and deceitful. He’s bundled up in a thick coat, looking rather cosy, even in the early morning chill. The slight watering of his eyes and the red of his nose and ears betrays him.

“Not really.” Kaeya may be wearing very little, but the cold is hardly going to harm him. His choice of a sleeveless shirt for this morning venture may have been bold, but the pleasant chill on the skin of his arms is quite delightful, and worth any side-long looks he may receive for it. “Just a little tickle on my skin. It’s quite refreshing this early in the morning, gets the blood pumping.”

“Ah, the joys of youth.” Pulcinella laughs. “I suppose as long as you're careful with the exposure there’s no harm in it – I don't want to hear anything about you ending up in the infirmary with pneumonia or hypothermia, you hear me?” he wags his finger at Kaeya, as though he really is nothing but a concerned grandfather, and not a high-ranking Harbinger.

Kaeya nods along, as though he too has been taken in by this guise, smiling gently. “Rest assured, I shan’t be giving you any cause for concern.”

“Oh, good.” Pulcinella smiles up at him, the silver frame of his glasses glinting in the morning sunlight. “Perhaps you should still invest in a coat, even Childe cannot deny the comfort on occasion.”

“I find that I can become easily flustered in such a thick coat, especially when partaking in strenuous activity. I'm afraid the heat and I were not made to be friends,” he laughs. “It can also become a burden when your opponent claws like a feral cat.”

Pulcinella hums. “I acknowledge your point.”

Childe shouts something then, drawing both their attentions back to the field. The two recruits under his scrutiny look more terrified than encouraged, quaking under the manic smile Childe shoots in their direction.

“And how are you finding Childe?” Pulcinella asks. “How is it to work with him?”

“I'm hardly working with him,” Kaeya says. “But I suppose he is not all too terrible, as long as you don't mind working with a feral creature half the time. Some days he acts as though we are the best of friends, and the next he attempts to rip my face off.”

“Both those actions are much the same to him. He is simply…overeager in his pursuit of battle. Besides,” Pulcinella looks at him again, expression turning sly, smile knowing, “you would have requested this partnership to be voided if you disliked him as much as you are attempting to portray.”

“Would I now.”

“Oh, certainly. You are highly opinionated, and you are not afraid to share such opinions with whoever draws your ire, no matter who you may offend. From the lowliest of recruits, to the Jester himself.” Pulcinella laughs. “I would commend your bravery if I was certain it was that rather than plain ignorance and stupidity.”

Kaeya curls his lip at the man in front of him. “There is no point in preserving someone’s delicate sensibilities. It only weakens them in the future.”

“I suppose,” Pulcinella says, though he doesn’t sound as though he agrees. “I suppose your presence is a blessing, in some ways; I feared that Childe would remain stagnant, too caught up in the high of a fight to progress any further on his own.”

“And what may have changed? His position seems to be the same, he has climbed no higher.”

“Not yet, though with the new opportunity brought in front of me, I do believe that climbing may be sooner rather than later.” The Harbinger shoots him a sly look, a suggestion that this opportunity is him. Kaeya would be more disgusted by his shamelessness if he weren’t already becoming accustomed to his behaviour. He may cloak himself however he likes, but he’s still a conniving little man beneath all the disguises. “His struggles with interpersonal relationships, though not entirely his own fault, has left him with a rather limited network. Put simply, there is no-one that wishes to assist him, whether that be with chores or on missions. I was disheartened, and his violent tendencies only seemed to grow without companionship to…pacify him.”

“I doubt my presence has solved that problem,” he points out. If anything, it has only made it worse. Their fights have become a thing of gossip around the Palace, with far too many recruits turning out each day to watch them attempt to maim each other. Perhaps such displays are just an everyday occurrence for the Fatui; Dottore and Pantalone's constant back-and-forth only lends credence to that.

“You don't spend enough time outside of your lab and around him to notice the effect you have,” Pulcinella tells him. “He enjoys your fights, enough that he no longer seeks the thrill from another. The infirmary is really quite pleased with this new development.”

“Pulcinella!” Childe shouts.

The two of them look up, watching as Childe bounds across the training field, recruits forgotten behind him. Despite their supervisor’s lapse of attention, they continue their drills faithfully, none sparing a glance for Childe's antics.

“My ears are burning,” Childe says when he reaches them, grinning. “Were you talking about me?”

“Not everything revolved around you Childe,” Kaeya says.

“Ah,” Childe clutches at his chest, as though Kaeya had slid a dagger through his ribs with his words. “Oh, Pavlín, you wound me terribly. I am not certain I can survive such cutting words.”

“I'm certain you can,” Kaeya replies, dry, though he can feel a smile beginning to tug at his lips. Childe's dramatics, as rare as they are, are amusing when they emerge.

“Oh, no, I don't think I will be able to push through this one, unless,” Childe looks up at him, still grasping at his chest.

“Unless…?”

“Unless you come and help me give a little demonstration? No effort required on your part, I just need you to fall over. Swoon right into my arms, hm? Ah, have you ever dreamed of such a thing, I'm certain you must have.”

Kaeya frowns at him. “I do not swoon.”

“No denial on the dreaming!” Childe cheers, grabbing him by the hand and tugging him out onto the training field. Kaeya allows himself to be pulled behind Childe, bored enough to help with whatever demonstration he's deemed necessary.

“And why must your recruits be taught the art of catching a swooning lover in their arms?” Kaeya asks. “I wasn’t aware the Fatui had such…boundless romantic options. I am certain you have never managed to sweep someone off their feet.”

“Harsh! But unfortunately true. You won’t be swooning, don't worry, just demonstrating how to perform a nice little takedown on an opponent.”

“Are you certain it shouldn’t be the other way around? If my memory serves, I more often get you on your back than the other way around.”

“Ah, Pav! To suggest such a thing is cruel – none of them would respect me if they saw something such as that.”

“They do see it,” Kaeya points out. “Regularly. Whenever we fight.”

“Oh, shush. Props don't talk,” Childe says, pressing a hand over Kaeya's mouth when he opens it again. He finds himself extraordinarily offended, and tempted to lick Childe's hand. He only resists as every eye has turned in their direction, and to do so would embarrass him more than it would embarrass Childe.

The back of his knees feels like one massive bruise by the end of it, and the steady warmth of Childe's hand seems to have seared itself into the flesh of his back. He wouldn’t be surprised to find it branded into his skin, a faithful depiction of every whorl of skin on the pads of his fingers, pressed into the skin between his shoulder blades where Childe had held him to make sure he didn’t collapse to the ground with each demonstration.

Kaeya pauses just inside the door to the lab. The emptiness of the main lab is beginning to make sense, especially when that thought is punctuated by the crack of bone and ripping of muscle.

“Good morning,” he greets, feeling immeasurably tired. “You're here earlier than usual.”

“Hm.” Another crack – it sounds like someone’s ribs are being pulled open. Kaeya's not certain that ribs can be opened up, but Dottore is putting a good effort in, and the jutting spikes of bone sticking out of the chest cavity of whatever unfortunate soul are testament to that good effort.

“Any reason you've turned my desk into an operating table?” He tries.

“I moved your projects.”

“That…is not what I asked.” Kaeya takes a step backwards. Another rip follows him, then a chuckle as Dottore just goes all in, digging around the chest cavity with squelching noises that are beginning to turn Kaeya's stomach. “You know what, I'm gonna go see if Pantalone needs help with anything. Have…fun?”

“Come in,” Kaeya summons, waiting until the door swings shut again before he greets anyone. He doesn’t even get the chance before one of the people – one of Dottore's assistants, judging by the lab coat – is lunging towards him, kneeling at the side of Kaeya's chair, hands clasped together in a pleading motion.

“Please, Pavlín, you need to help us,” he says, with all the desperation of a dying man. It’s enough to startle Kaeya into stillness, meaning he doesn’t even react when another of the man’s companions reaches forward and yanks him up by the collar of his coat.

“Get yourself together, honestly,” she shakes the man, who rocks back and forth with the motion, still staring beseechingly at Kaeya. “Look less pathetic or he’s not going to help us.”

“I still might not help you if you keep speaking as though I am not here,” Kaeya interjects. “But please, continue.”

The first, most pathetic-looking of the lot turns those beseeching eyes on the woman holding him. All three of them are dressed in typical surgeon’s garb, though the surgical masks are pulled down, tucked beneath their chins. The volume of blood spattered across their coats is another big blaring sign that they're not normal surgeons, but instead part of Dottore's elite team.

“Let me guess,” he sighs. “You've lost something valuable and Dottore is now looking for it, and he’s going to kill you if it’s not returned to him? If that’s the case, then I'm afraid you're on your own, I'm not putting my neck on the line for anyone like you.”

“That’s not it,” the woman says, firm.

Their thus-far-silent companion steps up then, his hands twisting together anxiously. “We just need a moment of your time,” he says.

“Hm.” Kaeya leans back in his chair. “I suppose I can spare a moment to listen.”

There’s an uncomfortable swoop in his gut when the trio exchange a giddy grin, transforming from an anxious bunch into a group of giggly schoolchildren in a heartbeat. It does nothing to reassure him when they all press in closer, heads bowed as though sharing some terrible secret with him. It almost feels like he's about to be murdered, though none of them carry a weapon.

“Is it true,” the nervous man begins, “that you've been partnering with Childe?”

All of his anxiety is firmly squashed. “Have you been living under a rock?” He asks, scathing. “I've been working with him for months, and you just now ask if I might be? Where the hell did Dottore find you? Who educated you?”

“Why is that relevant,” the woman spits. “We asked you a question, genuinely, and you respond with such biting criticism? Have you no manners? No respect for your elders?”

“Do you have no respect for your betters?” Kaeya asks, rising from his seat. “I outrank you in every sense of the word, and you dare to question how I speak to you? Would you do the same with Dottore, or is it simply because you think I can be intimidated?”

“Hey, hey,” the quiet one steps between Kaeya and the woman, hands out as though to pacify each of them. Kaeya shoots him a disdainful look and leans back against the desk. “We came here to be polite,” he hisses at the woman, before turning back to Kaeya. “The only reason we ask is, well, we…wished to know what he was like?”

Ah.

Kaeya heaves a great sigh at the sudden realisation that crashes over him. Childe is equal parts terrifying and attractive to the general population of Snezhnaya, something which he’s unfortunately borne witness to far too many times already. The trio in front of him seem to be firmly in the enamoured camp, which already makes them insufferable to him.

He still finds it strange that so many people are obsessed with Childe, especially as many of them are far older than he is. Some of them are even old enough to be his mother. But he seems to take the attention in stride, sparing a winning smile for everyone that claims his attention. He’s charming. He’s also the face of the Fatui, and Kaeya is aware that he therefore has a certain reputation to maintain if they wish for people to continue enlisting, but it can become tiring when they can’t go anywhere without Snezhnaya’s golden child getting recognised a hundred times over.

However, this opportunity in front of him is too good to pass up on.

The three pairs of hopeful eyes on him are also far too trusting, prepared to take whatever knowledge Kaeya shares and spread it far and wide. It’s with this thought that he feels the beginnings of a smile tease at the edge of his lips, threatening to spill over into laughter if he leaves it unchecked.

“Well, why didn’t you just say so before, hm? Now, what might I know about Childe…”

“So,” Kaeya says, when the conversation lulls for more than a moment and Childe seems to run out of steam. “I had a few fans visit me the other day. They were all very interested in you.”

Childe groans, burying his face in his hands. It’s not enough to hide the sudden flush of his face, not when the bright red of his ears gives him away so easily. “How- why did they even ask you?”

“They figured I’d be the safer option.” Kaeya grins.

“You?” Childe peeks out from between his fingers, incredulous. “Your tongue is sharper than most Harbingers’, the only person worse than you is Dottore.”

“Which is why they did not ask him.” Kaeya says. “Besides, I have far less of a reputation for maiming my subordinates. They were curious, I gave them answers, and sent them on their merry way. Maybe you'll be seeing them at some point.”

“What, no. No I will not be seeing them, what do you mean? What did you tell them?”

Kaeya turns away, content to ignore Childe's frantic pleading. He's prepared for Childe grabbing his shoulders and manhandling him back around, spinning him in his chair so he's facing Childe again.

“What did you say to them?”

“Nothing harmful, relax. They assist Dottore with his dissections. If they ever make it out of this basement, it will be in pieces.”

“That is not reassuring, Pav. All of Dottore's assistants are crazy.”

“I'm one of Dottore's assistants,” Kaeya replies. “And you're plenty crazy yourself. I don't know anyone else our age that goes crazy at the idea of being allowed to run rampant through the countryside with nothing but a bow.”

“They're a different kind of crazy. They’ll open me up to see how I work,” Childe whines.

“Mm. I'm sure there’s lots of people looking to open you up.”

Silence settles, for just a moment.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Sorry.”

He adjusts the microscope again, fiddling with the fine adjustment in the hopes that it might bring the blurry image into focus. It refuses to bow to his will, the image fading in and out of focus until he's just left staring at a bright light and giving himself a headache.

“Pav!” He stiffens moments before impact, only jolting slightly when Childe drapes his entire body weight over Kaeya's shoulder.

He shakes Childe loose a moment later, flicking the power source off as he stands, kicking the stool beneath the desk with a little more force than necessary. Sue him, the stupid microscope won’t work, despite it being top of the line.

He turns then, finding Childe sprawled on the ground just in front of him, head tipped back and staring at the ceiling blankly. Kaeya kicks him in the side, grinning at the little oof Childe lets out and the way he curls around his new injury, like a dying bug.

“Get up.”

Childe groans at him.

“C’mon, up,” he repeats. “I know you're not hurt.”

“I could be dying.”

“I've slammed you into walls with more force than that. You're fine. Get up.”

“Ah, I fear my legs have begun to fail me,” Childe rasps, dramatic as always. Dottore chuckles at the back of the room, and Kaeya shoots him a glare for encouraging this behaviour. “If only…there was a friend of mine nearby that might help me back to my feet, alas…I fear this winter will be my last…”

Kaeya heaves him to his feet, brushing his shoulders off, flicking away a piece of lint that clings stubbornly to the fabric of Childe's shirt. “See, you're fine.”

“Ah, my saviour!” Childe leans into his front, grasping at his shoulders and pressing their faces close together. Kaeya watches him impassively. “Your kindness knows no bounds, truly, you are the most benevolent of-”

“What do you need?” Kaeya interrupts.

Childe pauses, looking down, before looking back up at Kaeya from beneath his lashes. “Come spar me?”

“We just fought a few days ago.” Kaeya sighs.

“I know! Please, Pav, come fight me. I think I'm gonna die otherwise, I'm so bored.”

“Ugh, fine. Just, give me a moment.”

He turns around, ignoring the way Childe crowds up behind him, leaning over his shoulder to watch as Kaeya packs his equipment away, slipping the cover over the microscope. The machine may be a piece of shit, but it’s an expensive piece of shit, and he doesn’t want to pay for it if a tiny speck of dust fucks it up even more.

He doesn’t get a moment longer than necessary, Childe grabbing his hand and dragging him from the office, ignoring any of Kaeya's protests. As one final attempt, he casts a pleading look in Dottore's direction, hoping that the man might speak up and invent some task to spare him from this.

Dottore just grins and waves a goodbye at him.

Traitor.

He freezes the ink in his pen this time. Never say that Kaeya can't learn new tricks, and Dottore has long become used to iced coffee.

“Hm.” The tea he holds is wonderfully fragrant, the delicate china of the teacup warm to the touch, even through his gloves. It chases the bitter sting of the cold away for a moment as he takes a sip, warm steam curling over his skin. It’s a momentary indulgence, allowing the rest of the world to float away for just a second.

This particular blend is imported from Fontaine, one of his favourites. He and Rosyalyne both enjoy the more floral notes of it, the crispness that lingers on the edge. It smells delightful too, an accidental discovery when he was abroad on business and decided to try one of the smaller cafés rather than the most popular.

“The two of them appear to be having fun, don't you think?” He asks.

Pulcinella chuckles at that, taking a sip of his unsweetened coffee before peering over the balcony railings once more. Where the shorter man has to practically clamber over to catch a glimpse of the pair below, Pantalone does nothing more than lean to the side, setting his teacup aside in favour of his smoking pipe.

There’s a brief burn in the back of his throat as he inhales, slowly exhaling, away from Pulcinella as the man is truly insufferable about the smell of tobacco.

Below, Pavlín runs after Childe, a steady barrage of icicles following at the lieutenant’s heels. Despite the imminent danger as Pavlín advances on his partner, Childe continues to cackle, dodging aside, even when Pavlín performs that handy little teleportation trick of his.

Dottore still hasn’t revealed how the boy does it, though there’s the hint of a secret in his denials, meaning he knows how it is done, he just refuses to share with Pantalone. It’s a mystery that he likes to consider when bored, turning it over in his mind absently, certain that he won’t find the key to the solution without some confession or slip-up from Dottore or Pavlín.

He’s found himself growing fond of the boy, though that was always a risk when he took him beneath his wing. He had been certain he would be able to remain detached and at a suitable distance, just out of arms’ reach, especially when he first met the scrawny, headstrong child that Dottore had picked up in Mondstadt.

He had kept his distance for the first few weeks, unwilling to face the child and know that there was a good chance he would be dead within the month if he failed to hold Dottore's interest. He may indulge his husband’s antics, but that doesn’t mean he's at all fond of them.

Still, the child had persisted, and flourished under his and Dottore's guidance. He is still snappish and sarcastic with those around him, but he has found his feet in Snezhnaya, and he is good for Childe, too.

Still, Pavlín remains a curiosity. He had caught glimpses of the boy in years before his move to Snezhnaya; lurking around the corners of economic conferences is good experience for future heirs, and most of them go unnoticed by the general populace. Not Pantalone. He liked to be aware of the next generation, perhaps to even coax a few of them into his service before they're fully of age. So the child that lurked around the Ragnvindr heir was something he had noticed immediately, though he was unable to ever speak to him, rebuffed by his fiercely protective older brother and father.

It only makes him question what could have driven the youngest Ragnvindr away from the Winery so permanently, and during such a tumultuous time, too. He had grown up with the silver spoon in his mouth, and yet he tossed all that privilege aside to escape his home and pledged himself to the Tsaritsa’s cause.

“I believe it may be time for Pavlín to begin joining Childe on field missions,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Pulcinella turns to look at him, though Pantalone keeps watching the pair below, blowing out another mouthful of smoke as he waits for Pulcinella to gather his wits and give him a verbal response rather than just staring dumbly at the side of his head. Honestly, some days he thinks old age might be catching up to the man with how he fails to respond properly or in a timely manner.

“Really?”

Below, Pavlín goes down with a thump, snow flying up around him as he yells out in frustration. Childe leaps onto him a moment later, their sparring devolving into some childish wrestling match that disturbs all the snow piled up around them. He sighs, and makes a mental note to order several more duplicates of Pavlín’s wardrobe.

“Yes.” He smiles, lips curling around the end of his pipe. “I think…it would be beneficial for future plans. Pavlín is good at keeping Childe in check, and Childe likes him. This partnership can extend beyond office work, and I think it would be in our best interests to ensure it does.

Pulcinella doesn’t get a chance to reply as Childe drives a blade into the ground beside Pavlín’s head, and he excuses himself to hurry down and defuse the fight.

Pantalone laughs at his retreating back. Childe is far too fond of Pavlín to consider killing him, even accidentally. Anyone with a pair of functioning eyes can see that.

Chapter Text

Kaeya has no-one but himself, his poor decisions, and his terrible luck to blame for his current predicament. Despite this, he’s still going to blame Childe anyway, because he seems to be at the root of all Kaeya's problems recently.

No matter who he blames, he's still out earlier than anyone should ever be awake, squinting against the harsh sunlight and wincing at each sharp order Childe barks at the recruits. At least someone seems to be enjoying himself, though that enjoyment seems to be coming at the expense of his – their – recruits.

He's not even sure how Childe managed to find his personal rooms – isn’t sure that he wants to know – only that it resulted in him being pulled out of bed and shoved towards his wardrobe with an order to be dressed and ready in ten. Still sleep-addled, he had done as ordered up until the point where he was plaiting his hair and wondering what the hell was happening. And by then it was too late.

The only good thing about being up this early is the chill of the morning air. It’s pleasant before the sun rises and dispels most of the cold, and the extra surge of energy it gives him is the only thing keeping him standing and conscious.

Childe takes a break from yelling orders to side-eye Kaeya.

“Aren't you cold?” He asks. Bold question from someone that looks like a walking laundry closet. Kaeya snorts at him and the way he's rocking back and forth on his heels, stomping his feet to stop numbness from setting in.  How he’s managing to be cold underneath a dozen layers, he won’t understand. “It’s freezing out here, like, genuinely below zero temperatures.”

“Mm, really? I hadn’t noticed.” Kaeya smiles. “Tell me, did you dress yourself this morning or was it grandpapa Pulcinella? Did he remind you to put your mittens on and wrap your scarf snugly around your neck before sending you out here?”

Childe snorts derisively, but Kaeya manages to see his cheeks go red before he's tucking his nose down, burying his face inside his scarf and swaddling himself further within his furs. “You don't know what you're talking about,” he muffles.

“Uh-huh,” he grins, leaning a little closer to Childe. “Did he knit you that scarf himself?” He tugs at the fabric, pulling Childe closer to him. The red fabric is soft, and he stops to rub at it consideringly, pinched between his forefinger and thumb, before slowly looking up at Childe and his steadily reddening face. “It’s certainly nice enough to be handmade.”

“My Mama made it,” Childe says, and yanks the end of the scarf from Kaeya's grasp. “But I’ll be sure to pass your compliments along.”

“You talk about me in your letters?” Kaeya teases.

“No.” Childe says hotly, and refuses to speak with him for the next half hour, focusing way too hard on the new batch of recruits they’ve been assigned. Kaeya had watched the first five minutes, writing most of them off as unskilled and sloppy, or just downright lazy before turning his attention to needling at Childe. A far more entertaining endeavour.

Childe only trains incoming recruits; he takes them in, gets them to a certain standard that everyone finds mostly acceptable and then ships them off to whatever Harbinger he thinks will benefits most from their skillset. Then, rinse and repeat, over and over and over again. Kaeya can see the logic behind it – many of the new recruits join specifically because of Childe's propaganda campaign, so having him as the face of their first few months in the Fatui makes sense. Unfortunately for Kaeya, this job is now also partially his.

“So,” Kaeya breaks the silence. Childe may like to chatter, but he can also hold a grudge like no other. His cold shoulders are persistent and chilly, even by Kaeya's standards. “Anything specific you want me to do, or should I just stand here and look intimidating?”

Two recruits trip over each other, both bristling like street cats looking for a fight. Activity around the pair slows, several of the new recruits glancing nervously towards where he and Childe stand. Kaeya raises an eyebrow, giving them all an unimpressed look and watching as they scatter back into their previous formation, purposefully looking away from him.

“You use a catalyst, don't you?” Childe asks.

“In a way,” Kaeya fingers at his conduit, considering it. It could be called a catalyst, but that’s a rather lacklustre description for something so incredible and complex. It’s one of a kind – first of its kind and he doubts any of the recruits would be able to utilise it, not without his…specific skillset. “Why?”

“I was going to suggest you look for anyone that may be more suited to catalyst work. Normally I just pick the ones that look too weak to be a gunner, but, well, you could probably be a gunner if you wanted to,” Kaeya preens a little under the appreciative attention Childe sends his way, even if the compliment is slightly backhanded. “And you're probably a better judge than I am. I shoot things, you have to think about the things you want to shoot someone with.”

Kaeya hums. “Eloquent as ever.”

“Not all of us can have a private tutor, Pavlín.”

“Hm. Those two,” Kaeya points, redirecting Childe's attention.

“What about them?”

“They’d be good catalyst wielders. See, watch, they're good at predicting their opponents next move, they're practically at a standstill with one another most of the time; they each know the next move of their opponent, and they don't dare to break the stalemate for fear of defeat. Long-range casting would allow them to play into this strength while also allowing them to hang at the back, away from the main action and therefore providing adequate support for the rest of their team.”

He turns back to Childe, only to find him staring at him, no longer watching the recruits.

“What?” Kaeya snaps, feeling his face grow warm under the sudden attention.

“Nothing,” Childe looks away, face flushing. “Just realised that you might be better at this than I thought you'd be. Man, and I was pissed when Pulcinella told me…about this…yesterday…”

“Don't look so scared, I was equally unhappy when Pantalone delivered the news of our- extended collaboration yesterday. It’s just lucky that we seem to be such a good team already.”

“Yeah,” Childe laughs. “A good team. Good team. Right, well, why don't you go talk to those two? Maybe find a few more and give them a short demo with your, uh, conduit. Most of them have never seen a catalyst before.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“I’ll be finding gunners. And melee fighters. Y’know, my speciality?”

“Huh,” Kaeya says. “You know, I could have sworn your speciality was wrestling in the dirt, but colour me surprised.”

“Ass,” Childe shoves Kaeya's shoulder, and walks off before Kaeya can shove him back, weaving between his new recruits, complimenting and correcting them in equal measures. He’s practically swallowed up by the crowd, several of them immediately turning their attention from their opponent onto the lieutenant in favour of flocking to his side.

Kaeya watches him for a moment – how he responds to it all with an easy smile, affable and unflappable; the perfect soldier, face of the Fatui – before turning away to find his own recruits.

Lucky them to get such close attention from a Harbinger’s apprentice, and on their first day no less.

Kaeya heaves another sigh and resists the urge to grind his hand into his eye. When he takes another peek at the document, the complex, unsorted numbers continue to stare back at him, taunting him from the page. How Pantalone does this every day for hours on end, Kaeya will never know.

“You know,” Pantalone says, voice soft, “as much as I like spending time with you, the sheer volume of time you've been spending here recently has become…concerning.”

“Mm.”

“Is there a reason you're choosing to spend so much of your time in my office, dear? I know you loathe tax forms, so to spend so much time here while I'm doing the annual taxes, it doesn’t make much sense.”

“It’s quieter here,” Kaeya grimaces. He sets his pen down, the small click of its casing against the desk loud in the silence that follows. He cringes at his own honesty, looking down at the stupid tax form and cursing out the inability of anyone to file them correctly.

“Quieter.” Pantalone repeats. “I wasn’t aware the private lab was particularly loud. Even if the main lab were to blow up, Dot’s soundproofing is good enough that you can't hear anything. Nothing gets in, or out.”

When he manages to look up, Pantalone is watching him, his own work set aside in favour of watching Kaeya. He keeps still, fingers neatly laced together.

“It’s not normally,” Kaeya sighs. He curls his hands into fists, tensing up completely before relaxing everything at once. When he looks back up, Pantalone is watching him more carefully, worry clear in his eyes. It’s enough to make Kaeya feel guilty. “Just recently.”

“Thus why you've been spending the majority of your time in my office rather than in the lab,” Pantalone concludes. “Hm. But then, why hasn’t Dottore come to retrieve you? This is far more time than we first agreed on with the contract. Oh, don't look at me like that, dear, I am more than happy to have you with me, I am only…confused. If Dottore's experimentation is becoming so…disturbing surely he would want you there to lend a hand, or even participate?”

“Oh, uh, it’s not Dottore that’s making all the noise. And distraction.”

Pantalone frowns. “Then who else is it? The majority of his segments are fond of you too, and they understand the sanctity of a quiet lab, so it cannot be any of them. As far as I'm aware, there's no-one else that is permitted entry to Dottore's lab, at least, not on a regular enough occurrence to cause such a prolonged disturbance.” He pauses. “It’s not Childe, is it? I thought the two of you had been getting along rather splendidly.”

“It’s not him…not directly, at least.” Kaeya confesses, unable to help himself. He’s been close to tearing his hair out for the past few weeks, and it has only gotten worse recently. He’d had to lock away all his materials and projects for fear of them being meddled with or destroyed or stolen. “He has quite a few fans. A lot of which have come to visit the lab recently.”

“Some…fans.”

“Yeah.” Kaeya huffs. “They're all obsessed with him. They know we work together, so now they're all coming to me for information on him rather than bothering Childe.”

“Yes,” Pantalone presses his mouth to his hands, staring off into the middle distance. “I had worried there would be consequences for that particular piece of propaganda at some point. Though for it to be affecting you so severely…do you know if Childe is experiencing a similar harassment?”

“No. Everyone’s well aware of his tendencies, so they steer clear in case he asks them to fight and come right to me instead. Never mind that I could just as easily kill them if I wanted to. I just have better self-control than that idiot.”

“Perhaps you should work a little more on your reputation.” Pantalone says. “Obviously, it’s not much of a short-term solution, but most research assistants know to keep clear of you now, don't they?”

“I guess.”

“Well, there’s your answer.” Pantalone perks up. “We just need a similarly fearsome reputation for you…” he trails off into muttering, brows furrowing in thought as it quickly becomes indecipherable, and Kaeya is left sitting and staring at him like an idiot. “Ah,” Pantalone pauses, “But as I said, that would be a long-term solution, not a short-term one. And, no offence to you, but I really cannot focus on these forms with you sighing over every other equation in the corner.”

“I’ll sigh quieter,” Kaeya offers.

“Nonsense,” Pantalone tuts. “You deserve to be able to work at your own desk rather than being relegated to a corner of mine. Honestly, it’s shameful that this behaviour has been allowed to continue for as long as it has.” Pantalone pauses, then stands, rounding the desk. “Tell me, Pavlín,” he lays a gentle hand over Kaeya's shoulder, kneeling beside him so they're at eye-level, “has Dottore been here during these instances of harassment?”

“Sometimes.” Kaeya shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter,” Pantalone scoffs. “Yes, dear, it matters. When you are in the lab it is his responsibility to keep you comfortable, for him to allow this to go on for so long is just unacceptable. Honestly, why didn’t you tell me earlier? We could have sorted this out ages ago.”

Kaeya feels himself flush. “I didn’t want to bother you with it.”

“Oh, dear,” Pantalone coos at him, something that simultaneously makes Kaeya feel warm inside but also like he needs to hide in the darkest corner of the room and never come back out. “I am here to be bothered. Dot is terrible with emotional matters, trust me. Never go to him with anything, but you can come to me with everything. My door is always open to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Good,” Pantalone squeezes his shoulder. Kaeya allows himself a small moment of weakness as he leans into the contact and allows himself to be comforted. “Now, come on. I have a Doctor to yell at, and I do think you will quite like the show, hm?” He's walking away before Kaeya can think of any response, cloak billowing out dramatically behind him.

“Wait, that really isn’t necessary,” Kaeya hurries, Pantalone’s words percolating through his mind with an urgency that has him standing suddenly, his chair scraping back across the flooring and making a horrific noise as it does so.

Pantalone shows no sign of having heard him, and he’s too far away for Kaeya to continue yelling after him, heavy door beginning to swing shut in his wake, leaving Kaeya in the dust.

He blinks, stumbling as he reappears in front of Pantalone. Pantalone makes a surprised little noise when he appears, but does nothing other than catch him by the elbow and steer him onwards, towards the basement.

“Really, ‘Lone, this isn’t necessary,” Kaeya repeats. “It’s, like, we’re both equally mean to each other. It’s the way we interact most of the time. He laughs at my misfortune and I freeze everything around him. It’s really not that serious. I just need to start scaring the recruits off.”

“And you will still be doing that,” Pantalone replies. “I just need to have a word with Dottore.”

Despite Kaeya's further reassurances and pleas, they all fall on deaf ears as Pantalone continues on his warpath, Kaeya trailing, embarrassed in his wake. His arm is still caught in Pantalone's grip, and he can’t bear to break himself loose, relegating himself to hanging back and looking like some helpless child clinging to the trouserleg of a parent while Pantalone yells at Dottore.

He hangs his head, partially in shame, partially to allow his hair to hang loose around his face and hopefully hiding most of his shame from their curious onlookers. He’s beginning to see why people say he's being co-parented by the two Harbingers. Unfortunately.

Kaeya plants his feet and braces himself as Childe comes flying at him, meeting the blades head-on. He holds steady, even as his arms begin to tremble, shaking as Childe continues pushing and pressing forward, leaning down onto Kaeya, looming far enough over him that he's beginning to block the sunlight.

“Distracted?” Childe teases, pushing harder. Hard enough that his arms are beginning to shake too. Kaeya's arms are beginning to go a little numb, but he grits his teeth and refuses to back down – not yet. Childe hums, a satisfied little noise in the back of his throat. So certain of his victory, writing Kaeya off this late into the fight. “Something catch your eye? Can’t say I blame you, but-”

Childe cuts himself off with a yelp, embarrassingly high-pitched, as Kaeya blinks away. He spins, ice aiding the turn as he whips back towards Childe, watching as he stumbles forward with the sudden loss of resistance, almost face-planting into the snow as he struggles to rebalance himself.

And he would have succeeded at regaining his feet, if Kaeya hadn’t kicked him right in the back, shoving him down into the snow and keeping him there, foot digging in deep enough that he feels the sharp vertebrae of Childe's spine pressing through the sole of his boot. He digs his heel even further into the small of Childe's back, just to watch him squirm.

The cheers from the sidelines have faded, recruits losing hope in their lieutenant as Kaeya seems to emerge victorious. Kaeya doesn’t relent yet, though, far too used to Childe's tricks and wary of anything he may try to pull before finally conceding defeat.

And he was right to remain wary as Childe flips over a second later, blades abandoned and dissolving into the snow in favour of latching onto Kaeya's ankle. His fingers dig in around the prominent bone, digging through the leather in an attempt to jab right into the sensitive tissues directly surrounding it. His leather is a meagre protection against the sharpness of Childe's bony little fingers, and his traitorous leg buckles beneath him not a moment later.

He catches himself with his conduit, driving it into the ground just above Childe's ear. He drops to his knees rather than all the way to the ground, as Childe likely hoped he would. He leans forward, knee shifting so its resting against Childe's sternum, before slowly pressing down.

Childe whimpers and squirms a little more, still clawing at whatever part of Kaeya he can reach. The slowly rising volume of the crowd drops again, uncertainty weaving its way through their ranks.

Childe remains immobile, pinned beneath Kaeya's weight. He presses his knee a little deeper, all too aware of how slippery Childe can be when he wants. It’s definitely going to bruise, but Kaeya is also prepared to placate and ignore him when he comes into the lab whining later.

“Aw,” he croons, leaning closer to Childe's irritated face. Though not too close – he bites, when cornered. “Did that not quite work out as you had it planned?”

“I have you right where I want you,” Childe hisses back, ever contrary. His eyes betray his hopelessness as they dart around and search for some weakness in Kaeya's offence; a weakness he won’t find. Kaeya smirks down at him, high off the feeling of an almost-certain victory – the first of his victories against Childe.

His losing streak, a mile-wide and a mile long to boot, has become something of a sore spot. He could easily overpower anyone else in a match of strength. And yet Childe remains an anomaly even here, meeting him blow for blow and finding his way behind defences Kaeya had been certain were airtight.

He jerks back at the sudden feeling of hands on his waist, instinctually drawing himself in, loosening his grip on his staff just enough to give Childe the leeway to flip the pair of them over. Childe leans forward, hands shifting until they're gripping at his shoulders, pushing him further into the snow. He feels the back of his head grow damp with melted snow

Childe breathes heavily above him, panting breaths that ghost over Kaeya's face. Kaeya stares up at him, and Childe stares right back, the sound of their cheering spectators – all so certain that yet enough victory has been safely tucked beneath their favourite lieutenant’s belt – fading into the background.

He watches the way Childe's pulse thrums in his throat, thumping under the paper-thin skin. Kaeya's so close he can hear the way Childe's heart beats in his chest, unnaturally loud.

Childe is bolstered by the cheers of his adoring fans, eyes alight with the flame of victory. He's so incredibly certain that this is another of Kaeya's losses despite him not yet tapping out. That certainty transforms into spite in Kaeya, solidifying into a resolve strong enough to drive his next action.

He blinks again, slipping out from beneath Childe, snatching his staff from where he left it. He whirls, bringing it up to block the stab that Childe aims towards him. He deflects it easily, not even wincing at the scrape of hydro against wood, twisting the staff until his grip is more secure and his need for a little flashy showmanship has been satisfied.

Childe attempts to charge forward, though Kaeya diverts that with a volley of icicles. He watches, grinning as Childe hops backwards, each step driven by the perfect placement. Herded right where Kaeya wants him, pushed into a corner like cattle to slaughter. Childe is too focused on the endless barrage to notice, too worried that one of those icicles is about to spear him through the foot.

Something in the back of Kaeya's mind howls in excitement, though the sound of it is quickly drowned out by the rushing of blood in his head as he charges forward.

He blinks, and he is behind Childe.

He hefts his staff, ignoring the lone shout of warning from the crowd as he strikes right into the side of Childe's knee. Something cracks, and he watches as the lieutenant crumples, easy as paper. He goes down hard, though not without a fight, twisting with a blade already half-formed in his hand as he attempts to drive it into Kaeya's thigh.

Kaeya grabs his wrist, forcing it above his head, dropping to the ground with Childe as he pins him in place. He squeezes as Childe's wrist, feels the bones shifting beneath his grip, and fixes his eye on Childe's face; waits, until that hydro blade dissolves and slips through his fingers. Harmless.

Childe is limp beneath him. Kaeya's knees press in on either side of his hips, preventing him from his usual tactic of flopping about like a dead fish until he manages to wriggle his way to freedom.

He leans in close, foreheads almost pressed together as he smirks down at Childe. A flick of his wrist summons a short shard of ice to his palm, and he doesn’t hesitate to press the sharpened edge against Childe's throat.

He watches again as that pulse thumps in Childe's throat. He can almost imagine the feeling of it beneath his own palm, rabbit-fast in its panic.

“And now,” he breathes, tapping that shard against Childe's throat, watching as his pupils dilate, “I have you right where I want you, dear.” He speaks quiet enough that their audience has no chance of overhearing. Only the most eagle-eyed of recruits will notice him speaking at all, his head angled away and hair casting a curtain over half his face. This boasting is between him and Childe, a personal victory rather than one to be declared to the masses.

There’s something deep and dark in the empty pits of Childe's eyes; something indecipherable that Kaeya doesn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. He doesn’t know what goes on inside of Childe's head on a good day, and he remains content to never know what goes on in there, ever.

“Well?” He asks, annoyance bleeding in at the continued silence that hangs heavy between them. He watches Childe, waiting for the faintest twitch that might betray a little fight left in his opponent. “Aren't you going to say anything?”

“I,” Childe's voice fails him, coming out as a breathy gasp, strangely breathless as he continues to stare at Kaeya. “I yield.”

Those words drain the last bit of fight from Childe's body, and he slumps into the snow, completely boneless, once they’ve been uttered.

“See,” he comforts, “that wasn’t so terrible, was it?” He smooths a hand over Childe's hair, pushing it back from where it was falling over his face, clumping together with frost and sweat. Childe makes a small, indecipherable noise at the action, squeezing his eyes shut. In frustration, most likely, the reality of his recent loss probably just beginning to set in.

Kaeya slips off him, offering a hand to help Childe back to his feet. He heaves Childe up once it’s accepted, steadying him when he seems ready to continue careening forward and straight into Kaeya.

“I look forward to beating you a few more times,” he promises.

“Hah!” That’s enough to break Childe out of whatever weird reverie he’d fallen into, eyes glimmering with some of their usual mirth. His grin is sharp, something that promises revenge, quick and sweet and painful when they're next on the training field together. Kaeya grins right back, shark-like and fierce. “I look forward to your attempts, Pavlín. If nothing else, they’ll be entertaining.”

“Attempts?” Kaeya laughs right back. “You speak as though I'm going to let you taste victory ever again!”

“Ow, ow, ow!” Childe whines, flinching back and attempting to escape from Kaeya.

Kaeya ignores his protests and drags him right back, grip on his thigh firm, even as Childe squirms.

“If you'd come to me earlier I would have been able to treat this before the swelling got this bad,” Kaeya grits out, clenching his jaw harder when Childe continues to squirm, refusing to sit still for even a moment. “Childe!” he barks, and then immediately feels bad when Childe ceases all movement entirely, blinking up at him with wide eyes. “Don't give me that, if you wanted gentle treatment you could go to the infirmary.”

“They don't like me there,” Childe pouts. He still flinches when Kaeya presses his super-cooled hands back to his knee, but doesn’t try to squirm away again. Thank god.

“Mm. I wonder why. Could it be the hundreds of soldiers you used to put in their care every week?”

“That’s not fair,” Childe whines. “If you're going to play nurse you should at least be nice.”

“Oh, I'm playing nurse now, am I?” Kaeya grins up at him, tucking himself a little further between Childe's knees, blinking up at him from below his eyelashes just to watch his face flush. “Well, dear, if you told me all it needed was a little roleplay to keep you still earlier then I would have indulged.”

“Can you not,” Dottore asks, exasperated.

“You could have treated him, doc,” Kaeya rebuts. “But no, I need to learn how to use cryo for healing. There’s a willing patient,” he mimics Dottore, poorly, just to watch the man bristle, “why don't you give it a go on him?”

“If I’d known your bedside manner was worse than his,” Childe hisses, “I’d have never agreed.”

“Aw,” Kaeya turns back to him, ignoring Dottore and the scoff thrown at his back. “Did you think I’d be nice to you?”

“Yes.” Childe grits out.

“Shame.” Kaeya says. “So, is the knee numb yet?”

“Yes,” Childe sighs. “Can I go now?”

“Just a moment,” Kaeya says. Then pauses. “Hm. Maybe brace yourself.”

“Brace myself?” Childe begins to squirm again. “Brace myself for wh-at!” Kaeya doesn’t wait for him to finish talking before sharply twisting and popping his kneecap back into place, immediately pressing an iced hand back to the site of injury as Childe falls limp.

“There,” Kaeya grins. “All fixed now.”

“You ass,” Childe wheezes. “Last time I come to you for treatment.”

“He’s becoming your only option, brat,” Dottore says. “I only treat you in life-or-death situations, and the infirmary is beginning to reject you more and more frequently.”

“I- what?” Childe looks hopelessly at Kaeya, as though he's going to do something to change Dottore or the infirmary’s minds. He shrugs instead, in a what-can-you-do-about-it way.

“You're not going to want to walk on that for a few days,” Kaeya rattles off, silently thanking Ekaterina and her tome of a medical textbook in the back of his mind. “Elevate it if possible and keep from strenuous activity for several months.”

“Several weeks,” Dottore interjects. “Childe tends to heal faster than a typical civilian.”

“All right,” Kaeya accepts. “No strenuous activity for the next few weeks. Doctor’s orders.”

“I hate you.”

“I’ll give you my rolling chair,” Kaeya offers. “I’ll even push you around on it while you're in here.”

Childe squints at him, suspicious. “I hate you a little less.” He decides.

“I really don't care either way.”

The chill of the window is cold against his forehead. It’s half-misted over with condensation and the rest of it is covered with a thin film of frost, clinging to the panes and blurring the outside into faint obscurity. It makes the snowfall blend together into one large mass, a constant sheet of movement that only the occasional figure manages to cut through.

Hardly anyone is out on the grounds. Even if it weren’t so late – the arms of the clock tick towards early morning, long past any sensible time to be awake – the weather has kept everyone inside the Palace for the last week. Everything locked up; shut away. The worst of winter doesn’t seem to hit Snezhnaya until much, much later in the year than it does the rest of the world. Winter in Mondstadt was…pleasant. Idyllic. It was the kind of snowfall that you would see on postcards and small, traveller’s mementos; the kind that were taken home to a family, hung on a wall or propped up on a shelf. Maybe framed.

Snow was not a persisting issue. A thin dusting every morning, perhaps just enough to roll a singular snowball on the way to classes. Outside the city bounds, it would get a little deeper, but nothing that would last longer than a week. Those halcyon days pale in comparison to Snezhnaya’s winters. Six, seven months long, stretching far into the future with no end in sight.

He’d enjoyed it at first. The cold was a comfort, a blanket laid over his shoulders. A relief. It had brought him alive. Left him with power thrumming in his veins and a lightness in his heart. He’d never felt anything like it before – doubts he’ll ever feel anything like it again.

And then the winter had dragged on; dark, long nights and short days that offered little sunlight. Frequent blizzards, harsh enough that the doors had to be blockaded, and training was confined to small classrooms. Theoretical rather than practical. Childe had gone stir-crazy first; no surprises there. Kaeya hadn’t been far behind.

And now, he sits and stares out. Watches the wildlife take over the grounds, reclaim what was once theirs, conquered by human hands, and now returned to them with the intervention of Mother Nature.

No matter what Childe says, he is not brooding. To brood would mean to think of something upsetting or aggravating. Something which brings him to turmoil, rather than just a…rushing sort of emptiness. A nothingness he hadn’t noticed before. A gap in his chest, of some kind. A hole he hadn’t noticed before – perhaps it has been there his whole life. Or perhaps it simply eroded over time, slowly ate its way through; a rot that claimed him from the inside out, roots settled so deep that once noticed it was too late to cut it free.

There’s little to do while trapped inside like this. Nothing to do but turn thoughts over in his mind, watching out the window, chasing that frost-chill without stepping out into the cold.

He sinks a little lower in his seat. The window pushes a little more firmly at his head as he leans into it. The chill of it reaches out, brushes over the skin of his face, gentle, harsh fingers on skin untouched for so long. The sensation of something other than silk is almost startling enough to have him jerking back from the window.

He doesn’t. Mainly because he might actually be brooding; too melancholic to care too much about anything. He’s not one to overthink; a little introspection never caused any harm, but to examine oneself too closely and too frequently cannot be good for the mind. He’s content to leave the philosophers to it.

Below, movement catches his eye. A shadow cutting through the snow. Just for a moment, it is too tall, too long, to be any kind of wildlife. Its gait is familiar, as it staggers through the snow, leaning heavily to one side. And then the image resolves, condenses as the snow swirls close around it, threatens to swallow it whole.

And yet, the small thing persists. It tunnels through the snow, hardly noticeable.

Kaeya watches it anyway, tracks it with his eye as it zig-zags over the snow. It keeps low to the ground, slinking like a snake across the snow. The creature itself is invisible against the snow. Only its shadow gives it away, small enough for anyone else to miss it entirely. Kaeya loses it a few times himself, searching again until he spots that small shadow once more.

A knock at his door draws his focus away, and when he looks back, no matter how hard he focuses, he cannot find the creature again. He sighs, watches as it mists over the last little bit of his window. He can hardly see his own reflection in it now, nothing but a distorted mess that twists him into something he is not.

He turns away when the knock comes again, impatient and nearly rattling his door in the frame. He smiles to himself, a little wry twist of the lips, because there's no-one else that could be at his door.

“Hey!” Childe calls through, too loud for the late hour and the sleeping residents all around – though, Kaeya isn’t sure if anyone else actually lives in this wing of the Palace – but so inherently Childe that Kaeya doesn’t really care about it. “I know you're awake in there!”

He opens the door. “And what if I was actually asleep?” He asks, hip leaning against the doorframe and arms folded across his chest.

“Um.” Childe says. There’s a tray in his hands, and a thick dressing gown pulled tight around his waist. Kaeya raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t actually, were you?” His eyes flick down, taking in Kaeya's loose sleep clothes. “Do you sleep with your hair tied back?”

“Yes.” He stands aside. “Come in.”

“Hah!” Childe crows, all too-loud confidence again. “I knew you weren’t asleep.”

“Uh-huh,” Kaeya shuts the door behind him, turning to find Childe already setting the tray – complete with a pot of something hot and two mugs – down on the small coffee table. “And how’d you know that, hm?”

“I just knew.” Childe grins back at him. “I know a lot of things.”

“I'm sure you do, dear.”

The Palace at night is an entirely different beast to the Palace during daytime. During waking hours, Kaeya can hardly move through some of the busier corridors without elbowing a few recruits, and maybe even a few higher-ups who he should definitely not be elbowing. Now, it’s like a ghost town. Which makes sense, as it’s very close to two a.m. But that’s besides the point.

Kaeya curses whoever decided to not light candles at night when he trips over yet another step, stumbling and almost falling up the stairs. He’s not sure how anyone is meant to walk around in these conditions. Anyone else would break their neck if they decided to brave these disgustingly steep and narrow stairs during the day, let alone at night in the pitch black.

Harbingers all sleep on the top floor? Makes sense, sure. High up and away from most potential assassins. Harbingers all sleeping in one corridor like some fucked-up university flat? Makes much less sense, but sure. He’s not one to question an architect’s designs; they're all far too sleep deprived and stressed to ever react well to questioning. Having the Harbingers traipse up and down this stupidly narrow staircase every day? Absolutely not – Kaeya's walking with his arms pressed into his sides, and he’s seen the size of the Balladeer’s stupid fucking hat. There’s no way he's making it up or down these stairs with any of his dignity intact.

It’s also way too long. Like, legs are burning as though they might fall off any second, long.

All of this fucking effort just to ask Dottore a question. He should have just gone to bed and waited until morning, curiosity be damned. But if he’d done that, he’d have lain awake for half the night and then forgotten the question by morning. He’s also committed way too much time and effort to this now, and he’s no quitter. He’ll see this through to the end, even if he falls down the stairs and breaks his neck on the way back.

After a short eternity, he emerges into a much wider hallway. You could fit, like, three Balladeer’s abreast in here. Very luxurious.

Maybe he should have just asked one of the segments rather than trekking up here – he doesn’t even know which door belongs to Dottore. (They unfortunately do not come with handy name plaques.) The segments are up at all hours of the day, always at least one of them lurking around somewhere. Kaeya also doesn’t trust any of those bastards, despite how Pantalone insists that all of them are fond of him.

There’s too many stories of their trickery circulating through the Palace for Kaeya to trust a single word out of any of their mouths. Even Dottore gets in on their trickery sometimes, and had once lent his mask to one of the segments so it could pose as him while he went off gallivanting around the Inazuman countryside for a month and a half. Pantalone hadn’t been pleased about that one.

“Pavlín?” Kaeya jumps at the sudden noise, skittering back several steps, heart going a mile a minute as he reaches out for the conduit he left behind in the lab. “What are you doing here?”

It takes another moment for Kaeya to recognise Childe, hand pressed against one of the doors, still lingering close to the frame as though he’s going to run back inside and hide. He looks confused – as confused as Kaeya feels right now – half of his face bathed in moonlight and the other half in shadows, creating a weird half-and-half effect that only disorients Kaeya further.

Kaeya squints right back at him, aghast. “What are you wearing?”

Childe frowns. “What's wrong with what I'm wearing?”

“You look like you got mauled.” Kaeya pauses. “Where are your crutches?”

Childe looks guilty then. “That doesn’t matter,” he brushes Kaeya's concern off. “The more important question is what are you wearing? I've never seen you look any less than…perfectly put together.”

“I was working.” Kaeya crosses his arms over his chest, feeling suddenly self-conscious of how little he’s wearing. The sleeveless top and black work trousers had seen like a suitable combo when he first put it on, but in the face of Childe's judgement it suddenly feels lacking. “Pantalone got sick of me ruining my nicer clothes with motor oil and chemical stains.”

“And you chose that?”

“And you chose that?” Kaeya parrots, looking Childe's own outfit up and down again.

“I sleep in this. Though I can’t say the same for you – do you really go out looking like that?”

“Harsh. I'm only ever in the lab dressed like this.”

“Not when I'm around.”

“I don't do dangerous experiments when you're around.” Kaeya shakes his head, sighing. “That’s not the point. What are you doing here?”

“No, what are you doing here? I asked first.”

“And I don't care. What, were you having a little hot milk before bed with dear old ‘Nella?” He teases, only to go quiet as Childe looks away, hiding more of himself in the shadows. “No way,” Kaeya laughs. “I was only teasing, you know. If you want to start getting away with things you need a better poker face than that.”

“He just likes to check up on me,” Childe protests, far too loud for how late – early? – it is. He scuffs a foot against the stone flooring. “And it wasn’t hot milk. It was hot chocolate.”

“Good. I don't trust people that drink straight milk.”

“Weird hill to die on but sure.” Childe shakes his head. “And you still haven’t answered me: what are you doing here?” Childe plants his hands on his hips, going from sheepish and embarrassed to holier-than-thou and disappointed in Kaeya. He gives him another short once-over. “Ugh, are you still working? It’s, like, one in the morning.”

“Two, actually.”

“Shit, really?” Childe stretches to look out the window, as though the position of the moon will tell him what time it is. Maybe it will, he’s enough of a freak to memorise every survivalist book out there. “Aw, man, I’ve got early training tomorrow morning.”

“I'm aware. I also have to be at that early training tomorrow.” Doubly so because Childe still isn’t meant to be doing any strenuous activity, which includes walking for long periods without his crutches. “Since you insisted that I had to participate.”

“And isn’t it just so much more fun?” Childe steps closer to him, like he really, genuinely believes that anyone likes to get up at the crack of dawn just to run around a snowy field. “It’s always nice to do things with other people.”

“From what I heard, you maimed most of your previous partners. Or should I say attempted partners?”

“That is neither here nor there.” Childe claps his hands together. “What is here and there is what could have possibly brought you up all those stairs this late at night. Ooh, do you have a weapons design for the Doctor? Can I see?”

Kaeya leans back, away from the sudden enthusiasm. “I had a question.”

“A question.” Childe deadpans, deflating a little. “Seriously? Why’d you climb all those stairs for a question?”

“Because I needed an answer.” Kaeya frowns. “Now tell me which room is Dottore's because I want to go to bed soon.”

“The one at the very end of the corridor,” Childe points. He waits until Kaeya starts walking in that direction before he pipes up again. “He won’t be in there, though.”

Kaeya sighs. “And which one is Pantalone's room?”

“Oh, so you figured it out?”

“Yes.” Kaeya pauses. “How do you know?”

“All right, I'm going to pretend you don't sound quite as surprised as you do. And I know because it’s an open secret among the Harbingers. Is it even a secret when half of them attended the wedding?”

“They eloped.”

“Vow renewal. Whatever,” Childe waves him off.

Both of them jump at the sound of a door slamming open, bouncing off the wall with how fast it swings. Light spills forth from the open doorway, silhouetting the figure that stands there, glowering at both of them. Kaeya almost doesn’t recognise the Balladeer without his signature hat, sleep-ruffled hair flopping over his eyes.

“Must you be so loud,” he grouses. “Honestly,” he continues, “you’d think I was living with animals- oh.” The Balladeer pauses as his eyes land on Kaeya and Childe. “It’s you two.” Kaeya is far too preoccupied with the fact that the Balladeer is wearing hot pink pyjamas to take offence.

Another door opens further down the corridor, a much friendlier face poking out. He feels Childe stiffen beside him, a small squeak slipping from his throat as Signora peers into the corridor, lone eye squinting as she casts about in the darkness.

The Balladeer smirks at them and shuts his door, leaving them to Signora’s tender mercies. Hah, jokes on that bastard, Signora actually likes him.

“Ah, Pavlín,” Signora greets, smiling. “Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing, Lady Signora.” Kaeya smiles back.

“Well, run along then. You won’t want to be disturbing Dottore tonight,” Signora grimaces at the door next to hers – Pantalone's, if Kaeya were to make a guess. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

“Of course.” Kaeya keeps smiling until her door shuts again, leaving the two of them in darkness.

“Why, for the love of god, are you on speaking terms with Signora?” Childe hisses.

“I told you,” Kaeya says, feeling very smug. “She invited me for gossip. Not my problem if you didn’t believe me. Now come on, I don't want to hear whatever it is that Dottore is busy with.”

He snags Childe's arm and begins pulling him towards the stairs, only sighing and readjusting his hold so Childe can lean on him when he feels how much the idiot is limping. Childe follows behind, still gaping at the back of Kaeya's head.

Childe trips down the first few steps, and Kaeya is beginning to consider just blinking the pair of them to the bottom and praying Childe doesn’t throw up on him when the idiot pipes up again.

“Was the Balladeer wearing pink pyjamas?”

“You're joking.”

“I can assure you, dear boy, we are not,” Pulcinella says. Kaeya couldn’t care less what the old man has to say for himself, glaring right at Dottore and his smug little smile and stupid mask. He doesn’t say anything, even as Kaeya continues to glower in his direction. Pulcinella, at least, has the good sense to look a little fearful, shifting back and forth nervously.

“If you are to continue working with Childe, you should have a title befitting that,” Dottore says. “I would have thought it would make you happy to escape from the lab every once in a while.”

“All of my work is in the lab.”

“Not anymore,” Dottore grins. “Some of your work is now outside, where all the people are.”

Kaeya changes tacks. “What does Childe think of this?”

The awkward silence that follows after is answer enough: they haven’t told him yet. Haven’t even floated the idea in his direction; if they had, Kaeya would have had Childe yapping in his ear about it not twenty minutes later.

Kaeya casts his eye skywards, though all that greets him is a grey concrete ceiling, and prays for patience. He doubts there’s any deity or minor god willing to listen to the plight of a being like him, but it’s the motion that counts. It also gives him just enough time to try and recentre himself so he doesn’t throttle the two Harbingers in front of him. That would be a very quick route to an execution if he managed to succeed.

“You want me to be a…co-lieutenant to Childe, and you haven’t even mentioned it to him? When were you planning to tell him?”

“Ah, well, the idea was for you to tell him.” Pulcinella says. Kaeya turns his glower on the old man instead, feeling overly satisfied when the idiot shrinks back, looking at him pleadingly through his thick-lensed glasses, like he were some elderly grandfather rather than one of the most powerful people in Teyvat.

“No.”

“No?” Dottore tilts his head. “No to what?”

“I'm not telling him. I’ll do your stupid job, but one of you two has to tell him.”

“Hm.” Pulcinella continues to look fearful. “Could we not convince you otherwise?”

“Do much more convincing and I'm not even agreeing to help out.” Kaeya says, and leaves the room. It means he has to abandon his work, but anything is better than being stuck in a room with those two while they squabble over him and Childe.

In moments like this, he’d normally go to Pantalone to complain about their idiocy, but he has a feeling the man is in on this too – particularly because of how encouraging he’d been of his and Childe's friendship – and would rather not face a lecture from that direction too.

He had only ever agreed to partner with Childe, assist him in some moments and maybe, just maybe, eventually go on actual missions with him. Not once had he agreed to be promoted and thrust into the public eye. Skills such as his work best when they remain unknown, and Childe's large fan club had already posed something of a threat to that with their insistence on spectating every one of his and Childe's fights. Now he not only has to parade himself around in front of whatever nobility he might catch the eye of, he has to explain to recruits how to replicate some of his tricks.

Grunts scatter out of his way – overly dramatic, but so very Fatui – as he roams the corridors, glowering at the brickwork underfoot until he finds some place to hole himself away, tucked in a far corner of the Palace. The dust is so thick that it falls as a clump when he brushes it away rather than dissipating into the air. Perfect.

It takes maybe an hour for Childe to find him. He looks sour when Kaeya looks up, just standing and staring at him, slightly ominously.

“Well, I do hope you're not here to kill me,” he jokes. If looks could kill, Kaeya would be halfway to the grave by now.

“No.” Childe grumps. He then stomps over to stand next to Kaeya, looming over him even more ominously than before. They maintain uncomfortable eye contact for several long moments, getting to the point where Kaeya is almost certain that this is where he dies, some dusty, forgotten corner of the Palace.

Instead, Childe slumps down onto the windowsill across from him, tucking his legs up and staring out the window miserably. Their knees knock together, but neither of them move away. It’s comforting, in a way, to have another person so close. Kaeya runs naturally cold, colder than any human could survive at for long periods of time; many have brushed against him, felt his frigid skin, and kept their distance from then on. But not Childe. He seems to drift into Kaeya's space whenever they're together, orbiting him closer and closer with each of their interactions.

Kaeya's not sure when it happened, but he’s begun to draw comfort from the warmth of Childe specifically.

Every contact between them is a blazing brand on Kaeya's skin, burrowing deep and leaving a mark on his very soul. To leave such an imprint is as wonderful as it is terrifying; to allow himself to be shaped by something so fleeting. But the danger of it is what makes it all the more thrilling. Childe's nature refuses to let him sit still, making him reckless with his own safety; it means he’s willing to place his neck on the line just for another hit of adrenaline.

Someone like Childe doesn’t have a long, fulfilling life ahead of him. And yet, the risk of it pulls Kaeya in further; he drifts into Childe's orbit too, as much as he may try to deny it, pulled in by an irresistible gravitational force, dragging him towards whatever calamitous end has been written into Childe's fate.

Such a fallout will only leave him spurned, burned with grief and misery; perhaps such emotion would be enough to reduce him to the same beast as his compatriots. A mindless existence would be nice, he supposes. Little to think about.

Childe turns to him, half his face illuminated by the sunset. It sets his hair alight, blazing against the dying embers of the sun. It’s almost enough to put a spark into his eye, and yet they resist the light, same as ever. Kaeya had shone a flame right into his eye before, and it still refused to reflect any light, not even the glimmer of the tapetum lucidum you might see in a wild animal.

Childe is an unsettling mystery. One that Kaeya hungers to solve, and yet remains wary of what answers may lie behind the unsettling aura and lightless eyes.

“So,” Childe says. “Co-lieutenants.”

“Mm.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“Not much, really. Apathetic, I suppose.”

Childe folds in on himself a little more. The ankle caught between Kaeya's feet begins to retreat before he traps it. When Kaeya leans forward, searching for Childe's eyes, he ducks his head and hides beneath his burning hair. For someone so tall, he folds into himself so easily, playing the part of a weak child, like it’s second nature.

“Though,” Kaeya continues. “I suppose we could have a little fun with it?”

Childe does not emerge, not even at the bait Kaeya so carefully selected and placed before him. He frowns, nudges his foot forward, pokes at Childe.

“I wouldn’t want to be stuck with any other idiot,” Kaeya offers. It’s sickeningly honest, and a little too saccharine, though the compliment makes Childe perk up, just a little. “We’re a good team, you and I.”

Childe shrugs.

“Childe, dearest, are you unhappy about this? I'm certain with the right words, Pulcinella and Dottore might be convinced to break this off before it becomes known.”

“No,” Childe rushes, finally looking up. He flushes quickly after, but continues to stare at Kaeya, even through his embarrassment. “I’d like to work with you, but only if you want to work with me too.”

“When did I ever say I wouldn’t?”

It’s odd to see Childe so insecure, but Kaeya has very quickly come to understand that Childe has no other friends. It’s him and Childe against the world here, and if all his previous partnerships had fallen apart…Kaeya can only imagine what anxieties might be running rampant in his mind.

“Though, if this is just a ploy to get me to do your paperwork then I must refuse.”

“Not even a little bit?” Childe relaxes at the familiar teasing, and Kaeya can’t help but smile at him. He’s going soft, all for some hopeless case like Childe with his unfortunately pretty face and charming voice.

“Absolutely not. Hah! I’ve heard stories of your office, tell me, are there truly mountains of paper on every surface?”

“Not every surface.”

“But still some. Have you never heard of a filing cabinet? Or perhaps considered completing your paperwork so troops get the resources they need?”

“I have no squads currently in the field. All of the recruits I train are slotted into other units before I have any chance to process anything they raise with me. I leave it to their next superior to sort out any issues.”

“Hm. That will be changing. I refuse to work in an office that is overrun by paper.”

“Whatever you say, lieutenant,” Childe says, saluting Kaeya, before giggling. Kaeya kicks him, for good measure, though he finds himself smiling anyway.

Kaeya cannot help the way he is drawn closer. Childe may remain oblivious to whatever affections Kaeya hosts – he would prefer if he would, in all honesty – and Kaeya can keep him as close as he wishes, until all this burns up and nothing is left in their aftermath.

“Are you ready?”

“Of course,” Kaeya replies. Only a short distance separates the two of them, snow glinting under the moonlight. Their onlookers are absent, all of them none the wiser to the match that is taking place here in the early hours of the morning. Kaeya is glad of it; he had been grateful when Childe first suggested such a time to practice together, working out the kinks in their teamwork away from the eyes of so many.

“Looking for another win, are you?” Childe asks. His hydro blades glow ever so slightly in the dark, enough that Kaeya can just make out the outline of his face, the slight hint of a smile curving his lips. “I won’t be going easy on you this time, y’know. Though, surrender remains a valid option. I promise to be gentle when you do.”

“When?” Kaeya scoffs. “Confident much?”

Childe laughs, and leaps at him. Kaeya ducks low, slipping to the side and away from Childe. He cannot outpace Childe – the man has far more stamina than Kaeya could ever hope to achieve, but he can certainly tire him out a bit first. That boundless energy must begin to deplete at some point, Kaeya just has to find that moment.

Childe leaps after him again, eager to begin the fight proper. Still, Kaeya avoids, weaving and dodging, evading each blow. Childe's one failing is that he doesn’t stop to evaluate his opponent, to observe the strengths and weaknesses, what he may be able to use to his advantage, and what will be his downfall. He evaluates afterwards, dissecting every fight in some strange post-mortem. In the moment, he’s confident in his own brute strength to carry him through to the end as the final victor.

Evidently, Childe has not yet met someone that could withstand this approach.

Childe gets close too quickly, twin blades crashing down just beside Kaeya's foot, where he had been stood not a moment before. Still, Childe didn’t strike with enough force to become stuck to the ground, and Kaeya is too slow to freeze the blades there, meaning Childe is twisting to lunge for him again a moment later.

Kaeya flinches back, even as the blades slam into an invisible barrier. Kaeya's ice sphere shimmers into existence around him, nary a crack to show for Childe's strength.

“Oh,” Childe grins, looking as though every major holiday has come early, eyes shining with delight as he looks at Kaeya. It would be enough to make a lesser man blush. Even then, Kaeya feels a little warm in the face as Childe stares at him – his shield, he's looking at his shield not him – with such open wonder. “This is new. You still have tricks hidden up your sleeve?”

Kaeya smiles back at him. “I know how much you like a surprise, my dear.”

Childe's distraction has rooted him to the ground, long enough that when he goes to pull his blades back he finds them frozen to the surface of Kaeya's shield. Childe shoots him a betrayed look before yanking his hands back, shaking the ice crystals from his gloves.

Their win-loss ratio has become far more even in the past several months, with Kaeya only racking up more and more wins, and Childe being forced to accept more and more defeats. He’s a sore loser every time, though he comes limping to Kaeya's lab whenever he injures himself, licking his wounds in peace, sheltered among the bubbling of various experiments and bothering Kaeya with every thought that crosses his mind. It’s disgustingly endearing, and Kaeya hates himself for how fond he's becoming of the idiot.

Dottore knows it too. And Pantalone, because the two of them don't seem to keep any secrets. Their knowing looks are embarrassing enough, he’s not certain he’d be able to cope with any outward teasing.

Still, Childe remains the overall victor in their ongoing competition. He is undeniably more skilled than Kaeya in battle. Though he prefers to evaluate an opponent after a battle, if he were to ever face the same foe again, all those tactics he had buried within his brain would resurface, leading to a swifter victory than before. It’s impressive, and indisputable evidence that, even in their partnership, Childe is far more well-versed in the art of battle than Kaeya probably ever will be.

He’s content to remain on the sidelines or in the shadows, at Childe's back when he needs him, and gathering information when he doesn’t. Their partnership is symbiotic, and each of them understands the other’s strengths. That, however, has yet to stop their frequent fights – even Kaeya finds himself longing for the rush of adrenaline when he’s gone a little too long without indulging the habit.

He has been slowly drip-feeding his own skillset to Childe, wary of introducing too many of his trump cards too quickly. Childe is highly adaptive, while Kaeya relies entirely on the element of surprise to win against Childe. Without that, he’d have far fewer victories under his belt, as embarrassing as it is to admit. His tricks only work once, and even then it might not be enough to keep Childe wrong-footed for the rest of their fight.

Kaeya watches the muscles of Childe's arms flex beneath the thin shirt he wears, hydro already swirling around his hands and beginning to coalesce into the form of a claymore.

Kaeya cannot help the way he stiffens, shoulders locking tight and hand halfway to his face before he shakes the instinctive fear off, forcing a grin onto his face as Childe stalks closer. He no longer moves with the sinuous grace of a predator hunting prey, but rather a curious creature determined to break open the puzzle in front of him.

He meets Childe's eye, watching as he adjusts his grip on the claymore to heft it a little higher. He circles Kaeya once, twice, walking the entire perimeter of his shield.

He doesn’t even touch it, wary from earlier, keeping a careful distance. Kaeya allows him a moment where he would normally leap to the offensive, preening beneath the appreciative gaze of Childe on his shield.

There’s a small clinking sound that vibrates through the air and straight into Kaeya's being. He turns, slowly, finding Childe tapping at the shield with one hand, watching as the ice doesn’t creep forward, leaving his hand untouched. For now. He taps it a few more times, even as Kaeya watches him, smiling at the sound it makes.

“How strong is it?”

“As strong as I want it to be,” he replies.

Childe frowns at him, dissatisfied with the response. He raps a knuckle against it next, listening to the melodic sounds of its vibration before frowning deeper than before. He looks to Kaeya then, a question in his eyes.

“Why don't you find out?” Kaeya asks. He steps forward, and the shield remains rooted in place. Childe watches him with wide eyes as he steps right up to the barrier separating them, going wider still when Kaeya reaches forward and the frost parts around his arm, allowing him to reach out and ghost a hand beneath his chin, tipping it upwards. “I can explain everything later, if you want. But you learn best from hands-on experience, don't you?”

He retreats back inside his shield, the gap sealing over as though it was never there in the first place. A wound that never was.

“Confident, I like it. Now, let’s see if that confidence is misplaced!”

His claymore slams down, halting once it reaches the shield. Kaeya flinches at the sound, backing up and away from the claymore’s arc. The shadow of it above him, embedded in a shield of ice…it makes bile rise in the back of his throat and panic lick at the edges of his brain.

The claymore scrapes free of his shield and Kaeya finds his eye shooting back to Childe, watching him carefully. That predatory look has returned, and Kaeya cannot help but feel like prey, pinned beneath that gaze.

“Ice shatters so easily,” Childe muses. “A fragile thing, like glassware. And yet you stand behind that shield as though nothing can touch you. Tell me, has this ever failed you before?”

Kaeya ignores the way his heart hammers in his chest. It beats against his ribcage painfully, tattooing itself against the inside of his chest with its ferocity. He swallows, tongue feeling thick in his mouth and weirdly unsteady on his feet as he shifts his weight. “Never.” He confesses.

It has never failed him as it was only ever used once, in a moment of desperation. He had only wished to not die in that moment, clinging desperately to the breath in his lungs. He should have died in that moment. Would have died – the Vision manifested itself too late. Its eye would never have gained a glow, a dead vessel for a dead child.

He had not used it since, scared of the reflection that would stare back at him from its shimmering walls. It would not be the wide-eyed reflection that had first stared at this outward manifestation, and he doesn’t think he could bear to witness the differences in such stark detail.

Another swing forms cracks in his shield. Kaeya smooths it over with only a second of thought, watching Childe closely as his face crumples in concentration. He seems to be realising that this is not something brute force can solve, not with how easily Kaeya restores the shield to its previous strength.

Kaeya begins moving on the offensive, shooting a shard into the ground, just beside Childe's foot. He was never at risk of actually being impaled, but its enough to startle him from his musings and into motion once more.

“Only a coward hides like this, Pavlín. Are you a coward?”

“A coward runs from a fight he cannot win. A survival tactic, nothing more.” A respectable one at that. To live another day is to grow strong enough to one day defeat another foe. Childe has never met something he couldn’t defeat, so of course the tactic is nonsensical to him. “I am no coward.”

“And yet you hide behind construct of ice. Scared to face me head-on? C’mon, I won’t gloat too much if you lose to me, again.”

“Mm. I'm finding that hard to believe, for some reason.”

They stalk around one another. Kaeya occasionally sends an icicle in his direction, and Childe strikes at his shield a few more times.

Other than that, they stagnate. Unable to progress any further as the fight currently stands. Childe has truly and properly corrupted him, leaving him chasing that same adrenaline high, though never to the same extent as the maniac in front of him.

Still, it leaves him feeling restless enough to shatter the shield, opening himself back up to whatever barrage Childe chooses to throw at him. First, though, rather than letting the shards dissipate back into energy he sends each of them shooting Childe's way, laughing as he dodges each of the projectiles, scowling as he pulls his bow – an actual, physical weapon rather than a hydro construct – from thin air, twirling it about his hand.

Kaeya blinks away from the first few arrows, barely landing for a moment before another arrow is being pointed in his direction.

Several arrows fly in his direction at once, each of them shooting in different directions. He dithers for long enough, several leylines in his grasp but uncertain of where each arrow might land and unwilling to stitch himself up at this hour. He jerks back with a hiss as one of the arrow skims past him, slicing into his cheek and through his ear.

His hand flies to his cheek, shocked more at the sting of it than any actual pain.

Childe grins at him, pleased. He tilts his head cockily, raising his chin in challenge.

Kaeya returns the smile, more than happy to accept the mocking, beckoning finger that Childe has just sent in his direction. He draws his staff forth, slamming it down into the ground and pausing, just to watch Childe falter, confused for a moment as nothing happens.

“Did you think I was out of tricks?” Kaeya taunts. “Perhaps you even thought you had me all figured out, hm?”

“I would never dare.”

“Mm. Good.” He says, and the field erupts, the ground beneath their feet shaking as ice spikes shoot out in every direction. Childe stumbles and falls, ice encasing his arms and leaving him pinned to the ground, bow just out of reach and Vision useless to him.

Kaeya's on him a moment later, caging him in with arms around the head, close enough that he can smell the mulled wine on his breath. Despite his imminent defeat, Childe continues to grin, watching Kaeya with half-lidded eyes. Again, it makes him more than a little warm beneath the collar, but their prolonged forced proximity has made Kaeya mostly immune to Childe's charms.

“Look at you,” he croons. “Trapped and helpless, at my command.”

“Only at your command.”

“Mm. I suppose it’s a good thing I am on your side. Can you imagine the destruction if we were to face one another as true enemies.”

Childe goes a little misty-eyed at the thought. “To face one another as enemies would be legendary, I'm sure. Fortunately for me, we are allies, meaning you can release me, no?”

“Only once you surrender, you sly creature. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Lieutenants!” Someone very loud and very angry bellows across the field.

Kaeya freezes, as does Childe, both of them staring at each other. The sound of crunching snow is all that follows as whoever has come to reprimand them makes their way across the treacherous terrain.

For a moment, Kaeya debates escaping, maybe abandoning Childe, perhaps not. He’s still not tested blinking with him, and he really doesn’t want to be vomited on. A moment is all the time he gets before the back of his collar is being seized and he's scruffed like a cat, pulled away from Childe.

He hangs loosely, registering then that it’s Pantalone that’s discovered them, and that they're both more unbelievably fucked than they could have ever imagined. His boots don't even drag on the snow as Pantalone holds him, face pinched and eyes squinted in genuine anger.

“Just what are you two doing out here at this time? Honestly, the panic you caused the nightshift guards when such destruction began to wreck this field was enough to send them running straight to all the Harbingers! Everyone thought it was a violent takeover, but, no, of course it’s just you two.”

Kaeya looks at his feet guiltily. It doesn’t help that he can hear Childe laughing softly in the background, but he feels like a child being scolded for fighting.

“Sorry, ‘Lone.”

“I was asleep.” Pantalone stresses. “Do you even know what time it is? And, goodness, look at you, you've got blood over half your face. Honestly,” he devolves into muttering as he sets Kaeya back down, roughly brushing him off before turning to break Childe free of the ice still pinning him to the ground.

Kaeya feels guilty enough that he breaks Childe loose, allowing him to spring to his feet like a demented jack-in-the-box, mouth already running a mile a minute with explanations for Pantalone.

“Stop.” Pantalone holds a hand up, sighing and looking incredibly tired. Kaeya notices that he’s wearing his nightclothes beneath his usual cloak, and somehow manages to feel even worse. Everyone knows how particular Pantalone is about his dress, but Kaeya knows even better than most how he abhors wearing indoor clothes outside. “Just…go to bed, the pair of you. I want a full damages report on…this tomorrow morning. Other than that, I don't want a peep out of the pair of you for another week, you got it?”

“Yes, Pantalone.” They chorus. Even Childe has the good sense to look sheepish as Pantalone turns around, returning to the Palace.

Only once he’s far enough away does Childe speak. “He was pissed.”

“Yeah.” Kaeya despairs. “Dottore is going to kill me.”

“There, there,” Childe pats him on the shoulder. “He likes you too much to kill you.”

“I need to buy him a present. An apology gift.”

Childe squeezes his shoulder. “You can't afford anything for Pantalone. His taste’s too expensive.”

“I know.” Kaeya sighs. “Debt is better than death, though.”

Chapter Text

Kaeya eases himself down into the seat he’s directed towards slowly. The air in the room is odd, his brain yelling for him to remain on edge, to be ready to bolt at any moment. He settles for sitting on the very edge of his, admittedly incredibly plush and comfortable, chair. These chairs are the kind that you sink into and struggle to escape the grasp of – Pantalone had admitted this choice being purposeful, making it harder for any more reluctant clients to leave, both due to the comfort and also the struggle in rising elegantly from this chair.

Pantalone is sat across from him, the usual pleasant smile on his face. It’s Dottore looming over his shoulder that makes him more uneasy. Normally, the two are seldom found in the same room together (unless that room is their own private rooms), quoting their disgust for the other; Kaeya doesn’t actually know anyone that believes these claims – it seems everyone has some kind of story about catching them in darkened corners and around the edges of corridors.

Dottore’s hand braces on the back of Pantalone’s wingback chair, fingers curling into the material as he grins at Kaeya, across the desk from him. Kaeya would much rather the desk to be larger than it is, right now, just to put a little more distance between himself and the ominous air that is currently radiating from the Doctor.

“You wanted to speak with me?” He ventures, breaking the silence first as neither seem willing to do it for him.

“We did,” Pantalone folds his arms and leans slightly forward on his desk, as though he’s about to share some secret. “Though we need to wait for our other guest to arrive before we can disclose any details.”

Other guest? Kaeya doesn’t question anything aloud, but he does narrow his eyes slightly at the pair before him.

He doesn’t need to ponder over this small detail for too long, as the door creaks open a moment later. He turns in his seat to face the doorway, watching as a head pokes itself around the corner. He scowls as the newcomer’s ginger hair catches the light, making it incredibly obvious who their mystery guest is.

Childe’s face brightens as he realises he’s found the right room, shoving the door the rest of the way open and striding in. “Morning!” He chirps, “Didn’t want to barge in on just anyone having a meeting.” He kicks the door shut behind him, something that Pantalone winces at, before sighing and apparently accepting.

“Good morning, Childe.” Pantalone returns the greeting. Dottore seems content to continue lurking and being generally ominous, only nodding slightly to Childe as the Lieutenant takes a seat beside Kaeya. “I hope we haven’t pulled you away from anything important.”

“Oh, no, wasn’t really doing much.” Childe does not have the same qualms about the chair that Kaeya did, sinking readily into the plush fabric. Pantalone’s eyes glint in amusement when he catches Kaeya watching him. “The current batch of trainees have been sent off to whatever cohorts have been deemed suitable for them, and current intakes are low, so there’s nothing for me to do right now.”

“Ah, yes, I hadn’t even considered that such a thing would affect your schedule too.” Pantalone notes something down on a pad of paper handed to him. Dottore’s hand retreats back to his side as soon as the paper is handed over. He does, however, lean over Pantalone’s shoulder to read whatever the man is writing. “See, we’ve managed to narrow down the current…lacking recruitment numbers, and have come up with a temporary solution – something to soothe the wound while we finalise a plan on how to mend it completely.”

“And that includes us, how?” He asks. It’s obvious that both him and Childe are being sent on some joint mission together – again – in order to temporarily fix their problems. Or, more likely, to give them more time to scramble for something that might fix the problem at the root.

“Current statistics suggest that the low recruitment numbers are due to the lack of Fatui presence in many major areas – partly due to these Fatui soldiers being killed before they can have much impact on the local populace.”

“And you can’t send more soldiers because we no longer have the same numbers, and for soldiers to be massacred twice in the same place would do even more to lower the faith the people currently hold in the Fatui.” He finishes. “What’s to say this person isn’t more powerful than us? Presumably we’re being sent in a show of strength, to reassure these people that they can still have faith in the Fatui and send their children off to be cannon fodder.”

“You could certainly work on your wording,” Pantalone sighs, dropping his head to rub at his brow. “But, essentially, yes. The intention is to have you travel out to the worst affected towns and help with repairing any damages and making yourselves friendly with the local community.”

“Wait- hold on a sec,” Childe interrupts. “That’s nice and all, but have you forgotten that you're not the one that gives my orders?”

“Pulcinella believes it would be a good idea for the face of the Fatui to be present alongside Pavlín.” Dottore says. “To send someone unknown would simply be the best way to make them even more uneasy around the Fatui. To resist their darling Lieutenant that promotes the Fatui to them? Well, such a thing is unthinkable, don't you agree?”

Childe flushes at the reminder of the posters, sinking a little further into his seat, as though wishing for it to swallow him and spare him of the embarrassment.

“That’s what I thought,” Pantalone clears his throat, before looking down at the notepad in front of him. “The arrangements are as such: a small cohort of soldiers will travel with you, each of you on a horse with enough supplies to last you a week – the expected time of this trip is a day’s ride, a five day stay, and then a day’s ride to return to the Palace.”

“And in this town?” He asks. “Will we be expected to book our own lodgings or is that going to be arranged by someone else?”

“I will be booking your lodgings. The town is rather large, with a sizeable population. The Fatui camp was a few miles outside of the town walls.”

“I expect you to examine the camp,” Dottore butts in. “One of my assistants will be a part of the cohort sent with you, and she’ll help you set up any of the unfamiliar equipment.”

“Any samples?”

“None. Unless you find something that needs further inspection,” Dottore waves his hand, “the assistant will have everything you need; she’s rather capable.”

“And me?” Childe asks. “What am I being sent along for?”

Dottore and Pantalone exchange a glance that sets every part of Kaeya on edge. He hates their skill in communicating without words, able to understand the other with nothing more than a slight squinting of the eyes or a raised eyebrow. Whatever plan they’ve got cooking in their brains, Kaeya wants nothing to do with it.

(Unfortunately, he rarely gets what he wants, and he seems to be stuck inside whatever web the two are weaving.)

“You're there as the muscle.” Pantalone answers. “Now, shoo. I'm sure you have preparations to make, and I have work to be doing.”

The morning is frosty, though not cold enough to deter Kaeya. His cloak is packed away into his saddlebags – he would only get too warm while riding, and it would be an inconvenience, flapping in the wind as they ride.

Childe, conversely, is bundled up like some kind of sentient blanket. Kaeya watches, with a healthy amount of amusement, as he pulls the layers off, hanging them over the stable doors as he mutters beneath his breath. His face is flushed, even when he’s left in only his usual coat and scarf.

“You can quit laughing.” He bites out.

“I didn’t even begin.”

“You were doing it internally,” Childe argues, stepping over to his waiting horse and rummaging through the saddlebags. “In spirit- whatever. I could tell.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don't you uh-huh me!”

“Mm.” Kaeya watches as Childe latches the saddlebag closed again before stepping back from the horse again. He twists at Kaeya’s hum, scowling.

“Don't do that either.”

“Whatever you say, dear.” He slips a few fingers beneath his horse’s girth, testing for the firmness of it. He’s pleasantly surprised at how well it’s been tightened – often, he’d find his saddle slipping off halfway through a patrol if he didn’t check it before departing, the Knights rather lax with the tacking up of a horse that is not their own. “Tell me, have you ever seen a horse before?”

“What a stupid question.”

“Well, don't blame me for asking it – you're staring at it like it’s some ravenous beast, prepared to take a chunk out of you.” He pats his horse on the nose, a rather charming shire with lovely feathering around the hooves, though he can only imagine how it clumps together with all the snow. Which is likely the reason why it’s been cut so short.

“It’s just,” Childe exhales rather sharply, shoulders bunching up. “Horses don't really like me.”

“Really? But you're the most charming person I know.”

“Not appreciated.”

“I appreciated it. And he did too,” his horse whickers in agreement.

“Seriously.” Childe looks back at him, dull eyes round and almost shining with genuity. “This the most good-natured horse we have at the Palace, and she turns into a real beast when I attempt to ride her.”

Kaeya would insist that Childe is simply being dramatic, that he’s overexaggerating previous experiences – perhaps in an effort to escape from this task, and leave Kaeya to do it himself. But the way his horse is watching him, her ears angled backwards and the whites of her eyes betraying her distress – well, it tells of an interesting journey ahead of them.

“Unless you want to run the entire way there, you're going to have to do it.”

“I'm aware.” Childe speaks through gritted teeth. “Funnily enough, it’s not actually my favourite thing to do.”

“Sucks.” He slots his foot into the saddle and grips the pommel, swinging himself into the saddle easily. He sits still for a moment, allowing the horse to adjust to his new weight. Childe stares at his horse for a moment longer before disappearing, reappearing with a stool.

“Can you not reach the stirrups without that?” He teases.

“I’d like to see you mount a horse that doesn’t want you on her.”

“I thought you were going to show me that already? I'm looking forward to the show.”

“Ha-ha.”

In the end, it takes Childe several minutes to first attempt, then pacify his horse for an entire minute, before attempting again, and managing to cling onto the suddenly uncooperative horse. His heels dig so far down towards the ground that it must surely be hurting, but Childe tightens the reins and guides the horse out of the stables with gritted teeth.

Kaeya follows behind him, his own horse much more relaxed than the one ahead of them.

Kaeya watches as Childe’s horse attempts to buck him off for the fourth time that day, kicking her hooves out and tossing her head back. His own horse is good as gold in comparison, even if he snags a branch from every bush they pass.

He keeps his eye carefully averted and looking forward. He’d already received a terse “what” from Childe the first time the horse had attempted to forcefully dismount him, and it made every single one of their accompanying group shy away from him.

There had been an executive decision to not stop for lunch, instead eating as they rode. The recruits had almost complained at the thought of not resting for half an hour, before glancing at Childe, and realising that their normally cheery Lieutenant was in a truly foul mood. As funny as it would be to watch Childe attempt to mount the horse again, once their break was finished, Kaeya would much rather their recruits stuck with them for the entirety of the trip rather than ditching early, just to escape from Childe.

Only once the horse calms down again does Kaeya dare to draw near, nudging his horse forward until he’s trotting alongside Childe, the mare seemingly content for a few moments.

“Did you need something?” Childe bites out.

“Ouch,” he frowns at Childe, “I was only hoping to make conversation. You’ve been stewing by yourself for several hours – such a thing is good for no-one; it makes you age prematurely, you know.”

“You’ve been listening to Pantalone too much.”

“When Pantalone starts talking, you don't get a choice on listening. If you drift away, he’ll know. He drags the conversation on for far longer than he originally intended if he even suspects that you might have stopped listening at one point.”

Childe’s face twists, morphing from the irritation that had settled over it several hours prior and had yet to be shifted, and changes to something more confused, and a little more worn around the edges.

“Why would he do that?”

“Spite, I think,” Kaeya answers. “He does it to the nasty businessmen he has to deal with – you would not believe how disrespectful some of them can be; the waiting list for appointments with the Ninth are several years long. The gall some of those people have to simply ignore him when they’ve waited for so long, and paid so much, to speak with him.”

“And you know this…how?”

“I sit in on meetings sometimes.” He nudges his horse a little closer, closes the gap between him and Childe a little more, until he’s close enough that he could skim his fingers along the flank of the other horse. Childe’s eyes flick down to the rapidly shrinking gap between them, but he doesn’t comment on their proximity.

“Of course you do,” Childe sighs. “Are you sure Pantalone isn’t attempting to steal you from Dottore?”

“Why steal me when they seem perfectly capable of sharing me.” He grins, “Besides, I've already heard their negotiations for it; Pantalone made him sign a contract.”

“They argued about it with you in the room?”

“I was not in the room with them.”

“Right, yeah,” Childe glances over at him again. “You're weirdly good at sneaking around – do they know you heard them?”

“No.”

“And you're not going to say anything?”

“Not until I find a situation where such information may be useful, knowledge is power after all.”

“A secret is worth twice as much. Why tell me?”

“I thought you would find it amusing.”

Silence lingers between them.

“That’s it?” Childe asks, looking over at him properly this time rather than glancing at him from the corner of his eye. “No other reason?”

“Does there need to be another reason?”

“Yes,” is Childe’s answer. “You keep everything close to your chest – no-one knows your name, no-one even knows where you came from. All anyone knows is that Dottore found a weirdly smart teenager on a mountain in Mondstadt.”

“There’s only one mountain in Mondstadt.”

“That is not an answer,” Childe retorts. “Unless you grew up on that damn mountain, then there’s going to be somewhere else you were before that.”

“Nowhere that mattered.”

“Nowhere that-”

“Come on,” he nudges his horse forward, urging him into a faster trot. “The town isn’t far. I'm certain I can beat you in a race there.”

“Hey!” He glances over his shoulder at Childe’s shout, grinning as he continues without heeding Childe’s yell. “That’s cheating, you know! Give me a little warning!”

There’s the sound of hooves behind him, rapidly gaining speed as Childe works to catch up with him when he already had such a head-start. He grips his reins a little tighter and urges the horse onwards a little faster, ducking low in the saddle to reduce the wind shear on his face and avoid the snow being kicked up around them.

“Hm.”

“Not up to your standards?” Childe looks incredibly pleased to be back on his own two feet, rather than riding a beast that seemed intent on killing him. He kicks up small flurries of snow as he walks over to Kaeya’s side, striking up a pose beside him. “It’s a little rundown, sure, but it looks pretty nice.”

“I was simply admiring the building design.”

“Ugh, don't.” Childe shoves his shoulder, causing him to sway slightly to the side and back again. “Don't even act like you know anything about Snezhnayan architecture – I don't know anything about that shit and I've lived here my whole life.”

“In this exact inn?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don't, actually,” he smiles over at Childe. “You grew up in the countryside somewhere, possibly somewhere along the coastline due to your familiarity with water that doesn’t simply come from your command over hydro; but there’s plenty of small villages dotted along the coastline, meaning you could be from any one of them.”

Childe makes a vaguely impressed sound in the back of his throat. The rest of their small expedition team are huddled around an outdoor fire, occasionally glancing over at the pair of Lieutenants, obviously waiting for them to enter the inn so they can retreat into the warmth too. Neither of them gave an order to remain outside in the cold with them, but they seem resigned to suffering silently in the cold until given the go-ahead.

“You been doing some research on me?”

“I've been looking at the destroyed Fatui camps,” he corrects. “That required some familiarity with the maps of Snezhnaya, and the locations of any significant settlements – most Fatui camps are within a day’s ride to the nearest settlement, allowing for any supplies to be taken to the settlement for collection by whatever poor sod picked the shortest straw.”

“And you just happened to be thinking about me while you did that?” Childe bats his eyes when Kaeya looks over at him. “Why, Pavlín, I'm flattered.”

“It was more of a passing curiosity, but interpret it however you want.”

“And how do you know I did grow up on the coast? I might have just lived near a really large lake – any major body of water is something to be wary when the cold can kill you in minutes if you face it unprepared.”

He pauses, and glances at Childe from the corner of his eye. “No-one enjoys salted cod that much if they didn’t grow up eating it. The only places eating salted cod are those with easy access to the coast; ergo, you must have grown up somewhere along the coastline to gain such a fondness for it.”

“You're freaky sometimes.”

“I'm aware,” he steps forward, watching how the recruits all perk up as he pulls the inn door open. A gust of hot air rushes out as he gestures for Childe to enter before him. They both knock their boots free of snow before stepping inside.

The warmth doesn’t bring the same sense of relief to him that it does for everyone else accompanying him, but it does warm something in his chest when he watches Childe relax into the heat, previously unseen tension dropping from his shoulders the moment it properly settles over him.

He looks like a cat bathing in a pool of sunlight.

“Sir,” he greets the man behind what he assumes to be the front desk, stepping up with an easy smile. “I believe there’s a booking under-”

“Harbinger,” the man grunts out. “Yeah, got it.” Several sets of keys are slid across the wood towards him, the keys jangling as he gathers them all up. “The largest key is the one for the Lieutenant; run along and leave me be.”

The man doesn’t even look up, apparently entirely engrossed in the book resting on his lap. When Kaeya lingers for a moment too long, the innkeeper looks up, glasses making his eyes look far larger than they actually are as he squints across the desk at him.

Kaeya doesn’t stick around long enough for the man to tell him to shove off again, holding the keys close to his chest and turning back around to the awaiting recruits.

He holds onto the largest key, distributing them evenly among the recruits remaining. They seem more than happy to pair up – probably just happy to not be sleeping out in the snow and cold.

“I expect you here by first light tomorrow,” he instructs, waiting for each head to nod before he dismisses them for the evening.

“You're funny when you order them around,” Childe tells him, following behind Kaeya. They have very little luggage between the two of them, clomping up the stairs towards the rooms. “Your voice goes all funny and listen to me.”

“I don't sound like that.”

“You do sound like that,” Childe laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners when Kaeya turns to glare at him. The key sits in the lock, unturned. “Your voice changes when you talk to them, it’s like you think they listen to you better when you speak all serious-like.”

“They probably do.”

“They listen to you because they're scared of you.”

The door creaks as it swings open, revealing a rather nondescript room beyond. The floor is wooden, and covered in places by a rather threadbare carpet. There’s a small window, with a tiny, padded seat installed on the windowsill. It’s the sort of thing built in warmer countries, designed so you can sit in the sun in the morning as you wake.

There’s a fireplace crammed in the corner, too, but that’s not what catches his attention first.

No, the first thing to catch his attention, drawing it away from whatever Childe is saying, still stood just behind his shoulder and waiting to enter their shared room, is the beds. Or, rather, the singular bed. It’s a little cramped, just shy of a double bed that could comfortably fit two adults pressed flush against each other.

“Oi,” Childe shoves him in the small of his back, pushing his foot across the threshold. His foot catches on a slightly elevated floorboard and he stumbles, completely in the room, fully through the doorway and across the threshold. “What’s the hold-up?”

“The sleeping arrangements, mostly.” He answers.

“So we’re getting a bit cosy,” Childe shrugs as he looks at the bed. “Unless you're some kind of prude, which,” Childe glances down at his shirt – or, more specifically, at the place where his shirt doesn’t cover, instead exposing bare skin – and then back up to his face pointedly, “I highly doubt. It’s nothing I haven’t done before; you wanna survive, you gotta huddle with a comrade or two in your time.”

“As long as you're unbothered by it.”

“Not bothered at all.” Childe flops down on the bed, not even bothering to kick his boots off before he does so. “Unless you're, like, freezing cold. We might have a few problems then.”

Kaeya pauses, halfway through unlacing one of his boots. Sometimes, he’s incredibly proud of the fashion choices he (and Pantalone) made, and other times he’s frustrated at the sheer number of ties they have on them.

Childe seems to sense his sudden stillness, twisting his head around to look at where Kaeya is perched on the edge of the bed.

“You're not actually freezing to the touch, are you?”

“I'm…a little on the colder side,” he admits.

“Uh-huh, and cold means…cold as ice or a little chilly?”

“Somewhere inbetween.”

“You know,” Childe rolls over, placing himself closer to Kaeya (close enough that he can almost feel, can definitely imagine, the heat radiating from him) and propping himself up on his elbows. “I think it would actually kill you if you gave me a direct answer rather than being vague as hell about everything.”

“You overdramatise.”

“Just lemme see how cold you are,” Childe reaches out before Kaeya can protest, shoving his glove down past his elbow, exposing a large patch of bare skin. He doesn’t get more than a single syllable, of a word he promptly forgets, past his lips before Childe’s hand is wrapping around his elbow.

“Ahm.” The warmth of Childe’s hand immediately seeps directly into his bones, sending a flood of warmth over the entire expanse of his skin. It sets off warning bells in his brain at the same time, and he almost jerks his arm away like he’s been burned – he certainly feels like it – and only manages to stop the knee-jerk reaction at the last moment.

“Tsaritsa’s tits,” Childe swears. “You're fucking freezing.”

“Thank you for your evaluation.” He begins to pry Childe’s hand off of him, peeling back a grand total of one finger before Childe latches on with his other hand.

“Woah, hey. Not happening, comrade. It’s not healthy to be this cold, y’know. It’s the opposite, actually, because I've felt warmer corpses than you right now.”

“I can see why you're so popular among the recruits, if you're talking to me like this.”

“I'm dead-serious.”

“And I'm dead, apparently.” He laughs a little at his own joke, watching as Childe’s lips twitch and his eyes squint in obvious amusement, but he doesn’t laugh.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s fine,” he assures, attempting to pry Childe’s hands off his arm a second time, before giving up and attempting to unlace his corset with only one hand. It’s a lot more difficult than it usually is, but he desperately needs the stupid thing off. He’d be happy with a thin blanket on ice right now, if it meant he’d be able to close his eye for longer than a minute. “I've been checked out by several doctors throughout my life-” not exactly a lie, but not strictly the truth either “-and none of them found anything wrong with me. I'm just a little cold.”

“This goes beyond a little,” Childe’s eyes track where he chucks his corset to, leaving it hanging off the edge of a chair. “But it’s fine – people always say I run hot, so you're in good hands here.”

“I'm perfectly alright as I am. I've been this cold my entire life, I'm used to it.”

“Well, yes, but don't you want to be a little bit warmer for once?” Fingers skim up Kaeya’s arm, and it takes all of his self-control to not let his breath hitch as the warmth spreads a little further, thawing out long-frozen joints. “Just because you're used to something doesn’t mean you have to continue on as you are.”

Kaeya doesn’t have a good enough argument for that. Doesn’t bother formulating one in his head; what’s the point in arguing against something that he wants? The promise of warmth, even if it’s only for a few hours, is irresistible.

He’s like a moth drawn to a flame, unable to pull himself away from the lure no matter how it may burn him later.

“It would be rather difficult to avoid each other in a such a small bed.” He cracks a grin, “Unless you plan to sleep on the floor.”

“You-! Why would it be me on the floor! Why wouldn’t it be you!”

The townspeople don't seem pleased by their arrival.

Displeased would be…an understatement, in actuality. They're not met with open hostility – even those in the middle of nowhere know better than to disrespect high-ranking members of their country’s military, but the muttered curses and damnations thrown their way are enough to give an impression.

Kaeya ignores the hostility easily. The recruits accompanying them…less so. They're obviously unused to such open hostility from those they come to help – they’ve been trained with the mentality that everyone they assist will be grateful for their aid, and act as such. Kaeya knows better; often, those that need the most help are the most stubborn, refusing to accept even the smallest shred of goodwill.

It snowed overnight. Normally, this would be something that he relishes in, enjoying the chill in the air and the undisturbed snow.

This morning, with the sun glinting off the snow just right to blind him in his uncovered eye, he decides that he hates whatever higher being made it snow so much overnight – it comes up to mid-shin, which isn’t high enough to begin spilling into his boots.

Their recruits are not so lucky, and it takes a grand total of five minutes before one of them starts whining about snow in their boots, making their feet cold. And, of course, because one person started complaining, everyone else must also join in.

“I don't even see why we’re needed here,” one of them mutters, almost quiet enough for him to not pick up on. Unfortunately for them, his hearing is far better than the average person, and he manages the catch the muttered conversation. “These two are more than capable of handling themselves.”

“We’re here to assist,” someone mutters back. Kaeya doesn’t bother to turn and find out who it is, continuing to trudge onwards and doing his best to ignore the other whinging soldiers.

“Yeah, but didn’t you hear what they did?”

“Uh…no?”

Kaeya had almost dismissed their conversation entirely and begun to tune it out, but the conspiratorial way the first recruit spoke, lowering their voice even further made Kaeya perk his ears up and listen a little better.

Childe’s gone a little quieter beside him, too, his breathing slowing and quietening, as though he too is listening for something. Kaeya doesn’t consider it much, simply grateful that there is less background noise, allowing for him to focus on the conversation behind them.

“You know that noble family that disappeared overnight?” The first speaker asks. They must get some kind of non-verbal confirmation, or simply not care for confirmation at all, because they continue without pause. “And how it was under super suspicious circumstances – with Fatui already swarming the grounds before first light.”

“I remember people complaining about being woken for that,” the second voice recalls. “They were summoned before the sun even began to rise.”

“It was a clean-up,” the first voice responds. “A massacre. And one of them did it.”

Childe makes a small noise beside him, but when Kaeya glances over his eyes are fixed steadily ahead, on the horizon line. Only the tense line of his shoulders betrays his sudden unease.

A pause, then, quieter. “So why do they need us here?”

“For clean-up,” the first voice responds. “In case one of them loses it again.”

“You make them sound like mindless beasts,” the second voice argues. There’s a slight waver in it, a worried tremble. Kaeya can feel eyes on his back. “They're Lieutenants – they wouldn’t have made it this far if they were going to just do…that.”

“One of them is the Doctor’s pet,” the first voice rises slightly, and Kaeya chances a glance over his shoulder, looking towards the sudden sound. Wide eyes stare back at him, the solider beside the scared recruit looking more angry than terrified, unlike his companion. “There’s a high chance that he is no better than some mindless beast; you’ve heard what happens in those labs.”

“But…he was nice to us yesterday, if he was just some…killing machine, he would have no reason to be nice.”

“Even the most rabid of animals knows when to bide its time.” Is the grim response.

To be spoken of in such a way, it’s enough to make him feel sick. There’s the taste of bile in the back of his throat, and he glances over at Childe again. He finds the other man already watching him, his blue eyes considering. He has to turn his head to see him, Childe choosing to walk in his blind spot.

“Aren’t you being a little, oh, I don't know…dramatic?”

“No.” Childe raises an eyebrow at him, a silent question that Kaeya doesn’t understand swimming in his eyes. “Just wait, I'm sure we’ll see their true colours soon enough – whenever they find the idiot that’s been wrecking camps. I almost pity the fate awaiting them.”

Kaeya looks back to the horizon line, only looking away to confirm their directions with the navigator.

Calling the camp wrecked would be nice.

It’s entirely ruined, with rubble and debris strewn around; Kaeya would have passed by it completely, the fresh snow burying the remains entirely. He kicks through the snow, uncovering a little more blue canvas, revealing a shred of the Fatui emblem that gets stamped onto every tent issued.

“When Pulcinella said the camps were being destroyed I didn’t picture this,” Childe looks around the cleared area, watching as their soldiers carefully pick through the snow. He can only hope that the wild animals in the area have dragged any corpses away; he doesn’t feel like dealing with any of those today.

“There’s a reason Pantalone hasn’t been sending out funds to restore these camps – the few that did get repaired were destroyed with more contempt than previously. It wasn’t worth the loss.”

“I'm beginning to see why the townspeople hated us the moment we stepped foot in there.”

He hums, watching as the soldiers he had been listening to earlier pick through some of the wreckage half-heartedly. “Childe,” he catches the other’s attention. “Those two, who are they?”

“New recruits,” Childe gives him a tight smile. “They’ve only been around a few months; they’ll learn when to keep their mouths shut in time. It takes a little bit before they realise how easily sound carries out in the open.”

“Hm.”

“Making an example of them won’t help our cause.”

“I'm aware,” he grouses. “Doesn’t mean I can’t consider it.”

“And you're sending them out again…because?” No response. “Sweetheart, light of my life, you cannot keep sending my apprentice away from me.”

“It’s for an important project.”

“You made them share a damn bed for their last mission!” He throws his hands up in the air, despite being aware that he’s arguing with what is essentially a brick wall. “Is that not enough for you? They can figure themselves out without external intervention.”

“They really cannot, dear.”

“Then leave them to it – if nothing happens, then nothing happens; must you have your fingers in every little piece of drama?”

“Yes. Now, dearest, I'm currently working on a new project, so some quiet would be appreciated.”

“Is that the plan for their next mission?” He pauses. “Send them up that mountain instead – don't look at me like that! Don't you remember the story about-”

“Brat,” Dottore greets him, upon his arrival back. Kaeya had barely paused once he returned to the Palace, only making a short detour to leave his horse in the stables before immediately heading down into the labs. “Good to see you back in one piece.”

“Even if I wasn’t, I'm sure you’d still be pleased to see me, if only because you’d get to poke at me.”

Dottore grins at his response, his usual sharp grin strangely comforting in its familiarity, despite the ruthless edge it carries. “That I would. Now, tell me, did you find anything unusual around the site? Anything that would warrant concern or give us a better idea of what it is that’s killing our soldiers?”

“Not much.” He sighs. “We spent almost five days picking through that camp, looking for any hint as to what it might have been – those recruits were considering strangling me in my sleep by the end of it.”

“I'm sure if any of them had tried, they wouldn’t have been returning with you. Especially as you and our dear Lieutenant were in such…close proximity for the entire trip.”

He squints at Dottore. “I don't want to know how you know that, but I'm not going to question it.”

“Pantalone only realised the error in his booking after you had already departed. Sending a missive wouldn’t have solved the problem; and with it being an entire day’s ride, sending someone alone is more of a risk than we wish to make right now.”

“I doubt our murderer is going to attack a singular soldier.”

“Oh, yes, of course. Our murderer, who has been shown to consider each of their attacks carefully and plan them meticulously, would not attack one of our intelligence officers that is carrying details on where some of the Harbinger’s apprentices currently are?” Dottore cocks his head to the side. “That doesn’t sound like it would be an issue at all.”

“Alright, yes, I see your point.”

“That’s a relief,” Dottore turns around. “Now, come and look at this; I've been waiting for your return to get a second opinion on this.”

“And you couldn’t ask anyone else…because?”

“No-one else has your speciality in the topic,” Dottore taps at the stack of papers perched on the edge of his desk. “Give those a read and tell me what you think.”

He should have gone to bed.

“I know you find some enjoyment in being contrary, dear, but this is a little much even for you, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Kaeya tries not to feel like a child being scolded by his parents, but with the way both Pantalone and Dottore are looking at him, some measure of disappointment and annoyance present in their eyes, it’s quite hard not to imagine such a situation.

Pantalone sighs.

“What he means to say is that you’re being more of a brat that usual. Did you really have to disagree with Childe on the exact colour of the snow you were standing on?”

“For him to even think that it was a grey-white was just stupid.”

“What a reasonable thing to say in response.”

“Well it’s not my fault he’s a freak!” He bursts, throwing his arms out to the sides sharply. “There’s something up with him, I just can’t figure it out!”

Pantalone and Dottore exchange a look. It holds for a few seconds before they turn back to Kaeya with matching smiles, though Dottore’s is more of a sharp grin than Pantalone’s faint amusement.

“You are Dot’s apprentice, dear, surely you can...run some tests? Whatever it is that you normally do in your lab.”

“’Run some tests’?” Dottore repeats, “What is it that you think I do? Mess around until I get a result of some kind that’s alright?”

“I do believe that is the process of science, is it not?”

“I- no!” Dottore frowns, reaching around Pantalone and spinning his chair so that he’s facing the Doctor head-on. “Darling, I think you need a reminder of what exactly it is that I'm doing, if you think so lowly of me.”

“I'm just going to go.” He dismisses himself before he has to see more than he already has. He’d been unable to escape quickly enough last time. The sight of Dottore climbing into Pantalone’s chair – into the man’s lap – still hasn’t been fully erased from his mind.

“You can’t keep sending them out into the countryside until they run into some kind of obstacle, dear.”

“Watch me.”

“Are you getting a sense of déjà vu?” He asks, “Or is it just me?”

Childe’s horse snorts at the same time he does, giving a little flick of her back legs. It’s half-hearted at best, and gets nowhere near to unseating him. “What makes you say that?”

“Only that I could have sworn we were out on a trip just like this the other week,” he glances around at the snow-covered forest they're currently travelling through. The pines shiver beneath the weight of snow on their branches, wind snaking between the narrow alleyways the trunks create. “And then another one a week before that, and then another one the week before that week.”

“It’s not my fault we’re out here.” Childe scoffs, “Dottore’s getting all possessive over you; Pulcinella’s been stealing you away too often so he’s retaliating like a child – he’s stealing me away from Pulcinella.”

“I should probably try and dispute it, but there’s no point in doing so when you're right.”

“At least you're able to ad-”

“Hilichurls!” Someone yells. The shout sends a wave of panic through their small group, several of their recruits spinning their horses around to face the direction that the hilichurls are coming from. Kaeya sighs and turns his horse as well, though he does it much more calmly than his recruits do.

It gives him a better vantage point to watch the hilichurls burst from the treeline, scattering over the path in some attempt at a formation. He sighs, before gritting his teeth and dismounting alongside Childe, leaving the reins looped over his horse’s head so they won’t get tangled in case it bolts.

The hilichurls chatter something between each other, glancing back at the treeline, as though waiting for something. Kaeya doesn’t bother to look and find out what it is that they're waiting for, pushing through the nervous huddle of recruits, internally scoffing at them, and drawing his staff.

It materialises in his hand, the weight comforting after so long away from the training field.

He swings it in a wide arc, knocking several hilichurls off their feet. Their chattering grows angry, the entire group turning on him with a snarl. He grits his teeth a little harder, ignores the way it grows painful, and jerks his staff upwards.

Icicles burst from the ground, spearing several of the hilichurls through in one go. It leaves the alive ones panicking, scrambling backwards and towards the treeline. The shooters are attempting to nock arrows in their crossbows, but fail miserably.

He cuts down several more of them, freezing a few of the hilichurls that Childe is chasing after. He doesn’t watch as Childe lunges for them with a giddy type of glee. He seems so eager to destroy these creatures of the Abyss, laughing as he gets the first real taste of blood he’s had in a while.

Kaeya assumes it must be easier to do when you can’t understand how they beg for mercy.

Childe turns to face him, both of their chests heaving a little from the exertion. Childe has a splash of red across the bridge of his nose. Kaeya doubts he looks much better, the feeling of warmth slipping down his face and onto his neck. Dispatching them quickly means that it cannot always be neat.

Childe’s eyes widen. “Pavlín! Behind you!”

Kaeya turns and braces himself, a shield shimmering into place around him. A pair of massive arms crash down onto it a moment later. Shockwaves from the attack travel through the ground, and Kaeya watches as his shield splinters.

He meets the frostarm lawachurl’s eyes through the shield, both of them staring at the hairline fracture that was just created. Both of them watching as it spreads, the fissure racing over the rest of the shield before it shatters entirely.

Kaeya dives to the side, grasping for the leylines around them desperately as he rolls out of the path of another attack. He grabs onto the first one he senses, yanking and pulling himself away. He staggers as his feet hit the ground, feeling sick from the vertigo that washes over him a moment later.

His breath is ragged, and he’s convinced he’s actually going to vomit for a moment, acid rising in the back of his throat and coating his tongue.

It subsides after a moment, but what he looks up to find isn’t much better.

Childe launches himself towards the lawachurl again, hydro polearm held firmly in his grip. He plunges it into the back of the lawachurl’s knee, which does nothing but enrage it further. Frost spirals up the weapon, rendering it useless as Childe leaps back out of range, already forming a new construct.

Kaeya pushes himself forward, blinking closer to the lawachurl again and swinging his staff like a bat. It roars loud enough to deafen him for a moment when the blow connects, and he has to roll over the snowy ground when it swings at him.

“Go back, Pavlín!” Childe yells, gesturing for him to retreat in the same direction their recruits already have. Their horses are all long gone, and Kaeya can only hope that his and Childe’s are smart enough to return to the Palace rather than get lost in the wilderness. “I've got this!”

“No, you haven’t!” He yells back. He flips his staff and plunges the sharpened tip into the lawachurl’s foot, hard enough to pin it in place before he wrenches it back out, a spatter of gore spraying over the front of his uniform. “How do you plan to break its shield, you idiot?”

“I'm working on it,” Childe yells. They duck together, sides pressing against each other as the lawachurl spins to chase after them. Kaeya summons his shield again, already knowing that it’ll shatter with just a little force. His reserves may be greater with the amount of cryo simply nearby, but they're not bottomless, and he can feel them draining rapidly.

He feels out of breath, the warmth of Childe against his side jarring after the cold of the wind. “This isn’t going to last long,” he warns Childe. “So start fucking thinking.”

“I'm doing my best,” Childe snarls, but there’s a panicked glint in his eye as he watches the lawachurl. It hasn’t moved to attack them yet, considering them too. Probably deciding how best to squish them into a pulp. “I’d like to see you do any better.”

“I have a plan!”

“Then why didn’t you share it!”

“Because you have an entire complex over this shit,” he turns to jab Childe in the chest, shoving him backwards. “You don't let anyone tell you anything, because you think it means you're worthless! Newsflash, you idiot, your only worth doesn’t come from being able to kill anything in your path – the value of a fighter is being able to battle. That means being able to strategise and realise when you're fighting a losing battle.”

“Oh yeah, because you're so much better!” Childe gets right back in his face. The blood smeared across his pale skin should be terrifying, but it’s such a common sight on him that Kaeya’s almost scared by how easily he ignores it. “No-one knows anything about you because you're so determined to remain unknowable – is it really so bad to be known by those around you?”

“Yes.”

The lawachurl has apparently tired of waiting, as it slams its fists down onto his shield again, shattering it easier than before. Kaeya swears as he jumps backwards, watching as Childe does the same in the other direction, divided by the lawachurl’s fists and the scattered shards of his shield.

“If you're a true vanguard,” he yells, fighting to be heard over the wind now roaring through the forest, “then you’ll know this is when we retreat! We are outmatched – there’s nothing we can do!”

Childe makes a soundless noise, something halfway between a snarl and a growl.

He ignores Kaeya. He ignores him. He launches himself at the lawachurl, blades flashing as he raises them above his head to slam them down on the beast’s skull.

The lawachurl swats him aside, treating him as though he’s nothing more than an irritating pest. Kaeya gasps as Childe hits a tree and crumples like a doll with its strings cut, feeling suddenly breathless, as though he’s the one that’s been slammed into a tree rather than Childe.

He blinks over there, hauling Childe upright, not caring for sticking around as he glances back at the lawachurl, watching as it braces itself in the snow, preparing to leap towards them. He wraps an arm tighter around Childe’s waist and apologises silently for what he’s about to do.

Finding the branch he’s looking for is easier than it was earlier – familiarity with the space makes it easier to find. And he’s certainly familiar with this particular space. He wraps his hand firmly around it and holds a little tighter to Childe; he’s not sure how he would explain losing Childe in the leylines. It’s a headache he never wants to deal with.

He stumbles as his feet hit solid ground, shedding snow everywhere. He hates the thought of cleaning it up later, but shoves it aside in favour of holding Childe a little more safely. He may be lanky, but there’s enough muscle on his frame to make him difficult to carry, even if it’s only a short distance.

His office doors slam open abruptly, causing Pantalone to jerk in surprise and bang his knee against the underside of his desk. He hisses in a breath through his teeth.

He looks up, reprimand ready on his lips because there’s only one person that dares to barge inside in such a manner-

“They’re in his lab!” Dottore’s grinning, which is worrying enough; the accompanying statement certainly doesn’t help in appeasing his worry, as “he” could be anyone from an important dignitary to Dot’s newest test subject.

“Who, exactly?” He asks, rubbing his knee carefully, wincing at the pain that radiates through the joint and down his leg. It’s going to ache something fierce later.

“Childe,” Dottore grins impossibly wider, showing off all of his gleaming shark’s teeth.

“That’s nice,” he smiles pleasantly, lacing his hands together. “But was it worth it?”

“Worth what?”

“Barging into my office like that.” It’s his turn to smile now, Dottore’s grin dropping as he no doubt remembers the agreement they’d made just last month, after an overeager Doctor slammed his door open so hard it simply fell off the hinges.

Kaeya had laughed himself silly over it, laughing so hard that Pantalone was momentarily worried he would rupture something.

“Uh,” Dottore’s voice squeaks. He takes a slow step back as Pantalone rises from his desk, and then bolts the moment he reaches for his cane, easily reaching it from where it leans against the edge of his desk.

“The coward’s route never pays!” He calls out behind him, making it to the door just in time to watch Dottore hurry around a corner.

He may not be moving anywhere very fast today, but unfortunately for the Doctor he knows every one of his hiding spots rather intimately.

He can still feel the tacky, stickiness of dried blood on his hands. He’s washed them several times, in the small sink in the corner of his personal lab, but the feeling remains. No blood is caught beneath his fingernails, but he can feel it anyway. The cloying, clinging sense of dried blood clotting beneath his fingernails, congealing as he waits.

Childe’s face is lax, where it had previously been twisted in pain. And he looks strangely small on the cot Kaeya dragged out of storage for him. His cloak has been abandoned for burning – though not without a silent apology to Pantalone for destroying another – and it lies in a huddled lump in the corner, thrown there without care.

He doesn’t know how long he’s observed this silent vigil at Childe’s bedside. There has been sound outside of the room, as people move to and from the main labs, chattering to one another, unaware of the silence Kaeya has sat in since he returned.

The stitches he did on Childe are far better than his first attempt. The lines are neat, like a row of ants marching across his skin. They're hidden beneath swathes of bandages now, but he would still be able to trace their lines over the top of white fabric, the memory of piecing Childe’s skin back together ingrained in his mind.

He’s not even sure how he sustained so many injuries without Kaeya noticing – the only injury from that last blow is a few broken ribs. The lacerations are unknown in origin to him, something that he missed during their battle and during their…argument.

He likes to think that he would have noticed the blood, would have seen the red staining grey dark, but he can’t be entirely sure anymore. Cannot be certain in his own ability to stand beside his partner and make sure he doesn’t die.

He wiped the blood off his face, too.

He almost wishes he hadn’t. He looks too pale without the splash of colour, his face devoid of any colour. He had sat with his fingers on Childe’s pulse for over an hour, just to assure himself that his heart is still beating, despite how corpse-like he looks.

His close scrutiny means he notices the first hitch in breath, the slight rolling of Childe’s eyes below his eyelids before they crack open, the slightest hint of blue peeking through, like a patch of bare sky emerging from behind storm clouds.

He turns his head to the side, and grimaces immediately, seizing up. Kaeya has to push his shoulders back down, stopping him from jostling his ribs before Kaeya can properly assess them.

“You,” he grits out, “are an idiot.”

“I- what?” Childe coughs, turning his head to the side in an attempt to muffle it into his shoulder. His voice is scratchy enough that Kaeya takes pity on him and offers a glass of water, ignoring Childe’s insistence that he can drink it by himself and tipping it to his lips.

“Are you feeling disorientated in any way?” He asks, leaning closer to inspect the dilation of Childe’s pupils. They seem normal, but that doesn’t mean there’s no risk of a concussion. “You got slammed into a tree pretty hard.”

“Is that what happened?” Childe lets his head drop back down onto the thin pillow. “No, I don't feel disorientated. Do you want to ask me what year it is and what my name is?”

“No,” he sits back. “I think you're alright at the moment.”

“Hm.”

“This could have been avoided if you understood when to retreat; or at least trusted me enough to listen to me.”

Childe sighs. “Everything I said was equally true. I'm sure you wouldn’t trust someone when you didn’t even know their name. Everyone’s happy calling you Pavlín, but that’s a name I gave you. It’s not your name, but you seem pretty happy to be given an out.”

“I was advised against sharing my name.”

“Too many ties to your previous life?” Childe grimaces. “It’s not uncommon, though most choose to do it for themselves. Choose to protect whoever is waiting at home for them.”

“And that’s you, then?”

Childe huffs out a laugh, “I'm not even surprised that you’ve figured that out, you know. How’d you figure out that Childe wasn’t my real name?”

“Seeing as Childe means ‘young noble’ I figured it out pretty early. Not many nobles living out on the coastlines, are there? They all live here, right where the Tsaritsa can keep an eye on them, make sure they're not getting too comfortable in their power.” He pauses. “There’s also a moment, when someone says your name, where you take a second too long to respond and realise they're talking to you.”

“You're actually terrifying,” Childe attempts to sit up again, and Kaeya tuts at his impatience. Childe winces as he props himself up, reaching behind him to adjust the pillow so he can comfortably lean against it.

“Would it kill you to ask for help?”

“Possibly,” Childe jokes, but his smile is thin. Kaeya helps him sit up properly, adjusting the pillow as best he can to make it comfortable. The pillow is thin, and the wall Childe is now leaning against is unforgiving. “Would it kill you to be less vague about everything?”

“Most likely.”

“Aren't we a magnificent pair,” Childe laughs. “Whoever was watching over us the day we got shoved together must have been having a right laugh.”

“I doubt there was anyone watching over us.” The dark tone of his voice is enough to make the smile drop from Childe’s face, replaced by a twisted one of confusion.

“There you go again with your vague references – at this point, I think it really would kill you to say what you mean. And if it didn’t outright kill you, it’d bring you close enough to death that it wouldn’t matter.”

“You needn’t be so dramatic. I am…capable of telling the truth.”

“But only when it benefits you, right?” Childe scoffs. “How can you criticise me for my faults when you refuse to confront your own? Can you not recognise your hypocrisy?”

“I can recognise it perfectly fine.”

“Then speak with me plainly; give me a reason to trust you to have my back on the battlefield, and that I don't need to watch for a knife in it.”

“There are many things that I could speak about plainly. I could talk of the weather today, or the project I've been working on. What is it you want to know?”

“Your name.” Childe responds immediately. “Quid pro quo, you give me yours and I’ll give you mine.”

“And what of the people waiting at home for you? What if I find them with your name?”

“You might like to think of yourself as some ruthless soldier, but even you would flinch at the idea of harming children. Besides, I could just as easily find those waiting for you.”

“There is no-one waiting for me.”

“For all that is holy- you're dragging this out so far that it’s becoming painful. Gods, is your name truly so special?”

“Not really,” he shrugs. “Kaeya just has a lot of ties in Mondstadt that could be easily exploited.”

Childe stares at him for a few seconds, squinting his eyes as the seconds tick past without response. Kaeya can feel his face heat in response to the scrutiny, anxiety tickling at the base of his skull; but he refuses to break eye contact first, waiting Childe out.

“What?” He snaps.

“I'm waiting to see if you get smote for speaking plainly.”

“Aren't you funny,” he snips. “Now, I believe this was a quid pro quo?”

“Yeah, yeah, lovely to finally meet you Kaeya, you can call me Ajax when it’s just the two of us,” Childe wiggles his eyebrows at him. “I’d prefer you not yell my name to anyone willing to listen; it’s a little easier to get to my family than it is to get to Mondstadt.”

“Now,” Kaeya leans a little closer to Childe. “I heard several of your ribs crack when you hit that tree, so I need you to tell me what hurts.”

“Woah, hey! A little warning would have been nice.”

“You got plenty warning.”

“…I hate the fact that worked.”

“What can I say, dear, always trust a banker.”

“I think that’s the opposite of what you should do- okay! Alright, alright, I apologise, I’m sorry, please stop pulling my hair!

Chapter Text

“Please?”

Kaeya breathes in slowly through his nose, exhaling just as slowly through his mouth. The breathing exercise is supposed to have some kind of effect – he’d attempted to find some logic behind this, but had found nothing more than it slowing the breath slightly, compared to breathing through your mouth – but he’s found it useless thus far.

He hadn’t expected it to help, but he still does it once more before he turns around, away from the purposefully non-volatile experiment he was attempting.

“Good afternoon to you as well,” he greets. “I hope you’ve had a nice day so far.”

Childe grumbles something under his breath, collapsing down into the seat beside Kaeya’s desk. He has his own desk now, in the main lab, rather than being forced to share with Dottore – he’s not sure whether it was his own complaints or his incessant need to tidy the Doctor’s desk that convinced the man of the idea first.

“Good afternoon,” Childe responds eventually, like he was raised with some semblance of manners. He continues without pause, “Fight me?”

“No.”

His experiment awaits his attention – something simple, just to take his mind off the recent stresses that seem to have filled his every waking moment – and yet he’d rather not mix any solutions that have a higher molar concentration than zero. He nudges the chemicals away from the edge of his desk, not trusting Childe and his ability to not knock things off the edge.

This should be a simple experiment, a simple test of the product he’s spent a few hours synthesising. And yet he fears turning around and leaving Childe unoccupied for even a few moments, still slightly traumatised from the incident earlier in the week that had cost him numerous pages of observations.

He already knows what the result of the test would be, confident in his own skill. But he rather enjoys watching the silver mirror appear, the precipitate clinging to the walls of whatever vessel the sample is contained within. It’s only a shame that there’s hardly enough of the metal within for it to be worth extracting.

He reaches over and pulls the pyro core away from where it had been heating a water bath, dumping it into its own tub of water to cool. And also to reduce the opportunity for it to be used as a tool of mass destruction. Then, and only then, once he’s certain that he’ll be able to stop whatever chaos Childe attempts to cause, does he turn back to the man in question.

He’s lowered the seat, dropping it as low as it can go. Now, he idly spins himself around in it, long and gangly limbs awkwardly kicking out to push himself around.

He can feel eyes on them, the lab filled to the brim with scientists and assistants alike, all of them idling in the middle of the day with little to do – most of their projects don't come to life until the early evening. Most don't find the flash of inspiration until the late evening, leaving everyone twiddling their thumbs while they await some moment of genius for everyone to experiment the hell out of.

As such, he and Childe are the best entertainment they have right now.

That is also, unfortunately, becoming a rather common occurrence. Kaeya isn’t sure when the pattern developed, only that it was too late to stop it from turning into a habit at that point. Anything he did to try and dissuade Childe from bothering him while he was “working his other job” had not worked so far. Not even the near-miss event involving a naked flame – a different incident to the one that had cost him and two other researchers three-weeks’ worth of notes – and his hair had been enough to scare him away from the lab.

Childe slumps a little further in the seat – the seat which Kaeya doesn’t use, as he has his own, non-spinning chair that he much prefers, and yet the other researchers insisted on giving their beloved Lieutenant a seat – and frowns. He does it loudly enough that Kaeya can hear the complaints before he even voices them.

“Don't,” he warns.

“You don't even know what I was going to say!”

“I can make a rather good guess.”

“Uh-huh,” Childe crosses his arms. “And how do you know that I wasn’t about to ask what you were doing?”

“The day you develop an interest in the synthesis of organic substances is the day pigs fly.” He laughs a little at the thought, “I can explain the process to you if you want – though I might have to explain the few basics of oxidising alcohols; I'm sure you’ll grasp the basic concepts rather quickly.”

Childe grimaces, the expression on his face clearly communicating how much he’d love to learn about that.

“As I thought. You know my answer already, and it’s the same as it has been for the past week. Continuing to pester me is not going to irritate me into giving into your whims.”

“What about my irresistible charm?” Childe scoots a little closer in his chair, grinning up at Kaeya. He keeps his arms crossed, staring down at Childe. “Would that be enough to convince you, comrade?”

“Once you develop this ‘irresistible charm’ I'm certain it will work wonders. Until then, you’ll have to tun to other strategies.” He pauses. “My answer is still no, before you ask.”

“Oh, come on!” Childe tosses his hands up, almost smacking Kaeya right in the arm as he flails about. “You're just being uptight about this now – no-one is willing to go against your orders, meaning there’s nobody willing to fight me.”

“Perhaps, if you thought your plans through a little more and allowed yourself to take others input into strategies, you would not currently be in this situation.”

“Ugh,” Childe rolls his eyes. “Did you not believe the sincerity of my words since then? Words have been exchanged, and everything’s even again. There’s no reason to hold a grudge against me like this.”

“Is there not?” He turns on Childe quickly, fast enough that it startles the Lieutenant slightly as he leans forward and grasps at his shoulder, pushing him back into his chair harshly. His grip is nowhere near strong enough to actually restrain him, but it makes his point known as Childe’s face twists with discomfort.

Kaeya adjusts his hand, the pressure releasing for a moment as he wraps his fingers over the top of Childe’s shoulder, using the new leverage to dig his thumb into the centre of the wound. “Tell me, how is it that you would attempt a spar in such a condition? It would be an easy win, seeing as I know each one of your weak points currently.”

The hush that falls over the lab is near suffocating, but the silent is something that Kaeya has adjusted to, gradually, over the entirety of his stay within the lab. Conversations tend to cut themselves off the moment he enters a room, eyes turning to study the newest fascination of the Palace. Even the scratching of pen on paper has stopped.

He releases his grip on Childe’s shoulder, grinning down at the Lieutenant, even as he glares right back at him. The silent frustration Childe radiates is telling – not quite the anger that Kaeya would have expected, and not aimed at him, directed towards himself instead. He grits his teeth and bears the pain that Kaeya’s sure he’s feeling currently – something that he feels a little bad for, even if it had been a necessary demonstration.

“Of course, if you're dissatisfied with my diagnosis and treatment plan, we can always take you to the Doctor for a second opinion on my own observations, but he might prefer to do a few more internal observations that I prefer. I'm sure he’d enjoy taking you apart and finding out what possessed you to throw yourself at a frostarm lawachurl like you wielded a pyro vision, I'm just not sure whether he’d stitch you back together the right way.” He quirks an eyebrow, “We can always find out, but I doubt you want to end up like the subjects in the basement.”

Childe’s staring at him, the glare from before melted away as he instead grins. “You know, I've always wondered – do you raise both eyebrows when you do that, or is it just the one that you raise? I can’t tell, ‘cause the other one’s hidden.”

He breathes in again, the same breathing exercise as before. It helps just as much. “Did you listen to anything else I said?”

“Not really,” Childe grins. “Something about pulling me apart, and trying to stitch me back together. You wanna see my insides that badly, Pav?”

He hums under his breath, leaning a little closer. “I'm sure they’d be plenty interesting, dear.” He’s close enough that he can see the small flecks of darker blue – almost purple – in his iris. “Unfortunately, I much prefer you in one piece, so I’ll have to leave you be for now.” He pats Childe’s cheek with his hand absently, vaguely registering that he can feel the warmth of Childe, even through his leather gloves, before he turns back to the experiment.

“Was there anything else you wanted?”

“I- no.” Childe’s voice sounds unusually strained. “I’ll see you around.”

Kaeya only turns around once the sound of Childe’s footsteps has moved away, but the distance isn’t enough to hide the redness of his ears, his face no doubt matching it. He’s far too pale to hide the flush on his face, and he obviously knows it with how his head is slightly ducked.

Kaeya feels a little bad for embarrassing him in such a way. And then he promptly remembers the multitude of times when Childe had used training exercises as an excuse to pull him close in an attempt to embarrass Kaeya.

Ah. Perhaps he just got a taste of his own medicine, then.

“I'm almost at the point of begging them to fight each other again.”

“Hm.” Pantalone flicks over a page, nodding along as Dottore continues to complain beside him, sat on the same side of the desk as him rather than opposite, as his usual clients do. He supposes this client is a little more special than the other ones he invites into his office. “And why have you reached that point, dear? I had thought Childe sustained rather significant injuries.”

“He has,” Dottore’s lips twist, an obvious sign of his discontent. “The medical report given to me was…lacking in details, but the extent of the injuries was enough. As was the supplementary report I was given when Kaeya figured out that some injuries had been concealed from him.”

“I'm sure he was pleased about that.”

“Everyone seemed to enjoy it,” Dottore scoffs. “I don't think Kaeya’s been a good influence on them. Before, they could hardly care for entertainment, and yet now they drink down every morsel they're handed, as though they’ve been deprived of it until now.”

Pantalone laughs.

“What?” Dottore twists to face him a little further, contorting himself awkwardly in his chair to continue sitting in his “actually incredibly comfortable position” while also facing him. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing.” He waves Dottore away gently, picking his pen up again and signing the bottom of the document with a flourish. “Only that I cannot understand where their love from dramatics may have come from. It must have been Kaeya, for there was no drama for them to witness before his arrival.”

He gets the sense that Dottore is squinting at him from behind his mask. “Why do you say it as though the opposite is true?”

“No reason.” Only that his and Dottore’s own spats had probably been enough to entertain the deprived researchers up until the far more amusing spectacle of Kaeya and Childe arrived. “No reason at all.”

“Ow.” The monotone echoes out into the empty lab around them, Kaeya only wincing slightly as he’s pulled away from his work for a moment before Childe relaxes his grip again. “You could benefit from being a little less heavy-handed.”

“I would benefit a lot more from-”

“I'm not fighting you,” he interrupts Childe before he can even make the request, accepting the harsh tug on his hair that he receives a moment later. “I'm busy right now, and your stitches still haven’t been removed; I don't feel like redoing them this evening, so you will simply have to wait and be patient.”

“And when will you take my stitches out, incredibly qualified doctor of mine?”

“When I feel like it.”

He traces out another quick design, tilting his head to look at it from a different angle. Dottore had passed this particular commission onto him, deeming it too boring for his own tastes. He would have discarded it entirely if Pantalone hadn’t twisted his arm and berated him for throwing away good mora in such a flippant way.

Childe yanks on his hair, almost pulling him off his stool entirely and straining his neck as he struggles to remain upright. “Ouch,” he complains, almost twisting in his seat and glaring at Childe, before realising that will just piss him off more.

“It would hurt less if you stopped squirming like that,” Childe snips back, tugging on his hair again, albeit a little more gently than before.

“You talk to your sister like that?” He asks. The design needs a few more modifications before he starts testing the prototypes. It could do to be a little more streamlined, the current design too bulky to be easily concealed and transported, which the commissioner had stated as an absolute need for this tool. “Alternatively,” he offers, when Childe seems content to continue yanking at his hair as though attempting to rip it from his scalp, “you could simply not braid my hair.”

Childe scoffs. “I'm visiting family in a few weeks; if I get there and I can’t braid her hair, she’ll be disappointed.”

“What a tragedy.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Childe sighs. His hands move a little more gently through Kaeya’s hair, almost soft in their ministrations as he parts the hair carefully. Kaeya isn’t sure what kind of braid he’s doing, but he’s certain it’s a complex one with how long it’s taking him. “Childhood is something fleeting, and to be able to fulfil any of their requests, no matter how small or silly they seem to be, is valuable. Even more valuable when I'm away so often.”

Kaeya doesn’t know what to say to that, doesn’t have experience in being the older one. He settles for a hum, giving no response in particular.

Childe doesn’t attempt to goad him into a fight, unlike the other evenings they’ve spent together recently, where Childe uses every tactic in his arsenal in an attempt to frustrate Kaeya until he’s backed into a corner and unable to do anything but accept Childe’s request.

Silence is not unusual from Childe, especially not when he’s plotting his next move or considering his next words carefully. Kaeya waits, ready to listen to whatever it is that Childe comes up with next.

They sit in silence for the rest of the evening, until Kaeya is satisfied with the design and his eye is burning from tiredness. Childe says little as they part for the evening, expression pensive. Kaeya’s not sure what it is that has him in such deep thought.

All he takes away from that interaction is that his practice with braiding was obviously unneeded. The braid he has is complex and elegantly done, something that Kaeya would be unable to replicate himself. He leaves it in, in the hope of preserving it for a few short days.

Dottore sighed. “I don’t think you understand. Everyone is at their wit’s end with him, and to have the face of the Fatui be regarded as an annoyance by the majority of our troops is not good for morale,” Dottore breaks off to mutter under his breath. Kaeya only manages to catch something about “his own wit’s end” and “Pantalone”, which is when he decided he actually didn’t care nor want to know.

“I don’t see how that’s my problem,” he shrugs. “Sounds like an issue, sure, but not big enough of an issue to warrant sending us out into the middle of nowhere – need I remind you of how that ended previously?”

“That is exactly what landed us in this situation,” Dottore sighs. “Look, you might not be aware of it, but whenever you squirrel yourself away into your hiding spots, Childe wreaks absolutely havoc with everyone else. He posters the researchers, and the assistants, and the soldiers. He’s even begun pestering me, trying to figure out where the hell you’ve scurried off to.”

“I’m not telling you where I hide.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to leave the Palace for a few days so everyone gets some peace and quiet and doesn’t kill him.”

“That’s a little much,” he folds his arms as he sits back, rickety chair creaking under his weight. The rest of the lab is empty, odd for the early evening as its usually the busiest time. Tonight, however, everyone seems to have retired early. “I don't think they would be able to kill him.”

“Either way, someone’s going to get hurt, and that’s the last thing I need. These floors are not designed to scrub blood out of.”

“I can see that,” he remarks dryly. “There’s several places in this room that come to mind.” There’s one right beside the door, at the base of the stairs leading up into the supply room. It’s a spot that the more suspicious researchers skirt around, preferring not to step into the long-dried blood of their deceased companion. Kaeya’s not actually sure what happened to that particular researcher, with the rumours ranging from him tripping and falling to Dottore assassinating him and making it look like an accident.

“That is besides the point,” Dottore waves him off. “If for no other reason, remove him from the grounds so that I can get some peace; he seems to think if I declare him to be in good health that you’ll attack him the moment you hear. Set him loose on a pack of wolves, for all I care, or I'm going to kill him and then no-one will be happy with me.”

Kaeya sighs.

“Where are you sending us this time?”

‘This time’ sees them sent to the middle of nowhere, with a group of nervous recruits. All of which are nervous because they're the first expedition team to be formally sent out since the massacres began happening. They're glancing over their shoulders as they travel – on foot, to Childe’s obvious glee – as though they're going to be suddenly ambushed.

In truth, the woods they're travelling through certainly don't help with the atmosphere.

The pines grow thick and close together, the canopy blocking most light from reaching the ground. Despite it being midday, most of them are holding a lantern of some kind to see more than three feet in front of themselves.

Childe is positively elated, bouncing along next to Kaeya, as though walking through a forest is the best idea he’s ever heard of.

“You could do with calming down a little,” he grouches. He’s not nearly annoyed as he sounds, finding more amusement in the way their subordinates keep glancing at Childe as though he’s finally lost it and is going to murder them all. “You're scaring the little ones.”

“Most of them are older than us.”

“All of them are also recruits.” He replies, “They're not going to do anything if I call them little ones, even if they really want to.”

“Because they're scared of you,” Childe teases, poking him between the ribs. He flinches away from the touch with a scowl.

“I still don't understand why they think of me as someone scary.”

“Well, you're a Lieutenant, you have a vision – the same as Our Beloved Tsaritsa, nonetheless, meaning you have an obvious sign of her favour – you're not Snezhnayan, you wear an eyepatch, and you’ve beaten most of them in a fight at some point.” Childe counts all the points on his fingers, watching him the whole while.

“Most of that can be said for you as well,” he points out.

“Yeah, but I go and chat with them. Get all chummy with them – I'm their friend, you know, humanises me a little if they see me relaxing as well. The only places you can be found are on the training field and in the lab. You're a spooky guy.”

“A spooky guy.” He repeats.

“Yeah! The sorta person that would be a ghost story for the local village, stop the kiddies from running into the forest at night and tripping into something they shouldn’t! You never know what you’ll find out in the woods.”

“Uh-huh,” he watches Childe from the corner of his eye. “You get a lot of those stories growing up?”

“Of course, not that any of them worked.” Childe grins right back at him. “You're perfect for the traditional set-up of those kinda stories. You’ve got the spooky and mysterious vibe going on. It’d probably be the traditional thing of taking and eating children.”

He balks. “I've never eaten a child.”

“I'm not saying you have! C’mon,” Childe laughs, sidling a little closer to Kaeya, until they're practically pressed hip to hip. “You never heard those stories?”

“No. Where I lived, it was quite safe. And if there was anything dangerous, there were Knights to deal with it. If not, I had the training to deal with most situations. Besides, if either of us are suited to become the local horror story to ward children away from the forest, it would be you.”

“Been there done that,” Childe shrugs. “Not very interesting. You get a few weird looks every now and then, but it works a little worse when the kiddies love the stories you bring back.”

Kaeya stares at the side of Childe’s face, wondering if he can feel the burning stare of his confusion and curiosity.

“What?” Childe notices it.

“You cannot simply say that you’ve somehow become a local horror story and then move on- you said you’ve hardly been home in the past few years, certainly not while I've been here, so there’s no way you could’ve become...some cryptid.”

“Well, you attack a few kids your age, and no-one lets you live it down.”

“You're being far too casual about this.”

“Eh, there’s a reason I've been in the Fatui for so long. Got shipped off here to have a safer outlet for any stray emotions. But it’s apparently a little hard to live down a reputation like that when those kids still live in the village.”

“I'm sure.”

“Oh, come now,” Childe sighs, sagging as he turns to face him. “They were bullying my sister, and she was so much smaller than them – it was in no way a fair fight! Admittedly, I could have tried talking them down first, but hitting them was much easier.”

“Hm.”

“Don't do that,” Kaeya quirks an eyebrow at Childe’s response. “Your disapproving hum! You don't say anything, but it’s made incredibly clear that you think I did something wrong.”

“I'm not being disapproving. I'm just trying to figure out how many kids you had to beat up before someone decided that you needed a different outlet.”

Childe laughs at his response, eyes crinkling in the corners, but rather tellingly does not give any other response.

The site of their expedition is less exposed than Kaeya expected. With all the winter gear they're lugging, he’d expected it to be out in the middle of the tundra, rather than sheltered between a forest and a mountain.

Childe seems displeased by the chosen location, which he makes rather obvious once he and Kaeya are left alone to set up their own tent.

“This is such a terrible location,” Childe complains, even as he hammers the pegs into the ground and tightens the guylines. “Really, I don't think they could have chosen a worse location.”

“You know just as well as I do that they're just following orders. If you have such an issue with camping here, bring it up with Dottore later.”

“It’s like he’s begging for an ambush. The mountains trap us in unless we’re particularly adept at scrambling up a sheer clifface, and the forests open us up to have someone sneak closer, unseen until it’s far too late to organise a counter.”

“I do believe that might be the point.”

The sound of the hammer connecting with the metal pegs they're using pauses. When Kaeya away from the pole he’s holding up, he finds Childe staring up at him, still poised to swing the hammer again.

“What?”

“I think the entire point of this expedition is to lure our mysterious attacker in. There was no reason to send us on such a small expedition; there was no reason to send out such an expedition in the first place, either. We have all the useful data that we could want for from this mountain. The ore veins here are subpar, already depleted by previous mining efforts; there’s no ancient civilisation located nearby that we might be able to find ancient texts within. Whatever mission they’ve been given is not intended to be fulfilled.”

“And you're happy to go along with this?”

“As happy as I can be.” He sighs, looking back at the pole again, at the way his glove-clad hands wrap around it. Considers the way the leather wrinkles. “Dottore attempted to play this off as getting you out of Zapolyarny before someone snapped and killed you; I think he might have been halfway serious about how irritating he found you, though not enough to hurt you.”

“More like not enough to start a spat with Pulcinella.” Childe mutters. He swings the hammer down and shoves the rest of the peg into the frozen ground easily, staring down at it for a moment longer. “So what, you're happy to just send all these recruits running to their deaths?”

“Of course not. I’d like to think you know me a little better than that. Or at least think of me more kindly than someone that would enjoy using those around me as nothing more than pawns.” He nudges Childe with his foot, getting the Lieutenant to look up at him again. “They're on edge already, waiting for the moment they can bolt, and I'm sure if they're given the opportunity or motivation to do so, then they will.”

“Still doesn’t guarantee their survival.”

“All previous encounters suggest that it’s a single person, working alone. They wouldn’t be able to attack the camp and block a road at the same time. It’s not a guarantee, of course; they could still run into monsters on the path back to the Palace, but that’s out of our hands at that point.”

“And we’re to stay here, catch this person?”

“Kill them, if necessary.” Kaeya adds. “But I assume the idea. This person needs to have some idea of Fatui movements, meaning they're likely already aware of our movements.”

“Because we’re the first expedition team to leave Zapolyarny in months,” realisation seems to dawn upon Childe, his eyes a little wider as he turns to look at the rest of their team. “Alright. I can work with this.”

“I'm sure you can,” he smiles at Childe, watching as he shuffles through the snow to begin fixing the next peg. “I only ask that you allow me in on the planning this time.”

“Oh, if you insist,” Childe rolls his eyes. “No stupid ideas.”

“Hm, perhaps I should take over planning, then, if we wish to avoid those.”

“Your grand plan isn’t working very well,” he mutters to Childe, both of them huddled out by a snow bank, directly centred between the mountainside and the forest. It gives them the best vantage point of both locations, making it easier to spot any movements quickly.

“Our attacker might be overly cautious,” Childe hisses back.

They're hidden quite well behind the snow bank, both laying down on their fronts and wearing all white. He hadn’t even been aware that the Fatui had such camouflage uniforms, but he’d been pleasantly surprised when Childe produced one out of each of their standard military packs.

It is, however, also the second night that they're doing this. They’d managed to sleep during the day, dozing in shifts as the recruits moved around camp and did whatever menial task Dottore had given them.

Childe shivers beside him, huddling a little lower into the snow in an attempt to keep out of the wind’s path. It doesn’t work very well, as he continues shivering beside him, eventually transitioning to chattering teeth that prevent Kaeya from listening to anything else.

He sighs and shuffles a little closer, spreading his cloak over both of them. He would take it off entirely, but that much movement would alert anyone watching the camp closely, and he doesn’t want to chase off their attacker if they're watching this evening. He’d rather this expedition be over quickly, despite how determined it is to drag everything out.

Childe remains silent for a moment, before breaking it with a whispered, “Thanks.”

“You should have brought your own cloak,” he whispers back. Childe still feels far warmer than he is, but colder than is probably healthy for a normal human. Kaeya huddles a little closer into the snow, keeping half an eye on the way Childe slowly begins to stop shivering.

The lack of shivering can be a sign of warming up again, but shivering also stops once you reach the later stages of hypothermia. He’d rather not turn to the side and find that Childe’s succumbed to hypothermia at some point.

“I'm fine,” Childe says, after an indeterminable amount of time later, when Kaeya’s turned to scrutinise him again. “I'm warmer, not dying.”

“Sorry for checking up on you,” he scoffs.

“Yeah, yeah,” Childe breaks himself off to yawn, dropping his head into the snow once he’s finished. “Basic training, whatever. You staring at me isn’t making me feel much better.”

“You haven’t been sleeping very well during the day,” Kaeya comments.

“Kinda hard when everyone’s moving around the camp, and the canvas doesn’t do much to block the light.”

“Have a nap right now then.”

“What?” Childe whips his head around to face him. “Are you stupid? We’re on watch right now, we can’t just sleep because we feel like it.”

“There was no ‘we’ in my suggestion. I was saying that you could sleep, if you're so tired. It would do neither of us any good to be tired in case our foe did arrive. Besides, you would be awake in moments if promised a fight.”

“Ugh, I don't even know if I can fall asleep.”

“It’s quiet and it is dark, if you lay down with the intent of falling asleep, I'm sure you’ll find it easy.”

“Whatever,” Childe shuffles a little closer to Kaeya, putting himself a little further beneath the warm weight of his cloak, no doubt. “You better fucking wake me, or I swear-”

“I'm sure you're going to come out with some creative insult, but I can assure you it’s unnecessary. If I were to move, you would be awake in moments; there’s no way for me to fight someone without waking you.”

“Fine.” Childe huffs. “But I'm pretty sure this won’t work.”

It works within minutes. Kaeya hears the moment his breathing transitions from awake to asleep, taking a moment to pull his attention away from the camp in front of them to look at his companion. He’s a little closer than Kaeya had first anticipated, their faces mere inches away from each other.

He glances back at the treeline, and prays that their assailant doesn’t choose tonight to strike. For Childe to be so tired that he accepted Kaeya’s suggestion without a fight tells far more than the bags beneath his eyes, or how he yawned his way through several of his comments.

There is no attacker, and someone must hear his prayers, as the only difference during the night is that the shadows look a little darker than they had a few moments before.

It starts suddenly and without warning.

Kaeya doesn’t even realise that it has begun until Childe is up on his feet, yelling out to alert the sleeping members of their team. It takes him a moment longer to smell it too, on his feet beside Childe in a moment, only taking the time to adjust his eyepatch before he’s running after the other man.

The smell of burning fabric fills the air. He can only hope burning flesh doesn’t join it.

The recruits scramble out of the camp easily, watching with wide eyes as the tents catch alight, flames jumping from one to another, flaring up in dangerous columns of red and orange, grasping at the sky.

“Go!” He barks, pointing at the path they had arrived here on. “That’s an order,” he shouts, when some of them continue to hesitate, staring at the tents as though they're going to dive back into them for the useless data they had been ordered to collect. “Return to Zapolyarny and await further orders!”

It takes only a few moments for everyone to begin scrambling towards the treeline, towards the path that leads to safety. He’s glad to see that some part of their training has stuck in their brains, even in the moment of panic, as they pair up almost immediately, grasping onto their buddy and hurrying onward.

He turns back to his own partner, mouth set into a grim line. Childe looks much the same, the seriousness of his expression contrasting the youth of his face. The fire doesn’t help, illuminating the edges of his face as he turns back towards the blaze.

“A planned attack,” Kaeya says. “Something to draw everyone out, push them away from the camp.”

“A tactic to scatter the unprepared,” Childe agrees. “Only our assailant likely wasn’t expecting us to remain.”

“No.” He frowns, “They most likely weren’t.”

They split up without a word, Kaeya circling around to the left, while Childe takes the right, each of them stepping carefully through the flames. The fire poses a lower threat to them than it did their soldiers, their visions perfectly equipped to douse the flames themselves if needed.

The fire crackles around him, making it hard to listen for anything – he almost fears that Childe could shout for his aid, and he wouldn’t hear it over the roaring of blood and flames in his skull.

The sound of feet crunching through snow behind him is a distinct one, though. As is the metallic clanking of something moving at high speeds.

He ducks and rolls, casting his cloak off without a second thought as he hops to his feet. His staff materialises in his hand, and he swings it towards his assailant without thinking, forcing them back.

A flash of red eyes meets his own, before the assailant is moving again, backing away and attempting to get behind him once more. He turns, not allowing them to disappear from his sight, as hard as the smoke and ash swirling in the air make it.

He sees the tactic here now, despite the fire posing a threat to their attacker, it cloaks them too, allowing them to move freely among it as their foes attempt to counter any attacks thrown their way.

“Stop!” He calls out in Snezhnayan, the word feeling rough in his throat as the smoke rubs it raw. He bites back a wheezing cough, “By the order of the Tsaritsa, I ask you to surrender! Anything further and I shall be forced to use extreme force!”

The attacker makes a low sound in the back of their throat nearby, the words they spit out nearly indecipherable with how low they talk and the noise surrounding them. All the same, it’s easy to hear the “Fatui scum,” tossed towards him.

He can also hear the Mondstadt it’s spoken in. Can hear the cadence of voice that he’d become familiar with over the entire course of his life, that he’d probably recognise the sound of it before his own.

He lowers his staff just a moment too early, hands relaxing their grip just as chains shoot forth from the smokescreen their wielder has hidden himself behind. They grasp at his staff, attempt to yank it from his hands, but he refuses. Digs his heels into the ground and allows himself to be reeled in until he’s face to face with their attacker.

Face to face with his brother.

Chapter Text

The chains continue to slink up his staff as he stares at Diluc – at his brother – curling first around his fingers then snaking up to tighten around his wrists. He barely notices the faint pressure it begins applying, far too caught up in taking in all the small details of his brother- of the person he hadn’t thought he’d ever see again. Hadn’t ever considered if he even wanted to see him again.

The chains reach his forearm, clinking as his brother continues to glare at him, clambering over his forearm as that faint pressure begins to register at the forefront of his mind, mainly because that faint pressure quickly becomes really quite painful pressure as the chains constrict.

He gasps out a quiet breath, instinctually going to yank his arm back and away from the sudden source of pain. Said source of pain keeps him rooted firmly in the spot, his brother’s tight grip around the chains preventing him from backing up, keeping him tied to his staff but unable to gesture in any meaningful way. He wonders, in the very back of his mind, the part not currently occupied with trying to break himself free, how many Fatui grunts his brother has killed in this exact way.

He finds he’d rather not remember the exact statistics.

He should have moved before it got to this point. Should have gotten himself firmly out of range long before the chains could even begin to secure themselves around his wrist. Should have called out to Childe, should have warned him that he’s found their attacker- that he’s currently being attacked by said attacker.

The words, the summons to action that Childe is no doubt keeping an ear out for, die a sad death in the back of his throat as the chains begin to burn against his arms.

In that moment, with Diluc staring down at him with no empathy, no sympathy, present in the flickering flames of anger in his eyes, he’s thrown years into the past. The smell of burning flesh is the same as it has always been, and the unforgiving glint – the burning cold resentment – in his brother’s eyes is as steely as it had been. As it still is.

“Diluc,” he chokes out, voice strangely distant to his own ears, as though he’s listening to someone speaking inside a cave. Far enough away for the sound to echo. He doesn’t know why he bothers to choke out the plea, attempting to appeal to whatever sympathy his brother may have left for him, even as he stares him down with no more than cold fury in his eyes.

The chains loosen abruptly, though it does little to alleviate the burning of his skin. The chains have burned through his gloves, melding little bits of fabric to the quickly blistering skin beneath. Even as the chains fall away, retreat with a clattering sound of metal – certainly loud enough to attract anyone nearby with keen enough senses.

He takes a hurried step backwards, grasping his newfound freedom and using it to escape, to pull away from the sensation. And yet the burning sensation doesn’t fade- it climbs and crawls, inching over his skin and up his neck. The sensitive skin beneath his jaw flares up, and he chokes on an inhale, breathing in smoke and ash and the taste of his own cooked flesh, gritting his teeth together to hold back the pained sound that threatens to break free.

He looks at his brother through a watering eye, tensing his jaw as the burning sensation continues to spread, swirling into the form of a hand and digging into his skull, beneath the eyepatch, as though it’s attempting to pry his eye from his skull.

His brother still hasn’t uttered a word. Hasn’t moved an inch. Kaeya can’t even be certain that he meant to release him from the chains – where is his vision? Why doesn’t he have it with him? Where is it – and he takes another hurried step back at the thought, recoiling at the idea that those grasping, burning chains may reach out for him again.

“Kaeya,” his brother breathes, after what might have been an eternity but could have very easily been only a moment. His voice sounds different than Kaeya remembers; perhaps a consequence of the fire and the ash floating around them. Or perhaps he remembered the sound of his brother’s voice incorrectly. Perhaps he has been away for long enough that such memories have begun to blur into something from longer ago.

His own lungs feel thick with the ash floating around them, the oppressing heat almost too much to bear, his eyes watering with the sting of smoke and phantom pain of a burning hand digging its fingers into his face, cupped around his eye.

He coughs out a breath and inhales, properly this time, straightening as he breathes it out. Reminds himself where he is. Who he is. How it is unbecoming of someone that holds such power to cower before someone who is, for all intents and purposes, an intruder.

“What are you doing here,” he asks. His voice is colder than intended, but he also had no intention of giving his brother – ex-brother, some small, spiteful part of him whispers, he doesn’t want you anymore – a warm welcome.

His brother has already done a rather splendid job of warming the atmosphere they currently stand in, though it has nothing to do with his words.

“Destroying something that should not have been allowed to grow as far as it has,” Diluc frowns, face twisting and eyes shimmering with a hint of flame. “It’s like a tumour, doing no good to anyone it exists alongside, and the moment you wipe it out in one place, it appears in three others.”

“You have driven Fatui expeditions from every other nation in Teyvat. Those people were not even given a chance to flee, not to plead for their lives. They were wiped out indiscriminately, and now you chase them back into Snezhnaya? Are you the type of man to follow a wounded animal to its den, just to ensure you are the one to deliver the final blow?” He sneers, “What would Father think of you now?”

“Do not speak of him,” his brother’s hands tighten into fists. His face settles into a scowl moments later, free of the conflicting emotions that had warred on its moments prior. “You should not consider yourself someone able to call him Father.”

“And you have the authority on the wishes of a dead man?” Kaeya draws himself up, even as his brother takes a threatening step closer. Kaeya's small height advantage over his brother had been something that rankled Diluc when they were children, but it does nothing to deter him now. “He was the one that instructed me to refer to him as such in the first place. Tell me, brother, what do you think he’d think of you now? Truly, would he see someone great and valiant? Would he see that you have grown into the person he always believed you would? Or would he see nothing more than someone who is enough of a coward to turn on his own brother in his own house, because I know which one I see.”

“It was a bad time and you knew it,” he grits out. His fists tighten and loosen, pulsing in an erratic rhythm. Maybe he’s imagining how it would feel to strangle him. Or maybe he’s just itching for a fight.

“Maybe I did know it,” he shrugs, taking an easy step closer. Not close enough to put him within reaching range, let alone punching range. But he’s close enough to pen his brother in a little more. “Maybe I knew exactly how you’d react; what you’d say. What you would do. The steps you would take, the way you would command me to step outside into the rain. Maybe I recognised the moment resolve settled in your eyes, the way your plan formulated in your head. What would you say if I said that I knew this?”

“That it was a terrible thing for you to do.”

“And if I wanted you to do that terrible thing?” He smiles, a sad little thing. “If I wanted you to commit to the first response that flitted through your mind. To the first idea that came to you, in that moment of anger. What if I wanted you to kill me on that evening, rid me of my guilt and cleanse me of my sins? How would you feel then?”

He watches Diluc swallow, sees the bob of his throat and the thrum of his pulse, watches as he considers his next words carefully.

“I would feel shame,” Diluc chokes out, as though admitting such a thing physically pains him. And perhaps it does; speaking on their emotions had never been a strength of the Ragnvindr family. It was something accommodated for in the moments where it was necessary. Kaeya doesn’t bother to accommodate for him here. “And guilt,” Diluc continues. “For turning on someone that would have no way to defend themselves.”

He hums. “Maybe Father would not be so disappointed in you after all.”

Childe calls out for him then, the sound splitting the silent air like a gunshot. Immediately, Diluc is on edge again, fists tightly clenched and stance stiff as he glances around.

“You're not alone,” Diluc says, more a statement than a question.

“I am not,” he answers anyway.”

“Who is here with you?”

“A…partner, of sorts.” He turns his head to the side, eye on Diluc the whole time and calls a response to Childe’s initial yell, summoning him to where the two of them currently stand. It’ll take him a few minutes to pick his way through the still burning debris, even with the assistance of his vision. It gives them a little more time.

Watching Diluc means he gets to see how his face twists when he registers the Snezhnayan he speaks in. Gets to watch as sorrow twists into fury, then mellows out into something resembling resignation.

“Snezhnayan.” Diluc says.

“We are in Snezhnaya,” he answers. “In a Snezhnayan military camp.”

“I- Kaeya,” Diluc rushes out, having the gall to sound disappointed in him. He lost the ability to show disappointment in his questionable life choices the moment he ordered him outside of the house with nothing but a sword. Diluc’s eyes go wide as their setting, and its implications, seem to fully settle in. As though he hadn’t considered – hadn’t wanted to consider – such a scenario before.

“What? You expected me to just roll over and die in a ditch?” he spits in reply, furious at the disappointment Diluc dares let colour his voice.

“The entirety of Mondstadt thinks you're dead. Gone in the middle of the night! Disappeared into Dragonspine and not returning.”

“And who was it that chased me away?” He steps closer, no longer caring to remain out of reaching distance. He’s not close enough to snarl in his face, but it’s close enough that Diluc’s eyes go a little wider.

Something dangerous thrums just beneath his skin, searing cold in his veins. It barely remains contained, and even then he fails to keep it all bottled up, some of it seeping out and through, something he only realises when he nearly bites through his tongue as he stifles his next words.

“Everyone searched for you,” is Diluc’s weak offering. The silent I did too, goes unspoken and ignored. If his brother doesn’t wish to vocalise such a sentiment, then Kaeya will not bother to hear it, will not pretend that he understood the implicit continuation.

“Looked for me, or held a manhunt for me?” He raises an eyebrow, “Tell me, will I be able to return to Mondstadt without someone calling for my head?” Something in Diluc’s eyes shifts, barely there but something Kaeya notices all the same. “What? You didn’t go running to the nearest Knight you could find and tell them all about the Abyss Order’s spy?”

“No.” Diluc says, sounding angry at the mere idea. “I didn’t.”

“Well, colour me surprised. You sure didn’t seem to have an issue with taking justice into your own hands in that moment.”

“We held a funeral for you,” Diluc says, stepping forward. Kaeya steps back, carefully maintain the distance between them, staff held in front of him like some kind of barrier. He may have been the first to step forward, but he doesn’t wish to get any closer to him, especially not with the tendency Diluc has to act like a cornered animal in more desperate situations – Kaeya isn’t certain of how well he’s going to take Childe showing up. “Why didn’t you come back? Or even send some reassurance of your survival?”

“Maybe I didn’t wish to see the person that permanently disfigured me. Maybe I found somewhere that treated me just a little better than you treated me that night.”

“So you ran to the Fatui.”

“I ran into the Fatui,” he corrects. “And was given an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“And what offer could that be?” Diluc spits out, furious again. Kaeya is beginning to tire of his flip-flopping between sadness and guilt and anger and disappointment and resentment. It’s becoming far too much to keep track of.

“A Harbinger offered me a position,” he explains. “One that offered control, and freedom to do mostly as I please. A position directly beneath his own.”

“I cannot-”

“Starting a fight without me comrade?” Childe cheerfully interrupts, the sudden sound causing Diluc to spin towards the newcomer. Kaeya doubts Diluc understood anything Childe just said, but he glares all the same.

“You,” Diluc growls out, and then says nothing further. The fire has truly begun to die around them, leaving them stood among the blackened husks of what was once a rather busy camp. He’s only glad that there are no bodies for him to pull from the remains.

Childe looks at Kaeya, eyebrows raised. “Some help here, Pav? Can’t say I know much Mondstadtian.”

“He just said ‘you’. Reckon you’ve got a fan.”

“A fan?” Childe looks a little more excited at that idea, glancing back at Diluc as he adjusts the grip on his bow. “Well, it wouldn’t do to disappoint a fan.” Kaeya’s not sure what he imagines he’s going to do with the bow – he’d picked it up out of boredom, despite Kaeya warning him not to overexert himself and tear his stitches, and his progress with the weapon had been frustratingly painful for all those involved. He can barely hit an adjacent target, let alone hit what he was actually aiming at.

The master of weapons, felled by a bow.

“Wait,” he holds up a hand, ignoring the kicked-puppy look Childe immediately shoots him at being denied a fight, a pathetic noise building in the back of his throat as he no doubt begins to formulate an argument. “I'm not denying you a fight, I just want to finish speaking to him first. Find out what he wants.”

“Sure, yeah,” Childe drops his bow back to his side with a sigh. “Find out what the terrorist wants – please, be my guest.”

“Are you aware who that is,” Diluc hisses at him the moment Childe’s mouth shuts, not taking his eyes off the Lieutenant.

“Yes,” he sighs. “Lieutenant Childe, Apprentice of the Fifth Harbinger.”

“There’s been warnings of him,” Diluc says, turning his head to Kaeya but not pulling his eyes away from Childe. Childe is the most harmless that he can be right now, stood with his bow almost in the snow as he waits for whatever permission he thinks Kaeya is going to give him. “Some traitor noble has been sending snippets of information about the beast the Tsaritsa has managed to capture.”

A traitor noble…

He glances at Childe, away from Diluc for a moment, as thoughts of bloodied snow and desecrated remains flicker into his minds eye. Something to consider, but perhaps not right now.

“And?” He tilts his head to the side, “Sure, he can be annoying at times, but he’s rather easy to deal with when you figure out what he likes.”

“Figure out what- Kaeya, this is a trained killer of the Fatui.”

“I told you I was here with my partner, what do you think it is that I'm doing?”

“I don't know,” Diluc explodes at him, shoving forward a few steps. Kaeya backs up again, taking several steps backwards until he’s right beside Childe, where Diluc falters, apparently unwilling to get close to him. “I don't know anymore! There’s something wrong with you, and you're siding with him over me!”

“There’s something wrong with me,” he repeats.

“Yes!” Diluc cries, seemingly in exasperation.

“And you're certain I can’t fight him?” Childe asks, leaning close enough for his breath to brush over Kaeya’s ear as he speaks.

“Certain,” he replies, not taking his eye off Diluc.

“Why side with him?” Diluc asks, seemingly shouted out, deflating like a snuffed candle.

“Childe never burned half my face off,” is his cold reply. “The Fatui has been nothing but kind to me. A little rough around the edges, certainly, but kind nonetheless.”

“No-one within its ranks is kind, they're simply waiting for the moment to turn on you.”

“He smiles at he looks at Diluc, considering him carefully. “Did you not do the exact same to me?”

“Kaeya, that’s…”

“No.” He shakes his head in refusal, firmly cutting off whatever half-baked excuse Diluc was scrambling for. “No, you don't get to do that. It’s been two years; I've got something better now- something without you. I'm sick of living in your shadow; anything I did was compared to you. Here? Here no-one even knows who you are, outside of some winery owner back in Mond. There is no shadow for me to stand in here, and frankly, I am long done with that.”

“So that’s it,” Diluc’s eyes lose the fire that had been burning in them throughout the entire confrontation, dimming to nothing more than cold red. “You're just going back to whatever the hell it is that you're doing here, and you expect me to return to Mond empty handed?”

“Yes.” He frowns at Diluc. “I'm not some trophy for you to return with, triumphant in your victory over the Fatui. Feel free to embellish the tale however you like- remove me entirely if you so wish. Perhaps you simply ventured into Snezhnaya looking for a fight, and the Harbingers turned out to chase you away. That sounds like the kind of story that would be popular with the drunkards, right? The bards would sing your story to the heavens, praising the Master Ragnvindr that dared to step into the beast’s den and emerge victorious.”

“You're not funny, Kaeya.”

“I wasn’t intending to be,” he says. “Tell the tale however you like, I don't care. Just leave. Find the next boat going to Liyue Harbour and get on it. Or maybe the Harbingers really will turn out to hunt you down. Maybe I’ll join them – Archons know you’ve caused me enough of a headache with the destruction you’ve been causing.”

“How have I inconvenienced you?” Diluc’s face wrinkles as he thinks. “You’ve been at none of the camps attacked – this is the first time I've even seen you!”

“And all the surveillance equipment? Every single piece that was meticulously disassembled and left in the snow to rust? Who do you think made that?”

Diluc scowls. “So you’ve been looking for me from the start.”

“I haven’t been looking for you, I've been looking for the pest costing us so much damn mora.”

“Kaeya,” Childe attempts.

“Quiet,” he hushes Childe. “I want to hear what he says, and then you can chase him away.”

Diluc sighs. “And so what is it that you're doing? Or, wait, no, what title do you hold? If your…partner here is a Lieutenant and apprentice.”

“Looking to embellish your story?” He smiles, “I'm certain the bards and gossips will already do that for you.”

“Kaeya,” Diluc grits out. “Tell me.”

“Sure,” he sighs. “Good evening, Master Diluc, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he sweeps into a bow in the way Pantalone had taught him to, drawing his cloak slightly up with his hand. He ignores the confused look Childe shoots him, keeping his eyes focused on Diluc and the way he seems to recoil at the formalities. “I am Lieutenant Pavlín of the Fatui, Apprentice to the Second Harbinger.”

“You really are one of them,” Diluc frowns. “Your casket was empty, you know.”

“Do not try and guilt me. My friend is simply waiting to chase you down, you know? The only reason he’s not already attempted to kill you is because I asked him not to.”

“You got a hold of his leash or something?”

Kaeya glares at the insult behind Diluc’s words. “Childe does not have a leash for me to hold. There is respect between the two of us, meaning we trust when the other gives instruction.” He doesn’t mention that such trust is a new thing, glad of its recent blossoming between them, otherwise he’d currently be hastily contacting the Knights of Favonius to explain why one of their captains has turned up dead in Snezhnaya. “But if you insist on using such demeaning language, then consider that I am about to let go of that leash.”

Diluc’s eyes flash, static filling the air around them for a moment before Diluc turns on his heel.

“Run home, Ragnvindr,” he calls. “Tell the Knights your tall tale, and sit content in your home, knowing that you chased a wounded animal to its den. Be content in knowing that you recoiled when that wounded animal struck back at you.”

Diluc pauses, on the edge of the destruction that he had crafted. “Your grave will continue to be maintained,” is all he says, and then he continues walking away.

Kaeya watches, with gritted teeth and a locked jaw as Diluc begins towards the treeline, only glancing back once before he vanishes into the shadows.

He should feel pleased, probably, that he drove away a threat that has been plaguing them. Should feel relief, that he won’t have to think about how every one of the soldiers he trains is then sent off to be massacred in their camps.

He feels none of those things. Only utter relief, as he allows himself to release the tight hold he had over every inch of himself.

His hands shake as he turns away, no longer looking at the spot that Diluc had disappeared into, trying his best not to gasp pathetically in the silence left behind, every shred of air entering his lungs too thin to do him any good.

He’s vividly aware of Childe standing beside him, can feel the way his gaze bores into the side of his skull. He cannot find it in himself to turn towards him in that moment, shaking pathetically, as though the cold has suddenly sunk its jaws into him. His fingers tremble, even as he attempts to bring them back under control.

The fading adrenaline only makes his arm sting worse, the blistered skin making its displeasure known as he attempts to flex his arm.

“Okay, alright,” Childe’s hands flutter anxiously over his wrists before he seems to make a decision and clasps them firmly in his hands. He carefully avoids the burned and blistered parts, which Kaeya appreciates. “Not a great moment- not a great family reunion! Not the time or the place, if I'm being honest. I could think of plenty nicer places that would be much more suited for a family reunion, but alas! We’ve gotta make do with what we have at the time. Speaking of right now, staying in the moment and all that, maybe consider breathing? You haven’t done it recently, and normally that wouldn’t be cause for concern with all your-”

“I am breathing,” he grits out. Even though it really doesn’t feel like he is, with each word scraping against his throat as he forces it out. Gods above, strike him down now, if they have any mercy, and spare him from this pathetic vulnerability.

Childe makes a sound in the back of his throat, hands tightening in their grip around his wrists for a moment before releasing just as quickly. “Wrong answer, comrade. You are currently not breathing!”

“I haven’t collapsed yet,” Childe continues to periodically tighten and loosen the grip around his wrists, some kind of pattern that Kaeya probably wouldn’t focus on in any other moment. But with the flames still dying out around them, he’s almost glad to pay attention to Childe’s eccentricities. “That’s good enough.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Childe shakes his head. “Rough times getting rejected by your family for the first time, thrown out into the cold and left to fend for yourself. Though...judging by the outfits you regularly wear, and the amount of skin you flaunt, I don’t think being out in the snow would be such a hardship.”

“Not actually the first time,” he corrects, not even thinking it through, only focused on taking his mind off everything else. He feels strangely distant from his own body, flexing his arms in Childe’s wrists, just to feel the sting of pain throw him back into existence once more.

“Haha, great,” Childe grins at him, all teeth. “Good to see it doesn’t get any better, then.”

“Diluc is a special case. Always had an explosive temper, very quick to protect those that he deems as being wronged.”

“And yet you sent him packing with no more than a few words!”

“I shooed him away.”

“Sent him packing!” Childe insists. His hands have burned themselves into red-hot brands around his wrists. If Childe were to attempt to pull away, Kaeya isn’t sure that he’d be able to let go. “C’mon, we just chased away the fella that’s been the scourge of our lands recently! At least try and make it sound grand – unless you don’t want to impress dear old Dottore?”

“There’s nothing to impress with this, dear.”

“There’s plenty!” Childe insists, eyes gleaming. “C’mon, we just scared away the largest threat we’ve been facing recently, that’s certainly something worthy of praise.”

“Sure.”

“I am sure! Just you wait, you’ll be eating your words back at the Palace.”

It seems that he is, indeed, eating his words back at the Palace.

They slip in through the gates easily enough, the guards there visibly startling at their return – no doubt receiving the story from the returning recruits – but they let them through all the same.

It’s only when Kaeya goes to retreat into his lab that he faces his first problem. Childe has followed behind him, something that Kaeya would normally protest, but in this moment he simply lets Childe be, allowing him to follow for however long it takes for him to get bored.

Dottore stands outside his door, arms crossed and very obviously waiting for him. Pantalone stands just beside him, leaning on his cane with a pleasant smile on his face. Kaeya halts at the base of the stairs, only shifting slightly when Childe bumps into his back.

Inexplicably, he feels like a child that has just been caught sneaking back into his room after hours.

“Good evening,” he greets, treading carefully.

“It’s morning, actually,” Dottore corrects. “Not that it seems to matter with my researchers. They feel rather free in their attempts to cave my door in.” More like attempting to cave Pantalone’s door in. It’s no secret among the Fatui that Dottore will never be found in his own sleeping quarters.

“It was done out of concern, dearest,” Pantalone pats him on the arm. “Such a rude awakening is not what anyone expected this morning, but the others accepted it rather easily.”

“Easily,” Dottore scoffs. “Sure, if you include Scaramouche yelling until he goes hoarse as accepting it easily.”

“That was mild for him.”

“Uh, hello?” Childe pokes his head over Kaeya’s shoulder, hooking his chin there a moment later as he peers at the two Harbingers. “Kinda wanted to go in there, y’know. Injuries and all that.”

“Injuries?” Pantalone asks, both him and Dottore looking back at Kaeya again. “Was the confrontation violent?”

“No, it was actually incredibly peaceful. Turns out the person destroying the camps and killing everyone in their path is actually a pacifist, and so we had a lovely conversation before sending him on his merry way.”

“Now is not the time, brat.”

“He’s gone either way, going back to his own nation.”

“That’s lovely,” Pantalone smiles. “Now, as much as I would love to continue this conversation, we have a rather, hm, pressing meeting to be getting to.”

“Unfortunately,” Dottore says, though he grins as he says it.

“We’ll let you get to it, then.” Childe says, nudging Kaeya to the side of the staircase and making plenty of space for them to move past. Something doesn’t feel quite right about the situation to Kaeya – Dottore’s smile, paired with the knowledge that they have a pressing meeting to be attending, and them stood in a corridor, seemingly awaiting his return rather than attending said meeting. Something doesn’t add up, and he feels as though a step has dropped out from underneath him.

“Who said anything about you escaping from this meeting?”

“Uh, no-one? Kaeya here really needs to stitch himself together, though.”

“Don't speak for me,” he hisses. “It’s insulting.”

“Well you didn’t say anything! It’s like you’d gone mute, I'm havin’ to pick up all the slack here!”

“I’ll show you mute- want me to cut your tongue out?”

“Boys,” Pantalone lays a hand on his shoulder, pushing him apart. “It is late, and everyone is tired, I'm sure. The sooner this is all dealt with, the sooner we can all sleep and put our troubles aside, yes?”

“I still don't understand why we’re needed at this meeting,” Childe grumbles. “Or why you're suddenly able to order me around.”

“Because I said so,” Dottore brushes past both of them, taking the steps two at a time. “Hurry yourself up, or you’ll be making everyone else wait.”

Everyone else. The mystery continues to grow, though Kaeya believes a rather accurate image is beginning to put itself together in his mind. He squints at Dottore’s retreating back anyway, suspicious.

The walk through the Palace hallways is brisk, few words exchanged between them. Only he and Childe exchange several confused glances as they're hurried through winding corridors, drawing closer and closer to the heart of Zapolyarny Palace with every step they take.

It’s only when the chill in the air makes itself known that he realises where they’ve been led, watching as Childe seems to come to the same conclusion that he has. They have a moment to glance at each other, wide-eyed, before the doors are pushed open.

Mist spills forth from the room, and he’s really not surprised at the dramatics anymore. The Harbingers had to get their fondness for dramatics from somewhere, suitable that it be from the Tsaritsa herself that they’ve all inherited it.

Pantalone and Dottore lead the way, walking forward and carefully joining the ranks of the Harbingers currently stood in formation, all of which are watching them, eyes following his every move.

He pauses in the doorway, for long enough that Childe continues walking and bumps into his back. This is enough to unbalance their best warrior, the man in question flailing before he grabs onto the back of his cloak and yanks. He stumbles, shifting himself forward in order to not land flat on his back and embarrass himself in front of the assembled Harbingers.

“Can you not,” he hisses to Childe once he’s managed to regain control of his limbs.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t just stop in the middle of the doorway!”

“You were the one close enough to be breathing down my neck, I do believe the fault here lies with you.”

“Oh, my, I do see what you mean,” an unfamiliar voice breaks through the air. It emerges from the perfectly cast shadows over the throne at the back of the room, echoing like crystal through the silence that quickly falls. “They really are quite the pair, what was it you said…? Ah, well, nevermind. I can’t seem to recall it quite right, but you two truly are quite a delight to witness!”

He sees something shimmer within the shadows, before someone sweeps out of it. He’s uncertain how to put her appearance into words, other than overwhelming elegance. Likely what writers refer to when speaking of the “image of beauty”.

The elegance in her motions, and the ease with which she glides down the steps towards them is telling enough of just who she is. The icy glint in her eyes, and the way frost follows her every step, aids a little in his realisation.

He averts his eye, bowing his head and focusing on the floor instead.

He doubts looking away is enough to hide just what he is from the Tsaritsa, but not staring her in the eye with an obvious sign of his heritage should be enough to gain him at least a little favour with her. Maybe enough that she won’t immediately smite him.

Pierro follows her out of the shadows, an imposing figure next to her slender grace.

Frost pools around her feet as she comes to a stop right in front of them. The cold brushes over him, like gentle hands smoothing over his skin. He shivers as those careful hands close around the burns on his wrist, soothing the ache there.

Wave after wave of her power rolls over him, leaving him a little dazed and slightly weak in the knees as he struggles to comprehend it. The cryo hanging in the air sets a fire alight in his veins, abuzz with energy from being surrounded by his element; and yet he also tenses, wary of such power and the acts it has previously been used for. He’s left feeling off-kilter, unsure of how he should react.

“You have both been most impressive,” she says, a smile splitting her lips wide. “I have been kept rather well-informed of your ventures, especially the ones you have been having as of late. Tell me, my child, what was it that gave you such confidence to take on something you could not beat?”

“I- hm?” Childe blinks up at the Tsaritsa, apparently still struggling with the overwhelming force of her power.

“Ah, nevermind,” she shakes her head, hair bouncing around her face. “It is rather late, and I do believe everyone wants this to be done sooner rather than later.”

“This could have been done in the morning,” the Balladeer complains. “Your Majesty,” being tacked on the end as an afterthought.

“But the Palace looks so much more beautiful at night, don't you think? The moonlight reflects beautifully off the ice – I couldn’t imagine doing this at any other time.”

“And what is it, exactly, that we are doing here, Your Majesty.” He asks, raising his head to meet her gaze for a moment before looking away again.

“Always with the questions…Pavlín, was it? Yes, Pavlín. Your curiosity will take you far, I am certain. You find opportunities where others see nothing, finding the perfect moments to slip in. Your skills are rather specific, though what you do is good.” She tilts her head slightly to the side, one finger tapping at her cheek. “You're a rather fascinating one, aren’t you?”

Kaeya doesn’t have a response to that, though he doesn’t believe he’s meant to come up with you.

“And you, Childe. My dear soldier, you have done much for the Fatui, and I am certain you will continue to do much for us in the future. I look forward to whatever successes the two of you will have together.”

He swallows as the Tsaritsa steps forward, bracing himself as she reaches out for his face. Though, when she does touch him, it is gentle. She cradles his face carefully in his hands, gazing down at him with some unreadable look in her eyes. It promises something to him, though he doesn’t know what that promise entails. He doesn’t have the understanding for it, doesn’t possess the knowledge of an Archon.

She leans closer, until her mouth is besides his ear, the words exchanged between them meant for him and him alone. The cold of her skin on his face is refreshing, almost odd in how its chill rivals his own.

“You are a long way from home,” she murmurs. “Though I am impressed with the strength you possess. To withstand being rejected by your family not only once, but twice, it takes a special person to continue holding their head high.” He doesn’t question how she knows something like that, accepts it as part of whatever new reality he’s stepped into. “I only hesitate, at this crucial moment because I do not know how much more you can withstand. The path of you ahead is a hazardous one, and I remember the night I granted your vision with a clarity I wish I could dispel. I only ask you this question: when faced with such trials again, do you believe you would be able to overcome them?”

“Yes,” he says, breathes into the space between them. “I do.”

The Tsaritsa hums as she pulls away from him, still smiling.

A moment later, she has a ceremonial knife in her hands. Despite its decorated appearance, the blade shimmers in the moonlight, glinting dangerously off the sharp edge. She offers it towards him, hilt out until he grasps it carefully.

The point of the knife is aimed directly at the centre of his chest. He realises, in that moment, that this is a test. A way to evaluate his true motives, to see if he would even consider plunging it deep within her and ending her reign.

“Do you swear your undying loyalty to me, Pavlín?” She asks.

“I have once before,” he replies. “I would do it again easily.”

“And will you act as my hand, my will, in order to bring my goals into this world, into being?”

“I will.” His hold on the blade doesn’t waver. He doesn’t falter, confident in himself. He has no reason to kill the Tsaritsa. He has no motive, outside of some age-old dispute. He meets her gaze head on. Her eyes are kinder than he would have thought, soft, in comparison to the hard edges of her face.

“If I asked, would you bring the world to its knees? Would you be willing to stand beside me and watch Celestia burn?”

The Cryo Archon is known for her coldness, for the distance she places between herself and her people. Meaning it takes him aback when he sees the way her eyes burn, some passion mixed in with righteousness in her eyes.

It’s enough to steal the breath from his throat before he breathes out his next answer. “Gladly.”

“Then I welcome you my Tenth, Brighella.” The title carries a certain weight with it, and he accepts it graciously. “May you find opportunity wherever you step.”

He watches as she moves to Childe, cups his face gently, in the same way she had his. Their conversation is shorter than his had felt, but Childe’s eyes are still wide when the Tsaritsa steps backwards and offers him the knife in turn.

She repeats the oath to him, and Kaeya watches him murmuring his assent where necessary.

“My Vanguard, Tartaglia. My Eleventh,” the Tsaritsa concludes. “I welcome you to this inner circle, and can only hope that your exploits bring glory to Snezhnaya.”

That seems to be some kind of dismissal, as their silent audience moves immediately afterwards. It almost startles him, the sudden movement, after their stillness for so long.

Brighella.

He wonders what Diluc would think of this. Smiling a little to himself, he realises he actually doesn’t care.

Chapter Text

Kaeya arrives at the gates bright and early, walking alongside the guards sent to relieve those on night duty. He hadn’t meant to walk with them to the gates, but they had exited the Palace at the same time as he had, and it would be rather rude, and more than a little awkward, to put distance between them, in order to not walk alongside them.

That does not mean he has to exchange conversation with them, however.

He can feel their eyes on him, even as the gate comes into view, revealing the no-doubt exhausted yet still standing upright guards. It also puts them in the direct path of the slowly rising sun; where it had been blocked elsewhere in the Palace Grounds by the rather formidable walls surrounding it, here, at the gate, the sunlight it allowed to bleed through the wrought iron bars and spill over the snow beyond.

Kaeya pauses a short distance from the gate, boots crunching on the untouched snow. He’s surprised the guards don't have a fresh layer of it on their uniform, though perhaps they made themselves a little more presentable upon seeing his approach.

Both of the relieved guards pause in front of him to give a short bow and greeting, waiting until he waves a hand tiredly and dismisses them, despite not being their superior or at all in charge of when they can and cannot leave.

The new…respect he’s being given is unsettling. The announcement of his and Childe’s ascension to Harbingers had not been kept under wraps for very long, as the next day the news broke forth and their new titles were being whispered with envy and admiration.

And he still isn’t used to the way people look at him now.

Some stare with obvious wonder in their eyes, which is just as embarrassing for him as it is for them, seeming to take in his every move, as though that will do something to help them improve, and not just set them up for failure as they attempt to perform highly specific attacks that he has spent years honing and perfecting to fit his own set of skills.

But it isn’t his job to oversee the newest recruits anymore, pulled away from that specific duty to oversee the formation of a more elite force. He’s not sure what is meant to be “elite” about them, other than the fact that they seem to be overachievers in regard to sucking up to him.

He’s not sure what they think that’s going to do for them in the long run, other than leave them woefully unprepared for a real battlefield if he simply takes their pretty words and compliments, and assures their underlings that their newest boss is absolutely capable of doing what he assigns.

Others that watch him do so with a sort of hunger that reminds Kaeya of wild wolves. The kinds that would lurk at the edges of a forest and wait for a weakened creature to draw near before attacking. The kind that watches you with sharp, hungry eyes that do very little to reassure, and everything to remind you that those around will always seek to seize power in some way.

The sunlight soaking the ground is gradually cut off as a lone figure draws near, walking closer to the gate at a relaxed pace that speaks nothing of the owner’s usual speed.

The gates are swung open for him before he can even draw close enough to speak without yelling, not waiting for him to give proof of identity. Childe visibly stills for a moment, hand still reached inside the pocket he keeps his badge buried in when off-duty, before shrugging and continuing forward.

He waves to both guards and gives them a small “good morning” before he turns and notices Kaeya.

“Oh, my,” Childe grins. “Never did I think we’d see the day where you come and wait for me at the gate like some pining maiden, waiting for her love to return!”

“Pining maiden?” He snorts. “If that’s what you think of me, I certainly shan’t be extending the offer of a spar to you.” He goes to turn away, done more for the theatrics of it rather than actually wanting to walk away. It has the intended effect.

“No, no, wait,” hands grab his shoulders and pull him back around. For anyone else to do such a thing to him he would recoil in an attempt to escape the burning hands that grasp at him and sear their outlines into his skin. But he is familiar with these hands; knows the way they’ll tighten then loosen again, the length of the fingers and just how warm Childe’s hands truly are. “Don't walk away, I haven’t even said hello to you properly.”

“Oh, my, Childe.” He grins at the other man, turning to face him fully. “Did you miss me? Like some pining maiden, awaiting the day his parents would release him from captivity and allow him to reunite-”

“Okay, stop it,” Childe releases one of his shoulders to thump his hand against it in embarrassment. His ears have gone a little red, and his face seems to be following their example, slowly growing warmer the longer Kaeya stares down at him with amusement, waiting for the rest of the response Childe is formulating. “Here I was, trying to communicate a genuine sentiment to my dearest friend, and you respond like that?”

“I'm your dearest friend? Or am I simply the only person that fits the bill?”

“I have other friends, thank you.” Childe hits him again, a little harder this time. The first hit had been barely anything compared to what he’s capable of, this one might bruise. “Just because you don't see them doesn’t mean they don't exist.”

“Of course,” he nods along. “I wasn’t attempting to insinuate that they're simply a figment of your imagination.”

Childe laughs at the biting sarcasm in his voice, releasing him completely from his grip. The warmth left behind by the fading impression of his hand is quickly chased away, leaving only the vague memory of warmth behind.

Kaeya takes the opportunity to take stock of Childe. He’s been away for two weeks, meaning there should be no new injuries present – especially as he’s meant to be on rest, right now, accounting for the severe injuries he gained, which were then exacerbated during their confrontation with Diluc – and yet he has a small cut just below his eye, something that should have healed within a few days, and yet is still scabbed over; it’s at least a day old, and not matched by any other injuries on Childe’s face that would suggest him fighting through some thorny bushes.

His eyes have a glint Kaeya rarely sees in them, lit in a way his eyes never seem to maintain. The kind of light Kaeya’s only ever witnessed in the midst of a fight, when he’s utterly enthralled with the give and take of conflict.

He looks…healthier too. He didn’t look unhealthy before, but his skin has a little more colour, his freckles a little more obvious.

Kaeya blinks, and the moment is broken, Childe’s laughter smothering itself as the man grins up at Kaeya, leaning forward onto the balls of his feet until they're nearly nose-to-nose.

“Now, I know you're some kind of cold-freak, but I’d really love a nice, toasty fire to warm my hands beside right now.”

“Would you now?” He raises an eyebrow, both at Childe’s demands and at the guards still watching them rather than the gate. They both hurriedly turn back to their posts when they realise they’ve been caught. “I suppose it’s a good thing I know you so well, then, hm?”

“Because you know me so well?” Childe’s enthusiasm to be inside cannot be hidden, especially not with the way he walks faster than Kaeya does, remaining a step ahead as they follow the winding path back to Zapolyarny. “If that’s the case, then what’s my favourite colour?”

“Easy. You like the kind of blue that borders on purple. The kind you only see at night, when the sky is free of clouds.”

“I- yeah. How did you know that?” Childe twists around to face him, walking backwards through the snow. “I didn’t tell you that.”

“I guessed.”

“You guessed,” Childe’s voice is deadpan, face neutral as he faces Kaeya.

“Yes.” He steps a little quicker, closing the gap Childe has created between the two of them by walking faster, eager for the warmth the Palace offers. “Did you want to guess mine?”

“Ugh, not after that.” Childe rolls his eyes and turns back around. He kicks his boots through the snow as he walks, tucking his hands a little deeper into his pockets. The end of his scarf flutters over his shoulder, looking less tattered than the last time he saw it.

He catches the end of it in his hands, Childe making a protesting sound that vaguely sounds like he’s choking. “You get this mended while you were at home?” He runs a hand over the red fabric, trying to find the line where old stitching meets new stitching.

“Yeah,” Childe pulls the end of his scarf from between Kaeya’s fingers. “I didn’t have the right kind of needles to do this kind of work on it here. Everything I needed was at home.”

“Why not just buy yourself a new scarf?” He reaches forward to flick at the still tattered ends of the scarf, shying away when Childe bats at his hands, chasing him away. “There’s plenty of red scarves kicking about, all of them probably identical to the one you're wearing right now.”

“Screw you, this scarf is fine.”

“A whole chunk of it was holding on by a singular thread. Do you know how many recruits were terrified of being the one to hack the last bit of it off and face your wrath?”

“None,” Childe scowls at him. “Because I'm not some mysterious fucker that actively terrifies his recruits.”

He makes a buzzing sound in the back of his throat. “Wrong. There was an ongoing bet for who would ruin it, and what the outcome would be.”

“And what was the winning bet?”

“None of them. Everyone thought it would be me to destroy it, during one of our fights. They’ve all lost their money, or, well. They’ve won nothing, I’ll be making sure they all get their mora returned to them.”

“And what’d they think would be the outcome? They reckon I’d fly into a rage and kill you?” Childe spins around again, momentarily tripping over a patch of air, and slows his pace so Kaeya can catch up with him properly.

“I thought you said your recruits weren’t scared of you?” He grins, “Doesn’t sound like something non-fearing recruits would bet.”

“So break the suspense,” Childe sighs. “Bestow upon me the knowledge that you are withholding.”

“I hope you know it’s jarring when you switch to speaking like that,” he tells Childe. “Besides, the consensus on what would happen afterwards was…mixed.” His face heats a little as he remembers stumbling across the written list of bets, some of them more…detailed and ridiculous than others. “That’s not what we should be occupying ourselves with right now, anyway.”

He pulls Childe away from the main entrance, ignoring his complaining. Both he and Childe know full well that he could break himself free from the grip Kaeya has on him easily, and that he’s only following along out of curiosity.

“And what should we be concerning ourselves with?” Childe asks, once they’ve stopped in front of one of the outer walls. “This wall is nice, and all, but I've spent several years staring at ones exactly like this. You’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.”

“You’ve stood and stared at the walls, why- you know what,” he shakes his head and refocuses on the wall in front of him. “I don't care. I don't want to know and I don't want you to tell me what possessed you to do such a thing. Just- look.”

He presses his palm flat to the wall in front of him, drawing on the frost around them and within himself and watching as the frost spirals outwards from where his hand rests against the wall. It draws a deep groan from the stone, the bricks beginning to shift inch by inch as the cryo coaxes them to do so, until a narrow doorway has opened up.

It’s just wide enough for Kaeya to slip in sideways, back pressed against one side of the doorway.

“Ooh,” Childe’s voice echoes as he enters the secret passageway. “Murder hallway.”

“Don't call it that.”

“Someone has absolutely been murdered in here.” The door closes quite rapidly once the cryo is no longer influencing the stonework, their entrance sealing back up behind them. “It’s inevitable. Someone’s probably been murdered in your bedroom.”

“The Tenth’s seat was open for a reason.”

“Oh, yeah!” Childe laughs, “You know, I kinda forgot about that.”

Kaeya glances at Childe over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Gods, you really do live in the middle of nowhere. Does news not reach you?”

“Not until three months afterwards.”

“I can’t tell if you're joking or not, but you’ve somehow remained oblivious to this. Tell me, why do you think we’re currently sneaking in through this way rather than using the main entrance? Why do you think I came to greet you at the gate rather than waiting for when you’d inevitably seek me out in pursuit of a fight?”

“We’re sneaking in right now?” Only the vague outline of Childe’s features are visible in the darkness of the tunnel, but it’s enough to make out his surprised face. “Pulcinella normally likes to meet with me once I've arrived back; he likes to know how my family is doing.”

“I'm sure he does.” There is still something off about that man, even if he’s been nothing but nice to both of them. He doesn’t simply get and hold the seat of Fifth without some heavy manipulation and/or battle prowess. “I can assure you, you do not want to run into him right now.”

“Care to explain why?”

“There is a celebration being hosted in a few days’ time,” he explains. He stops in front of the marker he left for himself, pressing his palm against the wall and watching as the bricks shift themselves again. He silently thanks whatever paranoid architect was paranoid enough to install several secret tunnels into even the Harbinger’s quarters. He doesn’t know what kind of purpose they served, unless the architect had some elaborate murder plot planned. “One being hosted to celebrate us.”

“Us?” Childe follows him out of the corridor, blinking at the sudden brightness. There’s a fire roaring in the fireplace; as loath as he is to use such a thing, needs must, and keeping Childe here meant he would have to light a fire to entice him. “Sorry, what?”

“There is a party being held for us,” he repeats, slowly, “and if you get found by anyone you're going to get put through the worst few days of your life. I had the fortune of experiencing it over the span of two weeks; you get the misfortune of experiencing it in the next two days before the celebration.”

His secondary motivation for exploring the secret tunnels so extensively, that only he can access and neither of his…guardians (? Calling them such feels wrong, but if the boot fits…oh, whatever, this is something to consider at another time) can access them, allowing him to escape from the torturous etiquette lessons, dancing lessons, and overly long trips to the tailor that he really does not need.

“Pav,” Childe whines, collapsing backwards into one of the plush armchairs kept beside a fireplace that Kaeya has not found reason to use in the past few weeks he’s been occupying the room. He watches as Childe throws an arm over his face, entirely too dramatic a response to finding out that he’s attending a party thrown in their honour. “I can’t believe you’d let me walk back in here, knowing what I'm about to be subjected to.”

“You’ll live,” he laughs at the way Childe peeks out from behind his arm at him, frown deepening. “Come now, it’s a small price to pay for your lofty new role, Tartaglia.”

“Ew, ew,” Childe sits up. “What the fuck, don't call me that.”

“Watch your language,” he chastises.

“Since when did you care about language?” Childe scoffs, “Need I remind you why there was a week where all the recruits did was swear at me in Mondstadtian?”

“No, you do not.” He was going to offer Childe the tea he made before leaving to fetch him, but he sips at it himself, cradling the delicate teacup in his hands. “I care about it because such language is not permissible around the upper echelons of Snezhnayan society.”

“You memorise that or something?”

“Reading the etiquette book several times does that to a person,” he sighs as he seats himself in the armchair opposing Childe’s, pushed further away from the fireplace, in order to avoid the stifling heat it brings. The way it warms his leg – the closest part of his body to the open flames – is uncomfortable and makes his skin feel as though it is melting right off the bone. He tucks his legs a little closer beneath himself.

Childe groans. “Do I have to do dancing lessons?”

“Presumably, yes. Though you will likely have the mercy of doing it with Pulcinella, rather than Dottore and Pantalone.”

“Were they that bad?” Childe leans forward, as though such a small motion would breach the gap between their chairs. Kaeya leans forward to meet him in the middle, closing that distance between them, even as it puts him within range of those hungry flames.

“They were,” a knock interrupts the beginnings of his story, and he turns away from Childe, unable to push back the discontent noise in the back of his throat as he glares at the door. “Well, a story for another moment, then.”

“Pavlín?” It’s Pantalone, calling to him through his door. It’s unlocked, but unlike most of the other Harbingers, Pantalone has some sense (more or less at times, depending on his company) and will not simply barge into his private rooms. “I do believe you have someone that Pulcinella wishes to see?”

The teacup clinks as he sets it down on a low-lying table to the side, and he stands with a sigh.

“You know the door is open,” he tells Pantalone, when the door is opened. He’s alone, it seems, which is why the door didn’t simply slam open to announce his guests.

“It’s impolite to simply walk in without notice. Speaking of impoliteness…it’s rather rude to sneak Childe back into the Palace and avoid Pulcinella, don't you think? He’s rather disappointed in your actions, or, he would be if he could figure out how you did it.”

“You want me to care that he’s disappointed? If he was my father that might work.”

Pantalone sighs. “I do hope you improve your manners slightly, if only for one evening.”

He hums. “I can probably slot that evening in over the next…six months?”

“Pavlín.”

“Oh, whatever. You're not even here for me,” he steps aside, allowing full view of the inside of his rooms, displaying both the neat arrangement of the room and the sprawled out mess that is Childe. He’s not bothered to move from where he’s slumped, only peering at Pantalone over his arm. “Take him away.”

“You can’t force me to do anything,” is Childe’s bold opening statement. Kaeya winces from his place in the doorway, stepping back to clear the path for Pantalone, in case he deems such measures necessary. “I'm a Harbinger now. I answer to no-one but the Tsaritsa.”

“You're barely an adult,” Pantalone cocks an eyebrow, leaning his hip against the doorway. “I have no qualms with dragging you out of there by your ear, like the child you are.”

“As if,” Childe obviously needs to spend a little more time around the labs, if only to give him a few more self-preservation instincts. Kaeya has witnessed many of the incidents that had ended up with Dottore’s arm twisted – whether literally or figuratively – and Pantalone being the one in charge. It’s a well-known and well-documented phenomenon around the labs, but apparently such tales haven’t spread to the training fields.

He widens his eye, shaking his head as subtly as he can from beside Pantalone, trying to communicate to Childe that challenging this is a bad idea.

Childe sits up a little as Pantalone steps into the room, eyes widening momentarily before he’s attempting to downplay his original response of fear, grinning instead, even as Pantalone makes his way around the room.

Kaeya watches, not willing to get involved and risk his own hide in favour of Childe, as Pantalone grabs Childe by the scruff of his coat and hauls him upright. Childe’s eyes widen, darting to Kaeya, as though pleading for help.

He grimaces, stepping back as Pantalone drags him from the room.

“If you’re feeling up for a spar, feel free to come find me,” he calls after Childe, waving to Pantalone when the man turns to bid a quick goodbye to him.

“It’s expected that you will handpick your underlings now,” Dottore tells him. He punctuates his sentence with dumping the stacks of paper onto the desk in front of him. It makes a rather loud thud sound as it lands, something that does not fill Kaeya’s heart with any sense of hope. “You and Childe are a…unique case. Harbingers typically work alone; we work best when there is no-one else to interfere with our machinations, but Her Majesty seems to believe you will perform better as a pair.”

“So there’s no way for me to escape him?”

“Not anymore,” Dottore grins down at him. “The two of you are quite firmly a pair. Of course, if one of you kills the other, that’s a rather effective way of ridding yourself of the unwanted partner.”

“I don't think that’s the kind of advice you should be giving me,” he says, a wry grin playing on his lips.

“Well, that’s the advice you're getting from me, brat. You want some counselling, go to Pantalone.”

“My, I didn’t know there were things you don't hold the answers to – tell me, is there anything else of the sort or is it just discussing reasonable solutions to common issues?” He rests his chin in the palm of his hand, watching as Dottore scowls in his direction.

He’s busy with some kind of concoction. It almost looks like it’s heating, despite the cryo-core placed beneath it, decidedly not heating it. And yet it continues to bubble ominously. Kaeya would ask what it was being made, but after the previous time he’s sworn off asking what Dottore is doing. (He’s still uncertain of whether the man was joking or not, but he hadn’t been able to look him in the eye for a few days after that. Unable to look Pantalone in the eye for even longer.)

“You're speaking far too much and far too cheerily for someone tasked with picking out his own agents,” Dottore nods towards the stack of paper. “Most of the agents in there are specialised in some form of combat, but you should leave that to Childe; he’s probably trained most of the ones in there. You should be looking at the various intelligence officers you're being offered.”

“And who am I trading these people with?” He begins flicking through the stack of papers, setting aside the ones that have a combat speciality. He’ll go over it with Childe at another point; he always seems to work better when he has someone else to bounce his ideas off of, and if Kaeya just leaves him to his own devices he doesn’t know when it will end up being done. He’s seen the state of his office, and the overdue documents that will probably never get handed in now. “Other Harbingers? Looking to palm off their shoddier agents?”

“Some of them are agents that have requested to be considered for your unit,” something metal clanks as Dottore fusses over his experiment. “Everyone’s fascinated with the new pair – not only are you the youngest Harbingers in recent decades, but you're also the only Harbingers to be paired with another.”

“Did the Tsaritsa ever give an indication of why she wants us to remain paired?”

“No.” He looks up at the amusement in Dottore’s voice. “She likes to keep her own schemes close to her own chest, especially when they involve the more…subtle roles of Her Archonhood.”

“And I'm assuming you're not going to tell me what you mean by that cryptic statement?”

“That would ruin the fun, brat.”

Subtle roles of Her Archonhood. He doesn’t have the faintest clue what that could mean. Obviously Dottore does, but Kaeya never bothered to take notice of information concerning Archons. Barbatos had all but disappeared from Mond, and he never imagined he’d end up where he is currently, so researching the Archons, or listening to whatever titbit of information about them was mentioned, was not a priority.

Silence settles over them for a few minutes, only broken by the sound of paper rustling and the bubbling of whatever it is that Dottore’s making.

“Ekaterina?” He voices, looking up and away from the profile in front of him. The picture provided is standard, but this person is familiar to him. “Isn’t she one of yours?”

“She is,” Dottore hums, turning his back on the experiment for a moment to face him. “She has been growing…bored with her position recently. I believe she misses working in the field, though she would never give up the stability of her current job on a whim.”

“Hm.” He frowns at the document in front of him. “But you said anyone currently working within a unit would have to request to become a part of my unit?”

“They would, which is why this is so interesting. She was really quite intrigued with you, actually; you only worked with her once before.”

“On Dragonspine,” he recalls. “She was the one guiding me around that morning.”

“She was,” Dottore nods, smiling at him for a moment before turning around again. “I would suggest you consider her. She has good leadership skills, and her control over a situation far exceeds most others.” Dottore scoffs, “It will be a shame to lose her, she’s the only one that doesn’t ask me to hold their hand as they light the burners.”

“And yet you're willing to let her join me?” He smiles, “My, Dottore, are you doing this because she’s unhappy with her job at the moment?”

“No.” Dottore turns around again, “She is simply someone I believe would do well in your unit; she’s capable, and has plenty experience with fieldwork prior to her temporary retirement.”

“Uh-huh,” he nods, still grinning. “Does that mean you're worried about me?”

“Twist it however you want, brat, though the leaps in logic make me concerned for the bright young man I first picked up.”

“Frustrated?” he laughs, hopping back out of range. The hydro blade swishes through the air where he was just stood, would have disembowelled him if he hadn’t moved.

Childe grunts in response, shoving himself forward. Kaeya meets him in the middle, surging forward and using his staff to parry the blow, freezing the blades without a second thought. Childe slams his now-frozen blades against the staff, shattering them and scattering ice shards everywhere.

“Oh, come now, the lessons can’t be that bad?”

“They wouldn’t be,” Childe exhales harshly as he lunges after Kaeya again, “if only I had proper time before.”

“Yet you have enough time to be doing this with me?” He dances over the snow, dyed pink and orange by the setting sun, footsteps light enough to barely make an indent in the untouched snow. Childe storms after him, creating deep channels as he forges onwards. “What would Pulcinella think if he caught you out here, at this time?”

“We have an hour,” Childe dismisses him. “What would Pantalone say if he found you out here?”

“We have an hour,” he parrots.

Childe lunges after him, polearm manifesting in his hands as he swings it in a wide arc, forcing Kaeya backwards, before plunging forward. Kaeya dodges the attack in a whirl of fabric, circling back around Childe before slamming his staff down into the ground.

The snow ruptures with ice shards shooting out of the ground, several of them scraping along Childe’s legs as he fails to move quickly enough to avoid the attack. Kaeya grins at him, the two of them separated by the temporary blockade.

It only takes Childe a moment to size up the distance between them; his tells are far too obvious after so long spent fighting only one person. His eyes dart to the ground in front of Kaeya, then back to his own feet, calculating the distance in his mind and the amount of momentum needed to clear it with enough force to then follow through with an attack.

Childe grins as he looks up again, tensing as he readies himself. All of it happens in less than a second, but it’s still long enough for Kaeya to register the upcoming attack and tighten his hold on the leylines, his mind curling around the point he’s aiming for.

Childe lunges and Kaeya blinks away.

He huffs out a breath as he reappears, the air knocked from his chest by the sudden weight barrelling into him, sending him stumbling back into the snow. His back hits the ground, and the remainder of air leaves his chest. He gasps like an idiot, blinking up at Childe.

Childe grins down at him, one elbow propped on Kaeya’s sternum the other curling into his hair.

He tips his head back and barks out a laugh, uncaring of the way his hair collects snow.

“Hello,” he says, once he’s gotten over his amusement and Childe still hasn’t moved.

“Evening,” Childe says back, their faces scant inches from each other. It’s enough for him to smell the firewater they’d both indulged in earlier on his breath. He’s certain Childe can smell the same on his own breath, close enough that he can begin counting the freckles on his face.

It had been Childe who suggested a few drinks before the celebration, something to take the edge off any nerves they might have. He’d insisted that there were no nerves on his behalf and that he was only looking out for his fellow Harbinger, but the fact that he was the one to first suggest such an idea spoke volumes.

“You have sharp elbows.”

“Oh, really?” Childe leans a little more heavily onto him, the sharp edge of his elbow digging deeper into his chest. Kaeya’s not sure if the sudden breathlessness is from the increased weight on his chest or the way their faces push closer together.

“Yes,” he pushes his shoulders up in a half-hearted effort to dislodge Childe from where he’s perched. “Come on, I still need to get dressed, and get the snow out of my hair now, shift.”

“That’s not a very polite way to ask,” Childe frowns, poking his cheek in reprimand.

“It’s not very polite to keep me pinned to the ground even after I've conceded defeat.”

“I didn’t hear any complaints.”

“Hm.” He stares up at Childe, the quickly encroaching evening darkening his eyes even further. “How did you know where I was going to reappear anyway?”

“You always glance over in the direction that you're aiming for,” Childe shares. “I assume it’s to check that the area is free of obstacles, but once I noticed it was a pretty obvious tell. And enough cryo gathers when you're about to reappear to make it glow. You're not exactly subtle.”

“Neither are you.” He hadn’t realised his own tells were so obvious- he was rolling his eyes at Childe’s tells, and yet his own were just as bad. “Whenever you're going for a longer lunge you look between the spot you're aiming for and you own feet; you doing calculations in your head or something?”

“Maintaining momentum is important for battle,” Childe frowns, then digs his elbow in a little deeper.

“Uh-huh,” the sound of crunching snow reaches his ears. “How fast do you think you can get up to your maximum speed?”

“I- what?” Childe’s confusion is all Kaeya needs to shove the other Harbinger off himself, rolling onto his feet and into a crouch. It’s gotten dark quickly, but that won’t be enough to hide them for much longer. Caught tussling in the snow like a pair of children.

“Pantalone’s looking for us.” The sound of crunching snow is moving towards them now, likely to investigate the huddled shadows in the snow. Pantalone’s night vision might be shit, but he’s not an idiot. “Meaning we can either run or I can take you on another trip through the leylines.”

“Urgh, I’ll pass.” Childe crouches too, both of them glancing in Pantalone’s direction. “You get there after me I'm choosing the person you have to dance with.”

“Deal.” He crouches a little deeper in the snow. “I'm sure you’ll have fun dancing with Columbina.”

He takes off before Childe can say anything else, shooting across the snow and past Pantalone easily, ignoring the startled and angry yell that follows in his wake.

“This is terrible,” he murmurs to Childe, leaning over slightly to whisper it into his ear. He may be a little off, Childe standing on his right side and in his blind spot, but turning his head would make their small conversation entirely too obvious. Especially with everyone’s beady eyes fixed onto them hungrily.

He’s certainly not looking forward to the prospect of stepping down off the stage and beginning to mingle with the guests.

“It’ll be over in a minute,” Childe replies. “And I can see several glasses with my name on them.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Childe nudges him in the side, barely a brush of fingers. Kaeya still feels it anyway, hyperaware of every motion from his partner. “You got a problem with that?”

He’s overly aware of every move Childe makes beside him; every brush of clothing against his side, every warm breath that passes over his skin. He doubts it would be as bad if Childe were stood somewhere he could see him rather than his blind spot.

Pantalone glances over at him as he goes to reply, glasses flashing dangerously in the light as he fixes Kaeya under a firm stare. Kaeya smiles back at him, tilting his head to the side in question. Pantalone holds his gaze for a moment longer before looking away again with a sigh.

Pierro seems to be wrapping his speech up. Some overly long monologue about Snezhnaya’s history and the roles the Fatui upholds. Something rambling on about the importance of each Harbinger in their ranks and how it is an honour to be witnessing something as grand as two new Harbingers in their lifetime.

Which is also known as something that Kaeya tuned out of the moment he realised participation wasn’t necessary.

“My only problem with it would be you making a fool of yourself,” he says, Pantalone has turned away again. “You may believe you hold your alcohol well, but I have the clarity of mind that you do not after a few drinks.”

Childe scoffs beside him, shuffling over to kick at his ankle in retaliation. Kaeya winces, but refuses to join in the petty squabble Childe seems determined to start. He would win such a squabble, but he’d rather not pull the attention towards himself more than necessary.

He blinks as applause fills the air, thunderous in the expansive ballroom and its arching ceilings. It’s a little too loud for his tastes, but he grins and bears it as Pierro steps back from the small podium he had been speaking from.

This seems to be some kind of signal, as everyone else disperses the moment his feet leave the block, each Harbinger peeling off in a different direction, already on the hunt for whatever noble owes them a favour.

Pantalone disappears quickly, swift despite relying more heavily on his cane today than he has recently.

“C’mon,” an arm links through his own, tugging him away from their own positions. His legs are a little uncooperative after being stood for so long. The ache was only slightly alleviated by the ornamental cane Dottore had presented him with a few minutes before the celebration’s beginning. “All the nice drinks will be gone in a minute, and we’ll be left with the swill.”

“I doubt any of the drinks here will be of poor quality,” Kaeya stumbles as he struggles to turn himself around in the hold Childe has him in, attempting to drag him backwards down the stairs. His arm slips loose as he finally rights himself, cane clicking against the ground awkwardly as he attempts to get to grips with using it.

“Fine. We’ll be left with the worse drinks. The firewater will be gone, and Pantalone just orders whatever is easiest on the budget to fill everyone’s glasses.” Childe continues to pull him across the floor, weaving amongst the guests easily, dodging their attempts to draw him and Childe into conversation.

The cryo imbued within the cane hums under his fingers as he walks alongside Childe, their arms linked. The warmth of Childe’s palm rests just over his wrist, almost skimming over the sliver of skin made visible where his gloves meet his sleeves.

He understands that the cane was given to him as some kind of gift; it’s essentially a more subtle weapon, blending in with the multitude of canes that several of their guests carry around with them. He’s unsure where the fashion trend comes from, but it makes his own cane simply one amongst the masses.

Childe had been jealous the moment he was presented with it, whining about Pulcinella forcing him to remove any concealed weapons before attending.

Such complaints were no more than a distraction, as Kaeya can feel the hilt of a knife pressing into his side currently, concealed beneath Childe’s jacket and the ridiculous little capelet that he’s wearing over the top of it.

They pause at the drinks table together, maintaining a veneer of politeness as they survey the options. Childe aims straight for the firewater, plucking one of the small glasses from the table between a dainty thumb and forefinger, downing it in one and reaching for another.

The other drinks scattered artfully across the several tables are the ones that catch his attention. The ice is stacked high in the wine glasses, the drink inside familiar. He snags one of these instead, swirling it once and sipping at it.

He hums, considering the drink in his hands before turning away from the table again. Childe has finished his second firewater, though the empty glass remains clutched in his hand.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he says, leaning closer so the words are only for Childe’s ears.

“Alright,” Childe makes an inscrutable expression. “See you in a minute.”

Kaeya drifts across the ballroom as he searches for his targets. He finds them after a few minutes, ears pricking at the sound of familiar voices as he turns on his heel, almost bumping into a nearby man, backing away with half-sincere apologies, though he doesn’t bother listening for the man’s response, if he gives one at all.

It takes only a moment for him to locate the pair, following the sound of their voices rather than bothering to look for them in the crowds. The ballroom feels overly full, as though you can hardly move without tripping over the end of someone’s elaborately long gown or stumbling over another’s foot.

“-and, of course, such promises are not without their proof. It would be poor of me to arrive with nothing but the words in my mouth to authenticate my claims.” Pantalone seems to have cornered some idiot noble, who is nodding along with a smile on his face as he greedily eats up whatever lies Pantalone feeds him. “As such, I have my partner here to give you the more…scientific details. Such things often go over my head, and he really is much better than me with verbalising such grandiose concepts.”

Claims like that are lies. Kaeya steps a little closer, hesitant to interrupt whatever the hell is currently going on in this slightly shady corner. Pantalone is easily able to keep up with whatever nonsense Dottore spouts on the regular; on rare occasions he even corrects the Doctor.

Still, Pantalone stands beside Dottore with a placid smile as the other Harbinger eagerly begins explaining whatever product the two of them are attempting to sell.

It’s in this moment, with the man nodding along and trying not to look as though he lost the plot as soon as Dottore mentioned a word with more than three syllables, that slips into the space beside Pantalone.

He doesn’t do anything to garner his attention, but Pantalone looks over at him anyway, the placid smile mellowing into something a little…softer. It tenses around the edges again as he looks back towards his potential client, but it had been there for a moment.

“Good evening, dear,” Pantalone greets. “Did you get bored that easily?”

“I did not, I merely wished to ask you a question,” he says. And then, instead of asking the question, he simply raises his glass, tilting it so the liquid inside swirls around and refracts the light.

“Ah, I was wondering if you would notice that.”

“I've been told you buy drinks to fill glasses at the lowest price you possibly can,” he comments. “From what I recall, drinks imported from Mondstadt are rather pricey.”

“Oh, they certainly are. I simply wished to check on how our supplier was doing. They fell on harsh times recently, you see; there were two heirs of the Winery, with one of them perishing in a freak accident and the other disappearing for more than a year. I was almost worried they wouldn’t survive such tumultuous conditions, especially with how competitive the market can be; I really do quite enjoy their dandelion wine.” Pantalone spares a moment to listen in on Dottore’s pitch, silence falling over the pair as they observe the man’s occasional nodding, and the way he doesn’t appear to understand a single word Dottore says. “Their luck seems to be improving, it seems. A true relief, with the young master of the Winery returning only a week ago, just in time to finalise a trade deal with us.”

“Hm.” He swirls his drink again. The taste was familiar, speaking of late nights sneaking into places young children shouldn’t be, stealing sips of things young children certainly shouldn’t be drinking.

A hand settles on his shoulder, and he looks up to find Pantalone watching him. “I had assumed such news might…settle the recent discomforts you’ve been experiencing. Or at least for the flavours to invoke some fond memories.”

“Thank you,” he dips his head in something resembling a nod. “I appreciate the gesture.”

“Well, that certainly is a relief,” Pantalone’s lips curve with mirth. “I was worried I had caused some kind of offense with such a gift.”

“You have not,” he pauses. “It has brought me…a little more peace.”

“That is good to hear.” Pantalone releases his shoulder after patting it once more. “Though it would appear that your companion is looking a little lonely. May I suggest you return to his company and leave me to mine?”

A polite way to tell him to shove off elsewhere, but Kaeya takes the hint anyway.

He can’t resist stealing another look at Dottore’s latest victim. He obviously hadn’t expected the usually collected and mostly silent Harbinger to be able to talk so much and at such speed, but he’s certainly learning of it right now. Kaeya hides a laugh behind his hand and leaves the noble to his misfortune.

His path back across the ballroom seems to put him into the path of even more people, leaving him squeezing through small gaps and apologising to those he inconveniences. The only benefit is that they mostly shift out of his way once they realise who they're facing. He’s not sure whether it’s the eyepatch, or the hair, but a path is quite quickly cleared when the nobles realise who they're facing.

It’s odd, something that he still hasn’t become accustomed to, even after more than two weeks of simply his presence commanding more respect than he’d ever normally ask for.

As such, it’s a surprise that upon seeing who it is that just tried to slip past them, the group of ladies doesn’t move out of the way. If anything, they seem to cluster close together, blocking off any hope of escape he might have had.

He swallows, fingers tightening around the stem of his glass as he considers the idea that he might have just walked into a trap.

The weight of his cane is comforting in his hand, but attacking someone out of nowhere in such a crowded space will do nothing but cause panic. He’ll have to handle this situation carefully-

“Oh, look at you!” One of them women coos, reaching out towards him. He takes a nervous step backwards, chuckling slightly as he dodges her hands. She has white feathers sown into the edges of her dress, making her resemble something like a swan, or a dove. “You're so much younger than I had even imagined.”

“Forgive me, my lady, but I'm uncertain if that’s a compliment or an insult,” he offers, ignoring the way his voice goes a little weak. The woman’s friends cluster around her, looking rather like a curious flock of colourful birds. Such an impression may have been intentional, each of their dresses embellished with some kind of feather decoration.

“Oh, don't listen to her,” one of Swan-Lady’s friends chimes in, shaking her head with a small smile. “You look wonderful for your age, and to have achieved so highly at such a young age! My, I can only hope my children have a fraction of the success you’ve had.” The way she shakes her head makes the feathers in her hat bob, the black feathers catching the light and turning iridescent.

“Ugh, both of your stop crowding him,” a third one, this one with pink feathers rippling in waves over her skirt, reprimands. She even goes so far as to bat at her friends with the fan she holds. “Such an evening is for celebration, not for cornering young men that have better things to do than occupy themselves with the gossip of older women.”

“Gossip?” He raises an eyebrow at the trio in front of him. The one in all black – resembling something rather like a raven, or perhaps a crow – titters, finding something he said rather amusing.

“Don't tease him,” the pink one scolds, though she, too, is smiling to herself. It’s as though they all have some secret that they're keeping from him; a secret that they seem to be enjoying keeping from him.

“Well,” Swan-Lady leans in conspiratorially, Raven-Lady leaning in beside her, a small grin on her lips as her companion continues. “It’s you and that other young man that have risen to the rank of Harbinger, right?”

“I don't see why I should have to confirm what is already public knowledge to you. My lady.”

“Oh, no need to be so polite, we’re simply exchanging a casual conversation.” Kaeya flushes a little as she taps him on the tip of his nose with her fan, the feathers tickling his nose. He doesn’t flinch back from the small contact, though, which only seems to encourage the women even further. “Besides, it was more of a rhetorical question; something to open up the conversation.”

He tilts his head to the side. “Then, yes, Tartaglia is the one that rose to the rank of Harbinger alongside me.”

“Oh, isn’t it so sweet,” Pink-Lady giggles, leaning into Raven-Lady.

“Tell me,” Swan-Lady ignores her companions’ reactions, leaning forward with an almost scary gleam in her eyes. “Is it true that the two of you have been working closely for the past two years?”

“I- yes?” He’s not sure where this conversation is being steered, the questions seeming entirely unrelated, other than the connecting thread of him and Childe. “We were assigned to the same cohort, and worked together as Lieutenants.”

“How unusual,” Raven-Lady comments. “My husband had never heard of such a thing when I mentioned it to him. Was there some reason that you were working together?”

“A few,” he shrugs. He doesn’t feel comfortable disclosing any detailed information about Childe or himself, but he gets the feeling they're not going to release him from their clutches until he gives them at least a little of what they want. “We were partnered to…balance each other out, fill in with our own strengths where the other was weaker.”

“And will that continue now?” He doesn’t think Swan-Lady has blinked once since the conversation started, as though worried he might disappear if she takes her eyes off him for more than a moment.

“I- I apologise, ma’am, but such information is rather sensitive in nature and should not be discussed with members of the public. I do hope you can understand those limitations.”

“Oh, I don't wish to put you in a difficult position,” Swan-Lady’s eyes soften. “It was only curiosity, you see. The Innamorati have been a popular topic of conversation in my corner of the city in recent days.”

“The…Innamorati.”

Raven-Lady hisses something to Swan-Lady, quiet enough that he can’t hear what she said. Swan-Lady looks suitably chastised, blue eyes shining as she looks back at Kaeya. They're really quite bright in comparison to her porcelain skin, the different almost jarring in its unnatural beauty.

“Forgive my misstep, Lord Harbinger. It is only something related to idle gossip that us ladies choose to occupy ourselves with.”

“It is not a misstep, I am only curious. Who are the Innamorati you speak of?”

“Well, yes. Of course, you would be curious,” Swan-Lady tilts her head slightly to the side, pursing her lips as though considering something. “It’s a silly nickname for you and Tartaglia, Lord Harbinger. Spawned from late-night gossip over how terribly romantic everything about you seems to be.”

“Her Majesty must be positively giddy,” Raven-Lady giggles.

Kaeya feels as though he’s missed a turn at some point and ended up somewhere entirely different to where he should be. Similar enough that he’s not noticed anything wrong until now.

“Oh, look now!” Pink-Lady cries, leaning forward. “You’ve embarrassed the poor dear.”

“Oh, my sincerest apologies,” Swan-Lady’s eyes look as though they're glistening with tears, bringing to mind the image of melting ice, for some reason. “We swear not to speak of this encounter. We wouldn’t wish to expose your relationship with Tartaglia to others, not if you don't wish for it to be public knowledge.”

“I- that’s-”

“Leave the poor boy be,” Raven-Lady pulls Swan-Lady back by the shoulders. “Have you not embarrassed him enough already? Really, Lord Harbinger, we apologise for the intrusion and will leave you to enjoy the rest of your evening in peace.”

Kaeya feels a sudden surge of confidence as the trio of women turn to begin walking away, lurching forward with a poorly planned step. “Wait,” he calls after them. “Madam, I never even got your name. I must apologise for my rudeness.”

“Oh, my,” Swan-Lady looks down at her dress, down to the floor. “Is my name not obvious enough already?” She smiles at him, and does not wait for a response before she continues away, leaving him blinking after her, confused at what has just occurred.

In truth, the entire encounter leaves him feeling disoriented, and as though the rug has been pulled out from beneath him rather abruptly. Their words don't stop their swimming around his mind, invading most of his thoughts.

He glances back, once, attempting to catch a glimpse of Swan-Lady and her friends. Yet they seem to have disappeared entirely. He would have thought outfits such as their own – the flock of pink, black, and white travelling together – would stand out amongst the dull greys the rest of the crowd wears.

And yet he can’t seem to locate them again, even as he lingers for several moments, curious to see if he can catch even a glimpse of a feather.

Even as he wanders back across the ballroom to join Childe again, he finds himself with his mind drifting in other directions.

“Must I?” He digs his feet in a little more, if only to keep up his reputation. And to disabuse them of the notion that he might be so easily convinced in future.

“Yes,” Pantalone rests a hand against the small of his back, pushing him a few scant inches across the polished tile flooring. “Unless you wish for some older client of mine looking to get an in with me to request a dance with you, I suggest you pick a dance partner now.”

“I, ugh, whatever.” He turns away from the pair of Harbingers watching him like starving vultures, scanning the room quickly. “Have fun...swindling someone else, or whatever it is that you were just doing.”

“I’ll have you know my business practices are-”

“Just let it go, dearest,” is the last words he hears from Dottore before he’s walking away, slipping through the throngs of people towards his destination.

“Good evening,” he greets Childe. Childe startles at the sudden presence of another person right beside him, inhaling a significant amount of the firewater he’d been trying to surreptitiously down. “I do hope you can still walk in a straight line.”

“It takes more than this to knock me over,” Childe says.

“Good,” he plucks the glass from his hands easily, setting it down nearby and turning back to grasp Childe’s hands. “Then you won’t mind being my dance partner for the evening; or at least until Pantalone is satisfied with my participation.”

“Why didn’t you just lie and say you would?” Childe squints at their joined hands as he speaks, flexing his fingers a few times in Kaeya’s hold. He appears to be a little more inebriated than he’s willing to admit. “Pulcinella was satisfied with just that.”

“Pantalone will be watching,” he answers. “Pulcinella doesn’t care.”

“Urgh, sure. Just don’t step on my feet.”

“I think I should be more worried for my own feet.” He pulls Childe out of the path of a pair also making their way towards the dance floor, nodding briefly to them before they disappear into the crowds of finery and silk. “You don’t seem all that coordinated right now, Tartaglia.”

“I’ve already told you not to call me that,” Childe frowns, but places his hands on Kaeya’s back and shoulder, falling into the correct position for dancing easily enough.

“Whatever you say, dear. Are you not proud of your title?”

“It sounds weird when you say it.”

Childe glances down, his gaze dropping to between them as he studies their feet. It seems he took to heart the throwaway comment that Kaeya said earlier, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on his feet as though that would prevent him from stepping on any toes.

“Look at me,” he instructs. “I want all of your attention on me.”

He grins, satisfied, as he watches a shudder work itself through Childe’s entire body, his eyes widening and cheeks flushing a faint pink. His ears bloom with colour too, almost blending in amongst his hair with how red they’ve gone.

He’s not sure where the sudden boldness comes from, only that Innamorati is echoing in his ears and the ice-blue eyes are staring at him again with an unreadable grin. There had been something about that lady…

“I like the new accessory,” he comments, eye drifting towards the mask perched on the side of Childe’s head. “It looks really quite nice on you.”

“I- thank you?” Childe’s words trip over themselves on their way off his tongue, something that Kaeya almost laughs at. It’s endearing, to watch one of the most accomplished and feared fighters in the nation be brought low by a simple compliment.

“The white is really your colour too,” he murmurs, leaning forward to speak the praise into the gap between them. “Shame you wear that dark uniform near constantly,” he sighs. “The cut truly is flattering on you, dear.”

Childe makes a choking noise in the back of his throat. Kaeya’s surprised he hasn’t had a similar reaction himself yet – he’s not sure where the sudden boldness has come from, whether it spawned the moment the noble from before planted the idea of Innamorati in his mind. It pushed the world on its angle, until Kaeya’s looking at everything in a slightly different way than before.

Childe has gone even pinker than before. The flush has crawled down his neck. He’s struck with the thought of finding out how far the flush goes before he’s forcefully pushing that thought from his mind and redirecting where they step in order to avoid crashing into another dancing pair.

“The, ah, your suit is really nice too,” Childe manages, even if it takes him a few moments to gather his wits about him enough to say anything.

“Not too much like Pantalone’s?” He teases.

“You do look quite similar, though I can assume that was his own tastes and not yours?”

“I am not opposed to this outfit,” he finds himself quite appreciating it, actually. Especially as Childe’s eyes drop lower, away from his face again. “And it would appear that you aren’t either?”

Childe, whose face had previously been returning to its usual, pale shade, flushes again. Kaeya almost distracts himself too much with the sight and sends them spinning into another pair. He hastily corrects their course, so the only collision is a light brush of fabric.

“I joke,” he assures. “Though if you wish to appreciate me like this, I shall not stop you.”

Archons, maybe he’s had too much to drink as well. If he’s spouting shit like this, maybe he needs to go lie down. Preferably alone. Being willing to speak his mind is nothing new, but shamelessly flirting with Childe certainly is.

Him and Childe pull apart in synchronisation with the other dancers, only their fingertips brushing, before Childe comes spinning back in. He can only hope that Childe isn’t prone to nausea while tipsy, as he wasn’t lying when he said he rather liked this outfit. And he also doesn’t fancy walking out of here with vomit down his front.

The song ends with both of them breathless, and Childe far more flushed than he is.

They bow before separating. Kaeya spins on his heel before he can watch where Childe disappears off to. He is going to bed before he makes a further fool of himself. Lying in a darkened room will do him a world of good, either to knock him out or settle down the thoughts that repeatedly chant Innamorati and romantic in his ears.

Kaeya likes to think of himself as someone who is very aware of how his emotions function and the direction in which his heart strays. And yet, somehow, he’s managed to pull the wool over his own eyes in regard to Childe.

Everything about Childe confuses him, and yet he’s so thoroughly entangled with the other man that he’s not sure he would be able to break free of whatever binds them together, even if he wished to.

Archons, strike him down. It’s embarrassing to even think such thoughts. Though true mortification would only come from voicing such thoughts aloud.

“I despise the fact that worked,” Dottore grumbles beside him. Both of them watch as Childe exits the dancefloor in the opposite direction to Kaeya. The young Harbinger curls in on himself, going a quite impressive shade of red. Even covering his face does little to hide his embarrassment.

“Nothing better than a little ballroom dancing,” Pantalone purrs, looking far too satisfied beside him. “I think if you’ll recall, you really quite enjoyed our dancing. Beginning in your lab and ending in my b-”

“I think that is quite enough out of you.” Dottore interrupts Pantalone before he can continue, ignoring the way it makes the man smirk a little more smugly. “Look, Childe’s headed straight for the drinks.”

“He’s not.” Pantalone says it in his insufferably knowing tone of voice. Dottore glances over at him, head tilting to the side as he watches Childe, and the way he gives the drinks table a wide berth, heading straight for the corridor nearby.

“He’s…going to the toilet.”

“He’s going to cry in the toilet,” Pantalone corrects. “I don't think anyone’s touched him that much since he left home. Or that he’s ever considered your brat in such a context before. I do believe he’s having what you would call a revelation.”

“My brat?” Dottore scoffs, “He’s just as much yours as he is mine.”

“Not after a display like that. It was painful to watch how much he behaved like you.”

“So he’s only my brat when he does something wrong.” Dottore crosses his arms, scowling as the door swings shut behind Childe, removing the last scrap of entertainment either of them had. “And yours when he does something right?”

“Of course not, I'm not so selfish. He can be ours when he does something right.”

Brisk knocking is what wakes him, pulling him unceremoniously from his relatively peaceful slumber. He groans, pushing his face back into the pillow, ignoring the way it makes his eyepatch ride up against his face. Groaning makes him aware of how dry his mouth is, the beginnings of a headache pulsing behind his eye.

“Hope you're not naked because I'm coming in!” filters through his door, the only warning he gets before its shoved open. He twists, adjusting the eyepatch he wears to sleep so it’s no longer displaced and squinting at the intruder.

He watches as Childe catches the door before it can slam into the wall, strangely focused on it. He then looks over at Kaeya and grins.

“Oh, man. You know, I didn’t think your hair could look that bad.”

“Yeah, well. You walk around with that bird’s nest on your head all day and nobody comments on it,” he winces at the feel of sandpaper rasping over his throat, slowly sitting up as Childe continues into his bedroom. He pauses, then squints at Childe. “Did you let yourself into my apartment?”

“Yes!”

“Normally, someone would sound more apologetic about that,” he reminds, voice dry. And not just because his mouth feels like he ate sand.

“Probably because they would be apologetic, but I bring great news!”

Kaeya raises an eyebrow, waiting as the silence stretches on.

“Well aren’t you going to ask?” Childe whines.

“I assumed you were just going to tell me.”

“Ugh, you're no fun.” Childe drops down onto the end of his bed, making the mattress bounce with the sudden extra weight. “I got a letter through my door this morning.”

“Which you were awake for, presumably, because you're a freak that rises with the sun?”

“You can take the boy out the battlements but you can’t take the battlements out the boy!”

“…That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Anyway!” Childe loudly interrupts him, waving a piece of paper around. “You got one as well; the same one!”

“It’s illegal for you to go through someone else’s mail.”

“Gods, you really are a joy in the mornings, aren’t you? Whatever, this will cheer you up, I'm sure.” The paper crinkles as it’s shoved into his face, and he pulls back a few inches.

“You hold it that close I can’t see it,” he says, taking it into his own hands.

“Ugh, just read it.” Childe wriggles from his spot at the end of the bed, presumably from excitement. “I've been waiting for hours to see if you’d wake up, and then you just kept sleeping.”

“I do hope most of that time has been spent outside of my apartment,” he comments, only half-listening to the conversation as he reads through the letter. The writing is a little harder for him to read, written in a cursive he’s unused to dealing with.

“Of course,” Childe laughs. “I don't want to watch you sleep.”

“Mm.” He flips the letter over, curious to see if there’s any further notes or instructions on what he’s meant to be doing. “Liyue, then?”

“Isn’t it exciting?”

“Only as exciting as we make it.”

Chapter Text

The boat sways beneath his feet, a gentle ricking motion, back and forth. It’s rather soothing, in a way, to have the ground beneath you reach up and cradle each if your footsteps as you walk. A few of their cohort (smaller than the actual number of agents under their command, but the rest will arrive later, once they’re settled in and less likely to cause a panic in the Harbor) have not yet found the correct way to walk, leaving them stumbling across deck like newborn deer.

Kaeya looks away from where one of their agents just tripped over thin air, stumbling forward in a clumsy mess of limbs before one of his comrades takes pity and hauls him back upright.

His eye lands on his own pathetic idiot, though this one knows better than to move from his spot at the railings.

“How are you feeling, dear?” He rubs a hand over Childe’s back, equal parts soothing and mocking, unable to help the grin that curls over his lips as Childe makes a discontented sound. “Oh, you poor hydro allogene, exposed to the horrors of sea travel.”

“Your bedside manner could do with a little work,” Childe grits out. One of his hands, previously wound tightly around the railing, loosens slightly. It means his knuckles don’t look quite so pale. Kaeya ducks down, placing himself a little closer to Childe’s eye level. He pushes back the hair falling in his face, frowning and tutting at the pale complexion of his partner.

“You are not in a bed right now, so I do believe my manner is perfectly fine. If you were to be in a bed, I would endeavour to be a little kinder,” he jokes.

“Hah, as if. You’d just bully me a little less.”

“Perhaps,” he nods. “But it would be fond bullying, my dear.” He feels his own face warm a little as the word fond slips loose from between his lips, but Childe is far too busy feeling sick and sorry for himself to take much notice. Kaeya absently pats his head as Childe groans again, twisting a few strands of hair between his fingers.

Its silent for a little longer, and then, “I don’t think I can get up.” Childe’s whining is more than enough to make him feel a little sorry for the Harbinger and his seasickness.

“Ah, come on,” he hooks a hand beneath Childe’s elbow, beginning the arduous task of attempting to haul him up. He may be shorter than Kaeya, but the muscle on his body is packed tightly. “Right, I understand you’re feeling quite sick, but you are going to need to help me a little. Unless,” he pauses in his efforts, leaning down so he can speak directly into Childe’s ear, “you want me to drag you across the deck in front of all our lovely new subordinates.”

“Ugh, I’m up, I’m up.” Childe jolts to his feet, looking a little unsteady and still a little pale, but better than he had been. Mainly because he’s no longer hunched over the railing and praying for some relief. Kaeya’s not sure what the Tsaritsa is going to do to aid with his seasickness, but he’ll allow Childe this one respite, even if he doubts it’s going to work. “There’s no need to threaten me.”

He hums, hand still hooked under Childe’s elbow. Kaeya does him the grace of making it seem like their good and capable Harbinger is not almost falling over. His boots clank against the metal plating of the deck. Childe’s own steps are a little more uneven, a little heavier, but Kaeya hauls him along behind him, ignoring the eyes following them.

He presses his hands into Childe’s shoulders and guides him in front as they reach the stairs, keeping a firm grip on him in case he decides to miss a step. The boat tilts a little more violently as they approach the base of the stairs, and Kaeya can hear equipment sliding across the deck and the shouting of their agents as they chase after said equipment before it can slide into the ocean. Childe sways with the boat, almost falling down the stairs entirely.

Kaeya hauls Childe back towards himself, bracing the other man against his chest. “I know you’re not entirely incapable, so perhaps endeavour to hold a little more of your own weight?” He bites out, grunting as he heaves Childe upright.

The boat sways again, and he knocks into the nearby wall, turning so that his shoulder cushions the movement rather than Childe’s face. The pain flares gently along his shoulder and up into his neck, gently throbbing as he helps Childe down to the bottom of the steps.

Childe grins up at him, hair falling into his face as he squints. “Did you just bash yourself into the wall for me?”

“I can let you get a concussion next time, if you want,” he smiles sweetly down at Childe. “Or, I can simply do it for you. Would you like me to shove you up against this wall?”

He watches, with quite a significant sense of satisfaction, as Childe’s face slowly blooms into colour. It goes pink at first, lightly flushing, before bursting into red, spreading like wildfire over his entire face. He’s almost as red as his hair.

“Oh, dear,” he leans a little closer, brushing Childe’s hair back and pressing his hand to his forehead, as though taking his temperature. “Seems you're a little more sick than I realised, do you need me to take you to bed?”

“No, uh,” Childe struggles, breaking himself free of Kaeya’s grip. He doesn’t go far, still wary of the boat swaying beneath his feet and knocking him off balance once more, but it’s far enough that Kaeya can no longer justify pushing into his personal space just to watch him fluster. “I think I'm alright, actually. You should probably go back up on deck- not that I don't trust Ekaterina! She’s doing fantastic, but it also sounds rather…chaotic up there.”

Childe is not wrong. But Kaeya had been content to let Ekaterina deal with the chaos and then evaluate the strategies she used and see if there was room for improvement. He needs to find her limits, see how much she can reasonably cope with before he or Childe need to intervene and restore order.

“If you're certain,” he looks over Childe again, eye lingering on the way Childe’s throat bobs as he swallows, apparently nervous, before meeting his eyes. “Rest well, dear. I’d rather not arrive in Liyue with a sick Harbinger at my side.”

“Uh, yeah, yeah,” Childe nods. “I'm feeling better already but I'm gonna- I'm going to lie down anyway.”

“Okay.” He nods, taking a step back up the stairs, watching as Childe continues to stand still, not moving from where Kaeya left him in the narrow corridor. “If you're feeling up to our evening meeting, you know where to find me.”

“Of course, I’ll see you then.”

Childe lasts a moment longer before he turns and flees down the corridor, but in a way that almost looks like he’s not fleeing.

Kaeya grins to himself and turns back up the stairs, just as something crashes over on the deck, followed by a very, very, loud silence.

He quickens his step, taking the stairs two at a time.

His pen taps an unsteady rhythm against the surface of his desk. The pen pot is bolted to the surface, preventing it from sliding completely off the desk and spilling its contents all over the floor. The boat rocks, then, causing the pens to jump a little in place, rattling around the pot.

He ignores the sound, continuing to stare down at the work in front of him.

It’s a draft for the letter he’s writing to the Tianquan, but in truth he hasn’t set his pen to paper in the last ten minutes. Only a line of writing greets him when he refocuses his eye, staring back at him accusingly, black ink on white paper.

His eyes ache with exhaustion, the string of his eyepatch – usually easy to ignore, something he doesn’t even think about anymore, not with the quality of fabric he now uses – itches against his scalp, and his fingers curl a little tighter around the pen in order to resist the urge to simply tear it away and fling it across the room.

He’s aware the irrationality of his actions is down to the creeping exhaustion he’s felt for the past few days, and that any actions his mind conjures are more likely to be nonsensical rather than useful. He’s inclined to blame his recent unreasonable whims with being stuck in close quarters with Childe for so long, but even that excuse is beginning to blur at the edges, looking more and more like a lie, despite his own, attempted, ignorance of that fact.

In theory, he was always aware he would be going to Liyue. He was also, in theory, always aware of the geographical location of Liyue, placing it close to Mondstadt. Their shared border is partially blocked by Dragonspine, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that no eager Mondstadtian merchants travel to the Harbour.

However, knowing something in theory has done nothing to ease the anxieties that have plagued him for the past few days, especially not when those theoreticals are rapidly approaching something more tangible.

The tapping of his pen almost fades into the background as he frowns, writing glaring at him from its place on the page.

Dawn Winery is back in business, he is aware; whether that means the winery owner is personally visiting every large buyer – either to make pleasantries or reassure the clients that their supply is not going to be removed – or not is still unknown. He’s been cut off from any reliable source of information in the middle of the ocean, and anything sent behind would take several days to arrive, at which point it may already be too late.

He sighs, drops his pen down in the pot, ignores the clatter it makes, and shoves his chair back from the desk.

His eye stings with tiredness, the flickering light of his candle not doing much to illuminate the rest of the room. A cup of tea, set carefully away from edges in order to prevent spillage, that has long gone cold is not pleasant, nor was it particularly well-made in the first place. He appreciates the thought Childe extended with the action, but it leaves a funny aftertaste in his mouth.

He sighs again, feeling far more tired than he did a few moments ago. Grinding the heel of his palm into his eye does little to alleviate his tiredness, only reiterating the stinging in his eye as he looks up.

The ink on the word sincerely has begun to bleed slightly, from where the nib of the pen had been pressed too harshly to the paper. Paired with the rocking of the boat, the excess ink has made a trembling path over the otherwise empty page.

He screws the draft up and tosses it to join the other rejects. Each of them sporting some fault.

He’ll try it again in the morning.

“I just managed to create the greatest plan ever! Listen, all that needs to hap-”

“Oh my god!” Kaeya shoots up like a man possessed, hand clutching his chest. “Childe!” The blankets puddle limply in his lap, gathering around his hips. He almost feels as though he should pull them up and cover his chest to maintain some type of decency.

“What?” Childe stops in his tracks and blinks at him, hands spread apart mid-gesture, as though he was just demonstrating a rather violent part of whatever plan he’s cooked up. He probably was demonstrating some rather violent part of whatever plan he’s cooked up. Kaeya’s prolonged silence seems to have unnerved Childe. “What?”

“Ugh, nothing,” he flops back down into the bed. His pillow makes a soft thump sound as he lands back on it, deflating even further; it hadn’t been comfortable in the first place, and it took him over an hour to even get comfortable enough to sleep earlier.

He cranes his head forward enough that he can glare at the door Childe just burst through. The connection between his and Childe’s personal quarters hadn’t been his choice and was certainly not something he was looking to repeat. Ever. “Just continue. Regale me with your plan.”

Childe sniffs. “Maybe I won’t, if you’re already being so rude about it.”

“Not my fault it’s so early,” he turns his head to the side, feeling how the string of his eyepatch only gets further tangled within his hair as he does so, and squints at the clock sitting beside him. “It’s not even,” he squints a little harder “-three in the morning? Absolutely not. Goodnight, and please go back to sleep.”

“But,” Childe whines - whines! – and folds his arms like an oversized, petulant child. “But my plan, please, I need to tell someone otherwise I’ll forget and then my moment of genius will have passed me by! I won’t get another opportunity like this, and then we’ll get stuck and fail!”

“Write it down.” He rolls over, shoving his face into the pillow and ignoring the highly-trained killer stood a measly few feet from the bed, likely overexcited by whatever scheme he’s created, and with at least one weapon concealed somewhere on his person. “’M tired and ‘s early. God the fuck to sleep.”

Childe grumbles once more, followed by a short period of silence. Kaeya continues to ignore him, knowing that he’ll get bored after a moment and then follow Kaeya’s advice to write his plan down. They can both go over it in the morning and see whether it is actually a well-considered plan utilising the tools they have at their disposal, or if it’s just a slightly insane scheme that’s only been created as a product of Childe going slightly stir-crazy and being tired.

Footsteps over the floorboards echo, and Kaeya relaxes a little further as he listens to them getting further away. The door creaks as it’s opened, handle squeaking as it’s twisted.

He almost looks up when he hears no sound of the door shutting, already summoning tired annoyance to yell at Childe for not shutting the door behind him. He only pauses because Childe had done this exact thing two days ago in order to get him up and listening to the plan he’d created then.

It’s quiet enough that he almost doesn’t hear the murmured, “Goodnight,” followed by the sound of the door gently latching.

Kaeya’s so surprised at the quiet farewell, and the fact that Childe apparently made an effort to close the door quietly, that it wakes him up completely.

He sighs, digging the heel of his palm into his uncovered eye, before groaning and tipping his head back. Childe may truly drive him insane, someday.

“Lady Signora,” he greets, somewhat warmly. The Harbinger gives no such warmth in return, her returning stare frosty. Kaeya allows her a moment to take him in, resisting the urge to do a small bow – gods, he needs to spend more time alone if the Harbinger Theatrics are beginning to rub off on him.

He is of the firm belief that the Harbingers would have made a fantastic acting troupe if the stars had aligned slightly differently, and they each decided to pursue a career in acting rather than high-ranking government positions. They each as dramatic as each other, even attempting to one-up the nearest Harbingers whenever possible.

“Lord Brighella,” Signora returns. The silence between them was a short one, but it was by no means friendly. “Thank you for your time, I'm sure you're incredibly busy at the minute.”

“I could never dream of declining an offer from a fellow Harbinger,” he compliments. Because if he’s learned anything, it’s that flattery usually works and only a strange person reacts to a compliment poorly.

Signora’s cold façade briefly cracks, the corners of her lips turning upwards into something that could almost be called a smile, though her face slips back into a mask of neutrality so quickly that he can’t be sure it wasn’t a trick of the light. Her eye thaws slightly, and she looks less like she wants to slit his throat at the first opportunity.

“Why don't you come on in, then. I just prepared some tea.” She holds the door open, the draping sleeves of her outfit glittering as he passes by her.

Signora’s office is just as opulent as he expected it to be. The chandelier hanging in the centre shimmers, small crystals swaying in an invisible breeze, casting light around the whole room. Kaeya wouldn’t be surprised if he found a crystalfly or two amongst the gems.

Her desk is equal parts elegant and functional, with a sleek design that blends in with the rest of the room, yet maintains its function.

He lowers himself into the seat he’s directed to, crossing his legs neatly over each other as Signora sits across from him. True to her word, two cups of tea sit on the desk, steam still curling off their surface.

“I apologise for any residual mess in here,” Signora sighs, casting a baleful look up at the chandelier, positioned just over Kaeya’s head. “There was an incident with my previous chandelier and my guest at the time. I don't think they’ve managed to scrub all of him out the floor.”

He’s not imagining things this time, nor is it a trick of the light, watching as the corners of Signora’s lips quirk upwards in amusement at the grisly death of her previous companion.

“Well,” he laughs politely. “I do hope that same fate does not await me.”

“Of course not,” Signora tuts, “I like to believe I am a good host. One should never repeat their mistakes, to do so would mean you become sloppy; that you are not paying enough attention.”

“Ah,” he nods. Signora watches as he lifts the teacup to his lips, pausing a moment to inhale steam wafting off the drink. The smell doesn’t set off any kind of alarm bells in his head, nor is there any discolouration of the liquid. He takes a small sip before setting it down again.

“Ah, well,” Signora is still watching him, which is not unusual during a meeting. But the way she watches him makes it feel as though he’s being studied; every move catalogued and tucked away for later consideration. “You are not here to listen to my musings, though I am sure we have much to speak of, Scorned Child of Mond.”

“I'm…sure we do.” He is hesitant with his response. He does not deny any sense of kinship the two of them may have in regard to their ties with Mond, but he is also not eager to delve into such a topic at this moment. Perhaps another time, when the tension in the room isn’t so thick and they are no longer prodding at boundaries to see how far they can push the other.

“Your mission in Liyue was originally one I would be overseeing,” Signora continues, apparently setting aside the Mond comment for another time. “Though my involvement was far more behind the scenes than yours will be. It is, ultimately, up to you how you carry your mission out, but Childe is an invaluable asset in this case. I was intent on using him myself, allowing him to set up the branches of connection while I was elsewhere, and to fulfil the contract we have.”

“Contract?” This is the first time he’s hearing of a contract, something so incredibly important to those in Liyue that they feel the need to invoke their Archons name if anyone dares to broach the terms. “This is the first time I am being informed of a contract.”

“Simply because you are never apart from Childe,” Signora sighs. “I am glad that the two of you get along, but it is truly hard to catch you alone; I was almost worried he would follow you into this meeting and we would be able to discuss nothing but inane topics. To skirt around the true information I need to share would be awfully inconvenient.”

“And why would it be that Tartaglia should not hear of this information?” He quirks an eyebrow, “He is just as involved in this mission as I am.”

“To climb the ranks, many become used to stepping on those below them, in order to lever themselves upwards.” Signora laces her fingers together, the action drawing Kaeya’s attention away from her face for a moment. “It is of no surprise to me that you, having simply slipped your way in amongst the Lieutenants, would be unfamiliar with such a practice.”

“I prefer to step over someone than dirty my boots.”

Signora hums. “In this case, you may have to dirty your boots, if that is the metaphor we wish to move along with. Our contract with Rex Lapis demands that we test Liyue. He wishes for some reassurance that, even without him, his land will continue to prosper.”

“And how does he wish for the Harbour to be tested?”

“Rex Lapis is the primary defence, as you may know. He has spent millennia guarding against foes, protecting his people. As most Archons choose to. Recent years have caused a shift in power, pushing a little more of it in the Qixing’s direction.”

“And he wishes to test how they would respond to a disaster,” he surmises.

“Exactly that.” Signora looks faintly pleased, though she quickly hides her face behind a curl of steam as she sips her tea delicately. Her nails clack faintly against her teacup. “Of course, the type of disaster you wish to inflict is up to you, but one of catastrophic scales is preferred.”

He pauses for a moment before speaking again. “Is this not a form of terrorism?”

“Not if the Archon invites that terror himself.”

“I am quite certain this still counts as terrorism,” he sighs. “How do you suggest I avoid becoming implicated in this disaster. If the people of Liyue want a scapegoat to turn the blame on, surely they will target the two Fatui Harbingers within their Harbour?”

“It is a good thing we aren’t sending Harbingers, then, isn’t it?” Signora says. “Our two diplomats, Childe and Pavlín are rather irrelevant in the scheme of things. Your presence may be noticed at first, but you have enough time to blend yourself within the Harbour, until you are as much a part of the scenery as the bushes.”

“And what is the timescale of this project?”

“Rex Lapis insisted on the Rite of Descension being a key part of the plan. I do believe he has a few schemes of his own running behind the scenes, but I remain equally in the dark about those. We can only wait and see how it pans out.”

“Hm.”

It had been something to steal an Archon’s gnosis. For this to be a planned affair, with the Archon in question, apparently, relinquishing his gnosis willingly in exchange for the fulfilment of his contract. He can only wonder what the Tsaritsa has offered in return.

Such details are likely unavailable to him, as curious as he is.

“And,” he begins, looking back up at Signora, “what would your advice on this mission be? From a more experience diplomat to a rather inexperienced one.”

“I would use the tools at my disposal.” She tilts her head slightly, sending a cascade of hair over her shoulder as she studies him. “Childe is the most useful card in your deck. His thirst for a good fight would lead to a rather effective catastrophe – most certainly the exact thing Rex Lapis is looking for. Give him permission, and he’ll make the plan all by himself.”

It is his turn to study Signora. The relaxed set of her shoulders, the way she reclines in her seat, all of it point towards a self-assuredness that comes with experience. He’s not certain on how old she is, exactly, but she still hasn’t managed to disguise the slight unease in her eyes. The way she studies him as though he is an unknown factor, a wild card that could throw a wrench into the cogs of the machine and bring the whole thing grinding to a halt.

“And you don't want me to inform Childe of the other segments of our plan, then. You wish for me to send him along a path of searching for the gnosis and see how far along it he gets, what destruction he leaves in his wake.”

“I am not telling you to do anything. Only advising.”

“Then I thank you for your counsel, Lady Signora,” he stands from his seat smoothly. “I will consider your words carefully.”

“What do you mean she didn’t want to tell me?” Childe’s voice pitches a little louder than necessary. Kaeya grimaces at the volume, pulling away from Childe so he is no longer shouting directly into his ear.

The two of them are sat on the same side of his desk, awkwardly pressed up against each other, behind a desk that is only meant to seat one. Their knees knock together with each gentle rock of the boat – the stormy waters have long passed them by, and sailing is far smoother. Especially as Childe no longer feels the need to empty his stomach every minute.

“She only gave advice on what she believed would work,” he soothes. His diplomatic words obviously do little to appease Childe, and he continues to look frustrated. “Signora and I have different opinions on how something can be carried out. For her, she prefers to hold everything rather close to her chest. It reduces the need for trust in her subordinates, as no-one but her has the full picture.”

“Course she can’t trust her subordinates, that entire lot are shifty as hell- I'm certain that half the people that applied from her division were intending to spy on us for her.”

“And the other half?”

“Eager to get as far away from her as possible.”

“Hm. She didn’t seem that unpleasant in our conversation, however brief it was.”

“Course she didn’t,” Childe grumbles something else under his breath. “Maybe you just didn’t pick up on her murderous aura.”

“Oh, no, I certainly did. She even joked about her previous visitor meeting a rather unfortunate demise. Did you know she crushed him beneath a chandelier?”

“I- what?” Childe is lost for words, a never before seen occurrence that almost makes Kaeya reach for a kamera to document the moment. “She made a joke?”

“Well, she might not have been joking, but she certainly found some amusement in it.”

“That’s fucked up, man.”

“I am well aware. Now,” he taps the relatively small file of information in front of them, only open to the second page as Childe feels the need to give a running commentary on every fragment of information they're given, and he sulks when he thinks Kaeya is ignoring him. He also doesn’t believe Kaeya can listen to him and read at the same time, leaving them in an odd standstill. “Do you have any opinions on Liyue so far? Any grand plans coming to mind?”

“You didn’t appreciate any of my previous grand plans,” Childe complains.

“Your previous plans arrived after midnight and before six a.m., I think I am well within my right to be dismissive of those plans when they have the gall to be so inconvenient.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Childe waves him off, flicking further into the file – which suggests that Childe actually read the information they were given, rather than leaving it for Kaeya to fill him in – until he finds the page he was apparently looking for. “Behold! The grandest of all grand plans!”

Kaeya looks at the page open in front of them, then back to Childe. “Dead gods.”

“Dead gods!” Childe does an odd little shimmy in his seat, something that is oddly endearing, despite their current topic of conversation being how they're going to inflict terror upon the economic hub of Teyvat. “All that resentment’s just buildin’ up, and I'm sure they’d love to get back at their old buddy. What better way to test Liyue?”

“And how do you intend to find a dead god,” he asks. “Or even revive them from the dead?”

“We have a few consultants available to us, don't we?”

“Cultural consultants, yes.”

“Nuh-uh,” Childe flicks back a few pages – because apparently he’s memorised several locations of information in the file. He feels like he needs to give Childe some kind of reward; for someone that can’t sit still long enough to finish paperwork, he’s sure done a lot of reading of paperwork. “See, we’ve got this fella.”

“A funeral consultant?”

“He’s knowledgeable in more than just funerals, and more than just human funerals too! He knows the rites for an Adeptus funeral. There’s no way this guy isn’t an Adeptus himself, not with such a niche topic as his form of employment. The Adepti’s whole thing is being immortal, or something.”

“And you think he’ll be useful in…helping you revive a dead god that Rex Lapis subdued?”

“When you put it like that it makes it sound like it won’t work!”

He hums, a smile playing at the corners of his lips as he looks back at the information they have on this funeral consultant. Zhongli’s page is rather empty, compared to their other contacts, lacking many details of his relations, listing only his employer as a person of note.

He glances at Childe, still trying to justify how the consultant won’t figure out what his ulterior motives are, then back at the small portrait included in his profile.

…He’ll let Childe figure this one out on his own.

Chapter Text

He momentarily feels a little wobbly, slightly unsteady on his feet, as he steps onto solid ground for the first time in almost a week. He expects the ground to shift beneath him in the same way the boat had rocked atop the waves, and when it remains stationary and unmoving, he’s momentarily unbalanced.

“O Great Archons above, thank you for bringing me this solid land!”

…But at least he is nowhere near as dramatic as Childe.

He sighs, summoning some patience for this next segment of their journey. As much as he would love to simply enter Liyue and retire to whatever lodgings have been secured for them, he’s aware of the land he’s stepped into. Liyue did not get it’s reputation as a land fond of its contracts by simply allowing foreign diplomats to wander on inside.

“Childe,” he turns to his companion with a wide smile. “I beg of you, please refrain from speaking until we’ve spoken to whoever is concerning themselves with our arrival, yes?”

Childe grimaces at him. “Don't smile like that. You look manic, like the Doctor.”

“I’ll be taking a page out of his book and sewing your mouth shut if you don't bite your tongue,” he warns. The agents disembarking the boat behind them all shoot him a wide-eyed look, as though attempting to determine whether he’s serious. He’s as serious as the suture needle and thread he’s got in his pocket right now.

Childe rolls his eyes, “Calm down, comrade. We’re here on official business, there’s no reason for them to deny us entry.” He even goes so far as to sling an arm around Kaeya’s neck, pulling him down. Kaeya has to bend a little lower on account of the heeled boots he chose to wear today.

“Oh, certainly not. Our documents are perfectly prepared. I am, however, worried about what it is that you might say.” He punctuates his sentence with twisting out of Childe’s grip, yanking his arm behind his back and pinning it in place.

Childe could easily break free from his grip, albeit with a dislocated shoulder; Kaeya’s watched him do it before, and proceed to kill another four men before even thinking to whine about his new injury.

All Childe does now, on the fringes of the bustling port, is test Kaeya’s grip once before sagging backwards. It places them chest to back, and Kaeya can feel the warmth of Childe’s body against his front.

“Aw, you really don't trust me,” Childe tips his head back, settling it comfortably on Kaeya’s shoulder as he grins up at him, apparently unperturbed by the way his shoulder is dangerously close to slipping out of its socket. “Where’s the cooperation? The teamwork? Here we are, and I seem to be the only one putting any work into our relationship.”

“You mention anything about dead gods, flooding, unsavoury debt collection methods, destruction of property, anything related to murder of-” someone coughs, cutting him off.

He glances up, finding a prim and professional looking woman watching them with a mix between confusion and amusement. Her dark hair is pulled back from her face, leaving only a few wispy bits escaping and falling across her face.

“I do hope I'm not interrupting anything, gentlemen.”

Kaeya releases Childe, laughing as he switches to Liyuean. “Oh, no, no,” he pats Childe on the back, a friendly gesture meant to appease the woman. Her eyes don't stray from his face, only taking a moment to raise one eyebrow. “It’s only a friendly gesture between comrades, ah, I do apologise. Cultural differences may have that appearing a little more aggressive than we would perceive it ourselves.”

“Hm.” The eyebrow returns to its previous position, and then she glances away, down towards the documents Kaeya hadn’t noticed until now. “Well, I implore you to read up a little more on the local customs of Liyue while you're here. We wouldn’t want any more…cultural differences to end with the Millelith intervening, hm?”

“Of course not,” he presses his hand to his heart, bowing forward in silent apology. “We,” he gestures between himself and Childe, “are hoping that this diplomatic mission emerges with the best results for both our nations.”

“You are a part of the outreach program for the Northland Bank, correct?” The question is obviously a formality, especially with the woman reading a copy of the documents he had to spend several hours completing before their mission began.

“That is correct.”

“And your companion?” She tilts her head towards Childe, still not looking up. “Is he the second Diplomat, or is he merely your assistant?” Childe bristles at that, opening his mouth to retort.

Kaeya swiftly intervenes quickly, “Ah, no, no. He is a fellow Diplomat. His Liyuean is slightly lacking, unfortunately; see, he hasn’t had the opportunity to return to Liyue for quite a few years and as such his grasp on the language has grown a little looser. Yet, he missed your sunny shores so much that he jumped at the opportunity to come here again. He’s picked up most of what he’s lost, but the confidence is still missing, unfortunately.”

The woman regards him with suspicion. “Neither of you look old enough to have gone on several missions dating back to years prior.”

“Ah, well,” he laughs. “There is a saying, back in Snezhnaya, that the cold preserves us and keeps us looking youthful. I thank you for your compliment, ma’am.” Her responding look suggests that it wasn’t a compliment.

“Alright,” she glances back down at the documents, shuffling through a few of them before sighing and looking back up. “I don't have time for the usual spiel we use here, so I shall keep this encounter short. Do not break our laws, you will be reported to the Millelith, and it will be inconvenient for everyone involved. You may have diplomatic immunity, but that does not make you immune to being public nuisances and being arrested. I implore you to listen to whatever cultural consultant you’ve detailed hiring here,” she taps the papers meaningfully.

“You’ll hardly know we’re here,” he promises. “We will be keeping firmly on the right side of the law here.”

She regards him cooly over the edge of her glasses. “Being quiet isn’t necessarily a good thing. I will be keeping an eye on you, Fatui.”

“And may I ask after who it is that is keeping such a diligent eye on my work here?”

“Baishi,” she tells him shortly. “Secretary of the Tianquan.”

“Well, Baishi, this meeting has been lovely, but I do hope we never have reason to cross paths again.” He injects as much genuity into his voice as possible, sincerely hoping that she doesn’t show up at his door with a fleet of Millelith and Childe, whenever the Harbinger decides he’s gotten too bored with being good and lawful.

“As do I,” she eyes him once more. “Though I doubt it will be me speaking with you if there are any…issues with your stay here. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

They both watch her leave in silence; she moves rather quickly, speeding away as though she’s already late for another appointment. Maybe she is.

“Well, she was lovely,” Childe comments. “Also,” Kaeya winces as Childe punches him in the arm, pulling away and rubbing at the sore spot, “what was that about? ‘His Liyuean isn’t very good’? I’ll have you know that my Liyuean is probably better than yours.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Oh, yeah? What makes you so certain?”

Kaeya pauses, then turns a narrow-eyed, disappointed look on Childe. “I lived in Mondstadt,” he says slowly, “with a merchant father. And you believe I didn’t have lessons in Liyuean?”

“Ugh, I forgot you were a rich kid,” Childe shoves him away. “My Liyuean is plenty good for picking it up two months ago.”

“It certainly is, Master Diplomat.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Would you prefer Master Childe?” He follows behind Childe as he begins to make his way into the port city, “It truly makes you sound like a child having a tantrum, don't you agree?”

“Childe is a perfectly respectable codename,” Childe tosses over his shoulder. “It means ‘young noble’.”

“And yet you possess none of the qualities of a respectable young noble man,” he teases. “Where is the charm? You're polite only when it benefits you, and the rest of the time you couldn’t care less what people think of you.”

“Charm?” Childe scoffs. “I have plenty of charm, I’ll have you know.”

“Uh-huh,” he nods. “So much charm. It’s practically overflowing, and, oh dear, it’s all gone now. Whatever shall you do with your charmless words.”

“I’ll stab you,” Childe tells him. “I’ll do it, right here, right now.”

“How bold,” he grins. “You’ll be propositioning me next.”

“Ugh, you're incorrigible.” Childe is grinning too, even as he complains.

“Such is the life of someone with infinite charm, spare a little sympathy for me, won’t you? It’s a torturous life, having everyone falling over their own feet for you.”

“I'm not talking to you anymore.”

“Aw, Childe, come now. I was only joking, I'm sure you're plenty charming when you want to be.”

Childe doesn’t respond.

“Oh, have I hurt your feelings?” He spins around to walk backwards, coat swirling out behind him as he faces Childe, ducking his head a little to see his face better. “You must know that wasn’t my intentions, you're plenty charming, really.”

“You think I'm charming?” Childe grins, slowly looking up at him. Kaeya cannot help but think that he’s stepped into some kind of trap by saying that, and Childe’s shark-like grin only confirms it. “My oh my, Pavlín, you may as well kiss me in broad daylight. To think you would be so bold.”

Kaeya reels back, feeling his face grow uncomfortably warm at Childe’s teasing. Childe laughs at him, loud enough to draw attention from passersby.

“Oh, hush,” he reprimands, though with only a little bite behind his words. He should perhaps leave this coat behind next time he chooses to walk the streets of Liyue; it’s more than a little too warm for such a heavy coat, and it’s certainly doing them no favours in keeping their arrival subtle. Though Kaeya is certain that word will spread about the Snezhnayan “diplomats” soon enough. “If I were to only insult you, your self-esteem would soon drop too low. And then you’d simply be no fun to tease.”

“My self-esteem has already been damaged irreparably,” Childe hangs his head low, then promptly trips up the stairs as he forgets to look where he’s going. Kaeya, far too used to Childe’s newborn-deer walking from the past week on the ship, simply grabs him by the back of his shirt and hauls him back upright. “Thanks,” Childe manages, laughing awkwardly.

A few Liyueans lean over to peer down at them from the level above, one of them covering their mouth with the back of their hand as they laugh.

Kaeya dusts Childe off, brushing his hands over his shoulders before smoothing them down his arms. He pauses there, not quite holding Childe but also not releasing him. He’s only thankful no-one else followed them up the stairs, as they're acting like quite the blockade right now. “If you need a few more compliments, I'm sure I can squeeze a few more in, dear.”

He releases Childe and manages to get all the way to the top of the winding staircase before he turns back and realises that Childe didn’t follow him.

He twists around awkwardly, finding Childe staring up at him. He cocks his head to the side, raising an eyebrow in question. “You gonna stand there all day?”

“Dunno, maybe.” Childe grins up at him, something mischievous swirling in his eyes and cooking in his brain. “You look gorgeous in that sunlight, maybe you should stand there a little longer, let me admire you.”

The laughing Liyuean from earlier makes a choked off sound, covering their mouth in embarrassment the moment Kaeya swings his head around to face them.

“Well, I suppose we’re at a standstill, then.” He ignores how warm his own face feels. If Childe wants to play this game, then Kaeya is certainly not going to let him achieve victory easily. “It’s so wonderful to see you beneath me.”

Childe flushes as red as his hair, taking the steps two at a time until he’s on the same step as Kaeya. He pauses, hand raised, and opens his mouth to say something.

“Ugh,” Childe prods him in the chest. “C’mon, we have somewhere to be.”

“Ah, but I thought you could stand there all day?” he teases.

“Shut up,” Childe grumbles. He snags part of Kaeya’s cloak in his hand – the trailing end of fur that slips over his shoulder – and yanks, pulling him up and around the corner, towards the next set of red stairs. “We have things to be doing.”

Kaeya shuts the door behind himself, enclosing him within his new office. He leans back against the door as he thinks to himself, humming low and in the back of his throat.

The desk, sat innocently in the centre of the room and perfectly aligned with the sunbeams filtering in through the blinds, becomes the focus of his narrowed gaze. The staff greeting him had certainly been more than a little odd. Quick to answer each of his questions, even quicker to satisfy any request he made of them.

They were also overly eager to send Childe out on one of his first debt collecting assignments.

He pauses, continuing to lean against the door as he listens. After a moment, a knock echoes through the room, the door against his back rattling slightly with the force of it.

He steps away, gives it a few moments, and then opens the door, peering around the edge to greet whoever it is that has chosen to visit him mere moments after his departure from the impromptu meeting downstairs.

“Good afternoon,” he greets, giving Ekaterina a small smile as he opens the door a little wider. He can barely see her face for the mask she wears, but an air of frustration continues to emit from her. He’s not certain whether it’s him she’s displeased with or someone else entirely. “To what do I owe the pleasure of having you visit me again so soon?”

“One of the clerks gave me this,” she brandishes a sealed letter. “Said they forgot to give it to you when you first arrived, and were too nervous to come up and do it now. Sorry- correction: they were too busy to come up and deliver it, but seeing as there’s only one of our clients downstairs, I think we can both guess that he simply did not wish to see you.”

“Aw, already?” He leans against the doorjamb, taking the letter from Ekaterina’s outstretched hand. He slices it open with a dagger, smiling at Ekaterina as she tracks where he puts it back. “I don't suppose they got a warning ahead of time? Or perhaps the gossip is just so widespread…”

“Politely, sir, you're a Harbinger. Most of them are going to be more than a little nervous around you.”

“Well, that simply won’t do, will it?” he says good-naturedly, only skimming the letter quickly. A small smile tugs at his lips as he reads the casual threat within it, almost funny with its consequences. He tucks it away into the same holster as his dagger, concealed within the depths of his cloak, far away from where any prying eyes or wandering hands would be able to find it. “How about this, we send them all home early for the evening, and encourage them to spend time with the new agents; they’ll need to be working together soon, may as well get familiar. Any good establishments around here? Preferably ones with alcohol?”

“I do not know, sir.” Ekaterine looks as though she is barely resisting sighing at him. “This is also my first time in Liyue. Though I can ask one of the clerks, see if they have any recommendations.”

“Oh, please do. In the meantime,” he shuffles back into his office, “I do believe I will be getting myself familiarised with everything. Have someone bring me up the employee records – and make sure they bring it up and they don't coerce you into doing it. I would like to meet some of my temporary employees one day.”

“I’ll see to it that they don't coerce me.”

Ekaterina shuts the door behind her, the latch falling into place with a small click.

It gives Kaeya a little more time to gather his thoughts as he circles the office, poking at the trinkets lining the shelves. Whoever resided in here previously, or decorated the place, was obviously a collector of some kind.

He pauses over the collection of gems, picking up a chunk of cor lapis and weighing it in his hand. It’s heavier than it looks to be, settling comfortably in the centre of his palm. Even through the leather of his gloves, he can feel the faint pulse of warmth from the gem.

The gem itself is widely recognised as the signature of Liyue. Mondstadt may have its dandelion and its wine, and Snezhnaya its ice and frost. And Liyue has cor lapis. His meagre entertainment on the way to Liyue included a few local books and stories – partly to familiarise himself with written Liyuean again, and partly to have an excuse for ignoring Childe.

He’d been given a book by one of the recruits that had visited Liyue before, something which he really doesn’t think the girl meant to give him. It was Liyuean, certainly, but it was also the kind of trashy romance novel that you’d only find crammed in the corners of bookshops, gathering dust. Truly, if he ever had to read another description of someone’s cor lapis-coloured eyes he might simply gouge his own out.

He never mentioned it to that recruit, despite finishing the entire book (out of sheer boredom), but he couldn’t imagine it as something you should be recommending to your superior.

He sets the cor lapis back down, returning to his desk. The chair is comfortable, almost overly so, and he sinks back in it as he drums his fingers against the tabletop. Another book, dog-eared and well-worn, simply from the number of times he’s sifted through its pages, sits on the edge of his desk. It could easily fall of were he to nudge it.

He doesn’t, dragging it closer to himself and flipping it open. He flicks through the pages until he finds the one he’s looking for. This particular book is a collection of several volumes of the same series. It had been rather hard to find one in Snezhnaya, simply because mythos on the Geo Archon are not in high demand.

Still, he’d managed to find this copy. Their ‘consultant’ may have an agreement with the Tsaritsa, but none of that means Kaeya has to be overly polite. Reading the way an author has been permitted to speak about the Archon gives him a rather good idea of what he could get away with voicing, and what he could not.

He looks up at a meek knock on his door, calling out for the person to enter. He pushes the book aside in favour of the files he’s handed, only attempting to make casual small talk before he releases the employee to make a hasty retreat from his office.

He sighs, then flips the folder open.

“Must you sit there?”

“Must you continue to work?” Childe returns, twisting only his upper body to face him, leaving him a contorted creature perched on the edge of his desk. “The sun set ages ago, and you’ve only continued to work. C’mon, I reckon everyone else has gone home while you’ve been holed up in here.”

“They have not.”

“There’s no noise from downstairs,” he can see Childe frown at him from the corner of his eye. “And the Bank shut several hours ago. Even if there was other business to be sorted, it’ll all be finished now.”

“I never said that they were still here, I simply said that they had not gone home.” He ticks another name off his list, pauses, then scribbles a small note next to the name. “They have gone to one of the local bars, apparently. Ekaterina was among those invited.”

“Any reason why you know this?”

“I asked Ekaterina to organise a small outing between the two groups. They must be able to work well together, no matter how nervous some of the clerks may be about working with active agents, in order for us to blend in. If the groups remain at odds, then Liyue will remain at odds with us.”

“And you didn’t go with them, because…?”

“Because how would you feel, if it were your first night of being a Harbinger, and the Tsaritsa insisted on doing shots with you?”

“I- well I’d probably be a bit worried about my alcohol tolerance. It’s not bad, but I doubt it can compare to an Archon’s.”

“I,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That is not what I meant, Childe.”

“Oh, was it not?” There’s a small thump as Childe kicks his legs, heels bumping off the sides of Kaeya’s desk. “What was it that you meant?”

“Do not pretend to be obtuse with me. We’re both aware of how far your mental capabilities extend, and it’s further than most expect of you.”

“To be fair to them, I have gotten a few head injuries. After that, most people wouldn’t have much knocking around up there.”

“Someone with little ‘knocking around up there’ would not have been promoted to Harbinger.” Childe’s heels continue to bump against the side of the desk, beginning to grate on Kaeya’s nerves more and more. “Must you do that?” he snaps after a moment longer of the sound.

Childe stills, meaning the sound stops too. “Do what?”

“Sit there and kick your legs back and forth like some toddler.”

“There isn’t anywhere else to sit,” Childe points out, unfortunately correct. “Unless you're offering?”

“I am not-!” He sighs, setting his pen down perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary. “Let’s go. We can find our lodgings and I’ll continue my work there if it means you will cease your annoying.”

“Uh-uh,” Childe steps behind him the moment he stands, shoving at his shoulders. “Work stays at work. We’re going to go back and rest, like sane, healthy people.”

“Ah, yes, between the two of us we are certainly a fantastic example of sane, healthy people.”

“Like sane and healthy people,” Childe squeezes his shoulders, “I never said we actually were.” He rubs his thumbs over Kaeya’s shoulders, a gesture that is far too relaxing for his own good. It sends an odd sensation slithering down his spine, and makes him give in almost immediately, sighing and sagging forward.

“At least let me collect my cloak, then.”

“Of course,” Childe chirps, stepping back and taking his heat-pack hands away with him. “Though I don't see why you need such a warm thing in this tropical climate.”

He pauses halfway through fastening the chain, “I like it. It is…a comfort.”

“Sure, yeah. Maybe find yourself a comfort that won’t give you heatstroke.”

“I cannot get heatstroke,” he gestures to his vision, hanging from his hip. The bauble bounces against his leg as he gestures at it. “It is physically impossible.”

“Really? Because I might be attuned to hydro, but I’ll still drown if I inhale water.”

“Hm, something you tried?”

“Only the once,” Childe laughs. “Trust me, the feeling of water in your nose is not one you're ever eager to repeat.”

“I'm sure it’s not.” He feels a smile spread over his face despite himself, the image of Childe – likely in a bathtub, or perhaps even dunking his head into a sink and attempting this – inhaling water because he believed he could breathe it amusing to him. “Oh, before I forget,” he draws a note out of his pocket and hands it off to Childe.

Childe reads it as they leave, Kaeya locking the doors behind them.

“The consultant cancelled?” He asks, looking up. His eyes seem to absorb the darkness of the streets around them, not catching any light despite the lanterns lining their path. It’s late enough that few others are out, and those that are wandering around seem to be more preoccupied with remaining upright long enough to reach their destination than listening to the two of them. “Why?”

“He didn’t give a reason,” he shrugs. Maybe he needs a little more time for planning his own death. Who knows. “He assured me that he had already rescheduled.”

“For the day after tomorrow, yeah, I read it.”

“It’s only a few days, I'm sure you can find something to occupy yourself with.”

“Oh, I certainly can,” Childe grins. “Did I tell you about the debtor that tried to throw himself over a cliff when he saw me?”

“No, but I'm sure I'm about to hear about it.”

“Damn right you are, okay, so basically I went up to him, all friendly like, and then he…”

Kaeya allows Childe’s chatter to fade into the background as they pass Wangsheng, glancing at the singular lit window inside.

He tunes back into the conversation when Childe says something that sounds like a question, nodding and humming in an appropriate manner. Childe seems pleased with his cover duties, something that Kaeya can also say – it’s something to keep him outside of the city, give him reason to investigate the sites of old gods and information that could aid them in their quest.

He has a few locations in mind already, places that Dottore had marked onto a map for him before he left. Most of them with unusually high activity, others with suspiciously low activity. All available to entertain Childe, and himself if he got bored enough.

…But those are matters for tomorrow. When Childe is less excited about the man he got to threaten within an inch of his life.

Chapter Text

Kaeya shuts the door to their apartment quietly, easing the handle slowly into place. He glances around, barely hearing the latch click into place, instead watching as Childe pokes around the small kitchenette they’ve been provided with. To the unobservant, he would look rather relaxed, if not curiously poking around where they're staying for the foreseeable future; if it wasn’t for the tense line of his shoulders and the sheer amount of time that Kaeya has been forced to spend around him, he would also think Childe were simply investigating the icebox a little too thoroughly.

“I'm sure it was just a mistake,” he tries. He swallows a little thickly, watching as Childe snaps his head around to face him. He’s still frowning, ears pink, and his frown furrows into a deeper glare as he lays his eyes on Kaeya.

“Don't laugh!”

“I'm not laughing,” he soothes. Or attempts to. He’s not, really, but he can feel the corners of his mouth begin to twitch into a smile. “And I am certain it was an honest mistake.”

“Oh, of course. An honest mistake. Where is it that you wish for your assistant to stay for the evening?” Childe’s imitation of the receptionist’s nasally voice isn’t terrible, matching rather closely, actually. The scathing tone of his voice would be enough to make a lesser man tremble, and perhaps take the escape route at his back.

Kaeya is not a lesser man. He frowns and leans back against the door, crossing his arms defensively. “And what did I do? Did I stand there and laugh at your misfortune, or did I offer my help?”

“It’s not whether you helped or not, it’s the fact that he thinks I'm some kind of assistant.”

“Well…” Kaeya allows his eyes to travel over Childe slowly, taking in the standard issue Fatui uniform. It’s given out to every high-ranking officer when they first ascend to the rank; he has an exact replica of this outfit gathering dust somewhere in the back of his wardrobe in Zapolyarny. The only thing missing from Childe’s current ensemble is the thick black coat, designed to keep their officers warm in even the harshest snow.

“What?” Childe snaps.

“You do look like someone attending to me, only because you continue to wear a uniform while I wear whatever I wish. The Fatui are not an uncommon appearance in the Harbour, I'm sure they’ve seen many officers wandering around wearing exactly what it is that you wear.”

“I'm not wearing that stupid coat,” Childe says. “Only an idiot would do that.”

Kaeya ignores the obvious jab at his current choice in clothing, simply raising an unimpressed eyebrow at Childe. “Every other agent here also chooses to forgo the coat in this weather. Thus, you continue to look like every single one of them.”

Childe makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat, a little growl that is barely threatening. Kaeya chooses not to laugh at that, only because he’s not in the business of kicking someone while they're down.

He watches as Childe continues to stand there, arms crossed and eyes pointedly averted. He’s glaring so hard at a patch of the floor that Kaeya would be worried if he possessed a pyro vision. As it is, he allows Childe to have his moment, as he works through his frustration and onto whatever else it is that’s also bothering him.

It takes him several minutes, at which point Kaeya is rather certain he’s about to lose the last remaining dregs of his sanity to the incessant tapping of Childe’s foot against the floorboards.

“Did you see the name written on the door?” Childe breaks his silence, raising his eyes to meet Kaeya’s eye.

“I did not.” He pauses, then gives Childe a wry smile, “I was rather occupied with catching the door so it didn’t slam into the wall and wake all our neighbours. It is rather late you know,” he reprimands. “We’re going to be staying here for a while, so the least we can do is make sure our neighbours don't hate our guts.”

Childe hums, either taking that on board or not. Kaeya would go with not simply because he’s drumming his fingers on his arm and no longer looking at him.

Kaeya gives up on the conversation and locks the door.

He moves past Childe to investigate the kitchenette himself, poking around in the icebox to see what was so fascinating to Childe. He finds nothing in there but a few withered leaves and a wrinkly apple. He allows the lid to drop shut and moves onto the cupboards.

These he finds a little better stocked, some canned goods and a few boxes of tea. Though nothing beyond the bare essentials and certainly not enough to sustain two people for long. He is thankful for the bottomless budget Pantalone has generously allowed them – though the caveat of it is rather unfortunate.

(To be forced to report upon each expenditure means he’s going to need some kind of document to keep track of it all – Pantalone may favour him, but he favours his mora far more and will be far from appreciative if Kaeya doesn’t have an explanation for a dent in his wealth.)

He’s halfway through making a cup of tea for himself, Childe refusing when he offered to make him one too. He’s not actually sure what kind of tea it is, nor is it one that’s he’s had before, but he’s about to find out what this mystery tea bag is – it doesn’t smell like it’s expired, at least – when Childe decides that he’s done with giving Kaeya the silent treatment.

“This room was labelled for the Innamorati,” Childe decides to enlighten him. Sure, he could have easily poked his head back outside and read the placard. But it’s also important for Childe to learn the elusive skill of effective and open communication. Too many of his words are hidden behind double-meanings and smiles.

…For someone that dislikes their fellow Harbingers for being two-faced, he certainly fits into the role well enough.

“The Lovers,” Kaeya turns around, leaning back against the countertop as he stirs his tea. The liquid inside is almost golden in colour, swirling and creating a small whirlpool around his teaspoon. (Were he in one of those trashy romance novels that his recruit lent him, he’s sure this would have been described as cor-lapis and created some longing in the shallow main character. Ugh, he should have tossed that book aside the moment the first raunchier scene presented itself…for a recruit to even think of giving it to him…) “Have you not heard it before?”

“You have?”

“Hm.” He takes a sip of the tea. It tastes stale and out of date, so much for smelling it and hoping for the best. “I had a conversation with some guests at our celebratory ball. Some noblewomen from within Zapolyarny City, presumably. Apparently the Innamorati have been a topic of discussion amongst those social circles recently.”

He takes another sip of his tea, remembers why he had decided not to drink any more of it, and dumps it down the sink.

“I- Pav!”

“What? The tea was off.”

“Not that-! Just, ugh, why the Innamorati of all things? You can’t just leave me in suspense after telling me that some noblewomen approached you to gossip about me and you.”

“It’s nothing terribly important.” he says, just to see how Childe reacts. He smiles a little as Childe gestures for him to continue, obviously growing frustrated with his continued silence, “Oh, fine,” he sighs out, as though he wasn’t going to tell him anyway. “The nickname is one for the two of us. And it spawned from how our ascension to becoming Harbingers was apparently just so romantic. We’re rarely seen apart, as one might expect from a pair of young lovers; ones so obsessed with each other they cannot bear to be further than a hair’s breadth away from each other. Those that feel as though they begin to wither away when they go longer than an hour without contact from their most beloved.”

“You're just being dramatic now.”

“Maybe,” he shrugs.

“We’re also not attached at the hip.”

“Oh?” He grins a little at the statement. For someone to be so confident and yet be so wrong. “Has your memory been affected so terribly that you forgot that week you were injured and prohibited from your usual duties? The week in which you refused to leave me alone in the lab the entire time? I do recall a few times where you were, quite literally, following me around. Were you pining after me even then?”

“Ugh, you think too much of yourself. I was just bored!”

“And yet rumours spawned anyway.” He shrugs. “Such is the way of life. The agent sent to confirm our booking must have only asked for a room to house the Innamorati, presumably accustomed to using the nickname with other recruits. Whoever was working at the time must have assumed Innamorati was one person rather than two.”

“And they didn’t think to question it?”

Kaeya gives him a dry look. “We work alongside someone that chooses to go by Capitano rather than their actual name. My mentor is called Doctor more frequently than anything else. I doubt the person working wished to question a Fatui agent on their higher-up’s naming conventions.”

“And you got all that from a single placard?”

“Yes. The nuances of language are numerous, but if you study it for long enough, you can find an immeasurable amount of information from simple things.”

“Uh-huh, whatever.” Childe turns around. “I'm going to find the bedroom. Let me know when your use of language allows you to win more battles than me.”

“If we recall our last fight…who was it between us that won?”

“That didn’t count!” Childe calls from the next room over. “That was on a boat. I was unsteady.”

“And feeling sick?” He teases, grinning to himself when he hears Childe grumble to himself in the next room. “What happened to triumphing no matter the terrain or circumstances?”

“I'm going to sleep! You're on the sofa tonight!”

There’s a thumping sound a few seconds later, akin to someone kicking their boots off, followed by a muffled thump, like one would make when falling face first onto a bed. Kaeya sighs, casting basically empty cupboards another mournful look before trailing over to the sofa.

It looks plenty comfortable, large and with several cushions. He hardly needs any blankets, but he goes searching for a linen cupboard anyway. He finds thin blankets, ones that look more decorative than for actual use, but he takes them anyway.

He’ll let Childe have this victory for now, if only to soothe his slightly bruised ego from the earlier incident.

Tomorrow is another matter entirely. He’ll bodily haul Childe from that bed if needs be.

“You know, when I told you to sleep on the sofa I was only half-joking.”

“Mm.” Kaeya blinks his eye open, squinting up at Childe. Who is far closer than he initially thought he would be. His face is mere inches from Kaeya’s own, lightless eyes staring down at him. If it wasn’t for the amused twist to his lips and the slight crease between his brows, Kaeya would be convinced he was staring at a corpse. “I’ll fight you for it tonight.”

“Why fight when we can just share? It’s ridiculously massive – we’ve shared smaller spaces on overnight missions before.”

“Hm. I suppose so,” Kaeya stretches his arms above his head, feeling the way his back pops with the movement. The sofa may have been comfortable, but he’s still a little stiff from sleeping on it all night. He remains lying down, tipping his head back to see Childe. “You heading out already?”

“Yup! Got a few things to see to. You know how it is, debtors rarely wake with the sun, and if I can get to them before they’re awake it’s a lot harder for them to run as far.”

“Doesn’t that mean you’ll get a worse fight out of it?” he questions.

“It’s enough to get my blood pumping,” Childe shrugs, looking almost awkward. “Have fun sat behind a desk all day!” Childe begins to move away, though not before he pats the side of Kaeya’s face affectionately and disappears.

Kaeya sits up, startled, too slow to see anything other than the door swinging shut behind Childe. What.

He slumps back down onto the sofa, only just registering how early it actually is. Childe is up with the merchants today, it would seem, eager to interrogate and intimidate whoever’s on his list for the day. He drags himself from the sofa and through to the bedroom. The bed is made, all the sheets tucked back in neatly. Kaeya doesn’t even bother to untuck them, near-collapsing into its softness.

Childe was likely going for a friendly pat rather than the affectionate gesture Kaeya interpreted it as.

He groans, before slowly rolling off the sofa, dragging one of the thin blankets with him as he gets up. It really is much too early, but he blinks the sleep from his eyes and drags himself towards the bathroom anyway.

If he is going to get his new underlings to like him, he should show up at the same time they do, if not earlier. No-one likes a boss that throws their weight around and then amounts to doing absolutely fuck-all.

His underlings remain terrified of him, despite him offering the one brave enough (or unlucky enough, if they drew straws) to actually enter his office a drink and biscuit. He watches her soul leave her body at that moment, dumping the files he requested onto his desk as though they burned her before disappearing with a squeaky excuse.

Alright then.

The day passes slowly with only paperwork and Ekaterina to keep him company. She pops in around lunchtime to drop off some food, something from a place called Wanmin Restaurant down the street. The food is nice, some kind of noodle dish, and he appreciates the small break from the monotony of working.

He takes his meal over to the window, sitting on the small seat tucked into the alcove. The design of this is much more reminiscent of Mondstadt than Liyue, but he finds entertainment in watching the people pass below him.

He even gets the treat of watching a couple argue in an alleyway, even if he cannot hear what they're saying to each other.

Whatever it is much be appreciated, as they quickly pull each other in and that is his cue to get back to work. He’s just standing up (not scrambling, not escaping from the scene in that alleyway below- gods above that he does not believe in, please do not let a child stumble across them) as his door swings open.

He hadn’t heard anyone knock, and it becomes clear why when Childe comes tumbling through the door, unmistakeable with his red hair and gangly limbs.

“Good afternoon,” he greets, and then stops. He frowns. “Where did you get new clothes?”

“Oh,” Childe looks down at himself, as though only just realising that he’s wearing something different. “I bought them.” …Kaeya is beginning to see through this ruse, picking up on how Childe is quietly fishing for a compliment.

Which…is not undeserved. The cut of his trousers and shirt are both flattering, the grey of them both only making the red of his scarf and undershirt stand out even more.

“You look nice,” he compliments. He watches as Childe preens beneath the praise, grinning a little smugly and lifting his chin a little higher. “Though, is the stomach window really necessary? You’ll be rather cold when we return to Snezhnaya.”

“Hey,” Childe cups his hands over the purposeful gap in his shirt, designed to show off his stomach. Which it certainly does. Kaeya drags his eye away and back up to Childe’s face, who’s still pouting at him. “I’m presenting a united front!”

“A…united front?”

“Yes,” Childe drags the word out, as though he’s an idiot. “Make it look like we’re a team, you've got your- window there,” Childe waves at his chest, averting his gaze when Kaeya looks at him with a grin, “and I've got this.”

“So, you're telling me your idea of presenting a united front is through…exposing more skin?”

“When you put it like that it sounds dumb.”

“I'm not saying that, only,” he hums. “Childe, do you own any suncream?”

“Sun…cream?”

Oh gods above that he despises, this man is really helpless. He closes his eyes briefly, hoping to gather together some patience, something positive that will allow him to impart this key bit of information onto Childe.

“Yes, suncream. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt right now because you grew up in Snezhnaya, but it’s something you use in order to prevent sunburn. Something that you will be especially prone to. Definitely prone to with you now exposing far more skin than before.” He eyes the pushed-up sleeves of Childe’s shirt. Sure, it means that he can see every flex of his arms, as well as the smattering of freckles that extends past his wrists. He’d originally thought that the freckles were only on the backs of his hands-

“Well, I don't see you wearing suncream.” is Childe’s genius comeback.

“I am accustomed to sun like this. You are not. You're paler than the parchment I write on, darling.”

“It’s fine, a little sunburn can’t defeat me.” Childe shrugs his concern off. “I only came to check in and see how your office job is treating you.”

“Well enough. You really shouldn’t dismiss suncream so easily, though, it’s-”

“It’s whatever,” Childe cuts him off. “I burn, then I burn. I get hit with pyro all the time, I’ll be fine.”

Childe turns to march out of the office, something that Kaeya almost stops him from doing, before relaxing. If he wants to burn himself like an idiot, then he can do so. Kaeya won’t pick up the pieces when it inevitably falls apart.

Kaeya is eating his words as he sits here. He nods sympathetically to Childe’s plight and magnanimously does not tell him that he said so.

He bought some aloe vera in advance, even as he told himself he wouldn’t help Childe with it. That he’d leave him to struggle and laugh at his misfortune and refusal to accept someone else’s advice.

Instead, he’s been played like the fool and is currently helping Childe apply the aloe vera. His cool hands have Childe leaning into his touch, sagging forward as Kaeya rubs a gentle but firm hand over the back of Childe’s forearm.

“Ow,” Childe squirms, attempting to wiggle out of his grip despite his previous relaxation.

Kaeya tightens it, keeping a hold of him and continuing to apply the gel generously. He already reads having to justify this expense to Pantalone, having to explain just why he had to buy this instead of suncream.

“Sit still,” he complains. “I can’t apply it like this.”

“It hurts,” Childe whines.

“I thought you got pyro burns all the time? That you can handle a burn like this?” he mocks. “I can leave you to apply it yourself if you continue to act like a toddler, but I don't think that’s what you want, is it?”

 “This is different from a pyro burn.”

“Oh, really?” he can’t quite manage to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Shame no-one could have told you something like that.”

“Oh, yeah? And how would you know? Mr. I’m-Resistant-To-All-Burns-Ever,” Childe complains.

Kaeya laughs a little to himself, shaking his head. “I'm not resistant to all burns ever,” he corrects. He smooths over his own ruffled feathers quickly, caring very little about a joke that, just a year ago, could have distressed him so greatly. “And you’ve seen Diluc. His Father was the same as him, and they both came to Liyue on the regular. I have seen them both sunburns worse than yours.”

He can hear Childe’s frown before he even speaks up. “You don't ever call him your father.”

“What?” He looks up, surprised at the sudden change in tack.

“You’ve called Diluc your brother before, but you don't ever call him your father, only ever Diluc’s father.”

“Diluc is hardly a brother of mine anymore,” he continues to apply more gel, pressing down firmly enough that he cannot feel the trembling of his fingers. “And I doubt he would want me staining his late Father’s legacy by claiming I am also his son. Could you imagine? Second Ragnvindr son returns from the dead as a Fatui Harbinger- I can almost hear the headlines now.”

Childe sighs a little as Kaeya moves onto his other arm, the small sound of relief tickling a smile out of him.

“Besides,” he continues. “I'm sure he’s burned me from the family books anyway.”

“Ouch,” Childe says, but Kaeya doesn’t think he’s referring to the pain of his burns anymore.

“Ah, it matters little to me now.” He says, and it’s mostly the truth. “Now, what are we not going to discuss at our meeting with the consultant tomorrow?”

“Ugh, not this again,” Childe complains. “Can’t you trust me, at least a little?”

“Not after that time, do you remember – the time when we were on the north side of Zapolyarny, in one of the more run-down districts and you-”

“Okay, okay!” Childe interrupts him, laughing awkwardly. “I don't need a reminder.”

“Then I'm sure you’ll be on your best behaviour tomorrow, yes?”

“Nothing less for you,” Childe bats his eyelashes up at him, and Kaeya feels stupidly warm at the action, stuttering slightly in his efforts to rub the aloe vera into the sunburned skin.

“I’d hope not,” he snorts. “You’ve had me sat here listening to your woes for the last twenty minutes. Woes, might I add, that could have been prevented if you just listened to me!”

“Oh, shut it,” Childe shoves him, no harder than a playful shove between friends.

Kaeya kicks him in retaliation.

Chapter Text

Kaeya blinks his eye open slowly, unsure of what it is that has managed to wake him. The sunlight is barely creeping in through the window, only just beginning to venture across the floor and towards where he lies on the sofa.

He feels as though he is still half-asleep, movements slow and sluggish as though he’s having to fight his way through molasses to even lift his head. Despite this, he manages it, propping himself up on his elbows, before wincing at the ache in his back and flopping back down.

“Oh, good morning!” a voice greets him, far too loud for the hour it currently is. Kaeya doubts it’s even past nine a.m., and yet Childe seems to be practically buzzing with energy. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You didn’t,” he responds truthfully. He’s realising now that it would be the smell of cooking food that woke him, drifting into their small seating area from their equally small kitchenette. He doesn’t make any move to sit up, pressing the heel of his hand into one eye as he gathers himself for the day they have ahead of them.

Childe turns back to…whatever he was doing- is he cooking?

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Kaeya comments, feeling a small smile worm its way onto his lips before Childe can even squawk offendedly. Kaeya follows with a yelp of his own as something smacks his arm, bolting upright, no longer feeling content and relaxed. “Ow!”

“Serves you right,” Childe sniffs. “Here I am, lovingly cooking you a homemade meal, and you repay me with sarcasm like that? I went out first thing to get the best ingredients for this!”

“Geez, alright,” Kaeya rubs his arm, frowning at the small red mark there. It’s already fading, but continues to sting. He glances over at Childe, twisting and ignoring the pop of his spine as he does so, watching as he shuffles around the kitchen with ease. He then pauses, and flicks back through Childe’s words. “Where did you get the money for ingredients from?”

“You had some mora lying around in here,” he replies. “I didn’t want to wake you to check that you’d be alright with me borrowing it; I was certain you wouldn’t mind, right, comrade?” Childe glances at him over his shoulder, blue eyes flashing in the sunlight and grin wide.

“As long as I'm getting some of it.” He breathes in, before heaving himself upwards. It takes considerable effort to leave the warmth of the sofa, and the comfortable divot he’s made in an otherwise uncomfortable sofa. He’d thought it comfortable at first, but that was before he spent two nights sleeping on it. Childe can have the damn thing tonight, he’s taking that bed even if he has to fight Childe for it. “And as long as you pay me back.”

“It’s as much your money as it is mine,” Childe snorts, then looks over at Kaeya, and snorts again.

“What?” He asks, feeling a little defensive, skin prickling as Childe sweeps his eyes over him. “What?” He asks again, when Childe doesn’t give him a response immediately.

“Nothing, nothing,” Childe shakes his head, still laughing to himself. “Only, I don't think I've ever seen you look so ruffled. Your hair’s all over the place, like someone just put there hand in and…” Childe leans over the pan on the stove, face going red from the heat of cooking, “mussed it up.”

“Thanks, you really know how to compliment someone.”

“Your eyepatch is wonky, too,” Childe points out, ever helpful.

Kaeya brings his hand up, feeling around for the tie on his eyepatch, adjusting it self-consciously. When Childe continues to watch him from the corner of his eye, barely watching the food that he’s probably about to burn, Kaeya turns away so he can’t watch anymore.

The silk is cool beneath his fingers as he tugs at its edges, adjusting it until he’s certain it’s sat properly on his face again. The lace edges catch on the callouses of his fingers and he drops his hand before he can accidentally rip the delicate fabric from his face.

“You know,” Childe begins, Kaeya’s back still turned towards him as he speaks. Kaeya can hear him moving around, pan clanking as its set back down. “I don't think I've ever seen someone wear and eyepatch in sleep. Doesn’t it get uncomfortable?”

“Not when you're used to it,” he responds. It should be as easy as responding to any other probing question about his eyepatch and the state of his eye beneath it – gods know that Childe had all the tact of a toddler when they first met. The, and I am very used to it, goes unsaid.

“Wait, okay, so,” Childe giggles, “I want you to answer this honestly for me.”

“You're not giving me much reason to do so.”

“Do you have a tan-line? Where the eyepatch is?”

Kaeya keeps his mouth firmly shut, pressed into a thin and unimpressed line. Childe raises his hands slightly, laugh turning more sheepish. “It was just a question! I'm not gonna ask you to take your eyepatch off. Unless you want to?”

“I do not.”

“Well, then don't take it off! I wasn’t asking for a demonstration, only if there was, theoretically a tan-line there- don't!”

Kaeya swipes at him with a tea towel, barely missing him as Childe falls back a step. The tea towel hits the counter with a loud thwack sound.

“That would’ve hurt if it hit me,” Childe pouts, a plate in each hand. The food on it is not entirely unfamiliar to him, but it’s also not one he’s ever had the pleasure of eating before. He’s seen it sold at street vendors and markets, on the few occasions he’s been in Zapolyarny City during the day.

“That was the idea.”

“So rude, after I made you breakfast, too!”

“Yes, yes,” he flicks the tea towel at Childe again, though with less force behind it this time. It slaps against his thigh harmlessly, as the other doesn’t even bother to leap out the way like he did before. Kaeya is mildly disappointed. “What is it that you're serving us here, then?”

He sits and accepts the cutlery Childe hands to him, poking at the berries on top of something that looks rather like a pancake. He cuts a piece of it off, watching as a bit of jam leaks out.

“Blini,” Childe says, staring at him. “Have you never had them?”

“I eat the standard meals in the mess hall,” Kaeya tells him. “The same as you. And I did not live in Snezhnaya before then, hm?”

“I- yeah. I guess that makes sense.” Childe sighs. “But still! Did Pantalone not take you out into the city several times? What were you even doing?”

“I think you underestimate that man’s tastes,” he says, with more than a little amusement. “If something does not cost several thousand mora, it is not worth it to him.”

“Ugh,” Childe eats an entire blin in one go. “Can you convince Pantalone to like me a little more?”

“He likes you enough as it is.” The blin is rather like the pancakes he’s had before, only a little thinner and with sweeter fillings. It’s rather nice, overall, especially with how Childe has toed the line between burning it and maintaining the slight crispness. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Of course I can cook,” Childe scoffs. “What makes you think I can’t?”

“You spend most of your time running military drills, dear,” he eats a second blin, finding himself enjoying them more than he thought he would. “Is it so odd for me to think you would be unable to cook?”

“Cooking is a key skill in the military,” Childe says, actually beginning to look a little offended. “If I can’t keep myself and my subordinates safe in the wild with little access to resources, then I would be a pretty shitty Lieutenant.”

“I suppose.”

When he looks up again, grimacing at the slight stickiness of his fingers (where some jam had somehow managed to get, despite using the cutlery he was given), it’s to find Childe squinting at him, a suspicious then somewhat gleeful look in his eyes.

“You don't know how to cook.” It’s not phrased as a question, rather stated like fact.

“I can cook,” okay, maybe he can see why Childe was so offended now. He can cook! “I only know a small handful of things; simple things that are easy to make.”

“But other than that, you can’t cook?” Childe leans a little closer, so, so close to accidentally dragging his shirt through the jam on his plate. “You're joking, what did your mother teach you?”

“My mother wasn’t around.”

“Ah, shit, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s alright,” he grasps at the threads of conversation that have led them here, wondering how on earth this is what his morning has turned into, and how to get out of this as quickly as possible. “I never knew her, so there’s nothing to miss. I also,” he attempts to bring some levity back, smiling gently across the table, “grew up under the care of a wine tycoon; I was hardly going to be making my own meals, hm?”

“Oh yeah,” Childe grins back at him, tense atmosphere dismissed. “You were a rich kid. How many horses have you owned?”

“I was trained as a cavalry knight, so a few.”

“Ugh,” Childe scoffs, but it’s done with a smile.

“Come now,” he stands from the table. “You can scoff at my upbringing later, we have a meeting to attend with the esteemed Mr. Zhongli.”

“We have more than an hour until the allotted meeting time,” Childe frowns.

“And you somehow have jam down your front and flour in your hair. I'm not taking you out looking like that, we have a reputation to uphold.”

Childe glances down at his shirt, plucking at the fabric. “You liar, there’s a tiny smudge of jam – you can’t even notice it unless you're looking!”

“And you think such an esteemed member of the community won’t be looking?” Is it cruel of him to not tell Childe that their consultant is also the Archon who they're here to make an exchange with? Perhaps. But he’d much rather see how long it takes Childe to figure such a thing out himself. He will not, however, allow him to embarrass himself in front of the Archon in the meantime. “Come on, you have several shirts exactly like that, don’t you? Unless that delivery from a local tailor was for something else?”

“Oh, shush.” Childe waves him off. “I’ll get changed just give me a few minutes.”

“Don't forget the flour in your hair!” Kaeya calls after him

“Whatever!”

“Honestly,” Childe huffs, jogging slightly to keep up with him. “You’d think we were already late with the way you're marching through!”

“It sets a good impression if we are early,” he replies. “Liuli Pavilion is an upscale establishment. It would not be good to be dismissive of such a famous restaurant.”

“You use far too many words for such little meaning.”

“You are too blunt with your approach,” Kaeya counters. “Some things require a delicate hand, which you do not possess.”

“You're just yapping in my ear now,” Childe says, and then makes a yapping motion with his hands as though he’s some kind of child.

“Hush,” Kaeya tells him, then smiles at the waitress they're approaching, stood just outside the doors of Liuli Pavilion. “Good afternoon, ma’am, we have a reservation for lunch with a consultant from Wangsheng Funeral Parlour?”

“Yes,” she nods along, not even looking at the list of reservations. “Your consultant is already waiting for you. If you would be so kind as to follow me,” she gestures them through the doors before leading them upstairs and into one of the private rooms.

“What did I tell you,” he murmurs to Childe in Snezhnayan. “It always pays to be early.”

“Shut it.” Childe hisses back.

“Please have a wonderful meal,” their waitress tells them, hands folded neatly in front of herself. “And do let any of the staff know if you have anything else you wish to order.” With that parting statement, she holds the door open just long enough for them to enter before slipping away, presumably back to her post at the entrance.

“Good afternoon,” Zhongli greets them, smiling genially over a cup of tea. The steam obscures much of his face, but it does little to hide the way he studies each of them carefully. “I’ve ordered ahead, I hope you do not mind; I only thought that you would wish for a diverse array of foods, and that you may struggle with Liuli’s extensive menu.”

“We appreciate it,” Kaeya tells him, smiling in much the same way. It’s a little strained around the edges, something deeper within his chest recoiling at the presence the man in front of him exudes. It seems little can be done to conceal the presence of something divine, even when compressed into a humanoid shape. “You are here as our cultural consultant; I would be willing to try any recommendations you may have.”

The seats are arranged with two closer together while another remains separate. Zhongli has occupied the one that sits alone, while Childe and Kaeya are left with the two closer together. It almost gives him the impression of sitting across the desk from a supervisor, or even a headteacher.

“I can only hope that I will be able to fill your expectations for this role, then.” Zhongli lowers his tea, finally, removing the steam that had obscured his face. His eyes are the first thing that Kaeya notices, pupils narrowing into points. Rather like the slit eyes of a serpent, only a little more subtle.

His voice, too, is not what Kaeya had expected. It is smooth, like a flowing river than moves amicably over the rocks beneath it. He had expected a grating voice, one that grinds over your ears like the rocks the Archon is so famous for.

“Tartaglia,” Zhongli says, tilting his head slightly to the side, amusement flickering in the depths of those serpentine eyes. “Won’t you sit with us?”

Kaeya turns his head around sharply, gritting his teeth when he finds that Childe has not yet sat down, hand resting on the back of Kaeya’s chair instead as he stares at Zhongli. There’s something squinted and strained about his eyes, wrinkling his brow.

Kaeya tugs on his loose shirt as subtly as he can, jerking his head towards the only empty seat remaining, praying that Childe sits down before he has to drag him into the chair.

“Oh, please,” Childe recovers quickly, grinning bright enough to light up an entire room as he sits down. “Tartaglia is awfully formal, isn’t it? Call me Childe, please – I’d much prefer we treat this as a meal between friends than as a meeting between simply co-workers.”

What the hell.

Has Childe been hiding his silver-tongued side from him this entire time? For what, out of spite? Out of an unwillingness to be co-operative?

“I am certainly amenable to that,” Zhongli agrees easily. He’s watching Childe with far more interest than before, something unreadable lighting up in those gold eyes. He seems almost unwilling to look away from Childe, dragging his gaze to rest on Kaeya instead. “And you, Brighella? Or would you rather I call you by a different name too?”

Is this man, is Zhongli, truly making a petty comment about the numerous names Harbingers possess? Is he really the correct person to be making such a snide remark when he has more names than both him and Childe combined?

“Pavlín is just fine,” he manages. His normally smooth-talking falls apart in the face of Zhongli’s smug satisfaction, his smile far too pleased to put Kaeya at ease. He looks like the cat that got the canary, as though he’s won some competition Kaeya wasn’t even aware he was participating in. “Should we still call you Zhongli, or is there another name we could call you by?”

Maybe it was petty, but the age-old Archon started it first. If he wishes to trade taunts, Kaeya is more than willing.

“Zhongli is the only name I’ve ever possessed,” Zhongli tells him, though his smile is a little tighter, the skin around the edges of his eyes a little more wrinkled. “I would prefer you to keep calling me as such. However, such a question does bring me onto honorifics – are you aware of the addendums attached to names when referring to another politely?”

Zhongli then takes a sip of tea, watching him over the rim of his tea cup.

They’re interrupted by their food arriving, an entire fleet of waiters entering to set down dish after dish, until the entire table is covered with different platters of food.

“I am aware of a few honorifics and their uses,” Kaeya replies, after the last waiter has left and the door is firmly closed once more. “I do believe many would use the honorific xiansheng with you, correct?”

The subtleties of a sentence such as that one is something that he’s learned from watching Pantalone slight other bureaucrats in a subtle enough way in order to not be called out on the insult publicly, or at all. Such a thing is also apparent to Zhongli, as the man no doubt picks up on his use of many rather than any reference to himself. It may be respectful, but he has no reason to put respect on the name of someone that seems to dislike him on principle.

“That is correct,” Zhongli doesn’t frown at him, but the slight narrowing of his eyes and the increase in the overbearing feeling of his divine presence is enough to hint at his irritation. “Other such honorifics are used in certain situations – I doubt you will be expected to know many of them, as you are foreign diplomats, but to use them correctly will certainly improve someone’s opinion of you. This coul-”

“How do you use these?”

Both of them pause their staring contest to look over at Childe, and simply observe the way he’s holding his chopsticks. He’s fiddling around with them, unable to open and close them in the way that Zhongli is so familiar with, and something that Kaeya is quickly regaining familiarity with.

Childe keeps glancing over at how he’s holding them, but he does very little towards actually improving the grip on his chopsticks. He’s holding them like one would a pen, and is thus unable to open them even a fraction.

“Ah, allow m-”

“Here, let me show you how to hold them properly,” Kaeya offers, interrupting Zhongli for the second time in the last few moments. He looks affronted, probably unused to being interrupted in such a way as the Geo Archon and an apparently respected resident of Liyue Harbour.

Kaeya leans over and places his hand over Childe’s wrist, using his other hand to loosen his fingers around the chopsticks. “You need to hold them a little higher up than this,” he instructs, attempting to remember the best way to learn how to hold chopsticks. “One of them remains stationary, that’s this one on the bottom,” he plucks the top one away, repositioning the aforementioned bottom chopstick until it rests correctly in the gap between his forefinger and thumb.

“I'm not going to be picking up much with one chopstick,” Childe tells him. “Unless you want me to simply stab things?”

“I do think you would struggle. These are not the sharpened weapons you're accustomed to,” he allows a little of his amusement to seep into his voice, watching the way Childe twirls the chopstick between his fingers before settling his hand over Childe’s again.

“Your thumb should hold onto it like this,” he shifts Childe’s thumb over slightly, surprised by how easily Childe allows him to do so. He allows it to settle into place, only looking up at the small breath Childe lets out, only realising now that he’s moved his chair rather close, close enough that his knee is pressing into Childe’s thigh, and his shoulder is a hair’s width from Childe’s.

He clears his throat, face warming a little at their sudden proximity. He can feel Zhongli’s eyes still resting on him, though, watching his every move like a predator waiting for its prey to slip up so it can strike.

He glances at him from the corner of his eye, grinning at the forcefully neutral expression he wears.

“The second chopstick, the other half of this pair,” he picks up the previously set aside chopstick, “is the one that moves. You move it with your forefinger and also rest it against your thumb, but only slightly.”

He pulls his hands back, watching as Childe experimentally moves his chopsticks around, the wood clacking together in the silence that follows.

Kaeya picks his own up, clicking them together as he adjusts his hold before plucking something interesting from its plate and transferring it over to his own.

“Your skills with the chopsticks are commendable, Pavlín.” Zhongli tells him. “I wasn’t aware they taught such skills in Snezhnaya.”

“They don't,” he smiles back at Zhongli. The two of them match in their smiles: tight-lipped and frosty. Kaeya doesn’t even blink as Zhongli continues to stare at him, slit pupils rapidly constricting until they’re barely lines in the middle of his iris.

The sound of food hitting the table distracts them from their second stare-off, Zhongli’s over-powering presence receding slightly to glance over at Childe and the mess he’s made while transporting a jade parcel over to his plate.

“Hah,” Childe looks up, looking more than a little guilty. “Whoops?”

“It is no matter,” Zhongli sweeps in, assuring Childe with a sage nod of his head – Gods above he really does think he’s all-knowing. And maybe he is! Maybe he is, kicking around for several thousand years, but that doesn’t mean Kaeya has to watch Zhongli get all…possessive over someone that he’s just met.

He hadn’t realised, until right that second, that it was possessiveness that was guiding Zhongli. He realises that there is something about Childe that draws people in, draws someone closer until they are so trapped within his orbit – and happy to be trapped within his orbit – that they no longer wish to leave. But to act like this? At his big old age? The Archon may be depicted as a dragon, but that does not mean he can hoard someone else like a piece of treasure to covet.

“Here,” Kaeya pulls out a set of cutlery from within his jacket, wrapped neatly in cloth. “I brought these, in case you didn’t quite master the chopsticks immediately, dear.”

“Aw, Pav, thank you,” Childe takes them with one hand, the other scooping the spilled innards of the jade parcel onto his plate.

“Liyuean cuisine is best enjoyed with the tools used by the locals.” Is Zhongli’s wise commentary on that.

“Hm, I don’t particularly enjoy the sensation of wood against my tongue,” Kaeya disagrees, just to be contrary. “I find that any kind of wooden cutlery turns my stomach a little, and it can sometimes add a taste to the meal if there’s more wood than food.”

“Hm.”

“So, Zhongli,” Childe begins, tapping his fork against the edge of his plate absentmindedly. “Are there any popular places around Liyue? Outside the Harbour, of course; I'm more of an adventurer than a tourist content to mill around in the Harbour and while my days away doing nothing.”

“There are plenty of popular places many people like to visit, yes,” Zhongli nods. “A popular one amongst tourists-”

“Oh, no, no. I don't mean tourist places, you got any, uh, places popular amongst hilichurls? Anywhere that lots of camps are constantly being assembled?”

“You…want to know where Abyssal creatures gather most often.” Zhongli is not at all subtle in the way he looks over at Kaeya, one perfect eyebrow raised, just slightly. Kaeya resists the incredibly strong urge to make a rude gesture at him. He does it under the table, out of sight, but hopes that the intention still carries across to the Archon in front of him.

(He’d heard that Morax was respectable.)

“Yes!” Childe nods along, and while Kaeya may be aware that this is all a part of Childe’s masterplan, Zhongli does not have the same benefit, even as the one orchestrating this entire thing. “The geovishaps were fun to fight the first few times, but there’s rarely more than one in the same area.”

“Ah, yes, that is because they are rather territorial. They remain out of each other’s way, as each geovishap requires a rather substantial amount of meat to sustain themselves. The only time they will be found in a group is when they are incredibly young or during mating season.”

“Alright,” Childe nods along. “But what about areas with more monsters? Or even ones without any! Oh, do you think there’s something incredibly powerful in areas with fewer monsters? There must be something driving them away, maybe with the overwhelming presence it has – that’s how it works, right?”

Kaeya is more than a little pleased that Childe turns to him when he asks that question. Maybe he does listen when Kaeya tells him about his different research projects.

“That is correct,” he says. “Some creatures have an overwhelming presence, the highest amongst these being the Archons. They simply have so much elemental power that it overflows from their form – this effect is only worsened if the creature shifts its shape to a smaller one. An Archon masquerading as a human would be more off-putting to animals and certain sensitive individuals, simply because the power has been condensed into a smaller mass; of course, there’s also theories regarding whether any mass is actually removed, or if Archons with larger ‘true’ forms are simply denser when presenting as a human…Zhongli,” he turns to the man himself, the Archon masquerading as a human at their table, “you’re a widely read man, correct? You wouldn’t happen to know anything on the subject, would you?”

Zhongli returns his stare evenly, nostrils flaring slightly the only evidence of his irritation. He seems to have pulled his presence closer in around himself, so it doesn’t lay over the entire room.

“After all,” Kaeya continues, “the Geo Archon is the prime example of this. One of the forms he appears in is the Exuvia, which is a much larger mass than any other forms he may choose to don. Or even some of the adepti – Moon Carver is a giant deer, is he not?”

“You are rather well read, Pavlín,” Zhongli says, “for someone not native to Liyue. Though, if you were keeping up with recent publications you would be aware that recent published works have declared there is no way to find out whether any ‘conservation of mass’ occurs between forms as most Archons would either not take well to such an invasion of their privacy, or are not available for such a question to be asked. As such, the line of questioning has been rendered unsolvable and abandoned by the respectful scholars that I follow the works of.”

“Ah, what a shame,” he sighs, shaking his head.

“As nice as that all is, it doesn’t actually answer my initial question.” Childe frowns. “Are there any areas with little activity or lots of activity? I'm looking for a fight that might actually challenge me a little.”

Zhongli remains silent for a moment longer, lips pressed together. “Guyun Stone Forest is exceptionally quiet, with neither tourists nor creatures choosing to visit there. Tourists avoid the location because of the stories commonly told around the Harbour, and many creatures are driven away because they can sense Osial’s presence beneath the stone forest.”

“Oh?” Childe glances towards him not-so subtly. “Seems like a fun place.” Which is Childe-speak for seems like we’ve found the perfect place and means to create chaos.

“Not particularly,” Zhongli frowns. “The landscape was only created during the battle between Rex Lapis and Osial, as Rex Lapis pinned him to the seafloor with his stone spears.”

“Huh,” Childe nods along. “Does Rex Lapis still respond to challenges from others?”

The topic jump is so swift that even Zhongli blinks a few times, obviously struggling to find how Childe has leapt from discussions of Osial to discussions of fighting the Geo Archon Himself. Once again, as someone well-versed in Childe-speak, Kaeya can see the logical leaps clearly.

“As in,” he jumps in, clarifying only for Zhongli’s sake and not at all to tell the decrepit old man to back off. “Does Rex Lapis still demonstrate similar power to what was used during his battle with Osial? And would it be possible for him to respond to a challenge from a mortal?”

“I – there are no records of such a thing ever happening.” Zhongli frowns. “I don't know where you managed to gain such an idea from, Childe.”

Zhongli dismisses him once again, a last sharp look is all that is sent his way before the Archon concentrates on his fellow Harbinger once again. Kaeya doesn’t like to think of himself as a possessive man, nor someone that grows jealous easily, but the sight of Zhongli so obviously beginning to consider Childe as some – some new gem to covet makes something within him rear its ugly head and snarl right back.

“Ah, well, I was just hoping for something of a decent fight,” Childe frowns, idly pushing his food around his plate. “The creatures I've managed to find around the Harbour are rather…boring.”

“Well, it may be different in the wilderness of Snezhnaya, but the millelith do their best to ensure our lands are safe for anyone to traverse.”

Childe mutters something too quiet for either of them to hear, and stabs his fork through a piece of lettuce languishing on the edge of his plate.

Zhongli looks as though he might say something, though he’s interrupted before he can impart whatever wisdom he wishes to share with them. There’s a short knock, before the door slides open and a server enters, making a bee-line for Zhongli.

She leans down to speak into Zhongli’s ear, casts them an odd look, then cups her hand around her mouth in order to maintain more secrecy. Kaeya is vaguely offended for a moment, before dismissing it just as quickly. If she wants to distrust the foreign diplomats, he can’t really do anything to stop her. He will smile at her, though, and leave her to figure out whether it was sarcastic or genuine.

Zhongli nods along to whatever the server is murmuring in his ear, looking briefly pained before he schools his face into calm once again. He clears his throat just as the server leaves, looking back over at them. “I…apologise. It appears we will have to cut this meeting short.”

“Oh?” Kaeya raises an eyebrow. “Has something come up?”

“Unfortunately.” Zhongli says and begins to rise, apparently satisfied with that as an answer. Thankfully, Childe is as nosy as he is, and stands too – suddenly enough that his chair scrapes over the floor and makes an awful racket that has both him and Zhongli cringing. Childe seems unaffected by the noise and lack of decorum.

“Whatever is so urgent that you cannot even give us a proper farewell?” Childe pouts.

“I- ah,” Zhongli sighs, looking back and forth between the two of them. “My employer has…run into some trouble with the millelith. I am going to assist her, and make sure that the issue does not escalate beyond something necessary.”

“Oh, my,” Kaeya resists the urge to laugh. “She certainly sounds like a character. What has she done to be arrested by the millelith?”

“Something of no concern to you,” Zhongli cuts him off with a frown. “Now, please excuse me, but I must be going.”

The door swings shut quietly behind him. Kaeya almost expected it to slam shut, but he supposes even rude Archons have some manners.

Him and Childe leave rather quickly afterwards too. He thanks the lady at the door as they exit, and Childe nods his thanks too, jogging to catch up with Kaeya as he continues walking, intent on returning to the bank as soon as possible.

“Kaeya,” Childe calls after him in Snezhnayan, earning them a few confused, and wary, looks from those surrounding them. His hand claps down onto Kaeya’s shoulder a moment later; he almost jolts at the sudden contact, not expecting nor seeing it on his blind side.

“Yes?” He turns his head to the side in order to see Childe, cocking an eyebrow as the other man continues to hold onto his shoulder, even as it makes walking awkward.

“Please, please,” Childe looks almost pained. “Please, tell me you were not just trading petty insults with the Geo Archon.”

“Ah, but wouldn’t you rather our relationship remains one of truth and not deceit?” He smiles, more than a little satisfied that Childe has managed to figure it out. The picture of the man alone likely wasn’t enough to set off any alarm bells, but witnessing him in person has finally clued him in, it seems. Even as someone unable to sense the overwhelming power of an Archon when they aren’t purposefully exerting it, you would have to be a fool not to notice the subtle clues and hints Zhongli was throwing around.

The man wasn’t exactly subtle.

“Lying to each other would only make this relationship complex,” he continues. “And I much prefer having the air clear between us; it allows me to see your face clearly, after all.”

“I- what?” Childe’s hand slips from his shoulder as Kaeya continues to walk and Childe becomes a statue in the middle of the street.

He has one foot on the red stairs and the other on the cobbles still when he turns to face Childe. “Liyuean, dear,” he reminds, slipping into the language himself; best to lead by example after all. “We wouldn’t want to scare the locals, hm?”

Childe stares at him for a moment, obviously formulating a question in his head. Kaeya doesn’t linger to watch him figure the entire thing out, continuing up the stairs. By the sound of the footfalls behind him, Childe’s decided to just let it drop.

Good thing, because if Childe asked him to make sense of anything he just said, Kaeya doesn’t actually have an explanation for any of it.

Chapter Text

That meeting is the last either of them see of their consultant for the next few weeks. The man is well-known around the Harbour, and not a single person – whether that be a merchant, a granny, or even children – will hear a single word against the man. It’s as though he’s got every single one of them wrapped around his finger.

Whenever Kaeya has stopped for more than a moment to question such a person on their admiration for the esteemed Zhongli-xiansheng (which he will be refusing to call the man, no matter what he says), they quote his seemingly boundless knowledge. When questioned further, no-one seems capable of producing any past teachers Zhongli may have studied under or when exactly he became known in the community.

Even the grannies simply say that he simply appeared one day, though not exactly in such words – one hopelessly infatuated mother, who was being tugged at on both sides by her hyperactive children when Kaeya spoke with her had described him as someone ethereal. Almost too good to be true.

Kaeya had smiled and let her get on with her business easily after that, thanking her for her time.

Either Zhongli has well and truly got everyone wrapped around his little finger, or the entire Harbour is aware that their Archon is walking amongst them and are not pleased about Fatui diplomats sticking their noses where Fatui noses do not belong.

Fortunately for the Fatui’s reputation, thankfully for Kaeya’s remaining sanity, Childe keeps any of his more violent ventures outside of the city walls; not a single rumour from of a blood-hungry Fatui from any of the aunties or uncles at the markets – gods above, he spends too much time around Childe  reaches his ears when he pokes around at the various stalls that decorate the streets of the Harbour.

Childe keeps his unsavoury business far away from Kaeya and the Harbour; Kaeya keeps his own business tucked neatly within the walls. He’s sure the Tianquan would lose her shit if she saw all the different exchanges of information going back and forth, exchanging hands in shady bars and shadier alleyways.

His method of information gathering may be slower than Childe’s, but it is certainly much, much cleaner than his.

Case in point: right now.

Five minutes ago, he was sat at his desk, tapping his finger irritably on the sandalwood desk as he studied a report in front of him. He’d given his own agents precise instructions on what he wanted them to collect. Ekaterina had been in charge of making sure this got done.

So he’s not certain what the hell he’s currently reading, staring in something that’s halfway disbelief and halfway him hoping it transforms into something actually useful the next time he closes his eye.

Alas, he’s stared at this thing for the last few minutes, and nothing about it is changing. He’d wanted some details on the Tianquan, on how she seemed to simply know the goings-on of everything inside of the Harbour; sometimes outside of it, too.

And yet.

And yet.

His agents hadn’t even faced him with this report, slipping it in secretly amongst the stacks of paper he stayed late this evening to finally sort through – the stacks of paper that are technically meant for Childe to be filling out. But he’s busy with other duties, and trying to wrangle him into doing paperwork is like trying to shove a cat into a bag. Impossible.

He doesn’t bother to even ask anymore, simply accepts Childe’s paperwork as part of his own workload. It’s easier to do it than chase after him and then return and still have to do it anyway.

He’s at least a little glad that his agents – both those that arrived from Snezhnaya with him and those that were originally in Liyue – feel comfortable enough with their jobs to do such a thing. He’ll speak with them tomorrow morning, when they arrive for their jobs, but he can’t find it in himself to be angry. He’d rather this than the mute terror he receives from most of his recruits. Like he’ll cut their tongues from their mouths for daring to even breathe around him.

The clattering of his door startles him, and he jerks his hand, knocking the inkwell beside him and spilling it over the report. He watches the pool of ink spread out over his desk, soaking into the useless report. Ah, well, what a shame that he cannot finish such an exciting and riveting report. Shame.

The ink then begins to creep towards the paperwork he’s just sacrificed his evening for, and he jolts to his feet, scooping the stack of papers away, cradling it to his chest.

Only then, watching the ink firmly ruin his desk, does he realise that there’s a culprit for this; someone that caused this exact catastrophe (he really can’t find it in himself to care for this report at all. He cannot believe Ekaterina saw it and just went, yep this is perfect, send it on. …Maybe he needs to have a word with her too) and he jerks his head up, summoning as fierce a glare as he can when his eye burns with tiredness.

A glare that fades almost immediately as the shadows readjust themselves and reveal just who it is in his doorway.

The ginger hair gives him away almost immediately, hard to hide even in the near-pitch black of the room.

“This is your office, too,” he comments dryly. “I'm aware you don't see the inside of it often, but there is no need for you to linger outside as though waiting for an invite.”

Childe continues to linger, like some particularly ominous ghost.

“I'm not giving you an invite.”

He watches Childe for a moment longer, marginally freaked out by his continued silence. “Okay,” he tells him. “I'm just going to put these somewhere else. Away from the ink.” He lifts the paperwork up and holds it up for a long moment, before turning back around. Something prickles along the back of his neck as he does so, but he resists the urge to turn and look as he sets the stack of papers elsewhere, where they’ll be safe for now.

He turns back around and Childe’s leaning over his desk, peering at the ink spilled there.

“Oh, good, you’ve decided to grace us with your presence.” Kaeya snarks.

He then pauses and takes a second, harder look. Considers the way Childe’s hair is flattened down against his skull and actually a lot redder than it usually is. His shirt, too, is much darker than usual.

“Archons,” he can’t help it. It just slips out before he’s rounding the desk, yanking Childe back and away from the ink, closer to the singular candle that has not yet flickered out, persisting valiantly just beside the door. “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

The weak candlelight illuminates half of Childe’s face, letting him see the still wet and shining blood that covers most of it.

“How did you even get into the Harbour like this?” He questions, mostly to himself because it seems like Childe has gone silent. He's watching him, that’s for certain. His weird, dead-fish eyes staring at him, made even worse by the minimal lighting in here.

“Snuck in.” Childe tells him. Simple and to the point.

“Alright,” he releases Childe’s arm, beginning to search through his pockets. “Why’d you come here? Why not the apartment?”

“The landlord said…not to get blood on any of the furniture.” Childe blinks at him, slow, like a frog. “And there’s a medical kit here.”

“Uh-huh,” he finds the handkerchief he was looking for, pulling it free from his pocket with a triumphant noise, low and in the back of his throat. He reaches forward to wipe away the blood on Childe’s face, dripping into his eyes – he’s long deduced none of this is Childe’s own, too much of it covering his clothes for him to have lost and still be standing.

(And, whispers something deeper within his mind, shoved to the darkest and furthest recesses of it, it doesn’t smell like his blood. Childe has a smell, a presence around him that this blood does not. It’s the blood of whatever unfortunate victim he managed to get a hold of today.)

Childe jerks back before the cloth can even touch his face, retreating several footsteps.

“What are you doing?” He can’t help but feel like Childe looks like some cornered animal, cowering and waiting for the final blow. But that comparison falls apart when he thinks of who it is that he’s speaking of; the Vanguard of the Tsaritsa is not some shivering creature waiting to be put out of his misery.

“I'm getting blood on the floor.” Is what Childe chooses as his response. His eyes shine unnaturally in the light, Kaeya realises, reflecting the light like a cat’s would. It turns his eyes into two silver moons, both of them staring back at him from the darkness.

“I know.”

He doesn’t even need to look down to see the bloody footprints, the drips and splashes of blood that now decorate their previously unstained carpet. They have cleaners for this exact reason. Fatui whose entire job description is to clean up after incidents.

“It’s going to be hard to get out.”

“I know.”

“It’s going-”

“Shut up.” He huffs a sigh out through his nose, casting his eyes skyward, falling just short of praying for patience, or maybe guidance. “Just let me do this, okay?”

Childe doesn’t say anything for a long, long moment, and Kaeya almost thinks he’s going to refuse. Those twin moons staring at him from the darkness give nothing away.

Then, he steps forward, closer to Kaeya again. And then again, within arms’ reach. Then again, until he can almost feel Childe’s breath on his face. He slips his hand forward this time, gently cradling the curve of Childe’s jaw and drawing him even closer.

Childe has to look up slightly, both their height difference and the heeled boots they wear placing Kaeya above Childe. He holds his face like that, balanced in the crook between his finger and thumb, and dabs at the blood on his forehead.

“You should learn to be tidier,” he reprimands, though it’s gentler than he intended it to be. Childe hums, and his eyes are shut when Kaeya looks next. “You cannot go walking around in such a state; what would Pulcinella say if you got arrested for this?”

One of Childe’s eyes slits open. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I wouldn’t dare what? If you’d already been arrested every Harbinger would know it, I'm sure. They love their drama, and getting arrested is perfect material for several years at the very least. Trust me, Pantalone isn’t over this one dinner from ten years ago where the main dish exploded because Dottore managed to shove some machine into it.”

“Hm.” Childe’s eye slips shut again as Kaeya draws his, rather bloody, handkerchief over his cheek, just beneath his eye. “I’ll have to work hard to outdo that.”

“I do believe the plan you have cooking away will be enough to outdo that dinner fiasco.”

“Mn.”

Both of them know where the medical kit is, equipped with wipes for this specific purpose. Kaeya doesn’t need to stand here and wipe the blood on his face away gently, blanketed with darkness. The brave candle beside him has finally given up and sputtered out, leaving only the moon’s gentle glow to flood the room.

He doesn’t even need to get the medical kit, could leave Childe to fumble around in the dark for it. It would be a kindness to fetch it for him, but such kindness is unnecessary between colleagues.

Though, he’s not yet in the business of lying to himself. Their relationship goes far beyond merely colleagues, somewhere on the boundary of friendship and something else entirely.

The bloody handkerchief that sits in his breast pocket for the next week speaks for that.

He's going to strangle Zhongli.

He doesn’t care if it sets the entirety of the Harbour on him. Doesn’t care that everyone seems to hold him in the highest regard. This meeting has dragged on for longer than at all necessary; this was meant to be a simple discussion, something that might take an hour at most.

He’s sat here with his third cup of tea rapidly cooling and the golden light of a setting sun reflecting off of Zhongli’s face and his stupid eyes that probably inspired all the damn descriptions of cor-fucking-lapis eyes.

“And what of your fellow Harbinger’s activities?” Zhongli asks. If he’s attempting to feign disinterest it really isn’t working. This man seems to contain all the characteristics of a rock; he’s about as subtle as when one gets chucked in your face.

“He’s doing just fine,” Kaeya responds, and tries not to think about the handkerchief that still sits in his pocket, stiff with dried blood and due to be sent to the cleaners. He keeps forgetting it’s there until he reaches for it to wipe his hands, and then has to quickly redirect so he doesn’t pull out his blood-soaked handkerchief. “Though I don't see how his business would pertain to what was discussed during this meeting?”

“Ah, no, not at all. Just curiosity, I suppose.” Zhongli’s eyes glint, the eerie slits of his pupils narrowing at him. “Though, if we are speaking on curiosity, you are the most curious of all, hm?”

“Oh, am I really?” He glances down at himself, as though his very appearance, as though the shape of his pupil is not the exact reason that Zhongli calls him a curiosity.

“Don’t play stupid with me,” Zhongli smiles, all teeth. “I like to think my conversation partners are at least a little smarter than that, let alone those I am entrusting my nation with. Tell me, child of the stars, how is that you have come to hold such a position?”

“Much in the same way as anyone else,” he grits out. “Through hard work and determination.”

“Ah, what a pretty lie to tell new recruits.” Zhongli’s eyes glimmer with amusement that Kaeya wants to shake right out of him. He’s not going to fool himself into thinking that he might be able to kill an Archon, even an old and decrepit one like the snake right in front of him, but he can dream of such things. “Though, I suppose anything is possible. That vision you wear is a true one, is it not? Not a fake one constructed to conceal your abilities, but the real and true thing. Gifted to you by the Tsaritsa Herself.”

He doesn’t even twitch, just stares at Zhongli. The man raises a singular eyebrow at him, as though daring him to speak.

“I…admit I was surprised to see you when we first met. For someone such as yourself to take up service under an Archon? Especially knowing how your people suffered at our hands all those years-”

Kaeya stands. It is abrupt and rude, and not at all something that Pantalone would be pleased with. He’d cluck and fuss and try to smooth any ruffled feathers. Kaeya cannot bring himself to care, at this moment, anger welling up in him almost too strong to withstand.

“I will be taking my leave,” he tells Zhongli, still rude and abrupt. “Thank you for this meeting. Please,” he hesitates in the doorway, turning to give the Archon a saccharine smile, “do not hesitate to contact me if there are any further details of our contract you wish to discuss.”

Zhongli’s face suggests that he was not done, but he doesn’t leap after him and drag him back into the room. He simply lets him go, not even twitching as Kaeya swings the door shut behind him. He's not so rude as to slam it, though he does consider it heavily, thinks of the satisfaction he’d gain from such an action.

The stairs creak as he descends into the quiet lobby of Wangsheng. He keeps his head bowed, not glancing at the mourning families speaking to the Ferrylady in hushed voices; gives them their privacy in their moment of grief as they pick out which coffin they’d like their loved one to be buried in, what sentiment to engrave on the gravestone.

If it were up to people like Zhongli, he wouldn’t even get the dignity of dying in a ditch.

Brighella, I hope this letter finds you in good condition.

I know it must have been truly awful to be trapped on a ship with the Eleventh for so long; even as a child he was nothing more than a brat. Tsaritsa knows that I would have considered strangling the boy a few times, as endearing as he can be on occasion. I spared a few prayers for your sanity during such a gruelling trip, though I doubt even a god’s influence could subdue Tartaglia.

On the matter of business, of which I am writing to inform you, I will be departing Snezhnaya at the end of next week and arriving at Liyue’s sunny shores the week after. It is only a day’s stop on my journey to Mondstadt, but I would appreciate a meeting with you, nonetheless. I am sure you will be able to pick out a suitable restaurant with the guidance of your exceedingly knowledgeable consultant.

(In my personal opinion, he can be quite the prickly bastard, and I doubt he was anything less than mildly standoffish, if not outright rude. Perhaps we may speak on it once I arrive.)

After that, however, I will be continuing on my journey to Mondstadt. Pray that all goes well with the negotiations there, and I will be returning to Liyue to check on how our newest are doing.

Besides that, please make sure that your brat doesn’t get into trouble he is unable to handle himself. The Tsaritsa finds her heart growing rather fond for that one, and I’m sure she would be devastated to hear he’s managed to kill himself chasing a mythical creature of some kind.

If he does manage to find himself in trouble, some that he is unable to drag himself free of, then I expect you to assist him. Harbingers may not usually work together, but I suppose you two are a special case…either way, it is not wholly unheard of for Harbingers to cooperate with one another. In these cases, then it is also the expectation that the second Harbinger act as legal defence where the other cannot.

Consider visiting an expert legal adviser. Any less and I fear Tartaglia would be locked away for whatever crimes he has been accused of.

May the Tsaritsa provide you with the conviction to complete your mission.

Sincerely,

La Signora

“So you're exchanging letters with Signora now?”

Kaeya sighs, dipping his brush back into the ink pot and beginning to write the next line. “She was the one that wrote to me first. It is only polite to respond, especially as she is visiting us once she arrives.”

“Visiting you,” Childe corrects. “I will be nowhere near the city on the day she arrives. Sorry, but I can’t stand her. I swear, I swear, she tried to kill me when I was still a recruit.”

“Uh-huh,” he dips the brush into the ink again, letting Childe’s chatter fade into the background as he plans what he might say in his mind. He’d rather not have to make several versions of this letter just to avoid mistakes.

He hums at what seems to be the correct pauses, lending only half an ear to Childe. He’s moved away from Signora now, jumping from topic to topic, and somehow ending up landing on the topic of another recruit that Childe had taken a problem with, and who had taken a problem with Childe in return.

Childe is just beginning to describe the numerous injuries they gave each other when there’s a knock on the door, interrupting Childe’s gesturing as they both turn to look.

“Come in,” Kaeya calls, watching as the door swings open.

Nadia pokes her head in, mask slightly askew and clothes a little rumpled. “Sir,” she says, trailing off as she registers Childe’s presence, perched on the very edge of his desk and his hands curled into fists – he’d been miming the way he had punched that other recruit for mocking his accent, and hadn’t yet relaxed back into a less threatening pose.

“Yes, Nadia?”

“Oh, uhm,” she looks back at him. “The Director of Wangsheng Funeral Parlour has left a few…coupons? I- I don't know if that’s the correct thing to call them, but they’re all over our doorstep. Some of the newer recruits are freaking out – do you think it’s some kind of threat?”

“Ah, no,” he smiles, even as he dies a little internally. Hu Tao, Zhongli’s boss who has apparently made a habit of getting herself arrested, has recently found what she considers to be the perfect customers in the Northland Bank. “I’m sure it’s just a gift, from our close partners. Collect all the coupons and give them to Ekaterina, she will know what to do.”

“Ekaterina has already gone home for the evening,” the recruit says. “Sir.”

He had attempted to stop them from calling him sir when he first arrived here, but they had staunchly refused. Whether it is out of true respect or simple fear, he’s not sure. He’d much prefer the former. He’d actually prefer them to not call him sir at all. It makes him feel old – he’s not even past twenty yet.

“Gather them into a bag and leave it on her desk. Labelled.”

“Yes, sir.” Nadia nods. “Thank you, sir.”

The door clicks shut behind her, leaving silence in the room for an entire wonderful five seconds.

“Sir?” Childe sounds like he’s holding back a laugh, and looking at him only confirms this. “Why’re they calling you sir? Are you fifty years old or something?”

“Don't,” he groans, dropping his head into his hands. “I tried to get them to stop, and they just started calling me Lord instead. There’s no solution.”

“Get them to call you Pavlín,” Childe suggests.

“You think I haven’t already tried that?” He pauses, then turns a suspicious look on Childe. “Do they not call you sir?”

“No,” Childe laughs. He pretends to wipe a tear away, continuing to grin even as Kaeya glares holes in his head. “I told them not to, and they listened.”

“Ugh.” They're still scared shitless of Childe, probably not helped by him leaving and coming back with blood spattered over his face or up his arms every evening. Meaning there’s no way he can use the same method Childe has. “Just let me write this letter.”

“Or,” Childe flicks his inkpot. It tips and would have completely ruined his draft letter if Kaeya hadn’t caught it. “We could pop down to Wanmin and forget about all this.”

“No.” He places his inkpot down again, firmly out of Childe’s reach. “You can wait, or you can go alone. I will be twenty minutes more.”

Childe huffs at him, slumping backwards petulantly. Kaeya picks his brush up again, just about to continue writing when, too fast for him to process, Childe leans across his desk and tips his inkpot over properly, covering his desk with ink and ruining the letter.

Some of it drips onto his trousers, staining the delicate, expensive fabric black.

“Childe,” he stares down at his ink-covered desk, the ruined letter completely submerged. “I’m going to let you have a few moments head-start, alright?”

Childe is out the door before he even finishes speaking, the sound of him leaping down the stairs rather than actually using them reaches his ears.

He slips his cloak around his shoulders and takes off after him seconds later.

Lady Signora, I apologise for the lateness of this reply. Unfortunately, there were issues with a pot of ink during the first attempt at writing this response, and the perpetrator had to be dealt with.

I hope your travels treat you well, and that you do not suffer the same sea-sickness as our comrade. I will be waiting to meet you at the docks when you arrive, and we can have that lunch you proposed. Any details on our missions may be exchanged during this time.

May the Tsaritsa provide you with the conviction to complete your mission.

Sincerely,

Brighella

Chapter Text

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Kaeya bites back a sigh, frustration making his brow crease. He almost speaks the words through gritted teeth before collecting himself and realising what a monumentally stupid decision that would be. The client sits in front of him, dressed to the nines for a simple business meeting, one that Kaeya is sorely underqualified for.

He really doesn’t understand.

Most of what this man is saying is pure nonsense. He’s in this for himself and no-one else, it seems. He almost wishes that he could afford to lose face and simply call for one of his subordinates, namely one that is actually qualified to deal with a client like this.

He does not do this. As much as he wants to do nothing more than push his chair back and leave, he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a deep, slow breath in through his nose and smiles placatingly at the client sat in front of him.

He reminds himself, once again, that this man is a very important client. He’d been given an entire briefing on the man before he’d even stepped foot through their doors. Normally a slip of paper is handed to him before these meetings, with only the details of their name and their business here being given to him. Other than that, he usually goes into those meetings blind.

This man? Apparently he gets afforded some kind of special treatment. The tea sat on his desk is a clear enough message of that, at least, with it being pulled out of some locked cupboard and brewed by a tea specialist for this man. Kaeya hadn’t even realised they had a tea specialist in the building.

Whoever this man is, people have been treating him as far too important for the entirety of his life, and he would quite like for people to keep treating him that way, it would appear.

“However,” he forces out, “we cannot provide such a service at this time.” Nor would any other reputable bank.

“Preposterous,” the man blusters. His hand, previously resting on the edge of Kaeya’s desk, begins to tap. The rings on his fingers glint in the sunlight, shining bright enough that Kaeya has to look away. Which might solve the issue of their irritating glinting, but it does not solve the issue of the clacking noise the rings make against the wood of his desk. “Surely there must be some way to do this? My neighbour did this to her aunt, you know that? She told me she came to you.”

“Unfortunately, I have only recently taken over management of this bank and therefore am not aware of these previous dealings. Nor am I able to disclose any details of these meetings if they did occur. Our client confidentiality is of a top priority to us.”

The rings are excessive. Gaudy and far too thick. The few that have gemstones embedded in them are even worse, with the light being fragmented and scattered across the walls, which would be pretty if the gems weren’t so damn tacky.

Sure, sometimes you want people to know you're rich. But the man simply oozes old money attitude and privilege, the fit of his clothes and the fabric used is enough to tell everyone within a five-mile radius that he has money. And the rings just make it look tacky.

“Unfortunately, I am not able to provide you with legal counsel on this. I am unaware if there is even a way to, ah…remove your brother from your father’s will without his knowledge, but I can certainly refer you to a few of our partners if you wish to discuss this matter further with someone qualified to provide advice.”

“Cut the shit,” the man growls.

Kaeya blinks, halfway turned around in his chair and reaching towards the folder of their associated companies that he keeps nearby for occasions where he cannot answer the client’s questions (which is most of the time…what the hell, why does he have to deal with this when he’s not even qualified?). He stays like that for a moment, before twisting to look back at the incredibly rude man he’s had to put up with for the past hour.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said,” the man inhales, “cut the shit. Everyone knows you're Fatui, this whole bank reeks of you -you Snezhnayan-”

“I would have to ask that you think your next words through carefully,” he interrupts coldly. He turns back to face the man across from him, lacing his fingers together as he considers the potential ramifications of what he’s about to say. “It is common knowledge that this bank comes from Snezhnaya, but it is also true that Snezhnaya is one of the most prosperous nations, is it not? Liyue may mint the mora we use, but do not forget that most of the businessmen and aristocrats here keep their money with us.”

The man does not seem to care, lips peeling back into an ugly grimace. Truly, people always pull back the curtains on their ugliest side far too quickly when they’re prodded somewhere sensitive.

“Sir, with all due respect,” he brushes away the frost accumulating on his desk with a casual hand, not breaking eye contact with the man all the while. “Do you consider it a smart move to walk into a den of wolves and proudly proclaim that all wolves are terrible creatures and that you hate them?”

“I- what are you talking about?”

“I am talking about me and you,” he smiles, “and the misstep that you very, very narrowly avoided.”

Someone knocks on the door, causing the man to startle so violently that it would almost be funny if Kaeya weren’t so irritated with him.

“Ah, I am afraid our allotted meeting time has come to an end. Unless…you wish to linger a little longer? I can still give you the details of one of our partners, if you wish.”

He reaches for the folder again, but when he turns back the man has already disappeared. Only ajar door and the confused stare of one of his subordinates, presumably, following the man’s retreating figure down the stairs.

They turn the wide-eyed stare on him.

“Lord Harbinger,” they question. Gods, he really thought he’d managed to get them to quit with the sir only for them to pull out Lord Harbinger on him again. He’d prefer sir at this point, even if it makes him feel triple his age.

“If the Millelith come knocking on our door tell them it was simply a misunderstanding.”

“I- yes, of course,” they stutter their way through the words, then go abruptly silent. They don't move to close the door so Kaeya waits patiently, watching them open their mouth twice before summoning the courage to actually ask him a question. “Lord Harbinger, if this one may enquire.”

“You may.”

“Then, Lord Harbinger, what was it that you said to that man to make him flee like that? And for you to give a warning about the Millelith showing up?”

“He wanted someone to remove his brother from their father’s will, and as someone unused to being told no did not react well when I did just that. He talked me in circles for most of the hour before outright demanding that I have his brother assassinated.”

“Sir?”

“I didn’t agree,” he scoffs. “We are on thin ice with the Qixing as is, I wasn’t about to go and agree to some privileged old man’s whims. I guess he just didn’t appreciate me saying such a thing – I do hope he hasn’t run to the Millelith, but you never can tell with these types.”

“Right…”

He waves them off. “Be a dear and go tell the other floor staff, hm? Make sure they're aware there’s nothing to be worried about.” They turn to leave. “Oh! And if the Millelith show up and start being difficult, come fetch me.”

“Yes, Lord Harbinger. Many thanks, Lord Harbinger.”

“And stop calling me that,” he mutters, just as the door clicks shut behind the recruit. It truly is a miracle that nothing has been mentioned about the Harbingers currently residing in Liyue. Sure, they may both be a little young for the position, but his subordinates are really not subtle with it. He’s almost embarrassed for them.

He allows himself a moment to be jealous of Childe, gallivanting around the Liyuean countryside on his search for old gods’ remains and whatever the hell else he needs to make his masterplan work. It sounds so much easier than dealing with the stuffy, stuck-up clients that the bank seems to attract like flies to honey.

He’s still got several meetings to shoulder his way through, Ekaterina’s neatly written schedule tells him. She’s at least plotted in a small break for him, long enough that he can walk down to Wanmin and back and still have a little time to spare.

Small mercies, he supposes.

He groans as the third client of the day leaves, the last one he had to see before his lunch break. She had been nicer than the previous few – none could really beat his first client of the day and the sheer gall the man had to demand such things from him and then immediately insult him when he refused to stoop that low – but so, so nitpicky about every single detail.

He’s hardly qualified to run a bank. He can keep the people running it in check, but he can’t handle the finer details himself. Regardless, that woman made him flick through every damn page of her accounts and talk through each and every mora that left her vaults.

He had planned on walking down to Wanmin for lunch, to grab something nice to eat, maybe talk to someone that isn’t utterly insufferable. But right now he can’t even imagine standing from his chair, let alone walking all the way down to Wanmin.

He allows himself a small moment of weakness, alone in the office as he is, and drops his head into his hands.

He’s nursing a small headache, a blooming pain behind his right eye that threatens to blossom into something greater. He’d rather not suffer a migraine in such a swelteringly hot land – something about the hot weather only makes him more prone to headaches and he’s only just managed to beat his pervious would-be migraines away in favour of powering onwards.

Rubbing at his forehead does little to make the ache abate. If anything, the increased pressure only makes it hurt worse, stars firing off behind his eyes and blurring his vision a little. He grits his teeth and ignores the pain, glancing at the clock briefly to see if he can catch a small nap before his next appointment.

Sometimes sleeping, even if it’s only for twenty minutes, is enough to chase the migraine away without needing to take any painkillers.

He winces when the door is kicked open, the sound rattling around his head in an incredibly jarring way, making him almost dizzy with it. He glances up at the clock, panic momentarily overtaking him at the idea that this is his next client.

Only…there’s still fifteen minutes until that. He has to blink away the spots obscuring his vision, but it’s definitely fifteen minutes until the time Ekaterina assigned him.

“And your delivery is here! I know, I know, no need to- oh shit.” He looks over at his doorway, head still cradled in one hand. It takes him several moments to process that it’s Childe stood there, not his next client, three boxes of takeaway. If he could get his eyes to focus beyond the pain in his head, he’d be able to see the Wanmin logo on the side of the containers.

Childe shuts the door behind him with his heel. It slams shut and Kaeya can’t help the automatic wince at the sound.

“Hey, Pav? Pavlín?” The smell of the food is much closer now, the aroma of spices almost sickening. There’s a hand pushing his hair back and suddenly Childe is incredibly close to him, blue eyes staring right at him.

“Mm.” Their closeness brings a little bit of awareness back to him and he leans back, pushing his chair away from his desk so Childe isn’t so close to him anymore. He feels a little more settled with the distance between them. “I’m fine.”

“Uh, no,” Childe laughs. He’s leaning over his desk, both hands planted firmly on its surface so he can inspect Kaeya better. The Wanmin takeout boxes are set precariously on the edge of his desk – seriously, everything Childe does seems to be precarious. Everything he does teeters on the edge, ready to plunge at a moment’s notice. “I come in here and you look like death. What has Ekaterina been doing to you?”

“Ekaterina hasn’t done anything,” he doesn’t want Childe rushing off and blaming one of his favourite and most competent subordinates. “It’s just,” he waves a hand around his head, gesturing at nothing and everything in general. He’s not even sure what he means by it, only hoping that Childe gets the gist of something.

“Just what?”

Okay, nevermind. Apparently Childe does not get what he means. He sighs, working through the words in his mind before he tries to actually say anything. He’s spoken without thinking about his words like this before, and apparently everyone thought he was having a stroke with how garbled his words were.

“It’s hot,” he starts. What a strong start! “And…I get migraines in the heat. This is just one that came on suddenly.”

“It’s really not that hot.” Childe argues. He suppresses a small groan at Childe focusing on that detail, choosing to begin arguing with him rather than just moving on? A glance at the clock tells him he only has ten minutes before his next appointment. And if he doesn’t get Childe and the stomach-turning smell of food out of his office, everything is going to go horribly incredibly quickly. “Isn’t this, like, normal weather for both Liyue and Mondstadt? Snezhnaya is cold, sure, but you're more used to this weather aren’t you?”

Not at all. Snezhnaya has been bliss in comparison to the weather here. This is literal hell on earth.

“No.” He grits out, far more frustrated than is reasonable. “This weather is shit.”

“Right,” he feels more than sees Childe lean back from his desk, what with his hand shielding his uncovered eye as much as possible, avoiding any and all hints of light as best as he can. There’s the sound of footsteps retreating, the door swinging closed but not shut.

And the damned food still sits right next to him.

He gives up and slumps a little further. Ekaterina will come in a few minutes before his meeting starts and then everything will be fine and he’ll drag himself through his last few meetings and then collapse and sleep for however long he’s allowed to before he has to do it all over again.

The door swings open again, soft on its hinges and not at all squeaky. He listens anyway, not even bothering to look up. Why would he when he already knows who it is? Childe’s gait and the weight he places on his feet is intimately familiar to him after so many years of the man trying to spook Kaeya in some way or another.

What he doesn’t understand is what he’s doing here.

“C’mon,” and suddenly there’s a hand wrapping around his upper arm, pulling him from his chair. Kaeya stumbles a little, hand falling from his face momentarily before the sunlight startles him into raising it again.

“What?” He tugs his arm back, usual strength vanishing completely in the face of this migraine. Because it’s a migraine, full-blown migraine, no longer a would-be headache or upcoming migraine. He feels like he might vomit as the room spins around him. And yet Childe continues to hold onto his arm, his other hand coming round to rest against Kaeya’s other arm, basically holding him up. “I have another meeting.”

“One of your subordinates can handle it. Y’know,” he thinks Childe might be smiling, might be teasing him, but his eye refuses to focus, “the people actually qualified for this job?”

“Shuddup.”

“Mm. Only if you insist,” Childe begins to pull him towards the door, thankfully leaving the takeout behind. He feels less like his stomach is going to rebel against him when they reach the top of the stairs. And then he’s faced with his next adversary: getting down the stairs.

He frowns at them for a moment, trying to figure out how he’s going to manage these without making himself look like a fool, and without making himself look like a pitiful fool.

He gives up a few moments later, turning in Childe’s grip and grabbing one of his arms before reaching out for a leylines. It takes him a moment longer to grasp one than it usually does, but he manages. It only slightly rebels against him, possibly taking pity on him for how unwell he’s feeling?

…That’s stupid. The leylines don't have feelings or empathy or sympathy. They don't care that he’s feeling terrible, he’s just better at grabbing the leylines than he was as a kid. Better at grabbing the leylines while sick than he was as a kid.

“Tsaritsa’s holy tits,” Childe half-yells, right into his ear as they pop back into existence in their small apartment.

“Nothing holy about tits,” Kaeya says before he can think. He blinks, processes what he’s just said, and then decides that he still doesn’t care. Instead, he gets to watch as Childe first goes pink, then red, the colour rushing over his cheeks before it fades just as quickly, and then he’s laughing.

Laughing at Kaeya.

“You're a horrible person,” he shoves Childe away, freeing himself of the supporting arms that had been helping to keep him upright so far. He wobbles only slightly as he takes a step towards the bedroom. “I'm going to bed. You come in while I'm sleeping and I’ll fucking slaughter you, got it?”

“Crystal clear.”

Kaeya pauses, one hand on the doorjamb, and then turns to glare at Childe for the cheek in his voice. Childe looks stupidly pleased with himself, like he’s just created world peace, or something equally impossible.

“I mean it. I’ll feed your fingers to you.” He threatens.

“Go to sleep.” Childe tells him, and then mutters something that sounds suspiciously like: “I wish I had a Kamera right now.”

Kaeya ignores him, choosing to save his last dregs of energy by not arguing with him over something that is inconsequential. Instead, he kicks the door shut behind him and goes to sleep.

Kaeya stares, trying to force the person in front of him into submission with the weight of his stare alone. He almost feels like it’s working, lips pulled down into a frown and brow furrowed in irritation painting the perfect picture of irritation.

“I am not budging on this decision,” Ekaterina tells him. “Sir,” is tacked on the end like an afterthought. Which it probably is.

“And who gave you the authority to order me around like this?”

The entryway of the bank is silent around them. Kaeya can’t tell if the other employees are desperately trying to pretend that the current altercation doesn’t exist, lest they be dragged into it. Though if they think their unsubtle hiding spots are at all effective, then they have another thing coming – he really needs to speak with Ekaterina about the training that these employees have undergone.

…Once he’s managed to convince Ekaterina that he is perfectly well enough to do his job today.

The alternative explanation to the utter silence of the entryway, and the rest of the bank, around them is that all of his subordinates are horrible gossips who are committing every word to memory so they can tell all their friends about it. …Unfortunately far more plausible, and he sweeps a cold glare around him to remind his subordinates that the bank opens in less than ten minutes and that no-one is at their work stations yet.

It seems to work, if the sudden flurry of activity around him is anything to go by. The shifting of paper, the sound of footsteps on the floorboards – all of it becomes background noise when he turns his gaze back towards Ekaterina.

“I would advise you to take this day away from work as well, sir.” Ekaterina’s frown deepens. “It is not unusual for someone to take sick days, or even holiday leave, it is not something that would arouse suspicion if that is your worry.”

“That is not my worry. I simply fail to see why it is necessary for me to take the day for myself when I am perfectly well.”

Ekaterina stares at him as though he’s grown a second head. “With all due respect, sir, the glimpses I saw of you yesterday were not pleasant. You began acting like a corpse well before Tartaglia arrived to collect you.”

“Tartaglia did not arrive to collect me,” he hisses. Like he’s some kind of child being picked up from school! Childe had shown up and taken it upon himself to force Kaeya back to their apartment.

“Sir, please go home.”

“I am still failing to see what gives you the authority to order me around; I am still your superior officer, Ekaterina.”

Ekaterina sighs. “And I am older than you.”

What a ridiculous counter-argument – that’s like being told because I said so when a parent doesn’t wish to justify themselves. Or an older sibling arguing that they take priority simply because they are older.

“If you loathe to be away from work for even a day, then take this day to familiarise yourself with Liyue.” Ekaterina speaks as though she is conceding some great defeat when instead she is proposing a compromise that doesn’t even benefit him. “You’ve become something of a shut-in, sir, despite preaching the importance of blending with the local populace. Take some of your own advice, yes?”

Kaeya pauses for a moment, torn between continuing to argue and the steely resolve that has made itself known in Ekaterina’s eyes. She won’t be budging from where she stands easily, and he doesn’t have the energy to continue pushing against this immovable force. Perhaps he should argue at least a little longer, in order to save some face and not make him appear as someone to admit defeat so easily. But.

But, he is still tired. The migraine may have not lingered long into the morning, but an overwhelming tiredness has taken its place; it leaves him feeling a little slow, brain struggling to get over the hurdles it usually leaps over easily.

“Alright, then,” he gives in. “Do you have any recommendations for where I should visit?”

“Mm.” Ekaterina eyes him with a small smile. “If you’re quick, you’ll manage to catch the tail-end of the morning market. Many of the stall owners appreciate someone to chat with, especially if that someone isn’t the next stall over that they’ve been competing with for the last fifteen years.”

He nods, uncertain what she might mean by that, but turns to leave the bank anyway. Vlad watches him leave the bank, sparing a small nod before he’s holding the doors open for their first clients of the morning, greeting them warmly.

He descends the red stairs quickly, finding himself amongst the crowd of commuters and shoppers the moment his feet touch down onto the bricks of the street. He allows himself to be carried along in the hustle and bustle, nothing in particular catching his eye.

The street vendors call out into the crowds to advertise their wares, voices overlapping and competing with their neighbouring stalls in order to be the one that proclaims their products the loudest. Two stalls selling the exact same produce sit next to each other on a corner, and he watches as the vendors shoot each other a nasty look before yelling even louder than they had before.

The atmosphere of it is a far cry from the cold streets of Snezhnaya.

He much prefers the orderly quiet of Zapolyarny to this cacophony and organised chaos, finding himself a little melancholy as he misses the old woman on the corner that had sold the best ponchiki in the city. He misses the way it was easy to walk through those streets, too, his only obstacles being the snow and black ice.

Chihu Rock is a little quieter, with him able to freely move without getting several elbows in the ribs and stepping on many more feet. It means he can slip his way through the crowd without shoving others out of his way.

He approaches a nearby food vendor, beginning to look over the samples laid out for such perusal. Only for someone for someone to yell behind him: “Young Master! Come over here, don't try such food, mine is far better than his!”

“What would you know?” The vendor of the stall Kaeya is currently stood at is suddenly right beside him, leaning over the counter and past Kaeya’s shoulder to return the other vendor’s hollering. “You're the one that’s had the Millelith sniffing around your food to check that you're preparing it properly!”

Vendor B swears at Vendor A rather harshly, something which the man ignores in favour of turning to face Kaeya, speaking to him instead. “Is there anything that the Young Master would like to try? Of course, if you're unsure about anything to do with Liyuean cuisine I am more than happy to assist in describing them as best as possible.”

The man is middle-aged, with crow’s feet around his eyes that wrinkle when he smiles at Kaeya.

He’s beginning to see why Ekaterina had allowed herself a small smile before shooing him out the bank doors. She’d practically been throwing him to wolves! She must have known this was one of Childe’s haunts, somewhere he would have begun to endear himself to the vendors. Or, more accurately, where his wallet would have begun to endear him to the vendors here.

Childe pays for things like mora is going out of fashion. It’s something Kaeya has learned in his years with the man as a partner, forcing him to stand and watch as he pays a stupidly high price for something because vendors recognise a sucker when they see one.

He has no doubt that they’ve connected Kaeya and Childe together – the cut of their clothes is similar, and they are both unknown characters to the market. It’s not an unreasonable assumption.

“Pah!” Vendor B rejoins the fray, and Kaeya turns to look at the woman. She’s of a similar age to Vendor A, one hand waving back and forth as she denies whatever Vendor A was about to say. “As though you know anything about cuisine! Everyone here knows that your food is ordered in and reheated here – why do you refuse to show the cooking process to your clients otherwise?”

“It’s dangerous to have exposed fire where there are children running around,” Vendor A eyes the open flame that Vendor B has at her stall, steam billowing from the steamers balanced, only slightly precariously, over it.

“A child that doesn’t have enough sense to avoid an open flame deserves to be burned,” Vendor B says. “Besides, calling the Millelith the first three times did nothing to stop me, did it? Wanna give it another go and call them a fourth time? See what they tell you then?”

Kaeya blinks, suddenly coming back to himself – like waking up from a weirdly realistic dream – and wondering how the hell he managed to find himself caught between these two vendors, like they're a pair of children fighting over the same toy.

“Ah, apologies, sir,” he raises a hand to interrupt whatever vitriol Vendor A is about to fling at his neighbour, “I only came here to look at what you were selling, I was unaware that your wares were only fish.”

“Only fish?” Vendor A turns back to him with an incredulous look, “Of course there’s only fish, what did you think I would be selling in a stall called The Fine Plaice?”

“My written Liyuean is a little rough around the edges,” he lies. He injects as much genuine apology into his voice as possible, raising his hands in what he hopes is a guilty gesture. A small group of children has stopped nearby, interrupting their game of chasing one another to watch him instead. “I hadn’t realised your stall sold exclusively fish – seafood is something that I have never been able to enjoy, unfortunately.”

Vendor A looks at him like he just killed his mother right in front of him.

“Well,” the man looks a little lost, floundering for his words. He even looks to Vendor B a little desperately, as though hoping she’s going to give a few kind words and pull him out of this. “I suppose it’s only expected that a Snezhnayan diplomat may still be struggling with the finer details of our language…especially if he has only just arrived recently.”

“Quit bothering the boy,” Vendor B calls over. “He doesn’t want your food? Let him come look at mine then! If fish turns his stomach you're harming him keeping him captive at your stall.”

“Now I never said-”

“And who said he’d want your food either? Master Childe prefers this stall over your own, does he not?”

This argument is beginning to give him another headache, a faint pulsing starting up. He resists the urge to cradle his head in his hands, though only just.

“And you assume this Young Master has the same tastes as Master Childe? Did he not just say that seafood makes him sick?” This woman is only further distorting his words with every sentence she says, first it had been a dislike of seafood, then that it made him feel sick, and then now that it just outright made him unwell.

If this is Ekaterina’s way of making him simply admit defeat and take the day off next time, he has to admit it’s working. He entertains the idea of just walking away and leaving them to squabble amongst themselves, but Vendor A had already said that Childe is a regular patron at their stall, and walking away may make things awkward for him when he next comes to buy food here…

“Fine!” snaps Vendor A. “Have him, see if I care!”

The man retreats back into his stall and shoves at Kaeya, pushing him over towards Vendor B’s stall. For her part, she looks incredibly smug, beckoning him over with a smile.

He goes to her stall, if only because that group of children is still watching him.

“Now, Young Master, is there anything here that you would like to try?” The woman seems positively giddy that she’s managed to snag Kaeya from her competitor, bustling around to detail each of her different snacks to him.

“Ah, I'm only here to look for a small something, perhaps a snack,” he tells her, once she’s run through the really quite long list of food she sells here. “I'm afraid I am rather unawares when it comes to Liyuean food, so I can only ask that you help me out a little here.”

Vendor B tuts at him. “Don't use so much flattery on an old woman like me, please. There’s no need sweet-talk your way into buying something from my stall.”

Kaeya feels a little chastised when she turns away again, lifting the lids from the steamers and pulling a few things out and dumping them into one bag. She presses the bag, warmed by the food inside of it, into his hands.

“Why waste such sweet words on me, hm?” The woman smiles, “I'm sure there’s someone far better deserving of such words, perhaps Young Master Childe, no?”

“Chen!” Vendor A yells over at the woman, apparently having been listening in on their conversation this entire time. The man looks irritated by his vendor neighbour, though doesn’t say anything beyond the sharp calling of her name.

She ignores him, continuing on: “Ignore him, he only doesn’t know the difference between sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong but is needed.” She pats his hand, the one still holding onto the food she’s handed him.

“Many thanks,” he manages, confusion making his brain reel a little as he hands over the mora he owes the woman. He still feels a little disoriented as he steps away from the stall, not even opening the paper bag to see what it is that the vendor had chosen for him.

Using…sweet words on Childe? What the hell was that woman on about? Was she huffing the fumes from the fire while he wasn’t looking?

He forcefully banishes the encounter from his mind, peering instead into the bag still clutched in his hands.

He is beginning to associate the smell of tea with uncomfortable meetings.

He holds his cup properly, as was taught to him by Pantalone, nonetheless. Even as his patience with this meeting begins to wane, drifting away from the topic at hand. At this point, the Rite of Descension is a well-trodden path that they continue to walk down during every one of their meetings.

Zhongli continues to wax poetic about the occasion, talking about the ritual in far more detail than they would ever need to know. Kaeya assumes it’s part of his plan to subtly remind them of their duties here – duties that could have been cleared up a few months ago if the Rite of Descension hadn’t been a key part to the plan that Rex Lapis was wishing for.

Certainly, part of the delay had been their fault; they needed time to plan their method of attack, one that would not implicate the Fatui, and then find the means in which the attack can be carried out. Sigils had been located by Childe, and experiments were underway to determine how exactly they worked.

But the majority of the issue laid at the feet of the stubborn god in front of them.

Zhongli, completely unbothered, sipped delicately at his tea, wetting his tongue before he continues on his rambling way.

“Of course, this ritual is regarded as an incredibly important time of the year for all those involved in business within Liyue. It has also been known for business owners outside of Liyue to make the pilgrimage in the hope that they may receive a boon from Rex Lapis too.”

Actually, Kaeya is reconsidering his earlier statement – the worst part isn’t listening to Zhongli talk about the Rite again as though it’s some mysterious, unbroached topic rather than something Kaeya is confident he could write an entire book on. The worst part is Zhongli speaking about himself in the third person, refusing to name himself as Rex Lapis despite all occupants of the room being aware of his true identity.

Not that it took much brainpower to figure the Archon out – he possessed all the subtlety of a damn rock. From afar, the rock may look unassuming and the same as all its surrounding rocks, but get even a little closer and you would notice the shine of a precious gemstone, poorly hidden beneath a layer of dirt.

…Listening to him speak like this is also rather similar to being hit over the head with a large stone.

“Truly fascinating,” Kaeya interjects, before Zhongli can begin on the next segment of his ramble. He ignores the rudely thankful look Childe tosses his way, hoping that Zhongli does not notice it. It would do them any favours to irritate the god; as fascinated as he is with Childe, Kaeya doubts that he’d respond well to being dismissed so easily. “However, I was hoping to inquire about Jueyun Karst?”

“Jueyun Karst?” Zhongli hums, narrowing his eyes at him slightly. “What is it that you wish to know?”

Kaeya keeps his affable smile fixed to his face, despite the underlaid warning in his voice. Kaeya is aware that all of the adepti are bound by contracts to serve beneath Rex Lapis. He is also aware that several adepti visit Zhongli on the regular, for nothing more than a conversation. So there is some fondness between the adepti and Zhongli.

“Ah, simply what you are willing to tell me,” he tilts his head to the side, braid slipping off his shoulder as he does so. “I am aware that the adepti are rather mysterious, with few being seen in recent decades. Information on them is…lacking, as far as I am aware.”

“Hm.”

He allows Zhongli his moment to think. Perhaps he is parsing through his mental library, deciding what is common knowledge amongst the general populace of Liyue and what details are known only to the adepti and he.

Childe nudges his ankle beneath the desk, a gentle touch of his boot. When Kaeya turns his head, disguised resting his chin on his palm as he waits for Zhongli’s response, there is a silent question in Childe’s eyes. Kaeya answers it with a single raised eyebrow, enough to communicate his wait and see.

“You are…correct in stating that the adepti have not been seen recently. Many have retreated to seclusion in Jueyun Karst and prefer to watch the people of Liyue from afar,” Zhongli says. He seems reluctant to divulge this information, even though Kaeya could probably find this story in any book written on the subject. “Scholars theorise that the adepti are feeling ‘pushed out’ by humans, retreating to the safety of the wilderness and allowing the people to grow without them.”

Oh?

Kaeya had been wondering what it was that Zhongli was getting out of the deal with the Tsaritsa – he was aware that there must be a test for the Harbour, but he had assumed such a thing was to make sure that Liyue would be able to survive without their guardian, but for it to be for something else entirely? Such a thought had never crossed his mind.

“So the adepti…retired?” He tests the waters with his question, watching it land and ripple out. Zhongli’s face tenses in a complicated way, like some kind of spasm.

“In a sense, I suppose you could say that.” Zhongli hides behind his cup of tea. It must be tepid by now, and yet he drinks it anyway. “Though the adepti can never truly retire with the power they possess – stepping away completely rather than stepping backwards.”

Meaning the adepti are still a problem. Still something that may rear its ugly head at the penultimate moment of their performance.

There is no way to account for the adepti, as unpredictable as they are – numerous adepti roam Liyue, with only the most famous being well-known amongst the people. Any one of those adepti could attempt to intervene, throwing their plan entirely off course if they don't have a sufficient way to mitigate that.

…Would their end of the contract still be considered fulfilled if the adepti stepped up in the place of their Archon?

He continues to mull this over as they are ushered from Zhongli’s office and out of the Funeral Parlour, only beginning to muse aloud when they are out of the building’s shadow. His considerations are divulged in Snezhnayan, meant for only his and Childe’s ears, even if it causes several citizens to cast suspicious glares their way.

Childe has the same answer as Kaeya does: sit tight and hope for the best. Nothing else can be done.

Kaeya wishes it were that simple, but a niggling feeling won’t leave him away, poking and prodding at his mind in a way that leaves him sleepless, unable to rest until he’s successfully untangled the problem and laid each of its details bare.

Yet, no matter how he attempts to construct the final picture, a key piece remains absent.

Chapter Text

The port is picturesque as Kaeya stands at attention, arms folded neatly behind his back as he waits. He has been waiting for well over an hour by now, watching as the sun slowly creeps over the horizon. It was just a few minutes ago that it managed to finally heave itself upwards and fully into the sky, only the glow surrounding it still gracing the horizon line with its caress.

Everything else about the port is decidedly not picturesque.

Granted, he didn’t arrive here expecting outstanding sights and smells, but he expected a little more from the nation of commerce in one of their main hubs of trade and, you know, commerce. But the breeze is warm and slightly sticky as it blows in from the ocean, ruffling his hair and making him far, far too warm. He’d even forgone his coat today, as has become his norm, even when it makes his figure far less imposing.

Now, he’s just a random Fatui delegate stood at one of Liyue’s main ports kicking about and apparently getting underfoot.

The fishermen and sailors had already been working when he arrived, stepping down onto the water-slick stones with a soft clicking of his boots. He hadn’t thought his arrival deserved much fanfare, but the port workers apparently disagreed with this, nearly every eye in the vicinity turning in his direction and staring.

And then staring a little more.

Even now he can feel some of their gazes on his back, resting heavily. That may be contributing to the feeling of boiling alive inside of his own skin, curious eyes crawling over the back of his neck like ants.

He keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon line, and on the ship that is steadily making its way towards the harbour. The ship is nondescript, nothing special about it, and Kaeya can hardly believe that La Signora had deigned to step onto such a plain ship. Everything he has seen of the woman is glitter and gold, dressed to the nines, whether that is the woman herself or her office space.

Still, perhaps she was going for subtlety.

He inhales deeply, attempting to shake the last clinging bits of sleep away. Inhaling so deeply only reminds him of the stench of fish hanging heavy in the air – he has no doubts that the smell will cling to his clothes for days after, even if he washes them the moment he has escaped Signora’s company.

It has been nearing the two-hour mark when the ship finally pulls into the harbour, slowing considerably. Agents begin leaping on and off the vessel, looping various ropes around various posts designed to keep the ship from floating back out to sea.

He’d just about been getting bored enough to start watching the fish be hauled in from the fishing boats. He was doing his best to keep his mind away from the fact that he had failed to remember Signora’s reminder to pick out a suitable restaurant for them to dine in during this meeting, and that any potential openings in Liuli Pavilion will have long closed their doors to him.

Some of the fish are still alive when they're tossed from aboard the ship to the harbour, squirming and flapping their fins wildly, as though with just a little more energy they’d be able to throw themselves back into the sea.

Seems a little cruel to leave only a few alive, forcing them to lie above – or be trapped beneath – the bodies of their brethren.

He feels eyes on him and turns his head to look, finding several of Signora’s agents stood at the helm of the ship, watching him. The sun sits behind them, the glare of it forcing him to squint his eye nearly shut in order to even see their silhouettes, let alone guess at what expression they might be making.

He tilts his head at angle, before smiling and waving at the small cluster.

It disperses almost immediately, most of them simply ducking down until he can no longer see them. Kaeya’s not sure what that’s meant to do, as they’ll have to walk away from the helm of the ship, exposing themselves to him once again; unless they're just going to crawl away on their stomach’s like true cowards. They will be lucky if Signora doesn’t toss them overboard herself.

After that, it’s a waiting game of how long Signora’s going to drag this out. The sudden flurry of activity draws the eyes of the port workers away from him, at least, staring instead at the sudden influx of Fatui agents. There are a few snarled curses that even Kaeya would be reluctant to repeat.

It only takes a few minutes for the workers to make the connection between Fatui delegate and Fatui ship before their attention has returned back to him again, their scrutiny weighing heavily on him once again.

Still, the woman of the hour doesn’t take much longer to descend from her ship, stepping down a gangway gingerly, as though afraid she might infect herself with something from the wood. Her agents are arranged neatly on either side of the plank, stood at attention like this is some royal ceremony rather than her arrival in a foreign nation.

She looks around slowly, taking in the port with a look of indifference.

He steps forward as her eyes meet his, pressing his right hand just over his heart as he greets her, “Lady Signora, what a delight to see you at last. I hope your journey has treated you well.”

“The journey was as enjoyable as a ship could hope to achieve, I suppose. I have not faced hardship in the time between our last letters.” She gingerly plucks at her dress, lifting it delicately so it does not drag along the ground. “And you, dear Pavlín, how has Liyue been treating you?”

Kaeya stills, slightly taken aback at the dear before moving on as though it had never happened. The Harbingers are a strange mix of people, and he’s not going to agonise over Signora’s choice of words here. “The weather has been nothing but pleasant, though I sometimes find myself growing weary of the long days here. The long evenings and dark nights are far more suited to my taste.”

Signora hums, heels clicking against the stone. “And of the delicacies?” She abandons her agents at the ship, though they seem to know what they're doing, Kaeya reasons, when he tosses a glance backwards over his shoulder. “I have heard of Liyue’s food, though I have not been able to try it in many years – tell me, is the rivalry between Li and Yue cuisines still ongoing?”

“Liuli Pavilion and Xinyue Kiosk are across the street from each other currently, if that’s what you're asking after.” He ascends the steps first, going slowly as Signora follows behind him. Her heeled shoes are entirely impractical, and he’s almost worried that she might slip if he weren’t so aware that she could slit his throat without a moment’s notice, swiftly enough that his blood wouldn’t even spill on her snow-white dress. “Though I haven’t noticed any fights breaking out between the patrons of the establishments.”

“Shame,” Signora sighs. “I could have done with a little entertainment.”

She seems to be in a rather cheerful mood this morning, a smile tickling at the corners of her lips, nothing like the icy woman he had spoken with before, nor the cold and calculating Lady from the recounting of his agents.

“Speaking of,” her eyes glimmer a little as she looks back at him, something almost like…amusement? But that is ridiculous, what is there to be amused by? “Where is your other half? I was under the impression you two are rarely seen apart.”

“Whoever your informant is, they are rather terrible at their job,” he laughs. “Childe had business to attend to outside of the city more often than not, and I am stuck behind a desk doing an office job.”

Perhaps it is for the best that Childe is outside of the Harbour more often than not.

The memory of a couple months ago still lingers in his mind. Of the blood Childe had dripped on his floor. The blood that had not belonged to him. Kaeya thinks of the way it had reflected the light from his lamp, glistening like some priceless jewel in the low light. He thinks of the way he had wiped the blood away the next morning, considering the dark splotches on the wood.

(The stains are still there. Just…blending in with the grain of the floorboards. Noticeable if you look and know what you're searching for.)

The way Childe had watched him, shrouded in darkness, eyes reflecting the moonlight. Like some cornered beast. Or a monster that stalked in the darkness. Perhaps it was a little offensive to think of Childe like that, but he truly had looked…non-human, at the very least. Otherworldly. Something not meant for mortal eyes, is perhaps a kinder way to phrase it.

Still, it sends a shiver up his spine each time he thinks of it, halfway fear and halfway something else entirely.

That had been the last time Kaeya saw him so bloodstained. His own handkerchief had not survived that evening, stained with blood that refused to wash out no matter what he did with it. He tried all the tricks in the book when he had a moment to himself, away from Childe’s curious, prying eyes.

He kept that stained handkerchief hidden in his breast pocket, only a little cleaner than the first time it had been tucked away there. Away from the itching, manic energy that has begun to overtake his partner recently. It’s the kind that leaves Childe pacing, taking longer and longer walks outside of the Harbour, even when he’s off-duty and has no debt collections to make.

He’s not killing anything. Of that Kaeya is certain. Unless Childe has been bathing before returning to the city, Kaeya would have smelled the lingering traces of blood, clinging to his clothes and hair. Or tasted the ozone in the air, the kind that seems to dog Childe’s heels for several hours after a particularly intense battle, whatever the hell that means.

“He’s having all the fun without you?” No, his eye had not deceived him earlier, that is most definitely amusement shining in Signora’s eyes, twinkling merrily as he smiles at him. “No wonder you looked so miserable this morning, has he been leaving you by your lonesome all day every day?”

“I am surrounded by people at all hours of the day, Lady Signora.” The streets are becoming a little busier as vendors begin calling out their wares and prices, the morning market getting into the swing of things. “It is rather difficult to be by my lonesome when my day is mainly comprised of meetings and exchanges.”

“Ah, but that is not the same. Truly, Her Majesty was right about you.”

Her Majesty? What reason would the Tsaritsa have to speak with La Signora about him?

“You bring news from Her Majesty?” He doesn’t even realise he’s transitioned back into Snezhnayan until he’s receiving dirty looks from the citizens milling around the two of them, and suddenly they’re receiving a much larger berth than usual.

“Nothing of the kind.” Signora actually laughs, daintily and hidden behind her hand, sure, but she still laughs. Perhaps he died in his sleep and he’s been sent to some kind of hell. The kind where nothing makes sense and Signora smiles. “Only idle talk between the two of us. Nothing for you to worry your head over. Now, I do believe we are in the land of commerce, yes? Any vendors to recommend? Any restaurants?”

“No respectable restaurant was able to accept a booking at such late notice. I would have penned you another letter to inform you of this but I believe you would have already set sail by the time any letter reached Snezhnaya.”

“A street vendor then.” Maybe he is dead. Maybe this is hell. He shoots Signora a look from the corner of his eye. “Don’t you look at me like that, Pavlín, I am perfectly capable of eating from a street vendor.”

“I apologise, my Lady, I never meant it in such a way. Just…are you certain you wish to continue in these crowds?” He absolutely does not believe she is capable of eating from a street vendor. Her a Pantalone give off the same aura of I will only purchase something if it will hurt my pockets the most out of all options. The kind of wealth where the person has no concept of how much anything costs. “They can get…a little violent.”

And that’s not even mentioning the reactions they may receive when passersby recognise the Fatui emblem that Signora has draped herself in. Or made the connection between him, a prominent employee of the Snezhnayan bank, and some snow-kissed foreigner accompanying him.

“I have sharp elbows.” Signora tells him easily. “Besides, this is not dissimilar to the markets of my youth.” Her face turns a little sour as she surveys the throng of people ahead of them, “Though they were far more civilised than this rabble.” And there it is.

“Well, I do have a vendor I prefer visiting. I believe you’ll enjoy the food she sells, at least.”

“Mn. We’ll see about that.”

Kaeya finds out firsthand just how sharp Signora’s elbows can be. He feels as though he’s had one of his own icicles driven through his chest when she jabs him instead of the rude businessman attempting to shove his way through the crowd.

He wheezes, both a little caught off-guard by the sharpness of her elbow, and then the iciness of her fingers encircling his wrist and pulling him forward until they burst free from the worst of it. She releases his wrist then, giving him a considering look as she rubs her thumb and forefinger together.

He rubs at his sternum, feeling as though his very bones have been bruised by her lethally sharp limbs.

“It’s, ah, just this way.” He guides them through the much more manageable crowds around Chihu Rock

“Ah, Young Master Pavlín!” Auntie Chen sees him before he manages to see her, somehow. She ducks out from behind one of the draped fabrics at the back of her stall, waving him over eagerly. He doesn’t miss the long-stemmed smoking pipe she tucks away quickly, greeting him with a beaming smile that makes the smile lines on her face stand out. “I had begun to think you had forgotten about this old woman!”

“You are hardly an old woman, auntie,” he tells her in response, as he has every time he visited this stall since his first encounter with the two rival vendors. “You hardly look a day over thirty.”

“Don't waste such flattery on a woman such as me,” Auntie Chen waves him away, laughing to herself as she turns back to her steamers, busying herself. “I have told you there are far better people to use such words on – people that such words would actually work on!”

He laughs alongside her, despite feeling the tips of his ears warm in slight embarrassment. He can feel Signora watching, and it makes him feel self-conscious of every move he makes.

“You could introduce us, you know.” Auntie Chen returns to the small counter with a paper bag, no doubt filled with whatever variety of buns she’s made this morning.

“Pardon?”

“The lady you arrived with?” Auntie Chen looks at him as though he is an idiot. It rather makes him feel like one, especially as she continues talking. “I would assume she is with you, at least, seeing as you arrived here speaking with her rather happily.”

“Oh, of course, yes, this is my…overseeing officer La Signora.”  He makes the lie up quickly, not really thinking it through and having to resist the urge to grimace at overseeing officer, even superior officer would have been more believable, even if it left a sour taste in his mouth just thinking of it. “I am showing her the Harbour while her schedule permits it.”

“Well, then aren’t I honoured to have my stall visited my such an esteemed lady!” Auntie Chen positively beams at Signora, truly putting on her best customer service smile in the face of nothing but an icy mask. “I do hope the food is up to your standards. My, have you ever had Liyuean food before?”

She barrels on before Signora can even formulate a response, and Kaeya gets a glorious, front-row seat to watching her brain short-circuit, eyebrows crinkling and breaking the illusion of her mask.

“Oh, what am I talking about, you don't look as though you’ve stepped out of Snezhnaya a day in your life – not to be rude, of course! It’s just that your skin is so incredibly pale; tell me, how many hours of sunlight do you get during the summers of Snezhnaya? Is it as few as they say it is?”

“Give it up Chen!”

Kaeya closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, attempting to summon the will.

“Oh, can it Liu!” And just like that the picture-perfect customer service façade is dropped as Auntie Chen leans over her counter to yell right back at Liu. “I'm serving a customer here, can’t you see?!”

“Oh, yeah, look at you, perfect service yelling right in their faces!”

“I wouldn’t have to do this if you didn’t yell in the first place!”

“Well, maybe you should just let the woman get a word in edgeways, hm? No use bombarding her with questions – she won’t remember half of them by the time you’ve managed to shut your gob.”

“Uncle Liu,” Kaeya greets, before Auntie Chen can start yelling right back at him, starting the argument over again. “I wasn’t aware you were listening.”

“Don't be ridiculous, it’s hard not to listen when that old bat starts blathering on. I'm hardly a foot away from her!”

“You could always move,” Auntie Chen sniffs.

“As could you.” Liu snipes back.

“I'm not the one taking issue with talking.”

Kaeya pulls his bag of mora out, taking a quick peek into the paper bag and doing some rapid maths to work out how much he owes her, carefully counting the coins out. Quietly, so she doesn’t hear him and turn her attention back in his direction.

He sets the coins down to the side, away from where Auntie Chen’s wildly gesticulating arms could knock them into the street, and collects his paper bag before backing away.

Signora looks faintly bemused, eye bouncing back and forth between the two vendors. Still, she seems to find some of it amusing, lips twitching at the sight in front of them.

“We should probably leave now,” he tells her, food in hand. “Once they start going at each other they won’t stop until they’ve shouted themselves hoarse. Or the millelith are called.”

“That’s a regular occurrence, is it?” Signora turns her amused gaze onto him, still smiling slightly.

“Not as regular as you may think, but more regularly than necessary.”

“Hm.”

The walk to the Bank is done is silence, but Signora occupies herself looking around at all the buildings they pass by. Perhaps comparing it to her last memory of the Harbour? However long ago that was.

He finds himself glancing at her throughout their walk, paper bag tightly clutched in his hands, properly considering her. She had been polite, if cold towards him on their first meeting, and the tales spun about her afterwards had painted an entirely different image to what he’s witnessing right now.

He had expected disdain for failing to secure a booking in one of the fancier restaurants in the Harbour. And yet it had been met with easy acceptance when he had admitted to having no such booking. Signora seemed content to mix with the crowd, something that seemed antithetical to the image she projected of herself.

It seems that her image is contrary to her actuality.

Still, he doesn’t expect her opening line, with the door only just shutting behind him and Signora only just settling into her seat to be, “Scorned Child of Mond, tell me, how did you first come to the City of Freedom?”

“Pardon?” He turns partway, hand on the doorknob still. His grip crinkles the paper bag.

Signora is turned halfway in her seat, legs crossed over one another neatly as she leans against the back of her chair to face him. Her eye pins him in place, though the rest of her is loose and relaxed. Every part of her seems to contradict another.

“Scorned Child of Mond,” she repeats, as clear as the first time, though slower, as though she really wants him to hear what she says. “Tell me, how did you first come to the City of Freedom?”

“As any other citizen of Mondstadt did.” He replies as easily as he can. His earlier stumble has cost him, though, Signora’s eyes zeroing in on him as he crosses the office to sit in his own chair. The paper bag is placed between them, a meagre shield. “I trust I don't need to give you the details.”

“Ah, the details.” Signora smiles, a thin, red thing. “Tell me, is there any message you wish for me to pass onto your brother?”

He doesn’t react. He had felt it looming, hanging heavy over his head the moment he shut that door behind them.

“Every clue is in the finer details, Pavlín. I did not meet you before your assimilation into the Doctor’s lab, but even I can recognise the mannerisms of a well brought-up young man. The way you sit, the way your hands rest, the way you talk.”

“Speaking from experience, are we?”

“Yes.” Signora’s eye crosses with his own. “Oh, don't look at me like that. It was only so long until Harbingers began figuring it out, some already have…ah,” something in his face gives it away, “but you already know that, don't you?”

“It is rather difficult to ignore what some of you consider a subtle hint.” He hasn’t missed the dramatics of the Harbingers, that’s for certain. Each of them so focused in having the spotlight solely pointed on them that they attempt to outcompete each other in the most ridiculous of ways.

“You are one of us too, don't forget.”

“I am not looking to forget such a thing.”

“Good,” Signora investigates the paper bag, pulling one of the bao buns free. “I would so hate to leave here without giving you your gifts. And having a proper chat.”

“We’re talking right now, aren’t we?”

“Oh, yes, yes, talking, certainly. I wish to know you, strange thing that you are. Capturing Dottore’s attention is not unusual, but to be kept in one piece – he didn’t even vivisection you! What about you could be so fascinating that he doesn’t want to cut you apart to see what makes you tick, hm?”

“I'm sure he’s still trying to figure such a thing out,” Kaeya replies. Signora’s prying makes something itch on the back of his neck, not uncomfortable but not sitting at ease as he usually would inside this office. He feels as though he missed a step on his way up here and has not yet managed to regain his balance. “Not even the great Doctor has all the answers, hm?”

Signora watches him for a moment, sharp nails shredding the bao to pieces over his desk. She barely has a taste of it, most ending littered across the lacquered wood like petals across the water’s surface. He looks back up, meeting the woman’s gaze head-on.

“I suppose not.” She settles back, trying another small piece of the bao and humming quietly as they share the silence together. “Ah, shame. I did think you’d have something else to say about your mentor. Tell me, did he make you work the terrible hours that every other lab assistant was subjected to, or did he give you special treatment?”

“I often arrived at the same time he did, sometimes leaving later than even he would.”

Signora grimaces at that, and she begins shredding the next bao with a vengeance. He twitches slightly as some of the filling smears over his desk, but doesn’t say a word as she continues to pick over the ruined remains of a perfectly good meal. He silently apologises to Auntie Chen and gives up on trying any of the bao he bought today.

“So you're as bad as him,” she sighs. “How could you even bear to spend time in that place? It’s miserable.”

“I only spent so much time there when I had no other assignments. Otherwise, I would be elsewhere.”

“Hm. So it’s true, then?”

Kaeya sighs. Typical, that this meeting would only be arranged so she could pry and poke in an attempt to get whatever information she’s looking for. Still, he braces himself for whatever his answer may bring and says: “What’s true.”

“Oh, dear, did you not know the lab workers would gossip about you? The things I heard about you through the grapevine, well, it painted a pretty little picture of you and Childe, hm?”

And…yep. Regretting it. Regretting it severely.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh. Oh.” Signora laughs, and it’s not quite mean but it’s also not nice, in any sense of the word. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“People are hardly going to gossip about me to my face, are they?”

“I suppose not.” Signora frowns, and more bao filling drips onto his desk. He hopes some of it gets on her white dress. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Here, I have a letter for you.”

She produces a letter seemingly from thin air. One with a cream envelope and a black wax seal on the back of it. Signora extends it towards him, offering no explanation for where it’s come from, or who sent the letter. Only holds it out, enticing in its mystery as she waits for him to take it.

He takes it a moment later, hands barely ghosting over the envelope before he’s setting it to the side. For him to look at later, without Signora watching on like a hungry shark.

“Was there anything else you needed?” He asks, as polite as he can muster.

“Oh, no, no.” Signora seems to find this much too funny. Maybe it is funny from an outside perspective, but for Kaeya this is nothing short of embarrassing. This woman is far older than he could ever imagine being. She stares at him, that singular eye piercing with its intensity. “Well? Are you not going to ask about the letter?”

“No.”

He already saw the looping cursive of his name on the front, and the way it curled into a feather on the ‘i’ of Pavlín gave away who the sender may be. Feathered dresses and giggling words, and the Innamorati have lingered in his mind for long enough already. They can stand to be shelved for a moment longer, rather than being pulled out into the light in front of Signora.

“Shame.” Signora looks put-out for a moment, before reaching for something else. “Well, I was hoping to catch both you and Childe, but seeing as he’s not going to make a reappearance I may as well do this now.”

A long, smooth box is set down between them, the silver Fatui emblem glinting in the sunlight teasingly. It makes it look molten, as though the whole box is about to catch on fire.

He looks up at Signora, raising a singular eyebrow as she does not make another move to do anything. She doesn’t even speak.

He reaches forward, passing over the invisible barrier they’ve set between themselves, maintained by the distance of the desk, and pulls the box towards himself. It slides easily over the desk, where he had expected it to scrape and grate against the wood, to make a sound that would fill the silence. Instead, there is nothing.

It continues to be quiet as he undoes the latches, only giving it a second glance when he realises just how many are keeping the box shut. So firmly shut, in fact, that only once he unlatches the second to last clasp does the split in the wood reveal itself.

He flips it open as soon as the last latch falls open, bracing himself for- something. He’s not sure what he was bracing himself for, but the solemnity with which Signora had presented the box; the silence that had followed her announcement; the way she had tracked his movements carefully, as though watching for a moment of weakness…

All of it had made him expect the worst.

Instead, lying on a bed of plush velvet, he’s been presented with two delusions.

He looks at Signora then, gauging her reaction to the gifts inside of this box.

“From Her Majesty?” He asks. He’s not sure who else it would be. Who else it would be that Signora would act as a messenger for. Not sure what else would require a Harbinger to be the postal system. This would certainly not be making it through Liyue’s customs, and he has the sudden, slightly nauseating realisation, that this has definitely been smuggled into Liyue.

“She hopes you appreciate the gift.” There is something strange in Signora’s eyes. Something unreadable. “I think she believes it to be rather…romantic.”

That’s…one way to put it, for sure.

Twin electro delusions sit inside the box, the traditional Snezhnayan frame modified into the swooping curve of an eight-pointed star, feathers clasping the delusion in place, holding it tightly. The other is far more pointed, much like a typical Snezhnayan vision frame, though with the glaring exception of swirling waves holding this one in place.

He stares at them for a moment, before reaching forward and plucking the latter delusion from the box. It crackles faintly in his palm, electricity sparking along his fingers and making them twitch. Perhaps it reacts with the cryo running in his veins, charging the ice that lingers beneath his skin. Or perhaps even a false manifestation of an Archon’s power recognises something as wrong about him.

He rubs a thumb back and forth across the swirling wave, feels the way it dips and curves beneath his skin. Where it presses back into him, denting his thumb. The give and take of the metal.

He shuts the lid of the box and sets it aside for Childe. Later.

“Thank you.” He tells Signora, honestly.

She watches him with something curious in her eye still, something like a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. It disappears as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Kaeya to wonder if it had been imagined when her face freezes over.

“I only did it because Her Majesty requested I do so.” She stands, dress sweeping out as she turns. “I appreciate the meal,” she tells him. The meal that she left the majority of on his desk, ripped into tiny pieces. It’s reminiscent of a scene Kaeya would often stumble across in the back alleys of Mondstadt, where a cat had managed to catch a pigeon, but not cleanly. Not painlessly. The feathers would be left strewn about until the wind caught them, or another picked them up. “May Her Majesty’s will guide you forth.”

“May Her Majesty’s will guide you,” he repeats back. And Signora is gone, door clicking shut behind her.

He frowns, and rubs his thumb over the warm metal of his delusion’s frame. It crackles again, electro stinging the ends of his fingers. They begin to ache with it, but still, he does not pull away.

Signora leaves Liyue the same day she arrived, heading off to her true destination.

Kaeya reads the letter Madam Swan (as she calls herself) has sent to him. And promptly places it, and the little trinkets enclosed within the letter by her and her friends, into a drawer. One that locks.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t see Childe for almost an entire month after Signora’s departure.

He hadn’t been present when Kaeya rose that morning despite it being earlier than he would usually be moving around the apartment – not a single peep, not a sign to indicate that Childe was lingering anywhere in the small space. Realistically, Kaeya would have seen him if he were really hidden somewhere inside the apartment, but it had almost been comforting to pretend that he had simply missed the other, that he had risen too late to catch his partner before he disappeared out the door.

(He knows that it isn’t true, that he had risen long before Childe would ever consider stirring, even with his rigid schedule.)

He could attempt to pretend that Childe had simply dipped in and out of the apartment, as his partner is wont to do when caught up in a particular case, searching for a specific client of theirs that is just a little too slippery to allow a moment of rest.

Still, the silence of sunlight and dust is all that is present to greet him that morning. Dust motes swirl through the air as he stands, caught and suspended in the sunlight, a shimmering mirage that makes him sneeze.

His pretending, acting as though there is no worry, acting as though Childe had returned the night before, even if it was only for a few minutes, is all for nothing really. He knows it not to be true. Knows that Childe had not returned to the apartment the night before, the same as he failed to do so the night prior, and then the night before that, too.

The Kaeya of six months ago would not have bothered with worrying over Childe's sudden absences. He was a flighty thing, not content with remaining in one place for too long. The Kaeya of a year ago wouldn’t have batted an eye at Childe's sudden absence. The Kaeya of a year ago might even revel in his absence, would have seized the moment of peace and secluded himself in a corner of the lab to work on a project.

But the Kaeya of a year ago is a very different man to the one of today. Childe's sudden absence leaves him stressed and a little disorientated, as though he’s been brought out into the middle of an ocean and cut loose, left to flounder and search for dry land.

…Perhaps a poor analogy, but the stress of the unknown grates on his nerves worse than anything else.

He prefers to be prepared for moments like these, to have all the details at hand so he can plan and plan and plan; so he can create failsafe after failsafe, if only to ensure success. To ensure that his nerves do not get the better of him and leave him a mess.

There is little relief to be found in his day to day, but the agents under Childe's command continue to function, as though they are being fed orders. It means Childe has been in the Harbour at some point, or has made contact with his recruits – enough to make sure that his operations continue running smoothly while he’s off- off gallivanting around the countryside or whatever the hell it is that he’s doing right now.

But the lack of reaction despite Childe's obvious absence also serves to make him more stressed than before. As though Kaeya is the only one that notices Childe's absence.

Though perhaps that is unduly harsh to their recruits. Many of them still appear tense, on-edge, around him. As though they can sense there is something wrong, even as he refuses to allow his fingers to tremble, even with the low-level stress electrifying his veins, refuses to allow the mask of calm (apathy, even) to shatter, even as the days turn to a week, then another.

There is never a spare moment to ask one of Childe's officers, the ones that are presumably handing out the orders from Childe to ensure the agents continue to collect their debts so they can at least attempt to maintain their cover for being present in the Harbour. Kaeya’s not sure what he would do if the Qixing were to begin an investigation into their affairs on top of everything else.

It would be equally useless to ask Ekaterina. The woman may be more experienced, senior to Kaeya in everything except rank and someone that he would typically turn to in moments like this. But she returns home each evening without fail, not lingering around, seemingly more interested in catching up on sleep in her standard issue apartment. Kaeya can't blame her.

Perhaps it is as simple as Childe avoiding him. That everyone else sees him and in unaware of Childe's “disappearance” because, to them, he is still very present in their lives.

They haven’t had any major arguments. They haven’t even had any small, inconsequential arguments – they type that can spiral and fester if left unresolved for too long.

If anything, Childe has been the one acting odd. Spending all his time outside of the city limits, despite having duties inside of the Harbour too, to the point where Kaeya only saw him during the evenings, inside their shared apartment. Even then, before his impromptu disappearing act, Childe had been twitchy. Despite it only being the two of them in the evenings, some kind of street food balanced on their small table and the setting sun transforming everything into a shade of orange, he had been uneasy. As though he expected the shadows themselves to gain sentience and attack him.

Kaeya would have to be a fool not to notice such odd behaviour.

And yet he was apparently fool enough to let this slip past him.

He cannot help but feel a little guilty – he had known there was something up with Childe before he pulled this disappearing act, but he hadn’t properly registered it. Had only been tangentially aware of it, in the way that the bruises beneath his eyes seemed to darken with each morning, that his fingers would tremble and his hydro weapons would shiver before he struck out.

And yet.

He hadn’t bothered to voice his concerns, hadn’t turned to give Childe his full attention and asked just what was wrong with him. He had been content to allow it to exist alongside him, as though it was just another facet of Childe. Hadn’t bothered to check that Childe truly was okay and not about to have some kind of stress-induced mental break.

Perhaps if he had lingered on the moments that left him feeling off-kilter for a little longer, the ones that stuck in his mind even after Childe had seemingly recovered and regained his easy-going, cocky attitude. Even as his fingers stilled and the water of his blades would solidify enough to draw blood.

He doesn’t mention it.

Doesn’t bring it up with those around him at all, even as he finds himself staring blankly at paperwork he could complete in his sleep – supply requests, shipments, debt collections – still contemplating Childe. It’s become a slight issue.

But if they are all content to continue acting as though everything is fine, that nothing is wrong with the world, then he is too. No reason to stir up a fuss over nothing if no-one else is worried – fuss that would only pull more attention towards the Fatui presence in Liyue when that is the last thing they want right now. The Fatui thrives on remaining an unknown force, something that can amass power in the shadows, only to step out into the light and reveal themselves as a larger threat than their enemies could have ever conceived.

He especially doesn’t want to kick up a fuss when he’s still not certain if Childe has truly disappeared or is just avoiding him.

The only way this situation could worsen is if the Millelith show up hauling Childe's corpse with them.

He’s trying not to think about that possibility too much.

Because, as a rule to himself, Kaeya does not worry. (A rule he is consistently breaking at the moment.) If he worried over each and every stupid decision Childe made over the years his hair would be entirely grey and he’d have aged beyond his years from stress. This is nothing out of the ordinary for Childe, after all – he is a free spirit, one that goes wherever he pleases whenever he pleases.

Childe does poorly with boundaries or constraints of any kind, and the walls of the Harbour had probably been digging into him for a while now, perhaps tightening over time until he was unable to breathe, like the bars for a particularly small cage. He cannot expect someone accustomed to roaming the wilds of Snezhnaya, both with and without Kaeya to accompany him, to constrict himself to such a small area for such a long time.

So, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s seemingly disappeared off the face of Teyvat completely.

(The reassurances feel empty, especially after so long of repeating them. Trying to beat the mantra into his brain so he can think about something other than Childe, something other than his missing partner. The only way those false platitudes could become emptier is if he gained the courage to speak them aloud.

He may have set the rule for himself, in the safety of his own mind, but he breaks it anyway. He worries. He worries so intensely after it reaches the first full week and Childe still hasn’t made any effort to show his face inside the city.

Even Auntie Chen begins to ask him where her best customer has disappeared off to – he tries not to take offence at being delegated to second-best.

He doesn’t mean to worry her, either, but he sees the solemn thing wash over her wizened face when he takes a moment too long to formulate a responses, hesitates just a beat too long to be truly convincing – to respond too quickly would only evoke suspicion, and yet he fails utterly and swings too far in the other direction and his response comes too slow, equally suspicious. So much for the years he’s spent lying his way out of any and every tight corner imaginable.

He had waved her concern off with a laugh and a smile that felt strained at the edges, felt as though it was a single moment away from peeling from his face completely and leaving his distress exposed for the entire world to see.

Even for someone practiced with slipping on mask after mask, exchanging one for another as the situation requires it, his words are too loud as he attempts to cover up the hesitance Auntie Chen may have read in the tense set of his shoulders or the shaking of his hands (a bad, bad, habit that he needs to break). Tries to cover the flaw in his façade, tries to pretend the mora isn’t handed over too slow to be at all convincing.

Whatever emotions she read from his face as he lost control over the muscles there and it twisted – from a happy, carefree mask, away from his usual persona, into the stress-riddled one that he finds himself wearing in the privacy of his own office more and more frequently – means that she reads him as easily as one might read a book.

“Oh, you know how some people are,” he had said, still smiling. It had made his face ache. The forced perfection of his expression probably veering into something unnatural and unnerving, something that hadn’t happened beyond his first few years in Mondstadt. “They can't stand to be in one place for too long, they get too restless. Childe is just one of those people.”

He doesn’t think Auntie Chen believed him.

He’s not quite sure he believed himself, either.

If any of his agents notice his slowly fraying nerves, something he’s having to frequently hold a tighter and tighter grasp on, none of them comment on it. Perhaps none of them notice it at all, perhaps his mask is truly as good as he has fooled himself into believing and it has left him an impenetrable fortress, even as it feels like everything is crashing down around his ears.

He’s not exactly popular with his subordinates either, each of them finding his manner a little too cold to be comfortable with him the way they are comfortable with Childe. Maybe there is no difference in his behaviour to his subordinates. Nothing there to notice a change in.

Ekaterina seems to notice something, gives him more and more disapproving looks as he continues to arrive earlier and earlier. She doesn’t put her foot down and attempt to stop the behaviour, not that he would let her seeing as he is her direct boss, not even when he begins to turn up just after sunrise, before the night shift even manage to leave.

Though, perhaps he looks pathetic enough that she’s worried for his safety if he were kicked back out of the Bank and left to wander the streets of Liyue at that time of the morning.

Still, he decidedly does not worry. Doesn’t think about what it is that Childe might be doing. Where in Liyue’s wilderness he may have found himself. He's not sure he wants to know what it is that Childe has gotten himself wrapped up in- what it is that has dragged him away from the Harbour and kept him away.)

He loses only a little sleep over Childe's absence. (A lie.)

Spends several hours a night staring up at the ceiling as he waits and waits. He knows it is concerning, even as he counts the swirling patterns on the ceiling. He knows that his own health shouldn’t have become so closely tied to another human being, especially one that is prone to running off and doing whatever he fancies whenever he fancies. Traces out images with his eye between the grooves and bumps of the plastering as he thinks and thinks and thinks.

Which means it is not a surprise to be awake. Again.

One moment he is asleep, just below the surface of wakefulness, and the next he is blinking his eye open.

It is as though he hadn’t slept at all, as though the snatches of sleep he just managed to catch were nothing more than a particularly long blink of his eyelid.

Something in the air around him is still, in the way that everything comes to a halt moments before the lightning strikes, before the monster bursts free of the shadows. He breathes a little shallower, a little slower, wary of disturbing whatever presence has invaded this room in the darkness and quiet of the early morning – the too-early morning, where not even the fishermen have begun to stir yet.

Something makes a floorboard creak.

The sound is just barely loud enough to reach his ears – would probably not have even registered if his sense were on par with a normal human’s. It’s like a gunshot in the silence, though, and he stills completely, not even drawing breath into his lungs and he waits and listens for the sound again.

A chill steals over his skin as he shifts upwards ever so slightly, frost gathering at his fingertips as he prepares himself for whoever has decided it was a grand old idea to break into his apartment in the middle of the night. He sure hopes whatever potential criminal he’s got on his hands is aware of just who is occupying this apartment currently.

He shifts up, propping himself up with his elbows so he can keep an eye on the ajar door that leads into the small bedroom, just adjacent to the main living space.

He is entirely silent as he listens. His lungs begin to burn but he refuses to draw breath, but he ignores the sensation and tilts his head towards the door, listening carefully as he watches.

The floorboard creaks again.

He’s been living in this apartment long enough that he can pinpoint the different sounds of its floors and walls. The way it groans, as an old building often does, the way each floorboard sounds just slightly different. Enough for him to pinpoint where his intruder is.

He warps, sweeping a leg out and bringing his shadowy companion to the floor with a loud thump. He’s on them a moment later, knees pinning their arms to their body, one arm braced over their throat as his other hand holds a deadly spire of twisting, glimmering ice.

There’s a sharp intake of breath, the sound so disgustingly, achingly familiar that Kaeya freezes completely for a moment, still pressing Childe – because it is Childe, the stupid fucking idiot. The stupid, idiotic man that he’s been worrying himself to sickness over for the past month that has just decided to show back up at their apartment out of the fucking blue as though nothing had happened.

“You.” He can't even find it in himself to be sorry for the way his voice growls as he says it. Isn't sorry about the accusation lining his words at all. He keeps his icy blade pressed firmly to Childe's throat. Sure, they may be allies, but the emotional torment Childe has subjected him to for the last month means that he deserves all of this.

“Pav,” Childe whines, honest to all the gods, whines. “What are you doing?”

“Deciding whether it would be worth it to kill you.” He's dead serious. Sure, maybe he spent the last month missing Childe like one would miss a limb, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t astronomically pissed with him right now. Spur of the moment murder is a thing for a reason.

“Ah, no, definitely not!” Childe shifts and Kaeya presses the knife a little closer. He can feel the thrumming pulse of Childe's heartbeat beneath his arm, which is still pressed heavily to Childe's chest. “Very bloody, very terrible. Let’s not do that.”

“Mm.” He considers Childe for several long moments, picking apart the mud on his face, the dried blood in his hair. The fact that he absolutely reeks, and decides that, yes, Childe hasn’t returned to the Harbour a single time since he up and disappeared an entire goddamn month ago. “Do you have a good explanation for me?”

He leans back a little, not enough to give Childe any leeway to break himself loose, but enough that his back will stop hurting as he waits for Childe's answer.

Childe's face twists, something uncomfortable and unknown flashing across his face. For all of Kaeya's proficiency in decoding facial expressions- the ease with which he reads Childe's mannerisms, a year of partnership behind them, he cannot for the life of him understand what emotions are swimming just below the surface.

“No.”

He had expected the answer before it came, but it still irritates. Still scratches at something in the back of his mind, something that begs to ask further, to prod harder, look deeper in an attempt to peel back the layers of mystery and unveil the truth beneath.

Childe's lips are twisted into a pout, looking at him from below his lashes. The pleading look might have been more effective if it wasn’t for the dried blood caked on his cheek, running from his nose. It doesn’t look broken, but the low light casts long shadows over both of them, and the darkness can distort his sight, even with his improved night vision.

“Right,” he sighs, pulling his arm back from Childe's throat completely, allowing the dagger to dissolve into frost and snowflakes. He keeps Childe pinned beneath his weight, still, not trusting that the other won’t bolt at the first opportunity. “Well, you stink.”

“Hey!”

“And god only knows how much blood you’ve got on yourself. I mean, seriously?” He plucks at Childe's shirt collar, wrinkling his nose at the tacky feeling of dried blood. “What were you doing, ripping throats out with your teeth?”

He pauses and considers Childe's face for a moment, the way his lips press together and he refuses to answer that question. The way the blood is thick around his mouth, less like it had splattered onto his face and dried there, and more like…

“Alright, I don't actually care.” The thing in the back of his mind itches a little more, nudging him towards the obvious, logical answer- which isn’t at all logical, or obvious, or an actual answer that would make sense. “Come on, up.”

He stands, watching Childe for a moment before hauling him up too with a sigh.

He steers the two of them through their small apartment and into the equally tiny bathroom. It’s just large enough for the bathtub shoved against one wall and a toilet and sink.

“Sit.” He deposits Childe on the closed lid of the toilet, watching as the other sinks down gracelessly, as though attempting to hide the way his legs are refusing to support his weight and failing miserably. Kaeya doesn’t call him out on it.

“What am I, your dog?”

“A dog would be more obedient, dear.” He considers the late hour and the noisy pipes, before deciding that he actually doesn’t care and cranking the taps on anyway. “A dog wouldn’t run off for an entire month without a word to anyone.”

Childe hums behind him. “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to train me a little better in the future, won’t you?”

Kaeya pauses, fingers dipped into the water to test the temperature of it, before twisting his head around and staring at Childe a little incredulously. Seriously, this is the conversation they're deciding to start with?

Childe smirks at him from his perch, curled forward and chin resting in the palm of one hand. The harsh lighting makes him look paler than he actually is; it sets him in harsh contrast with the blood coating most of his skin, makes the coppery tint to his hair shimmer.

“You're testing my patience,” he warns. “Keep up like that and I’ll start calling you a mutt.”

“Aw, really?” It’s too easy. Sinfully easy to fall back into the usual back and forth, the give and take of their conversations. It’s disorienting. A month of nothing, of no-one but his own thoughts in the dark. He feels as though he’s just resurfaced in a stormy ocean, greedily taking in air but continuing to be battered by the waves. “You gonna put me down if I bite you?”

Kaeya narrows his eye at Childe. “Yes.”

“You are a cruel, cruel man, Pavlín,” Childe bemoans.

“Yes.” The water doesn’t feel too cold, but it’s also not melting his skin off. Probably a good temperature, then. He shuts the taps off, and the pipes groan creakily, probably waking every other person in the building. Not that he particularly cares. “Get in the bath.”

“Not even a please?”

A sharp look is all it takes to have Childe raising his hands in surrender. And then Kaeya gets to watch as Childe peels himself out of his clothes, almost painfully. The fabric seems to have fused with his skin in some places, meaning he has to awkwardly shimmy out of it.

He looks away as Childe sinks into the tub, only looking back when a damp hand taps at his arm.

Childe leans his chin on the edge of the tub, watching Kaeya with half-lidded eyes. The steam leaves Childe's skin a flushed pink, colour rising on his cheeks and making him look a little healthier than before. It matches the pink of the water.

When several minutes pass with Childe only breathing softly and blinking, Kaeya huffs a breath and stands. “Do not drown yourself,” he warns.

“You got it.”

Despite Childe's easy acquiescence he's brisk with his steps, back less than a minute later, ruined handkerchief clutched in one hand. He wets it at the sink with warm water before stepping back over to the bath. Childe's eyes remain fixed on him the whole time he works, watching as he shuffles around the small bathroom and does his best not to flush under the scrutiny.

He takes Childe's face in his hand, cool skin on warm as he tilts Childe's head back, beginning to slowly wipe away the grime and blood that clings to his face. He’s careful as he does it, gentle when he wipes over his petal-thin eyelids, swooping down over his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

Childe does not close his eyes during the ministrations, even as Kaeya shuffles closer to better wipe away the blood that has become encrusted in his lashes. The intense eye contact leaves him feeling even warmer than before, not at all helped by the warm water dripping down his wrist or the steam that surrounds the two of them.

The silence stretches, slow and languid, comfortable. Childe is unusually silent, seeming content to just watch as Kaeya cleans the blood from his face. Kaeya's not even certain that Childe blinks once, even as the seconds stretch on and on and his eyes must begin to burn.

The handkerchief is thoroughly beyond repair at this point. It had been wrecked the first time it was used to wipe the blood on Childe's face away, but he had clung onto it anyway.

“Tip your head back,” he murmurs, wary of breaking the quiet air between them. Childe goes easily, one of Kaeya's hands wrapped around the back of his neck as he wets his hair. It makes his breath catch, watching as Childe easily tilts his head back and exposes the long, pale line of his neck without further questioning.

For a murderer – a pair of murderers, his mind whispers – Childe has few reservations over leaving himself vulnerable to Kaeya.

He eases Childe back up, hand still wrapped around the back of his neck.

The sound Childe makes when he begins brushing through the wet strands, slowly working the shampoo into his scalp, is oddly reminiscent of a cat’s purr. It fades into nothing a moment later, but Kaeya heard it all the same, tucking that away into the same box at the back of his mind that contains everything else about Childe.

Childe goes boneless as he strokes careful hands through his hair, absently noting that it’s longer than it was before his month-long disappearance.

“Close your eyes,” he tells Childe. Childe does so without hesitation and, again, the easy compliance gives Kaeya an odd rush, something warm curling in the pit of his stomach.

He rinses the shampoo from Childe's hair carefully, watching as the pinkish suds slip free of the copper hair, ridding it of the rust-red tint of blood. He sits Childe back up again, not missing the way his eyes remain shut, how he leans back into Kaeya's hands despite how cold they must feel against his skin. Childe feels boiling to the cool skin of his hands, almost hot enough to burn.

He repeats the motions with the conditioner, watching and feeling the way Childe sinks into his hands a little more.

He stands abruptly once its rinsed out, and that seems to be enough to bring Childe back into himself, blue eyes blinking open, a little of the haze clearing from them as he looks up at Kaeya.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he tells him, a little louder. The delicate threads holding the quiet, calm atmosphere together snap as he speaks above a whisper. “Wash yourself and I’ll bring you some other clothes.”

He gathers the discarded clothes – they're so covered in blood that they don't even deserve to be called clothes at this point, more scraps of fabric than anything else – and gets halfway out the door before Childe makes a questioning sound in the back of his throat.

It’s enough to halt Kaeya and make him turn back around, waiting for a verbal question.

“What are you doing with those,” Childe asks, nodding towards the bloodied cloth that Kaeya is attempting not to touch more than necessary.

“I'm going to burn them.”

“I-” Childe chokes on a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” He’s been experimenting with the delusion when sleeplessness seized him and left him with nothing to do. He’s rather certain the night shift would kick him out if he attempted to work beyond midnight. He has discovered that, with a high enough voltage, he can start a small fire.

“I, well, alright then.” Childe's still squinting, as though he doesn’t quite believe Kaeya. “Have fun, I guess.”

“I will.” He turns around again. “Try not to crack your head on the tile, dear.”

The clothes catch fire quite quickly with the high voltage, burning rapidly. It leaves his fingers stinging with superconduct reactions and he can feel his fingers spasming as the last vestiges of the electro dissipate out into the night sky.

He smothers the fire when only a few scraps of cloth are left amidst the ashes, wary of the Millelith being called by a concerned citizen. He doesn’t really want to get arrested for arson, especially when he doesn’t have any good explanation for what he’s doing.

He’s certain that, yeah, sorry, my partner just returned after going missing for an entire month in the wilderness of Liyue, and he was covered in blood and looks like he probably ripped someone’s throat out too. I just needed to burn his bloodied clothes to try and gain some semblance of control over my sanity, so sorry sir, won’t happen again.

Either he would end up in prison until his diplomatic immunity managed to free him, or subjected to some kind of psychological evaluation.

When he returns to the apartment, Childe has managed to locate a towel and seems perfectly unharmed when Kaeya leaves him a change of clothes. He then tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s sleeping on the sofa and ignores any protests Childe can come up with as he returns to the bedroom in an attempt to get at least some sleep.

If he only manages to catch a few snatches of sleep, too preoccupied with the sounds of life just outside his door – the sofa creaking as Childe moves in his sleep, the quiet breathing that seems magnified in the silent apartment – then that is between him and whatever god is watching over him right now and laughing.

If the very next morning Childe is cheerful and smiling, grinning at him as though he had never even disappeared in the first place, then Kaeya does not worry. Even when Childe acts as though he had cooked breakfast for the two of them for the past month, he does not think about it too much.

It’s as though everything was a long, terrible dream that Kaeya has just awoken from. A sentiment he might be more inclined to believe if blood wasn’t crusted beneath his fingernails still. If Childe's eyes weren’t tired and absent, not even a shimmer to match the excited smile he wore.

Kaeya takes it all in, slow. Like breathing in then out, watching as Childe turns back to his pan, beginning to chatter away about whatever topic first comes to mind. He’s not sure what that topic is, too busy with nodding along as though he is listening despite the static crackling in his ears.

Kaeya does not worry.

(He is a liar.)

Chapter Text

“So, you are amenable to repaying us at a twenty percent interest rate for this loan?” He steeples his hands together as he speaks, the leather of his gloves creaking as his fingers move. Kaeya watches the client carefully, noting the way she breathes a little faster than typical, her eyes slightly rounded.

“Yes, yes,” she nods along quickly. If she nods any quicker Kaeya is worried that her head will simply topple off her shoulders. He hums, the sound accompanied by the slow turning of paper, hoping to encourage the woman to speak further. He can see the way her pulse beats in her throat. “That is absolutely perfect, thank you, sir.”

Her eyes dart to his, then away again.

Kaeya represses the urge to sigh, pressing his fingers a little tighter together before he drops them from their steepled position. “Well, if that is the case then can I ask you to sign here?” He slides the contract, which includes the twenty percent interest rate, across the desk towards the woman. He pauses, then pushes a pen across too.

It’s one of his nicer ones from Snezhnaya. A gift from Pantalone that Kaeya had attempted to politely decline, only for the Harbinger to deliver several sets of the damn pens to his office as a kind of silent protest. He’s not entirely sure what the man gets from him using expensive, gold-coated writing utensils, but he’s hardly going to protest. He’s never used such nice pens in his life.

The woman’s hands shake as she picks the pen up, fingers trembling as she lowers the nib to the page. She clenches her hand a little tighter and the subtle shaking ceases for long enough that she can sign her name elegantly at the bottom of the page.

The sound of shifting paper is amplified in the silence. Kaeya waits for the ink of the signature to dry before he shuffles it into the stack of papers, pulling the last page free. He slides it across the desk and she signs it without him even prompting her too (poor form on her part, very, very bad mistake. She hadn’t even read any of the terms he had written out), her eyes unseeing as she stares somewhere over his shoulder.

The pen is handed back to him without complaint and he splashes his own signature along the bottom of the page, looking up with a smile.

“Well, that’s all of our business concluded, then. Thank you ever so much for choosing the Northland Bank. I can assure you we are looking forward to see how this investment turns out; your ideas are new and imaginative, I can only hope that others will agree with us, hm?”

“Yes,” the woman’s voice is absent, unfeeling despite successfully gaining a rather hefty loan from the Bank. “I rather hope so too.”

“Allow me to see you out,” he stands and the client stands too, smoothing her skirt down with worried, pinching fingers. He holds the door for her as she leaves, shutting it firmly after bidding her one more farewell. He leans a palm against the door for a long moment, staring at the solid wood before he turns around again.

Childe lounges on the windowsill, one leg draping towards the floor as he props a book up against the other.

Kaeya glares at him, disgusted by his appreciation for the way the sun highlights the copper of Childe's hair, making him look ethereal as he sits and bathes in the setting sun and its golden glow. His pale fingers turn another page, long and delicate as they trace down the edge of the page.

Kaeya twitches before warping over to stand in front of Childe's seat, only growing more irritated when Childe only turns his head upwards with a short hum. Gods, this is just like some shitty romance novel, the way his head tilts back, as though he’s upturning his face in invitation for a k-

“Do you want to explain to me why my client was unable to get through three words without freezing up in terror?”

“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.” Right, screw any previous romantic thoughts, Kaeya's going to wrap his hands around that throat and wring it.

“Do not test my patience right now,” he leans into Childe's space until they're almost nose to nose. His hair falls over his shoulder and brushes against Childe, the end of the braid almost reaching the other man’s lap. The book lays there, forgotten, open to a random page. “That is the fifth client to react with fear within the last week. Each of those instances has a common factor of you being present in the room while I was hosting a meeting.”

“This is my office too,” Childe pouts. “You can't just kick me out.”

“I am not kicking you out,” Kaeya draws in a slow breath. “I am aware this is your office as much as it is mine, my dear, however my issue arises with you perching yourself behind my desk like some vengeful gargoyle and staring down any of our potential clients. Ekaterina has been receiving complaints about you.”

“I'm not a gargoyle,” Childe flips his book shut, covers snapping together. “Those things are ugly, what are you comparing me to them for?”

“You are scaring my clients away.”

Childe shrugs. “Not my fault if they can't cope with a few curious looks.”

Kaeya has to resist the urge to sigh, tilting his head back to pinch at the bridge of his nose instead. He attempts a new angle, “How about you read at your own desk instead? The windowsill must be terribly uncomfortable, hm? For something to place you on medical leave for an entire week it must be serious, no?”

Childe frowns.

“This window is not designed with it being a seat in mind. It is all…sharp angles and harsh edges. None of which are suitable for a still recovering patient, aren’t I right?”

“You're always right, Pav.” Childe smiles, leaning after Kaeya. He’s close enough that Kaeya could easily breach the distance between them, could reach out and brush a hand over Childe's face. Such a touch is far too delicate for either of them, far too reminiscent of that night that shall not be spoken of, where he had washed the blood from Childe's hair and wiped it from his face. “I just prefer to read here; the sunlight makes it easier to decipher the Liyuean.”

“Your Liyuean is flawless.” It may have been a little rough around the edges when just slipping into their roles here, but several months amongst native speakers and Childe could almost be recognised as one of them if it wasn’t for his ginger hair.

“Aw, you flatter me.”

“Just sit at your own desk next time.” He gives up on trying to reason with him, it had done little to dissuade Childe the last few times he had brought it up so he doubts it will work now. “I’d prefer not to chase off every one of the Bank’s clients, hm?”

“Whatever you say, Pav.”

Kaeya sits back at his own desk, shuffling through the papers of his most recent contract without really reading any of them.

He can feel Childe's eyes on his back, and a moment later there’s a foot nudging at his chair in an irregular rhythm – a tap-kick-kick-tap tap-kick tap-tap-tap-kick that he's felt enough times to memorise the pattern and also felt enough times to know that it infuriates him – and he knows that Childe is probably ten minutes from descending onto Kaeya's person and demanding they leave the office.

He may not dare to speak of The Incident (as he has taken to calling it in the privacy of his own mind), but that does not mean he isn’t thinking of it. The Incident has remained a topic neither of them mention directly, perhaps referenced indirectly. He’d almost lost his mind when Childe referred to it as his impromptu holiday, and had to leave the room in order to collect himself and not strangle Childe.

For Childe to refuse to speak on the experience means that it was likely demanding, whether that be physically or mentally demanding, he is not quite certain yet. Perhaps both. He would rather not deny Childe of his coping mechanisms, however he draws the line at making light of a situation that Kaeya had lost nearly a month of sleep over.

For them to return to ‘normal’ is a challenge all of its own, with Childe pushing himself closer and closer to Kaeya with every passing day. He had thought he was imagining it at first, unused to sharing his space with Childe after a month of his absence, but then Childe seemed to take his silence on the matter as acceptance – as permission of some kind – and had started to push himself closer.

Kaeya is unbothered by Childe's physical closeness to him a majority of the time; he only finds issue with it when Childe insists on propping his chin on Kaeya's shoulder or wrapping an arm around his waist while he is debriefing a cohort of their agents.

Perhaps Childe remains unaware of the rumour mill that spins whenever the two of them are involved, but this new affection has only made it churn out new theories and ideas even faster. Each of which Ekaterina painstakingly documents and delivers to his desk with a grin and laugh. She seems to find some kind of amusement in his misery.

“What do you think of this,” Childe's book clatters onto his desk, right on top of the documents Kaeya had been pretending to read. He sighs and tilts his head back, thinly veiled frustration appearing in order to keep up the act, the back and forth the two of them are accustomed to.

Childe grins back at him, leaning over Kaeya to tilt the book a little closer to him. It makes something in his chest warm when Childe automatically adjusts it so Kaeya doesn’t have to turn his head to read the text. What doesn’t warm his chest is the hand pressing on his shoulder, thumb brushing over the back of his neck.

(It makes his stomach warm with the closeness, with the still new and budding affection that he is now aware that he holds for Childe. It had been far easier to engage in this casual closeness when he had simply thought of them as nothing more than two exceptionally close friends, ones that may not always get along but ones that would trust each other to the, probably, bitter end. He curses Madam Swan several times daily for pulling the wool away from his eyes and exposing him to the harsh truths of reality.)

“And what, exactly, am I looking at,” he asks.

“Our ticket to Osial,” Childe whispers, voice quiet as it always is when they're planning their primary objective. The warmth of his breath against Kaeya's bare skin is enough to make the hair on his arms raise, reacting to the heat more strongly than he ever reacts to the cold. “These are Sigils of Permission, apparently they used to be gifted to treasured mortals so that they might enter Jueyun Karst.”

“And what use does that have to us,” Kaeya leans back in his chair, even as it brings him closer to Childe. Closer to his chest and the beating of his heart. “If we entered Jueyun Karst the adepti would immediately be upon us, Sigil of Permission or not.”

“Well,” Childe leans further forward, the thumb on the back of his neck digging in for a moment as he flips over a page. “That is not the only purpose they hold. They are also, apparently, rather powerful stockpiles of adeptal energy. For such a strong creature as Osial to be chained for so long, there must be something draining his power or preventing it from returning to him.”

“That would require some kind of blockage,” Kaeya frowns. “Something that would prevent that energy from returning through the correct channels…something that could be bypassed if you were to manually input a large amount of adeptal energy through other means.”

“Bingo!” Childe shakes his shoulder and Kaeya rocks back and forth with the spillage of Childe's excitement.

“And do you know where we find these?”

“No,” Childe frowns for a moment, bouncing back a second later. “But! I am certain that we can recreate them, right? I could ask the Doc to lend me a hand, but why would I do that when I have his protégé right here, right?”

Kaeya sighs. “You want me to synthesise a Sigil for you?”

“Yup! You probably have the best idea of what goes on with these kinds of things. You're not constantly talking about the flows of ley lines and the channels of power in the earth for nothing, are you?”

“I can take a look at it,” he says, pausing as Childe cheers silently, hands thrown up in the air. “If,” Childe halts his celebrations, “and only if you leave me alone when I am dealing with clients.”

“I- oh fine, you just know how to ruin all my fun, don't you?”

“Mm. I take pleasure in it, my dear.”

“You need to control it better.”

“I'm trying,” Childe huffs. His fingers twitch with frustration and leftover electricity, trembling against the sides of the glass. “You’ve had longer to do this than I have.”

“True,” the unspoken you could have practiced the same amount as I if you had been here is loud in the silence. Childe's eyes flick up to his own, bright, deadened blue staring right at him as though he can hear Kaeya's thoughts. Perhaps he can, the two of them have been nigh inseparable for the past three years; it would come as a surprise to no-one that the two of them have begun to understand each other without words.

He pushes that thought aside, unprepared to consider such an…intimate thing. To claim that his partner (partner in nothing more than work; even if they are called a pair, each a half of one whole) has spent enough time around him, and Kaeya spent enough time around him, that they can understand each other without words. Only the soulmates from the beginning of the Tsaritsa’s reign could achieve such a thing; a popular trope in Snezhnayan fiction, one that has begun to infect the light novels of Inazuma – not one that he and Childe embody.

“Ugh,” Childe sets the glass down hard enough that some of the water sloshes over the sides, spilling onto the table the two of them sit at. “Show me again.”

“As you demand, my dear,” Kaeya teases, voice gentle. Easy. He has cursed himself frequently for allowing such a soft tone to reveal itself around Childe. To allow himself to begin pulling down the walls around the still-fragile affection that he has only recently allowed himself to acknowledge. He fears ripping the defences down all at once, afraid of how easily such a fragile thing could be twisted and killed. It is like a delicate thing with wings, and Kaeya has watched Childe shoot many a bird from the sky.

The water on the table freezes, frost beginning to climb up the sides of the glass. “It is in the hands,” he says. His voice does not rise above a whisper, as though this precious moment of instruction may be shattered by anything louder. “If you watch any allogene that possesses an electro vision you will see that the majority of it comes from the hands.”

He flexes his hand carefully, fingers barely hovering over the surface of the ice. He does not need to hold his hand so close, not after weeks of careful practice; but Childe will still need to maintain some kind of contact with his chosen conduit, at least at first, and showing his own skills off would only motivate Childe to do the same without practice. And that, Kaeya fears, is how Childe would rather successfully incapacitate himself with backlash from his delusion.

The surface of the ice crackles to life, sparks sputtering out into the open air. Some of them glow a light purple, others are darker, more blue than purple. He draws his hand back but maintains his concentration, his delicate hold over the small sparks. He keeps a firm but relaxed grip on the power – holding it too hard would cause it to lash out, to seek its freedom; a lax grip allows it to writhe around, unaware of its cage – ensuring that the small sparks do not grow further. He rather likes this apartment, and the landlord had been incredibly clear that they were only permitted to stay here as long as they behaved and kept blood off the furniture and made sure there was no long-lasting damage.

When he looks up, Childe is staring at his hands with such focused concentration that Kaeya can feel his face begin to heat.

It’s only worsened when Childe reaches a hand out and traces a finger over the back of his palm. The contact sends a tremor up his arm, heat pooling at the surface of his skin, even through his glove, and he closes the connection to his delusion with an abrupt snap. The electricity dancing over the surface of the ice dies out with one final pop.

Childe blinks, then looks up at him. “Why’d you stop?” His finger still rests on the back of Kaeya's hand. He’s not certain how to explain it without making a fool of himself, especially when he can feel a blockage lodged into the back of his throat. He can sense, without even trying, that any words he may attempt to form would simply become garbled nonsense. He wisely decides that he likes his pride unwounded and simply swallows around the blockage, not making a sound, and allows the electro to flow over his skin once more.

It takes considerable mental strength to not react, let alone not make an embarrassing sound like a squeak, when Childe settles several other fingers on the back of his hand, positioning them until their wrists are aligned and Childe's hand is splayed over the back of Kaeya's own. It almost feels as though lava has been poured directly onto his skin, that it now runs beneath his skin and is in the process of cooking him alive from the inside out.

“Your fingers are twitching,” Childe tells him, very helpfully.

“Mm.” He responds, very articulately. The blockage in his throat is stubborn, but he manages to swallow it after a moment more of the burning contact. “That’s something that all electro users have to deal with, I'm afraid. You shall simply need to accustom yourself to it.”

“All electro users deal with it?” Childe asks. Kaeya finds himself rather distracted by the way Childe is running his fingers gently over his knuckles. Even through the thick leather he can feel the delicate, feather-light touch. God, he’s turning into one of those maidens in those shitty novels that freak out at the first bit of contact. Fucking hell.

“How aware are you of action potentials in neurones?”

Kaeya had learned, rather rapidly, all the exciting and wonderful ways a neurone functioned when Dottore had found himself fascinated with the idea of using human neurones to achieve…something. He has abandoned the project rather quickly, finding himself bored with the high chance for error due to the involvement of organic matter.

Childe stared at him blankly. “I didn’t go to school after the age of eleven.”

“You could have just said you knew nothing at all,” he says. He can only hope that the snark in his voice covers the way his breath hitched in time with Childe's fingers sweeping over the back of his hand. He thought himself immune to the dramatics of his fellow Harbingers, that perhaps he had escaped inheriting that flair, but in that moment, he can only think to himself this is how I die.

“You're saying you know that much more than me?”

“I am, actually.” Kaeya raises a singular eyebrow, “Come now, dearest, you really think the dear old Doctor would allow my education to be lacking in any way?”

“More like you grew up as a rich boy and already had that education,” Childe grumbles.

Kaeya concedes to that with a gracious nod. “Well, to answer your earlier question on the trembling it is simply because the neurones in my fingers are being influenced by the electro. It is disrupting the delicate balance of charge that the neurones contain, which itself is maintained by the movement of ions, meaning that the threshold for an action potential is being reached.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning the neurones in my hands are sending signals to the central nervous system and causing a reaction to stimuli that does not exist.”

Kaeya watches as understanding dawns in Childe's eyes. “Oh, so it’s basically making your fingers shake because all the delusion’s electricity is messing with your body’s electrical circuits.”

“That is…one way to put it.”

“Why do electro wielders not have some kind of aid to stabilise their hands, then?” Childe wraps a second hand over Kaeya's own, as though to demonstrate how such an aid could keep his hands still. It does reduce some of the shaking, but the trembling of Kaeya's own traitorous heart only worsens in response. “Surely that would allow for finer control over their element.”

“Some do. I have commonly seen finger braces, or even ones for the whole hand.”

His fingers curl into his own palm as Childe continues to hold onto him. Surely he can feel the cold that Kaeya radiates, even if the leather blocks the contact, ensures that he does not inflict frostburn upon those he touches without thought. The edge of his nails brushes against Childe's hands, drifting along the edge of his skin. Kaeya does not pull away, and neither does Childe.

“I haven’t seen any kind of braces on my agents? Several of them use electro.”

“It is uncommon for those in battle settings to use such aids. They are time-consuming to put on and in the heat of battle such time is precious. Many train without and then continue to fight without; there is little demand for precision when fighting an enemy. As long as you can hit a moving target, little else matters.”

“Hm.” Childe is quiet as he thinks. He has been more prone to such quiet thinking since The Incident; it is more common for him to become lost in his own mind, considering several possible outcomes. He thinks over his plans with a meticulousness Kaeya rarely saw from him before – Kaeya was the one that planned his elaborate schemes, and Childe was the one that adapted them in the heat of the moment; he had been the one that knew how situations would change and what the most appropriate response would be when Kaeya struggled with his perfectly constructed plans falling apart. Childe knew which fragments of those shattered plans were still salvageable, and which were better left to gather dust.

As it has many times since Childe's return, his silence allows Kaeya a moment to think too. The electro crackling over the ice dies down as he relaxes his hand. Childe does not release it and Kaeya does not seek to be released. These prolonged moments of quiet give Kaeya the space to look at Childe, to consider the way his eyes look more dead-fish esque than they had before; to consider the twitchiness, the way Childe sticks close to his shoulder – because, yes, he has noticed, even if he is kind enough to not bring it up to Childe's face – the way he has not left the Harbour since his abrupt return.

He seems content to remain within the safe walls when before he couldn’t escape them quick enough. The Childe of a few months ago would be clawing at the walls of their apartment, going stir crazy, if he remained inside for this long. And yet, this new, quieter Childe seems content with sedate mornings, quiet afternoons, and calm evenings.

If Kaeya didn’t know better, he would assume this Childe was a doppelganger of his own. That Childe had been replaced out in the wilderness and the Childe that sat beside him now was nothing more than an imitation of the man he knew.

Kaeya knows better. He, unfortunately, knows Childe as well as he knows the back of his own hand. He would know if Childe had been replaced.

(The glowing vision on Childe's hip is a reassurance, in the moments where Kaeya does not trust his own eye or mind; the moments where doubt clouds his judgement when Childe retreats into himself. When he is quiet where he would usually be loud. Those moments are short and sharp, a break in the façade before Childe brings the mask back up.)

Childe releases his hand slowly, fingers drawing hot patterns over the back of his palm as they drag themselves back towards their owner. He mourns the loss of contact for a moment, but only for a moment.

“Let’s try it again,” he prompts, instead of doing something ridiculous, like reaching out and grasping at Childe's hands again; clutching at the hot skin that threatens to burn him away before it would ever warm him like a man dying. He is a reasonable being, and he can recognise that such actions would be unreasonable. “Just remember that you should not cage it, allow it to-”

“-flow freely,” Childe says at the same time as him. “Yes, I know.”

“I am certain you will get it soon, my dear,” he assures. “You are talented in understanding matters far more complex than this, such a thing cannot escape you for long.”

“Good evening, gentlemen.” Zhongli’s voice is carefully neutral when he greets them, opening the door into his office a little wider. Childe slips inside first, Kaeya following close on his heels. Kaeya cannot help the revulsion that rolls over him as he steps over this threshold once more. He had been gladdened to escape the office the last time he had been unfortunate enough to find himself within it; a simple step over the threshold now and he finds himself thinking of how soon he can leave the room once more.

Zhongli’s presence inside his office is much more obvious than it ever was outside of it. He has spent time in here, clearly, imbuing his power into each of the surfaces. Whether such influence was purposeful or not, Kaeya does not know, however it is offensive to his senses either way; he finds himself caring little if it was purposeful or not when, if he looked closely, he would be able to see the gold shining on each surface, as though it were all lacquered in gold. Kaeya, however, values his eye and would prefer not to blind himself with the opulence and greed of an ancient lizard.

“Good evening, Mr. Zhongli,” Kaeya greets back, careful. Childe echoes his greeting, though it is far lighter than Kaeya's own. More genuine. Zhongli seems to appreciate this as his slitted, golden eyes turn away from Kaeya. He feels as though he can breathe again, as though the weight on his chest has lightened with that heavy gaze no longer lingering on his head.

“Might you enlighten me to the need for such an…urgent meeting?” Zhongli blinks slowly.

“Ah, there is nothing to worry about, Mr. Zhongli,” Childe cuts in before Kaeya himself can. He seemingly remembers their previous meeting where Kaeya had traded petty insults with the Geo Archon and is apparently attempting to prevent that from happening again. Unfortunately for Childe, he is unaware of the similarly tense meeting that Kaeya and Zhongli had participated in, without him there to mediate it in any way.

Zhongli seems to remember this meeting, too. He watches Kaeya carefully, as though he is some wild animal that is prone to violent outbursts; something that might suddenly turn on the occupants of the room and begin tearing into them with the ferocity of a beast. Unfortunately for Zhongli, there is only one person that often enjoys sudden bouts of spontaneous violence, and it is not Kaeya.

Childe drags one of the chairs further from Zhongli’s desk and ushers Kaeya into it. He allows himself to be manhandled into the seat, contenting himself with the way Zhongli’s eyes dart over the small touches between him and Childe, cataloguing every motion. When the man-shaped ancient deity meets his eyes again Kaeya raises a single eyebrow, a silent question of something the matter? echoing in the air between them.

Apparently not, as Zhongli settles himself in his own seat, across the desk from them, and politely offers tea.

Kaeya declines. Childe accepts.

The next few minutes are filled with idle, mindless chatter. The kind of conversation that Kaeya could carry in his sleep; it’s a learned skill, one born from studying how Pantalone sets his clients at ease, turns himself into a personable, almost friendly version of himself to lull his clients (victims) into a sense of security. That this man in front of them is not as terrible as the rumours have made him out to be, that he is nothing more than a simple merchant, just like they are themselves.

That, of course, is when Pantalone swoops in for the kill and diplomatically swindles them out of all their life’s earnings.

Kaeya is certain that such a tactic would work with Zhongli. Not just because the man is the God of Wealth and likely has an advanced understanding of business tactics, even the more…underhanded ones, but also because the man has simply been around for so long that he probably watched the creation of such tactics.

Besides, this meeting is not for his own benefit. It is for Childe's.

 “So,” Childe leans forward in his seat, placing himself closer to Zhongli's desk. “I have a few questions for you.”

“That is my role here,” Zhongli smiles, all relaxed, over the rim of his teacup. “As long as it is something relevant to Liyue’s culture and history, you have the entirety of my knowledge to sift through.”

“I heard that people used to visit Jueyun Karst to give offerings to the adepti living there, but apparently no humans have ever been allowed to enter? I would’ve thought a location like that would be popular for the tourists to visit.”

“It would certainly be popular,” Zhongli agrees. “However, the adepti have never allowed humans into their abode; many adepti prefer not to interact with humans and some avoid them entirely.”

Kaeya cannot say that he blames them. To have humans trampling over what they have declared as their home, what is essentially sacred land, without a care for what it is that they were destroying would be irritating at best and outright distressing or harmful at worst. For it to become a tourist attraction, something commodified and sold like a cheap ware, would only worsen the issue further.

“If the adepti try to avoid people, how do they know when people enter Jueyun Karst?”

“It…” Zhongli trails off and shoots Kaeya a suspicious glance. Not that he's actually done anything this meeting other than participate in some mind-numbingly boring small talk, let alone something that warrants suspicion. Unless Zhongli thinks this is all some elaborate plot to allow Kaeya to break into Jueyun Karst and murder all the adepti – as if – and that he’s set Childe up to ask the question for him. “It is heavily theorised on, so there is no certainty on what it is that allows the adepti to be aware of the presence in their homes, however, specific adepti only appear in specific areas to ward intruders away leading to the idea that they each have a ‘home turf’ that they guard and are somehow aware of.”

“So like a sixth sense sorta thing,” Childe adds. He appears to be thinking once more, filing the information away in his mind. Kaeya isn’t entirely certain what it is that Childe is actually planning – he hasn’t been included in every single detail of Childe's plan. His partner wishes for it to be a surprise, so Kaeya has allowed him his secrecy. Childe blinks and looks back at Zhongli. “How do they ward intruders away?”

“Peacefully.” Zhongli's answer is short and almost snappish. Touched a nerve there, ouch. “Each adepti…differs in the severity of their punishments for intruders, but it leaves the individuals physically unharmed each time.” Kaeya notices the careful wording there, physically unharmed doesn’t mean that there isn’t any psychological damage done there. He makes a mental note to not send any of their agents towards the borders of Jueyun Karst, just on the off-chance that one might grow bold enough to wander in.

“And if the person refuses to leave?”

“Then more severe action is taken,” Zhongli seems to be growing more uncomfortable by the second. Is it the line of questioning or is the strain of being confronted with how little some of his fellow adepti care for the humans supposedly under their protection. “On occasion, reinforcements will be called in to assist with the removal. There have been very few deaths in the last century from adepti-related incidents.”

“But not none.”

Zhongli sighs. “But not zero, no. Some of these deaths may simply be from the harsh terrain and conditions found within Jueyun Karst but there is also an adepti known for…their ability to manipulate such conditions and make it appear as though the cause of death is natural.”

Oh? “And how many of those ‘natural’ deaths are due to this adepti?” he asks, unable to resist the urge to prod at Zhongli a little. He’s managed to keep himself in check for a lot of this meeting, he should be allowed to sneak a small jab or two in.

 “That is unknown.” Sounds like the esteemed gentleman Mr. Zhongli is speaking through gritted teeth! What would the citizens of Liyue think to know that their favourite funeral consultant could be so rude. “And also not something not readily available to the general public. We prefer to give peace to the families affected by such things, not worry them needlessly over whether the deaths were truly natural or not.”

“Ah, before this can go any further I do have some other questions,” Childe smiles, a small, secret thing. Kaeya narrows his eyes suspiciously at that smile; nothing good has ever come of it, especially not when Childe glances towards him like that, his usually lightless eyes glimmering with something approaching mirth. “I was wondering if you could shed light on a particular novel that I've picked up in my time here?”

He draws a small, rather thin book from his coat pocket. A single glance at the cover has Kaeya's face threatening to betray him. He turns his head to the side slightly, lips tilting up at the corners. Childe looks far too pleased with himself as he sets a copy of Rex Incognito onto Zhongli's desk. He centres it perfectly, aligns the edges so they are parallel to the desk’s edges.

The look of utter disdain that Zhongli shoots the book is nearly enough to have Kaeya breaking his façade and bursting into laughter.

“Is that…a complete collection of the Rex Incognito volumes?”

“Sure is!” Childe still looks far too amused. Way too pleased with himself for someone that had seemingly enjoyed the attention Zhongli gave him during their last meeting. “It was rather expensive, too, lots of people were very upset that I managed to outdo them during the betting.”

“Well, it appears to be a first edition of some kind,” Zhongli pokes at the thing cautiously, as though its pages might snap out and bite him. Kaeya almost wishes the book had that ability; he’d pay good mora to watch Zhongli jump out of his skin. “You probably ruined several antique collectors’ day with that.” Zhongli then pauses and glances up at Childe. “Have you had a chance to read it?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, Pavlín, already has all of the volumes so I could just read those if I wanted to.” Childe has to know what he's doing. There is no way that he doesn’t know what he's doing right now, especially as Zhongli's face drops. “You know…” Childe hums and tilts his head, still staring at Zhongli, “Have you ever been told that you bear an uncanny resemblance to the description of Rex Lapis in this series?”

“It has…been mentioned once or twice.” Zhongli looks embarrassed. How embarrassing for him, local immortal can't even come up with a different mortal disguise and so gets regularly compared to the worst piece of fiction Kaeya has ever had the misfortune of reading. He clears his throat, “Unfortunately, if you wanted to discuss this book in depth, I will have to ask you to reschedule. It is rather late in the evening, and I promised the Ferrylady that I would be wrapping my business up soon so she could lock the offices.”

­­“Ah, shame.” Childe pulls the book back towards himself. “I guess I’ll be seeing you another day then, Mr. Zhongli.”

Childe stands and Kaeya follows suit quickly, eager to be out of this office and its oppressive, cloying air. It’s like trying to breathe through mud.

“Have a good rest of your evening, Mr. Zhongli,” he says, because he can be polite when he wishes to be. “I shall…see you around, I suppose.”

Zhongli's face suggests that he would rather they didn’t see each other around. Ever. Kaeya cannot help but find himself agreeing; saying such a thing was more of a formality than an actual wish.

The Ferrylady nods to them when they leave the funeral parlour and they make it just around the corner of the building before Kaeya is turning towards Childe, a smile already beginning to play at his lips. “You knew exactly what you were doing, you sly thing.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Childe says haughtily, then laughs. It completely ruins the effect, but Kaeya can't find it in himself to care as Childe slings an arm around his shoulders and leans into his side as he continues to laugh. The sound is infectious and Kaeya finds himself chuckling along.

“His face was so disgusted,” Childe manages to choke out once his fit has subsided and they are already halfway back to their apartment. “He looked like he wanted to smite the book right then and there.”

“I thought you didn’t want me trading petty barbs with the Geo Archon?”

“The guy obviously hates you for some reason,” Childe pokes him. “Not sure why, but that means you don't go and poke the sleeping bear. Let me do the poking and you can watch.”

“And let you have all the fun?” He scoffs. “I think not.”

“I wish I had a kamera,” Childe says. “I would have hung a photo of his face on my wall. The time I offended the Geo Archon by presenting him with explicit erotica of himself.”

“Explicit- what,” Kaeya cuts himself off. “Erotica? That wasn’t in the Rex Incognito that I read.”

“Because this volume is a special one,” Childe grins right back at him, looking more and more pleased by the second. “The officially published volumes weren’t allowed to include the explicit scenes because they were declared unsuitable for the public. And also because it was blasphemous.”

“Gods, what kind of porn did you manage to buy.” He stops talking, completely stops moving in the middle of the street. Childe continues on without him for a moment and the drag at his neck pulls him back into motion. “There were collectors competing for this? Did they know what was in it?”

“Of course they did. Why’d you think they wanted it so bad?”

“Not so they could read actual porn! Porn that was apparently bad enough to get itself banned from being sold publicly.”

“The porn is actually very good,” Childe tells him, all pleased with himself.

“Dearest,” he ducks out of Childe's grip and grabs him by the shoulder. They may be attracting the looks from the few other late-nighters that are hanging around nearby, but Kaeya can't find it in himself to care right now. “Are you telling me that you read the porn in that book.”

“What did you think I was doing while you were talking to our clients?”

“Glaring them into submission? I don't know! Reading porn about an Archon didn’t exactly come to mind, funnily enough!”

Childe pauses, then looks up at him. “Are you sad that I left you out? You can read it too if you want to. Oh! I can narrate it to you.” He grins, “I lied, by the way, the porn is terrible.”

“I- you know what, sure.” He resists the urge to drag a hand down his face. Settles for pinching the bridge of his nose instead and breathing in slowly. “But only if I can get a drink while we do it.”

“Already got some firewater back at the apartment.”

“Ah, you really know how to treat a man, my dear.”

“That’s a dirty trick,” Childe pants, blades dissipated into water vapour as he takes a moment to regain his balance.

“Life isn’t fair, my dear,” Kaeya calls back. He cannot help the small note of glee that slips into his voice as he skates back across the field, feet gliding easily over the frozen ground. “See, here,” he directs the attention of their audience to the ground below his feet. “Tartaglia is an experienced fighter, one that prefers head-on attacks, and a rare one too, as he has the battle prowess to back up such offensive attacks.”

Some of the new agents nod along, some smirk at each other, confidence oozing from their pores. Kaeya watches those ones a little closer, keeps an eye on the small cluster that stands slightly separated from the rest. Those ones seem particularly smug – the kind of smug that gets a person killed.

Childe recovers from his momentary loss of balance rather quickly; he remains the only one of Kaeya's sparring partners to adapt to the icy terrain so quickly, to find footing where others would simply slip. He may stumble, but he matches Kaeya's dance across the icy ground far better than any others could hope to do.

Smug Bastard A mutters something to Smug Bastard B, quiet enough that no-one would usually catch it. Kaeya hears it anyway, the I reckon I could do that. Easy and the replying oh, yeah, Lord Tartaglia’s probably just playing it up for the demonstration. He glances at Ekaterina, the one technically chaperoning this group of recruits – like they're little kids on a school trip – but she seems oblivious to the conversation.

“The idea with an opponent such as Childe,” he begins. “Is that you should keep your distance and wait for something to distract them, or keep moving until they tire, or you are able to find a weakness in their attack.”

Childe, just to be contrary, skates closer. He glides a little too fast over the ice, teetering on the edge of overbalancing but just managing to remain upright. He’s tempting fate, and by the gleam in his eyes he knows it, continues to move closer anyway; he was always the one to dance toe to toe with the enemy, testing the boundaries of what could happen with a child-like glee while Kaeya hung towards the back and made sure that Childe didn’t get himself killed.

“Alternatively,” he makes a sharp gesture with his hand, slamming his staff into the ground to add to the drama of it all, “you can make your own distraction.” With a crackle then a pop his staff bursts to life with electro, the field around them quickly following suit.

Childe leaps back, away from the mix of electro and cryo that had been reaching for his legs. He’s pushed back, further from Kaeya in an attempt to avoid the sparking ice underfoot.

Kaeya pushes forward further, gaining ground now that he’s forced Childe on the defensive. He slips over the still-electrified patches of ice, pushing it away when the tendrils reach out for him. Childe has half an eye on him – “Never take your eyes off the enemy when you're fighting!” he calls out. “That’s how you end up with a knife in your back or choking on your own blood!” – but he’s far more focused on not slipping and eating shit in front of the new recruits.

Kaeya skids to a stop in front of Childe, digging his staff into the ice and ducking low to avoid the swipe of a blade to the face. Childe's legs give in easily beneath Kaeya's staff swung at his knees and he crashes to the ground; goes skittering across the ice.

He draws the electro away from the ice, tugging it back towards himself as he waits for Childe to recover. In the meantime, he leans on his staff as though it were a crutch and turns towards their audience once more. The sharp end of it pushes into the ice as it sinks beneath the added weight.

“It’s an effective tactic – one of the most important things when fighting an enemy is to understand your own strengths and weaknesses; understanding those of your enemy is only half the battle. If you cannot fight effectively, if you become a burden rather than a strength,” he allows his eyes to linger on Smug Bastards A and B as he says that. “Then you have become a liability to those you are working with.”

There’s muttering, and then a sharp cry of horror as Childe rushes towards Kaeya.

He doesn’t turn, simply wrenches his staff from the ice as the vibrations draw closer and shoves it in Childe's path. The dual blades bury themselves in the wood with a solid thunk. He pushes his staff down, using the height advantage to force Childe backwards. With any hope he can make him slip.

Childe digs his feet in, refuses to be pushed any further as he sends Kaeya a cheeky grin around their entwined weapons. A grin that quickly turns into a smirk.

He gets barely a warning before Childe is darting away and around him. He whirls, heart picking up with this new pace of the battle. He digs his own heel into the ground and meets Childe head-on, swatting his blades away with a wide strike of his staff.

A polearm darts towards his head a moment later. He ducks his head to the side, grabbing the shaft of it as it pulls back again. Ice spirals out from his grip and he snaps the weapon in two. A spike of ice from behind and Childe's down again.

This time Kaeya follows after him.

He tosses the polearm aside. Hears it shatter as it hits the ground. He kneels on one of Childe's hands, the other leg swinging over Childe's chest so he's pinned to the ground.

“Hello, darling,” he grins down at Childe, smile only a little mocking. Childe had basically begged the gods to not let him eat shit in front of all these new recruits – he wanted to impress them, for some reason. Childe thumped his head against the ground in response, hard enough that Kaeya darted a hand forward when he raised his head, to prevent him from doing it again. “Let’s not give ourselves a concussion in front of all the recruits, hm? I do believe that might be a little more embarrassing than eating shit in front of them.”

“Shut up.”

Childe jabs a hand into his armpit and Kaeya recoils at the sharp sting. It loosens his grip enough that Childe rolls them, planting a knee in the centre of his chest, looming above him.

Kaeya feels breathless, and not just because of the air being forcefully knocked from his lungs. No, it’s because the stupid fucking sun has decided to frame Childe's face perfectly, to hide just behind his head and illuminate his hair so he looks like some deity descended from the heavens to impose judgement on Kaeya's mortal soul.

His breathlessness lasts long enough that Childe leans back, confident in his win despite Kaeya giving no indication of being done. Really, Kaeya has faked him out enough times now that he should have learned.

Apparently not, as he gasps loud enough for the audience to join in when Kaeya shoves his knee up in an attempt to hit anything that will allow him to wriggle free. Childe tilts but doesn’t shift entirely off of him, hands coming up to grip at his shirt.

They roll around in the ice for several long moments, both grappling with their hands rather than reaching for a weapon – to do so would lose them valuable time.

There’s a pause, both of them panting for breath. Kaeya has managed to pin Childe beneath him again. He can feel the warmth starting to build on his skin. He ignores it in favour of staring at Childe, their faces dangerously close. He can feel Childe's breath on his face, close enough to hear the quiet gasps between his panting breaths. He’s close enough to take in the detail of his freckles, to count each individual eyelash. To study the curve and dips of his lips-

Something zaps him. Hard.

He winces away from it like a wounded animal, turning on Ekaterina with a sharp glare.

“C’mon, up you get,” she motions at the two of them sharply. “This was a demonstration not an excuse for you two to wrestle in a field.”

If Kaeya cared anymore about what the recruits thought of him, which was not at all, then he might have been embarrassed. As it was, he stood up and dusted himself free of ice fragments. Childe continued to lay on the ground, propped up by his elbows to stare at Kaeya.

“You heard her,” Kaeya holds a hand out, “up you get.”

Childe allows himself to be hauled to his feet, favouring one side. Ah, yes, the side that Kaeya had unceremoniously smashed into the ground as they rolled. He’ll have to check that later because god knows Childe won’t. The recruits are still watching silently, eyes darting between the two of them.

Kaeya raises an eyebrow, “One of us will be supervising whatever drills you run tomorrow to assess if you are up to our standards; if not, then you will continue to run drills until we are. Dismissed.”

He gets several stiff nods as he says that, and then the group turns and leaves as a whole. Childe follows behind them, a few recruits hanging back to gush at him over his fight. Childe takes the attention easily, smiling and laughing as though his ribs aren’t terribly bruised.

Ekaterina remains beside him. “Lady Signora acts tonight,” she tells him. He isn’t surprised by this news. It had been coming for a few weeks now; Signora had settled herself into Mondstadt nicely, had played all nice and diplomatic, had attempted to aid with the dragon problem that has been terrorising the capital city. An issue that has apparently begun to resolve itself.

“I shall be in the office late, then.” He sighs. Childe might insist on staying with him, but he also wouldn’t begrudge the man going to rest in their apartment instead. Signora may not arrive until the early hours of the morning, but someone must be there to receive her and ensure she finds her ship in the Harbour.

“Yes.” Ekaterina nods as they begin to walk.

“I want you to hold those two back,” he points at the two Smug Bastards. Ekaterina follows where he points and frowns. “I don't care how well they do during drills tomorrow, do not clear them for any kind of field work.”

“I doubt that will help with the…issues they have been facing.”

“Then they are discharged and returned to their homeland.” He answers simply. “If they cannot learn that humility is more valuable than pride on a battlefield then they are of no use to me. I do not care for someone that may view himself as above one of his comrades; someone like that would be all too willing to leave another to die in a ditch without a second thought.”

Smug Bastard B twitches and turns to look back at him. Kaeya frowns deeper in response.

“Understood, sir.” Ekaterina is watching him carefully. “I will inform Nadia that you have some paperwork to finish and that you wish to do it late at night rather than tomorrow.” She pauses. “I estimate you will not finish said paperwork until the morning staff arrives.”

He sighs again. Fantastic. “That is acceptable. There is a futon in the office for a reason, I suppose.”

He parts with Ekaterine with nothing more than a nod as they reach the main path back to the Harbour. She will remain with the group of recruits to direct them on how to return in a unsuspicious way. Kaeya will return with Childe, having spent the day admiring the countryside, only to be forced to catch up with paperwork due to neglecting his duties for the day.

He can only pray that Signora is swift on her journey, and that she arrives while it is still dark. He is not looking to field questions from the Millelith.

(The gods have seldom answered his prayers, but he can only hope that they take pity upon him this time.)

Chapter Text

The door slams open so abruptly that Kaeya jerks his hand across the desk, reaching for a weapon that isn’t there. The only thing it succeeds in doing is spilling the ink across all of the documents he has spread out, wrecking all of them.

He raises his head, sharp glare already cutting into whoever had dared to slam open his office door like that. Sharper words teeter on the edge of his tongue, only being swallowed back down as he processes just who is in the doorway. Red hair, dead blue eyes.

…Eyes that are unusually widened. Not enough to be noticeable to the common person, but enough for Kaeya to notice.

“We may have a small…problem.” Childe gasps out, as though he's run all the way here from the docks.

“I find myself agreeing with you on that,” Kaeya says. He pointedly looks down at the stained desk and, more importantly, the ruined documents that sit atop it. Hours of work, gone, just like that. Important information, trade deals, trade pathways, minor dealings with merchants in the area. Contracts of their agreements with clients. Clients he's going to have to contact and make amends with so they will be willing to come and sign another contract with him.

Childe also eyes the mess on the desk, blanching as he processes the mess that Kaeya's desk has become. He looks back up at Kaeya, a sheepish smile beginning to spread over his face. He's not guilty in the slightest, Kaeya can see it in his eyes, but he's going to pretend he is.

“Save it,” Kaeya snaps, a little too tired and frustrated to smooth anything out. “You're just lucky that it was none of your documents that got ruined. Those would be much more difficult to replace.”

“Sorry,” Childe says, an apologetic smile on his face. The door closes behind him with a soft click. The gentle treatment of the office door would have been appreciated about, oh, two minutes ago. When his partner had so gracefully burst through it as though the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.

“Nothing that cannot be recovered, I suppose,” he sighs out. It will be difficult, but not impossible. Inconvenient, but not terrible. The worst part will be the headache of dealing with irritating and entitled clients. “Now, tell me, what was so important that it had you running in here so desperately?” He ignores the mess on his desk for now; it’s a lost cause, the ink will have soaked into the wood and the papers were ruined the moment the first bit of ink spilled.

“It’s that Traveller.” Childe says, rushing it all out in one breath. “The one Signora told us about. Or, I’m assuming it’s the same one ‘cause  I don't think there are many blonde travellers running about with a fairy.”

“Hm.”

“She’s going to be a problem,” Childe tells him. “The two of them are already poking about in all the preparations, asking about the Rite of Descension.”

“Oh?” Now there’s something interesting. “Is she interested in attending the Rite?”

“Yes,” Childe huffs out. “This could go so terribly wrong. You heard what happened with Signora, things could go much worse here- she got to do a small-scale operation! Barely a month in the making! We've got something that’s been ‘in progress’ for more than a year!”

“Things could go terribly well, too.” Kaeya allows himself a small smile at the disbelieving look Childe throws his way.

“This Traveller almost caused Signora to fail her mission.”

“Mn. I suppose she did.”

“And this…Traveller caused you problems? Multiple?”

“I'm sure you heard about the issue with the dragon in Mondstadt,” Signora says instead. “This Traveller managed to resolve something that the Knights of Favonius were unable to even effectively mitigate the damages of within a few days of arriving and endearing herself to the outrider.”

“And the gnosis?”

“Safe.” Signora gives him a level look. “I would not be sat here right now if I had failed. I do believe that little Traveller wanted me locked up.” Signora sighs. “She was a strange little thing, really. The odd fairy that followed her around was weird…but there was just something else about this girl.”

“What kind of strange?” Childe leans in a little closer. He’d been miserable at being forced to stay late (despite Kaeya reminding him that, no he can actually return to the apartment as only one of them is required to settle Signora on her ship and send her back to Snezhnaya) but he’s perked up now, eyes shining in the flickering candlelight. “A strong kind?”

“You and your insatiable lust for a fight,” Signora laughs. “Goodness, the two of you make a fine pair.”

Kaeya fails to see how that relates to anything they're discussing. They should be far more focused on the potential threat approaching Liyue Harbour and their carefully crafted plan. All variables within Liyue had been accounted for, but they never considered some outsider being a significant enough threat to warrant any contingencies.

His sharp look in the older woman’s direction only makes her laugh once more before continuing. “Oh, don't be so sour, dear. You’ll give yourself wrinkles. Ah, it is quite wonderful to see the two of you together again, I was most upset when only dear Pavlín was around to greet me. From what your darling partner told me you were off on one of your adventures at the time, yes?”

Kaeya watches as Childe stiffens, his spine straightening, out the corner of his eye. Signora’s sharp eyes catch it too and she looks over at Kaeya with a slightly sharper look that before.

“Childe's work often keeps him outside of the Harbour,” he responds before Childe can. He feels the rather ridiculous urge to reach out beneath the table and clasp Childe's hand in his own. His hands curl into the fabric of his trousers instead, gripping at the material gently. “Something which you were aware of since we discussed it when we last met.”

“Oh, but I had held out hope throughout that meeting that he would reappear. I have so missed seeing your face around the Palace,” she giggles. “But then, so have many of our fresher-faced recruits. Some of them are rather desperate to catch a glimpse of the handsome young face and charming grin that enticed them into the Fatui.”

“Lady Signora,” he cuts in. “As amusing as this may be for you, it is late, and your ship is waiting for us at the docks.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” she flaps a hand at him, oddly informal for how ice-cold she typically presents herself. Perhaps the late hour is getting to her, making her lips looser and her mannerisms a little less stiff. “Allow a lady her fun occasionally, won’t you? It is the way you typically charm them, though,” she pauses, her eye turning amused, “I do believe that is the last thing of either of your minds right now, hm?”

“We are rather busy with preparations.”

“Oh, no fun, Pavlín.” She tuts at him. “Alas, I must be away. Show me the way, won’t you?”

“Certainly,” he rises from his seat, rounding the desk. “Return to the apartment, Childe. I shan’t be returning here again this evening.”

“I can come with you,” Childe says, beginning to rise too.

“No.” Kaeya shuts him down. “We are attempting to mask Signora’s presence in the Harbour. If both of the diplomats from Northland Bank are spotted escorting her through the streets this evening, people may think nothing of it. Come tomorrow, when the news reaches the Harbour, eyes will turn upon us. Unless you want us to be put under close scrutiny, I would suggest returning home for the evening.”

Childe frowns at him. “There will be scrutiny anyway.”

“With this there is plausible deniability. If the Millelith becomes involved, then there is only one of us that has been seen associating with Signora.”

“You make me sound like some kind of criminal,” Signora says.

“You are.” He levels her with a flat look, too tired to attempt to mask his annoyance. He returns his attention to Childe a moment later. “Return to the apartment, Childe.”

Childe watches him for a moment longer, something suspicious still swimming in his eyes when he looks at Signora. “I’ll see you back at the apartment,” he says, though it sounds more like a question than a statement of fact.

“You shall.” He confirms.

With that sorted, and Childe lingering behind as to not cause suspicion, Kaeya escorts Signora out of the office as quickly as he can without coming across as rude. The woman had set him on edge through the entire meeting. Her intentions were not malicious, but she was acting far too amused for him to even begin relaxing around her. There was some kind of ulterior motive here, but he couldn’t quite pin down what that ulterior motive was.

“You know,” Signora breaks the silence that had settled heavily between them. She then pauses again, the only sound her heels clicking against the flagstones underfoot. He has a sneaking suspicion she only pauses to build suspense here, the quirking of her lipsticked mouth only confirming his theory. “I didn’t believe the recruits at first, I thought they were overexaggerating when they said you and Childe would regularly eye-fuck each other while giving a practical demonstration.”

Kaeya chokes. He coughs, attempting to clear his airways of whatever the hell is in the air that just made Signora say eye-fuck.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Hm, pardoned. Though, some of the recruits are rather young, so I hope you wait until all of your audience is…at least eighteen before proceeding with whatever constitutes ‘the most homoerotic fight’ some of my underlings have ever seen.”

“You had recruits infiltrate the ranks here.” He hopes his voice is flat enough to communicate how unimpressed he is. He isn’t surprised, unfortunately. It was to be expected and he should have done more than a cursory sweep of the agents filing in and out of the Bank the day after Signora’s initial arrival in the Harbour. She is well-known for her spies – the best in the Fatui, and probably the entirety of Teyvat – and it is something that he had considered a few days after her departure; a few days too late to catch any of those short-term moles. An oversight on his part, and one that won’t happen again.

“Naturally.” Signora huffs something rather close to a laugh. “A few also watched some of your ‘demonstrations’ in Snezhnaya. Ah, men can be so thick-skulled sometimes, can they not?”

“I am not taking romantic advice from you.”

“Oh, Pavlín, I wasn’t attempting to give you any.” Signora chuckles. “Cute that you think I would do such a thing. No, I’d much rather watch you circle each other and struggle. Oh, the Tsaritsa knew what she was doing pairing the two of you together. She’ll be pleased to hear of this development, I'm sure. I mean, it’s a surprise she hasn’t meddled with it already.”

Kaeya stays silent.

“Oh, she was always such a romantic,” Signora lets out a little sigh that makes Kaeya simultaneously feel as though he's intruding and also that he needs to get as far away as possible. “Perhaps she saw your threads overlapping, or maybe she even tied them together herself.” She then eyes him a little closer. “Say, who was the author of that letter I so kindly delivered to you?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, of course not. I meant the name she signed off with.” Signora turns to look at him. “Indulge a woman, won’t you?”

“Madame Swan.” He grits out.

“Hm.” Signora hums, then smiles like he's said something funny. “I know the way to the docks from here, feel free to return home.”

Kaeya hadn’t dared to look a gift horse in the mouth, pivoting on his heel and disappearing in a flurry of frost. It may arouse more suspicion for a Snezhnayan diplomat to disappear from the street in amongst the ice, but the hour is late, and the street was empty. And something about Signora was setting Kaeya's teeth on edge, enough that his jaw is beginning to ache from where it’s tensed.

“Well,” he settles back in his office chair, shuffling it back a little as the spilled ink continues to creep towards the edge of his desk. It threatens to spill on his trousers if he continues to sit in the splash zone like that, and these trousers were incredibly expensive. He’d rather not pay the extortionate fee to get them cleaned, or even buy another pair. “It will certainly make things more interesting.”

Childe's eyes narrow at him. “You know I hate it when you start scheming.”

“I'm not scheming.”

“You are.” Childe steps a little closer, leaning over the desk. He almost sets a hand down in the centre of the ink puddle, only to withdraw at the last second. “you get this look in your eyes- eye, whatever. Stop it.”

“I'm not scheming,” he insists. “Scheming is what Signora and Pantalone do. I'm not like that.”

“Pantalone’s basically your second father.” Childe scoffs. Kaeya gives him an unimpressed look. “Oh, come on, everyone knows Pantalone and Dottore are like, fighting a custody battle over you or something.”

“The two of them are mentoring me,” he tilts his head to the side. “How does that equate to parenting.”

“Maybe the fact that the contract Pantalone drew up to discuss how much time each of them got from you was basically one used for a child’s custody?”

Kaeya frowns, though he doesn’t have a good comeback for that one. Pantalone had referenced the standard outline for custody of a child in order to build the mentoring contract. Why it needed a contract was beyond him, but Pantalone had insisted and Dottore had agreed easily enough. “I am not scheming,” he begins again, “I am planning.”

“And there's a difference, is there.”

“Yes. Scheming implies malicious intent.”

“All right, do you remember the last incident where you ‘planned’ something?”

Kaeya smiles. “I do.”

“Don't smile, it wasn’t funny,” Childe rounds the desk to stand beside his chair instead. Kaeya obligingly turns to face him. “Do you know how long-” he huffs out a sharp breath. “Whatever, that isn’t the issue right now.”

“Aw, darling, you looked great,” he pats Childe's arm. That had been one of his better plans, even if it was only for personal enjoyment than anything grander. It had gotten the job done, but Childe had also disappeared into the Snezhnayan wilderness for several days afterwards to blow off some steam.

“The Traveller is poking their nose into Fatui business already,” Childe continues. He doesn’t shrug Kaeya's hand off, though, and Kaeya is content to continue to rest it on his arm. “What do we do when she looks a little too far?”

“Then we bring her in.”

Childe stares at him for a moment, and Kaeya can almost see the cogs turning behind his eyes, the information filtering through his brain as a slow realisation sets in and a grin spreads across his face.

“Oh,” Childe's grin grows a little wider, and Kaeya feels one begin to tug at his own lips. “Oh. Clever, clever man, oh, Pav, I could kiss you right now.”

“Please don't, we’re at work. Speaking of which,” he casts his eye towards the, smaller than it should be, stack of paperwork on Childe's desk. “You could thank me by doing at least half of that stack.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he pats Childe's arm once more before drawing his hand away completely. “I’ll even take you out for lunch afterwards. Or dinner.”

There is a door at the end of this corridor. It watches him.

He takes a step forward and the door creeps further away. He needs to…reach the door. He needs to get to the door. Why does he need to get to the door?

You have forgotten, something whispers. It is spoken directly into his ear and echoes all around him, as though it was shouted from the door’s position. The door watches him. How does it watch him without eyes?

Reality bleeds through his fingers, it bleeds from his fingertips and pools around his feet. Does he even have feet here? How can you possess a body in a place that does not exist?

There are stars in the floor. He is not certain how he did not notice them before.

The stars watch him too. They swirl around his feet with each step he takes forward, each fruitless step forward that brings him no closer to the watching, waiting door. Their laughter is mocking in his ears. His ears ring with the silence of the place. There was a voice before, where has the voice gone? Will the voice come back?

He’d like the voice to come back.

I never left, the voice tells him. Its presence lays heavy over his shoulders, weighing him down; it has been there all along, claws curling into his shoulders and turning his blood to ice. Your blood is already ice, the voice tells him, the odd whispering-echo of its voice makes his ears ring. He almost preferred the silence to this.

The door watches him. Maybe that’s why he can’t reach it. It sees when he takes a step forward and takes its own step back. Maybe he’s never meant to reach it. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe the door is dangerous, maybe it’s malicious.

You want to reach the door, the voice tells him, and he nods along with it.

Yes, that makes sense. There is always a door at the end of the tunnel, a goal in mind. Something to reach for. What is the point of a door if it remains unopened.

The door watches him. Its eyes feel heavier than before. How can a door with no face watch him?

The door has too many eyes. They blink in a rippling wave. He wishes the door didn’t have a face.

The door smooths, and it has no face, but it still watches. He doesn’t understand. Doors don't have eyes, doors shouldn’t have eyes. There is something strange about this door; he doesn’t know what, but to find out he needs to reach the door. He wants to open it.

Yes, the voice says. It sounds pleased. You understand now.

“Uh, you all right there?”

Kaeya doesn’t look away from the bottle he's holding. “I think your firewater went bad.”

“What?” Childe's at his side in a second, pulling the bottle away from his loose grip and cradling it like a baby. He swishes it a few times, then pops the lid off to sniff it. “What are you on about, this is fine?”

“I don't trust it.”

“Fine, more for me.”

Kaeya begins to reach out for the bottle, intent on snatching it away from Childe and throwing out what is obviously expired alcohol. He didn’t even know firewater could go bad; alcohol is meant to sit around for years and years, only getting better with age.

Childe snatches the bottle back to his chest. “You feeling all right, Pav? You're looking a little…woozy. You hungover?”

“I'm not hungover.” He’s never been hungover in his life, at least not enough to be significantly impaired.

“Sure look it.” Childe leans a little closer. He can feel his breath on his face, can smell the sharp ozone and electricity scent that has begun following Childe a little more closely recently.

“I'm fine,” he takes a step back, out of Childe's personal space, feeling oddly overwhelmed. “Have your…expired firewater. I hope it gives you weird dreams next time.”

“Weird dreams?” Childe parrots as he begins walking away. “What kind of weird dreams? Hey, Pav! What’d you mean by weird dreams?”

“The Rite is tomorrow, don't you have more important things to be planning?”

“Yeah, but you're acting all cagey about this. What kind of weird dream did you have?” Childe leers.

“Not the kind you're imagining.”

The Traveller is easy to pick out, even amongst the crowd of people that the Rite of Descension has drawn this year. It’s popular every year, Kaeya knows this well, but knowing something and observing something directly is always different; Pantalone had described the Rite to him once, talking about the bustle and energy of the crowd as they awaited Rex Lapis’ judgement for the year. It had made it seem exciting and energising; something to look forward to experiencing.

All Kaeya feels is cramped.

They're at the back of the crowd, away from the main gateways and nearer to the stone walls that line the terrace. The angular cut of the wall digs into his back where he leans against it, and the sun-warmed stone is hot beneath his hand.

He tracks the Traveller easily, ignoring Childe's quiet muttering in his ear as he turns his head to follow the flashes of blonde amongst the crowd.

She contrasts easily with the Liyueans in the crowd, all of them with their dark hair. She even stands out among those that have travelled here to see the Rite today. Those travellers are all dressed in their best, nearly all businessmen and businesswomen. Each of them here to hear the predictions of the God of Wealth in hopes that they might snatch some fortune for themselves.

“Hush,” Kaeya murmurs, when Childe's muttering transforms into Snezhnayan prayers; the type for good luck and wishing well, the kind you would hear before a soldier steps onto a battlefield or when praying for swift recovery of a family member. The sudden shift in language draws a few eyes towards them and Kaeya makes sure to keep his Liyuean soft as he continues speaking. “We aren’t here; if we fail to blend in properly and someone remembers our presence here then all of this has gone to waste.”

He plucks at his clothing in emphasis, the long material pinching between his fingers before dropping again as he releases it. It swishes softly around his legs.

“Subtle?” Childe whispers back. They're stood far too close to be friendly right now, but Kaeya can feel the crowd pressing in on either side, the way elbows dig into his arms and hips press up against his own as everyone searches for a glimpse of Rex Lapis in the skies above. “If you call that subtle then I don't want to know what you think is flashy.”

“I can wear whatever I please. You are the one that needs to hop over this back wall and escape attention. I am here for a cultural experience.”

Childe snorts. “How many times did you come here as a child?”

“Oh, every single year.” He whispers back. “Why?”

“You're so full of shit.”

“Whatever you say, dear. Come on, over the wall now, the Tianquan is heading onto the stage.” He nudges Childe backwards, towards the wall. Their sudden willing closeness has a few people averting their eyes, purposefully looking away; none look at their face, too embarrassed at the thought of any public displays of affection. Well, more fool them, because they're about to let a Fatui Harbinger hop a wall so he can recruit someone else into their schemes.

“Just so you know,” Childe pauses while sitting on the wall, one leg hanging each side, “my plan was better before you interfered.”

“It was simpler.” He pats Childe's cheek absentmindedly, glancing over his shoulder as the Tianquan begins talking, catching the attention of every person in the crowd. She has such a way with words, and each person here is desperate that they alone are going to be the one to receive good news this year. “Go on, while they're all not looking.”

Childe doesn’t move, Kaeya can still feel the warmth of his cheek beneath his hand.

He looks back at his partner, raising a questioning eyebrow as Childe continues to sit as still as a statue. If he sits like this for much longer a curious bystander is going to start asking questions; questions that will probably erode the minimal disguises he and Childe have donned. Even now Kaeya can see the charcoal beginning to rub off of Childe's hair, small patches of copper shining through.

Kaeya gives him a small push.

“Going, going,” Childe mutters. He swings the other leg over and drops without another word. Kaeya turns and leans back against the wall again, allowing the speech to wash over him. He lets himself almost become caught up in the tide alongside the rest of the audience.

A large majority of them gasp as geo shimmers in the air around the Tianquan, slowly gathering and coalescing into gems that spin in a dizzying whirl. Round and round they all go in a terribly clever show of control; it’s also terribly flashy, likely something done to impress any potential business partners she hasn’t quite managed to sway to her side yet. A common but effective tactic; a reminder that you're more powerful than they can ever hope to be and that you are more than capable of wielding that power effectively.

With one sharp motion the gems all shoot towards the centre of the terrace, clicking into their proper places.

The Traveller’s head pokes above the crowd for a moment; she’s somehow managed to worm her way into the front row, her small companion bobbing alongside her as they watch the censer glow. The etchings along its sides begin to glow, slowly building brighter and brighter until they flare and light up all at once.

There’s a wave of people pushing backwards, moving away from the column of light that acts a beacon for their Archon. As though he hasn’t been circling the terrace for hours already, awaiting his summons. The Traveller doesn’t flinch back with the rest of the crowd, instead stepping forward, right up to the invisible barrier so she can watch a little closer.

Her companion tugs at the flapping fabric of her scarf. Attempting to pull her away? Or the only thing holding her back?

The sky darkens as clouds gather, swirling around the pillar of light that calls their Archon forth. How dramatic. It seems the Harbingers aren’t the only ones that suffer from the apparently inherent need to have the most dramatic entrance possible. Maybe it’s something that anyone with too much power in their hands suffers, then.

It unravels rather rapidly after that.

Instead of their Archon descending to impart wisdom, curling delicately and gracefully over the same censer that summoned him to this terrace, the Exuvia crashes down, cracking the cobbles around it and sending the crowds screaming.

Kaeya finds himself squashed in the resulting upheaval, too many bodies pressing back into his own as panic descends and hysteria sets in. The wailing makes his already sensitive hearing even worse, and he cringes away from the sound.

“Enough!” Ningguang’s call rings out across the crowd and silence descends almost immediately. It’s quiet enough, now, that the unmistakeable clanking of armour can no longer be disguised as the Millelith move into discreet positions around the terrace. The faint sound of crying is more obvious too.

Everyone watches, breath caught, as the Tianquan steps forward. Kaeya leans back into the wall a little further, away from the hot bodies pressed in around him. All eyes look towards her as she crouches down near the Exuvia’s head; searching for signs of life.

It’s useless, anyone could see that. The usual glow of an elemental being has faded, leaving it an empty husk. Not that this particular husk ever contained any kind of life, it’s nothing more than a geo construction spun together quickly and cast down from the skies.

The Tianquan straightens up. The posture of her shoulders is stiff as she turns sharply towards where the Millelith have concealed themselves. Kaeya can only see one side of her face from here, but the part that he can see is nothing short of furious.

“Rex Lapis is dead,” her words, quiet though they may be, are the equivalent of someone smashing through the wall of a silent room. “Seal the exits!”

The Millelith reveal themselves then, storming forth and forming a human barricade, blocking everyone into the terrace. They search the crowd as though their potential murderer is standing amongst them here; perhaps they think their culprit had arrived at the scene to watch their crime play out, to watch as a centuries-old god crashed onto the cobbles and lay sprawled over them, limbs splayed out as though he was nothing more than roadkill.

Kaeya has to admit that there is a small part of himself that rather enjoys observing Rex Lapis while dead. It satisfies the small, slowly growing, part of him that has been snapping back at Zhongli’s every move for the last year.

Kaeya settles in for a long wait as the Millelith begin to search through the crowd. No doubt they’ll bring him in for further questioning when they discover his presence here. Snezhnayan delegations may be allowed to step foot on any land they wish to – the Tsaritsa’s influence is too great for them not to – but they are most certainly not welcome.

He entertains himself with tracking their Traveller, watching as she casually moves through the crowd. She even stops to check in on several of the people she passes, reassuring them and making them feel safe before the Millelith even reach them. As such, none question the kind young woman and her floating companion slowly making their way through the crowd. Certainly none notice the way she’s almost definitely beelining for one of the more hidden stairways away from the terrace.

He turns his head a little as he follows her, eyes carefully fixed on her position as she moves. She could almost appear as calm, if all you afforded was a quick once over. That disguise is immediately shed the moment she reaches the edge of the terrace, just beside the stairs.

Then she’s gone.

A Millelith guard even sweeps his eyes over the area and finds nothing amiss with the rustling bush that the Traveller has hidden herself in. How useless.

He slowly inclines his head in his direction. Nothing more than a short dip of his head that could be interpreted at frustration with being confined to this tiny area for the foreseeable future.

He watches from the corner of his eye as something flashes over the nearby rooftops, moving towards where the Traveller has hidden herself. He doesn’t look closer; it would be useless to do so anyway. If Childe doesn’t want to be seen, you will not see him.

Whatever the Traveller is doing to escape the terrace has been working well so far, well enough that she gets hasty or overconfident, or both, and slips on something. Something that slips into another something and makes a loud clattering sound that sends every Millelith in the vicinity snapping to attention.

Half the crowd watches as the Traveller freezes beneath the sudden stares of several Millelith guards, all of them with weapons and orders to use whatever force necessary to capture suspicious entities. Kaeya allows himself a small smirk, watching as the Traveller’s eyes dart rapidly amongst the guards. It means he gets to see the exact moment she makes her decision, eyes growing hard.

She shoves off the step and shoots down the rest of the stairs, half of the gathered Millelith peeling off after her.

She slips, foot skidding out beneath her as she stumbles her way down the last few stairs.

He looks away again as Childe flashes into view, behind the Millelith and away from the view of most people on the terrace. Even he has to lean back a little to watch as Childe takes each of them out, somehow managing to convince the Traveller, who Signora had described as suspicious to a fault, to follow behind him after only a few moments.

Perhaps she is desperate.

He sighs, and looks back at the crowd ahead of him; all of these people that need to be processed still before he can make his case to the Millelith and go home.

Fantastic.

Tsaritsa help them all if he needs to bail Childe out of prison at the end of today.

He pushes open the door to their office, wary of what he might find in here, especially after Ekaterina had just wordlessly gestured up the stairs as he entered the Bank. He didn’t even get to ask his question before she was answering it.

He can only hope they haven’t destroyed anything.

He braces himself as he opens the door, only to sigh and deflate a little as he finds everything intact and unstained. He’s not sure just how long the intact state of their office is going to last, though, taking in the way Childe and the Traveller are staring at each other.

They look uncannily like a pair of alley cats sizing each other up for a fight.

“Good afternoon,” he starts, when the Traveller’s eyes turn to him.

She narrows her eyes at him. “You.” Okay, much too hostile for a first meeting, all right then.

He looks over at Childe. No help there, he’s still staring at the Traveller like he’s attempting to size her up for a fight. Or just actually sizing her up for a fight, Kaeya wouldn’t be surprised if he challenged her to one before this meeting is over.

“Me?”

“You were watching me.” She says, taking a step away from Childe and towards himself.

Kaeya quickly takes another step into the office and shuts the door behind himself. The Traveller watches him do this with sharp eyes, her little companion floating at her shoulder.

“I was.” He agrees easily. No point in lying to her, especially not when they're hoping to work with her. “I'm impressed that you noticed me, we were nearly on opposite sides of the terrace at the time.”

“You're rather distinctive.”

“Why thank you,” he smooths his clothes down again. It’s not something he would ever wear normally, but for the diplomat wanting to act as a tourist for a day excuse to work he had to really lean into it. “I've been told that this fabric is rather good on me.”

“Not like that.” Ouch, okay, not one to be charmed then.

“Oh?” He steps around her, making his way towards the desk. The Traveller watches him all the way; it’s a little unsettling, actually. He doesn’t think she's blinked since he entered the office. He settles himself into his chair, not complaining as he usually would when Childe perches himself on the arm of it. “Please, take a seat. We have a…business venture that I believe you would be interested in.”

“And why should I trust a pair of Harbingers?”

Kaeya doesn’t glance at Childe, but he does wonder just what Childe said to get her into the Bank, let alone into their office. They’ve presumably been here for the past few hours, the whole time Kaeya was undergoing questioning from the Millelith and reiterating that no, he is not involved in the murder of an entire Archon, he's just a Snezhnayan diplomat.

“I hear you had an encounter with one of our…colleagues,” he emphasises the last word, putting as much derision into it as he can. He actually doesn’t mind Signora much, finding himself at least a little fond of the woman after their last few encounters. But the Traveller doesn’t need to know that, definitely not if she had as terrible of an encounter with her as Signora did. Neither of them had enjoyed that little altercation, apparently.

The Traveller slowly sinks into the seat across from Kaeya, taking him up on his earlier offer. She still looks suspicious, and the way she sits means she is ready to flee at a moment’s notice. He continues on as though he isn’t cataloguing her every twitch, making sure to look her in the eye as he speaks. “And I apologise on her behalf, we like to think our manners are much better at the Northland Bank.”

The Traveller looks unimpressed.

“I am speaking nothing but the truth to you right now,” he promises. “And I do truly believe that what I am about to propose will be beneficial for everyone involved, but for you especially. However, before that, I would love it if you would tell me your name.”

“And why should I?” The Traveller crosses her arms, still standoffish.

“I rather like to know the names of those that I am working with,” he says, only barely holding back a sigh. “I am Brighella, and this is my partner Tartaglia, though I would much prefer you to call me Pavlín.”

“And me Childe.” Childe says.

“Harbingers and their names,” the Traveller mutters to herself. “You can call me Lumine. Now, is there any point to this or should I just walk out of that door right now? How do I know that you're not the ones that just killed Rex Lapis? I could report you to the Millelith you know, your buddy over there was the one that knocked those guards out, not me.”

“I'm aware.”

“So you're an accessory to his crimes at best and an accomplice at worst?”

He grimaces. “I understand that you have had a poor prior experience with the Fatui-”

“That’s putting it lightly.” Lumine scoffs.

“-But we are just looking to help each other out here, hm?”

“If I believe what you're saying. Which I don't.” Lumine’s companion, still unintroduced, hovers anxiously at her shoulder. Kaeya would believe that she’s mute, but Signora had complained about the little one’s endless chattering so he doubts it. Intimidated, maybe. “Why should I even believe you?”

“Well, we are here working for the foreseeable future. It would be a little difficult to do that if we were arrested.”

“Working?” She scoffs. “Yeah, sure.”

“Do you think all this paperwork is here for show,” he gestures around himself in question. “This is a functioning bank, not a front for whatever shady operations your mind is cooking up over there.”

“I have other things that I could be doing right now.”

“But do you? You're wanted by the Millelith right now, at the very least for questioning and possibly even as the prime suspect in the case of Morax’s murder.”

“You shouldn’t call him Morax!” The little fairy squeaks out. “It’s considered-”

“Not now Paimon,” Lumine hushes her companion. “There’s nothing stopping me from leaving right now and moving on elsewhere. I'm a traveller, I can travel.”

“But what if your brother is here, in Liyue?” Childe asks. His forearm rests on Kaeya's shoulder as he leans forward.

Lumine’s face shutters and goes blank.

“Did you think we wouldn’t hear about that?” Childe continues, “That you're searching all over, looking for the brother that you lost? That you wanted to speak with Rex Lapis to try and find if your brother is here, or even if he was here at some point.”

“Did you need something?” Lumine snaps.

“Yes, actually.” He glances at Childe, who pushes the small talisman across the table towards Lumine. It glows softly as she picks it up, still watching them suspiciously. “I'm sure you want to discover what happened at the Rite this morning. This will allow you to do so.”

Lumine says nothing.

“Think of it as a way to seek whatever justice you want. A gift and an opportunity; the adepti of Liyue have always been more involved in those that travel through their lands than the Archon ever was.”

“And how would you suggest that I use your gift.”

“Only that there is a stone forest west of Guili Plains known as Jueyun Karst.”

“The home of the adepti, why would I want to go there?” Lumine asks, her first good question of the afternoon. “None are permitted to enter.”

“Not unless they have permission.” Childe nods towards the sigil she's clutching. “Just make sure you're quick with showing it, no point in them finding a sigil like that on a corpse; nothing to be done to bring you back from the dead.”

“And what use do the adepti have to me? They weren’t anywhere near the Harbour during the Rite.”

“Do you truly believe that a warrior god like Rex Lapis would go down so easily? There was no sound of a struggle so either the true culprit was shockingly powerful, or…”

“Or they're trying to cover something up.” Lumine finishes. She’s more thoughtful than suspicious now, eyes resting on the sigil. “Why don't you do this yourself?”

“We are Snezhnayan diplomats, dear. Do you really think the adepti would welcome us onto their lands, even with a Sigil of Permission?”

She stands. “This doesn’t mean I trust you,” she tells them. “In fact, you two are the most likely culprits out of everyone in this Harbour to have something to do with this. But I’ll play along for now, everything seems to progress a little better when I do that.”

Kaeya's not sure what response to give to that, simply watching as she steps towards the door. He’s just about to call out a farewell, perhaps a reminder to keep in touch, when Lumine speaks again.

“You remind me of someone,” Lumine tells him, just as he’s letting his guard down and she's reaching the door.

“Do I now.” He responds easily.

“Yes.” She stares at him for a moment longer. “You try to disguise your Mondstadtian accent, but it still bleeds through sometimes.” The door swings shut behind her and her companion. The thunk of wood is loud, but not as loud as the ringing that fills his ears for a brief moment.

“Well,” he huffs out a breath, looking over at Childe. “She's a smart cookie, isn’t she?”

“She’s strong, too.” Childe's eyes have that glint in them. The kind that preludes a fight.

There is a door at the end of this corridor. It watches him.

It has too many eyes and no face and it continues to watch him carefully. He feels pinned beneath its stare, pinned by the swirling wood and drifting of stars. He watches it back, unable to do much else when he feels as though he has been peeled apart and pinned to an observation board. Perhaps this is what a collected butterfly feels like. Or a stuffed animal.

He forces a foot forward, taking a singular step.

You are determined, something tells him. It swirls in the space around him, formless and solid all at once. The wavering form of a person dances in front of him. It reaches far above him and he can meet its eyes without ever tipping his chin up. Why seek out something that you locked away yourself?

I don't remember locking something away, he thinks. Maybe he says it. The being acts as though he does, and Kaeya watches as the stars swirl through its stomach and cascade down its arms. Does it even have arms?

He takes another step forward, draws closer to the door this time. It does not move away. It does not stop watching him.

Ice crackles underfoot as he forces his leg to move again. It is as though he is moving through molasses. Or wading through chest-height water. He feels as though he is just barely keeping his head above the surface, just barely keeping his lungs clear of the flood.

How can you justify it to yourself? The creature asks. It surges forward, ice and stars wrapping around him until it is as though it forces itself into his veins. You drift through life happily denying every part of your own nature, and to what end? What purpose does such a thing serve?

Kaeya grits his teeth and pushes forward, slowly raising his foot as he goes to take another step. He needs to reach the door. It’s close enough to almost be within arm’s reach now, as though it shuffled forward to meet him here. Needles prick under his skin, cold soaking his bones in a way it never has before and he gasps.

All air leaves his lungs as the stars grow sharp against his skin, hot and burning. He searches for words, for an answer to the being’s question, something- anything that will relieve him of this new and brilliant agony. Is this what his enemies felt in their final moments?

The resistance drops before he can find an answer and he stumbles forward, foot slipping through slick air as he falls through the floor.

He wakes in his bed, halfway up and out before he comes back into himself fully. His chest rises and falls quickly, but he doesn’t feel breathless. He doesn’t even feel scared.

He's…not sure what he feels.

Chapter Text

So! As you may know, this fic has been on hiatus for a while now, however, I AM coming back to it - however, while going over the outline and older chapters, I realised that some of the earlier ones are REALLY old (two years ago!) and the way they're written/some of the plot directions from the earlier chapters left me feeling a little unsatisfied as a writer, meaning..... i am currently going through this fic and editing/rewriting some things i did think at first that it wouldn't be too much changing- and it still isn't! the plot is entirely the same, but a few scenes are being added, fleshed out, while only a very small percentage are removed (and any removed are written with a different spin on it) current plans are to upload the first rewritten chapter today (yes, today!) and then continue on uploading them every 1-2 weeks at the weekend (aiming for a saturday currently)

But you may still be asking:

• How will I know if a chapter has been edited/rewritten already? The chapters are getting names (crazy I know) and there will also be a note at the start of the chapter with the date it was reuploaded.
• What if I like some of the scenes from the old fic and want to keep them? Worry not! I have a PDF copy of this fic on a google drive that I am very happy to share with anyone that wants it!
• How will I know how the rewrite/edits are progressing? I have a tumblr! I haven't been as active recently, simply because I've been so busy, but I am coming back to it and plan to post snippets/updates on how it's coming along (+ some nifty little designs/art for the characters)

I hope this is satisfying to you, but I know that if I continued writing the fic as it was at the start, I'd never be happy with it, so I hope you can be happy with this too! Anyway,, go read the first chapter again! You might find some fun new things ;)