Chapter Text
crow realized god loved him-
otherwise, he would have dropped dead
so that was proved
It was always pepper, paprika and salt, in the little spice array to the left of the stove, in Ekaterina’s lair.
Ekaterina could not be trusted to cook a boiled egg, but she’d been keeping a fully stocked kitchen ever since they met. She also did not live in anything so mundane as a flat or an apartment or an officer’s cabin. God-forbid a house, either.
Ekaterina lived in a carefully, mathematically designed lair that was always perfectly maintained, because the slightest bit of variation was liable to set her poor brain on fire. And Childe owned that brain, had bought it from her, the day she’d tried to use him to kill herself. She’d chosen him, she’d told him, because he was statistically more likely than his peers to make it quick and painless. She’d shown him the math, though he wasn’t anywhere near as good as she was at it, so all he had gotten was that his number at the end was orders of magnitudes larger than the others, and therefore as she sought self-destruction, she reckoned he was the best option she had.
Childe had devoured her, instead.
Only, he did it in a way he hadn’t told anyone yet, that he could do so. He dissolved her into him, ground her under the metaphysical teeth of the Legacy, but she was weak and so he didn’t swallow. Ekaterina came out of the other side stuck on the crushing reality that she wanted to live, after all. That in the face of certain annihilation, she had felt fear, regret, yearning for things the fog of her brain on fire had not allowed her to properly see, before.
She’d been willing and ready to serve then, no questions asked, but Childe had been nearly fifteen and fresh on the seat of Harbinger, still waiting for a task to be granted to him.
Childe knew that wouldn’t be fair.
Childe had bought her services with the only thing he could think to offer: a piece of his soul grafted onto a shard of his vision, and the solemn promise so long as he lived, no one would ever make her brain boil inside her skull. She had it set in a little silver pendant and it hung from her neck ever since.
They worked well, after.
Ekaterina was precise, methodical and deeply concerned with things being done right. If there were no rules provided, she was no stranger to making up her own, but once she knew what the rules were, she was notoriously stubborn in not deviating from them. Hence, pepper, paprika and salt, in that order. And requisitions came on the left of the desk, while leave approvals showed up on the right. And he was expected to pay her on Thursdays or Tuesdays, but never on Sundays. Tons and tons of simple, straightforward rules that she wove around herself, like a fur coat to keep out the cold.
She’d been weak, when they met. She still was, compared to him, but that was unfair, so he didn’t hold it against her. Like all the others who came after her, Ekaterina entered his service and endured his training, until he was satisfied that she would not, in fact, be killed easily, by someone trying to steal from him.
That was a lesson Master had taught him: to not cherish anything that could not stand on its own. Only Childe reckoned he had not quite grasped it the way she meant it. He didn’t mind. He liked his version better.
“I can’t believe you let him keep me for three fucking months,” Childe said, stirring cream into the pot slowly, gently, burner turned low so it didn’t curdle.
“You were alive and he was committed to keep you safe,” Ekaterina rebuked, sitting on her stool – it was round, wood covered in a chipped, blue lacquer, but just the right size for her to sit without her feet swinging – precisely out of range to not get in the way and still watch every step as he turned her pile of ingredients into soup.
“His bed, Katya,” Childe insisted, lips pursed in annoyance before he took the spoon – wooden, not metal, so it didn’t leave trace flavors in the food – and poured a dollop of thick, creamy soup into a tiny plate she’d bought in Inazuma, after witnessing one of the cooks there use it to taste the food.
Childe reached out and tipped the plate into her mouth, and something about it, as she parted her lips, reminded him, as always, of a baby bird.
“Mhm,” she said, after a moment, nodding, so he could turn off the stove and serve plates, proper. “Was it awful?”
“What?” He asked, careful not to spill on the edge of the plates as he poured.
“Lying in his bed,” she asked, sincere, “was it awful?”
Ekaterina did not sleep in anyone else’s bed. She also did not eat out of anyone else’s plates or drank from someone else’s cup.
Childe hummed in the back of his throat and told her the truth.
“Fuck, it was so nice?” He said, moving over to place her plate in place. “That was like sleeping on a cloud. I didn’t know they made beds that soft.”
Ekaterina folded and unfolded her napkin, before she placed it on her thighs.
“I can get you one, if you want.”
Childe thought about it for a moment.
“Nah,” he said, “some things are not ours to have.”
They ate in silence, afterwards, and all was forgiven, since.
crow reclined, marveling, on his heart-beat
The clock on the wall was two seconds behind.
It occurred to him, as he chewed on the realization, that it had to be on purpose. The one in the nurse’s office in Meropide had also been behind, precisely two seconds. There was something mildly disconcerting about it, but he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. He wasn’t sure he was allowed to ask about it, either. It was probably a test of sorts. Some kind of obscure research into human perception and human anxiety and who knew what else.
That was Sige in a nutshell though: trying her best to dissect the human condition into scrupulously documented treaties no one but her would ever read, on account of who she was and where she chose to work.
“So?” Childe asked, legs swinging absently as he sat, naked, on the edge of the examination platform that they were both very pointedly ignoring the history of. “Clean bill of health? All good and ready to go?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, dashing smile showing off his teeth. “Do I get sweets for good behavior?”
His boots sat neatly underneath the chair where his clothes had been placed, carefully folded and stacked to military standards. The lightbulb above their heads was faintly tinted blue, and given the pale grey of the walls, it gave the vague impression they were underwater. This was Fontaine, they could have been.
“Seven hundred and twenty-four,” Sigewinne said instead, looking at him over the rim of her clipboard, which held a stack of paper nearly three fingers thick. His fingers, not hers, even. She stared at him, blinking slowly. “That’s how many times I declared you dead while you were convalescing.”
Childe blinked back at her, just as slowly.
“Whoops.”
She harrumphed softly under her breath, and if she’d had feathers, she would have ruffled them, he was sure. Instead she wiggled her nose in the most adorable way possible, and flipped decisively through her notes.
“You are, for all intents and purposes, perfectly healthy,” she said, in the same put upon tone that she’d taught the Duke by force of sheer time spent together. “You just shouldn’t be.”
“That’s me,” Childe replied, wiggling his toes with a snicker. “I’m terrible at doing as I should.”
The clock tic-toc-ed away, two seconds behind, on the dot.
“Are you going to explain?” Sigewinne asked, lower lip stuck out in a pout and tiny wings vibrating in annoyance.
“I mean I could,” Childe said, head tilted side to side, “but then I’d have to eat you. And there’s seven people who’d immediately try to kill me for it, if I did. And then I’d have to eat them, and then next thing I know, I’d be getting punted by Neuvillette.” He made a point of shrugging at her. “I like my new job, Sige, it’d be a shame to ruin it so early.”
“Huh,” she said, staring.
Childe felt his skin break into gooseflesh at that tone.
“What?” He asked, not quite defensively.
Sigewinne tilted her head at him, side to side, as if trying to fit a puzzle piece in place.
“When we met, you were so sure you could take on Monsieur, if only he hadn’t caught you off guard,” she said, which was true enough. Childe had been notoriously annoyed at the fact Neuvillette didn’t deign give him a fight, fair and square, to defend himself from that bullshit charge. But that had been then, and this was now. Sigewinne hummed thoughtfully. “But now you’re so sure he’d win? No contest?”
“He wasn’t whole, then,” Childe pointed out.
And now he was… well, mouthwatering. The hungering voice forever whining about starvation in the back of his mind, that shard of the Narwhal his Master had put inside him, granted him as a boon for surviving her training: it hungered perpetually for strong opponents to consume. It was the nature of his power, the Legacy he’d inherited and then made his own. Anything that didn’t kill him, proper, he’d eventually overcome. And everything he devoured – everything he swallowed – he made into his own.
That had been the thing that earned him a Harbinger seat, despite the fact he’d been fourteen and not particularly impressive at first sight: The Rooster had taken him in and brought him to the Palace and the Captain had been in attendance. The Captain reeked of ancient, weighty power, and Tartaglia had done what he’d been taught: he’d fallen on him and tried to eat him. He’d failed, spectacularly, because the First was far too much for him to take, but the attempt had been impressive in itself. He’d been sent to hunt down a handful of horrors, unsupervised, and upon his return he’d been granted a new name and a new title, as well as the Captain’s promise to let him have a rematch when he thought he was strong enough to merit it.
The Neuvillette he’d met at the Opera house was a completely different creature than the one who’d poorly bartered for his services: one was prey, worthy, exhilarating prey; the other exceeded comprehension. Childe saw him for who and what he was, now, the infinite depths of the sea compressed in the nondescript shell of a man and a heart so painfully, earnestly pure it hurt his teeth at the root to consider.
No, he could not fight Neuvillette. Could not conceive of it in any meaningful way, and therefore should they come to blows, the result was obvious and unchanging. Childe couldn’t pick a fight with the very concept of water, the same way he was smarter than picking a fight with a mountain.
One day he might, though. It was half the reason he’d chosen to stay – the other half was what he told Neuvillette: hospitality was sacred and should always be repaid, three-fold at the very least – on the off-chance familiarity helped dull the unrelenting shock of it. In the meantime, he lingered at the sidelines, famished, gnashing teeth churning in his gut as he witnessed the spectacle of so much monstrous power so daintily kept in check.
It’d be one hell of a way to go, though, fighting that.
“Oh,” Sigewinne said, and squinted. “Can you tell?”
“Yes,” Childe replied, because it was the truth. “You can’t?”
“We’ve always known what he is,” Sigewinne replied, shrugging as she slowed down her paging through his records, thoughtful. “We see the nature of things, and his nature hasn’t changed.” She put down the clipboard on the table and went over to pick up his clothes. “What does it look like?”
Childe hummed as he thought about it, because what he saw, he didn’t see with his eyes, per se.
“Bright like the sun,” he said finally, “and warm, too. But not so harsh it burns. More like… you know how a dog has teeth, even if it’s never bit you? It’s like that, only… more.”
Sigewinne sighed.
“You are terrible at explaining things,” she said, in such a put-out tone that Childe couldn’t help but snicker again.
“It’ll be a story, eventually,” he promised, conciliatory, “and then it’ll make sense. I’m good at telling stories.”
Sigewinne gave him a long look, assessing but not quite judging, which was rather special all things considered.
Neutral.
“You’re good at lying,” she said crisply, “you mean.”
What was he supposed to do but laugh? To argue would only prove her point.
and he realized that god spoke crow-
just existing was his revelation
North of the secret entrance to the abandoned base that had been reclaimed to house the survivors of Meropide, there was a tower that served as a great outlook post to keep track of the Institute across the waters, and the Court in the distant South. There were remnants in it, of some kind of mechanism, but the Traveler had come and gone by the time Childe scouted out the space, so the puzzle – and the secrets it guarded – were long gone. There were traces of Fatui forces stationed nearby, but while he’d been unconscious, the Knave had made a point to retrieve her forces and very publicly all Fatui presence in Fontaine had vanished overnight.
Well, except for Childe’s, but none of them were Fatui anymore.
Maybe they’d never been, not in any way that actually mattered.
It was his fault, Childe knew. His people were his, for all he willingly set them up in service of Her Majesty. And she had to have known, of course, that if she let him go, they would go with him, bound as they were to his whims. She’d known, and she’d let them anyway, and no one could see it for the gracious, generous gift it was, because no one seemed to grasp what bound him to his erstwhile Mistress had not been loyalty, not really.
It was Duty and Destiny and Debt; she’d given him a name and a purpose, and refused to let him question when his principles chafed with his orders. But that was what it meant to be Fatui, to be foolish and expendable, always the sword, never the hand holding it. And Childe knew, deep in his bones, he was not made to lead. He could kill and conquer and devour, but his nature was survival, not dominion. He lacked the fundamental fire in his soul, to take charge of his own destiny. Perhaps he’d had it, once, but the Abyss and the Narwhal had snuffed it out, like a candle starved for air. He had strength and the hunger to accrue even more, and he knew his limits and made it his mission to erode them a little more each day. But he lacked purpose of his own.
Her Majesty had seen him, truly seen him, monstrous and feral and not quite whole, and she’d known him exactly for what he was. He’d accepted her offer – it had been an offer, one he knew he could refuse, and that was yet another kindness she’d bestowed upon him, the opportunity to choose his own muzzle – because he’d come out of his experience in the Abyss a fundamentally changed person, and he no longer had a place to call his own. His own family could not quite comprehend what he’d become, and his strength and his worldview disallowed the kind of quiet, peaceful existence they aspired to live. He’d become a Harbinger, well aware the new place he’d been given would need to be earned, day in and day out.
He was older, now. Experienced. And yet the prospect of Freedom was still rather daunting, all the more so because he had amassed people to look after. His people, who held pieces of his soul and complemented all those gaps where he was lacking. They depended on him, followed him the way moths chased after flame, only the flame loved the moths too much to let them burn.
They filled in, in twos and ones, over the course of the day.
They brought their dues: ingredients and cutlery and fuel, and then scattered about, tending the fires and stirring pots, chopping things and telling bad jokes. Ekaterina came last, with four crates of wine and a smug look on her face. The end result was thus: a string of people perched on the spiral staircase of the tower, hiding away from the rain that suddenly tore through the countryside, smothering the fire but not their good mood.
It'd been a while, since they’d all been together in a single place, not since he’d been sent to Sumeru, to smooth over the Doctor’s plots against the Dendro Archon. They’d picked the desert, then, if only to avoid too much scrutiny, and nearly six of them had almost died of heatstroke getting there. Childe had joked about retraining them, but before he could make up his mind about it, he’d heard the Narwhal’s song and found himself crossing half of Teyvat to chase after it, all the way to Fontaine.
And well, Fontaine.
The bread was flat and slightly salty, not the fancy fluffy loaves the folk in the Court favored, because the point of the exercise was that they could sit down and eat like this, no matter where they were. But the stew was thick and tasty and there were three different bowls of soup, and Ekaterina knew wine about as well was Childe knew swordsmanship. So it worked out.
He relaxed by degrees, all of his soul back together in one place once more… well, almost. The piece he’d given Cater, he’d given to Lanoire when she went to live with her grandfather, and of course, the one he’d given Neuvillette.
“I vote we stay,” Kalina said, bullying her way until she could go curl at his feet, chin on his thigh and his calf buried deep into her cleavage. “Fontaine agrees with me.”
Out of all his mirror maidens, she’d be the one who took to it the best. Kalina was pretty, had always known she was pretty and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t use that to her advantage. It was reflexive habit these days, the seduction. Ekaterina liked to say he’d created a monster, but really, she’d been halfway there on her own. So much so, very few people had ever noticed the Mondstadt vision she used in tandem with her delusion. Kalina was arrogant and prideful, certain beyond words of her worth and the place in the world it afforded her. But Childe hadn’t taken her in because of that.
“Is that so?” Childe asked, and put aside his plate to free his hand, so he could reach out and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Sounds to me you’ve taken a shine to the Duke, more like.”
Kalina grinned at him, eyes bright and useless, considering she was effectively blind, and had been, since the day she was born.
“The Duke hasn’t figured it out,” she said, leaning to rest her face in his hand. “I think he suspects, but nothing else.”
She wouldn’t serve anyone who couldn’t see through her, pun wholly intended.
“Well, if not for the Duke, then why?” Childe asked, eyebrows arched as she snorted.
“Because the Dragon makes you happy,” she said, keen, sharp, always far-sighted. “The same way you make me happy.”
The Dragon was Justice, it was the thing, but not the callous, brutal kind. His heart was soft and his soul was kind, and nothing he’d ordered had once made Childe flinch. He’d obey, of course, if he was commanded to atrocity: he’d been told to kill Morax and he’d spent a year figuring out how to drown his country to lure him out. He’d been ordered to kill innocents and sacrifice the unwilling, and he’d done so without question. That was what it meant to serve, after all.
Years in the service of others, and years having collected enough people to fill up the tower to bursting, Childe had come to learn that the only way to not make it bitter was to find the person who not only could do the job, but would also enjoy doing the job. A Harbinger had no choice but to obey, and the Tsaritsa had long discarded notions of fairness and justice in the pursuit of a higher goal. She’d ordered him to kill and he had, and he hadn’t grown bitter per se, but he had certainly mapped out the places where he could have been.
By contrast, Neuvillette asked so little of him, left so much slack in his leash, that he forgot it was there at all. Was that happiness? To serve without chafing? To know his principles were not kindling for another’s fire?
“I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing,” Childe said slowly. “If nothing else, we wouldn’t run out of work any time soon.”
“As long as you’re happy,” Kalina said, always the shameless voice that nonetheless found murmurs of support whenever she spoke up: “We’re happy.”
And well, what else mattered?
but what loved the stones and spoke stone?
they seemed to exist too
The Duke was a fascinating creature. In another life, if Neuvillette weren’t so obviously in the way, Childe would have claimed him immediately. Alas, it was not meant to be, not the least because the Duke belonged to the Dragon, far more than he himself did at this point, and they’d have to settle on being colleagues instead.
It didn’t make him any less interesting, though.
Wriothesley, Grand Duke of Meropide, Warden and Administrator of the Fortress of Meropide, was the one thing one wouldn’t expect him to be, considering everything else he was – titled, landed nobility, enforcer of the law, yoke onto the lawless, the faceless terror that served as detriment to those tempted to sin – he was a good man.
He was a good man, kind and generous and deeply concerned with the betterment of the souls under his care. He was also just straight up a bastard: cunning, shrewd, ruthless and utterly unrepentant. It was a strange and unique combination that often left Childe speechless and unable to do much else but sit back and spectate the insane way he managed to keep all his plates balanced and spinning up in the air.
In Meropide, the Duke had absolute power, both in theory and in practice. The Fortress was technically – legally, historically, conveniently – independent from the rest of Fontaine, and their cooperation and trade with the Court was precipitated primarily by a series of gentlemen agreements between current and prior wardens, and Neuvillette himself. But it was Neuvillette, and Childe knew – and he suspected the Duke knew – Neuvillette would never trespass into the Fortress or impose his will upon it, not even if the Duke decided to become a monstrous tyrant and began killing people for fun. Neuvillette would be distraught and willing to smite down the man the moment he stepped out of his domain, but it meant something, to him, that Meropide was independent.
And yet, the Duke.
Childe understood perfectly why Neuvillette had granted him the title he had – Grand Duke, of which there was currently only one, and which made Wriothesley the highest ranking member of the aristocracy by a significant margin – because Wriothesley, presented with absolute dominion, unimpeachable power and unquestionable loyalty had done the only thing a good man could do: honor his conscience and do his damnest to build guardrails that protected his people. He put limits on how much work people could do and he made sure no one starved and he was painstaking in his efforts to guarantee his people were paid fairly for the time they worked.
Only, he’d grown up in Meropide, himself. He’d known the cruelty and the violence and the viciousness that bred among those who declared themselves lawless. So rather than gently and benevolently delivering such boons to his people, and well aware they’d take any sort of consideration as evidence of weakness, he threatened them with it instead. He was rude and callous and delighted in reminding everyone around him that he was the biggest, meanest fucking thing around, and that if they disagreed, they were welcome to come break themselves onto his fists so he could prove it.
And it worked.
Kalina provided delightful insights into the workings of Meropide, because despite it all, she’d grown rather fond of the Duke for all he hadn’t figured out yet she navigated the world exclusively on the precision of her elemental sight. The rest of his people currently supporting Meropide brought back equally entertaining stories, although they were kept away from the Duke by the ferally loyal coalition of guards who were halfway convinced Kalina was there to usurp their rule. It was ridiculous the way this sort of thing always was, how explaining things up front was useless when the people you were talking to were determined not to listen.
Still, the Duke had listened about the food shortage.
Of course he had, he was a bona fide good man, and no good man would let a nation starve when he had the power to prevent it. He was just deeply unhappy that Childe was the one who brought him news about it.
But they had worked through that. Sort of. Childe had needled him into losing his temper and then he’d let him exhaust himself. It was cathartic and the Duke was smart enough to grasp the meaning of it. As they’d told Neuvillette, they had settled their differences. Mostly.
“It’s not going to work, you know,” the Duke said, at the end of yet another terse, terribly hostile meeting, looking down his nose at Childe.
“Well, if it doesn’t, we’re fucked,” Childe replied, blinking slowly. “Only Liyue might have enough surplus crops to sell us, but it’s Liyue. It will cost an arm and a leg and then we’ll be really fucked. We’re not ready to take on the Aristocracy head on. We might never be! Neuvillette keeps expecting them to be reasonable and not fucking monsters, so—”
“No, not that,” the Duke said, shaking his head. “Your attempts to seduce him.”
Childe swore every thought in his head crashed at once, like a cabinet full of plates toppling over onto the ground, so hard it must have made a sound.
“Bwha?” He managed, trying to ask three different questions at once and failing miserably at all.
The Duke snorted and sneered.
“I commend you at least for having the decency to not send one of your people in to try, but whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, I assure you, it will fail.”
“Is that where we’re at?” Childe asked, skeptical. “You’re mad at me because you don’t have a reason to be mad at me, so now I’m seducing your dad? Really?”
The Duke gave him a suitably flustered look, as if finally hearing the accusation out loud let him grasp how ridiculous it was.
“That’s not—” He spluttered, and Childe felt a meanspirited amusement at the sight.
Seducing Neuvillette! Honestly.
But that was why he liked the Duke: the Duke was never boring. And that was the most important quality a person could have, as far as Childe was concerned.
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “Let’s go stretch and see if we can get you to stop frostbiting yourself. Really, Wrioski,” Childe said, well aware it would make the Duke flinch at the nickname. “If you want some training, all you gotta do is ask.”
It was a productive session, on account that the Duke managed to not get himself hurt enough Sigewinne needed to look at him, and Childe got to ponder the absolute ludicrousness of the idea.
Neuvillette, really?
Was the dragon even capable of being seduced? Childe sat on the desk and watched him go through paperwork, later that night, and couldn’t quite see it as anything other than hilarious.
“You’ve been staring,” Neuvillette pointed out, after a while. “Is something the matter?”
Childe grinned.
“Nothing much, no, just thinking,” he said, and then nudged him with a knee, bumped against his arm. “The Duke sends his regards.”
Neuvillette nodded to himself, as if this was all good and proper, and moved onto a new stack of folders.
All was well that ended well.
and what spoke that strange silence
after his clamour of caws faded?
The Traveler was often called golden-haired, but it hardly did justice to the fine, spun gold that grew on their head. It was soft, silky smooth, even when covered in grime and sweat and brine from sea water. It was otherworldly, like so many other things about them were.
“I’ll get used to it, you know,” the Traveler said, eyes half lidded as they sat dutifully in place, head tilted back into the sink so Childe could lather and wash their hair before even attempting to brave the shower. “This kind of thing.”
“That’s an easy fix, comrade,” Childe replied, nails scrapping against their scalp, working in the soap all the way through. “It’s not rocket science and I bet Paimon wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.”
“You know what I mean,” the Traveler said, over the sound of Paimon’s enthusiastic agreement.
The thing people didn’t get, Childe reckoned, about the Traveler and their floating companion, was that devotion went both ways. It was the Traveler who got all the credit, and Paimon who did most of the talking, but he remembered clearly, that day in the Golden House, both had been there. Both had given it their best. You couldn’t hope to pry them apart, he reckoned, not without a scalpel and festering scars. So he didn’t even try.
“I know,” he said, because he wasn’t nearly as stupid as he was happy to let others think he was. “It’s nice, isn’t it? To not be at odds, not even nominally?”
Golden eyes stared at him intently, radiant like the sun, even in the dim light of the bathroom. Childe reached out and covered them with a hand as he began rinsing their hair, to keep the suds from reaching their face. They fell asleep in the shower, trusting despite it all as Childe wrapped them in one of the thick, fluffy towels that kept being stocked even though Furina no longer lived there and Neuvillette never really went up there.
“It is nice,” the Traveler muttered, half swallowed by Furina’s old bed, which looked about as soft as Neuvillette’s to Childe’s eye. And then a leg reached out, bare foot planted on his thigh and shoving. “Don’t fuck it up.”
Childe considered what to say, of all the things he could possibly say, and then noticed the drizzle gently tapping against the windows. It was the nature of their friendship, he reminded himself, the secrets they kept for each other were better left unsaid.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Childe replied, and gave into temptation to ruffle that soft, dawn-like fluff of hair, before he sauntered downwards to reclaim his place in Neuvillette’s office.
There was lying, of course, and there was making promises he damn well knew he couldn’t keep.
and what loved the shot-pellets
that dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
Over the years, he’d learned to distinguish the feeling of someone resonating one of his pearls with elemental energy. It wasn’t entirely a peasant sensation, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was often alarm, or a cry for help. The threat that someone had cornered one of his, was attempting to harm one of his, and they were not able to defend themselves.
His Master would let them perish; he was certain. After all, she was the one who’d taught him not to care for anything that couldn’t stand on its own. But he was different. He was selfish.
The pulse on his senses that morning, however, was different.
Abyssal.
And there was only one creature who had access to Abyssal power and also ownership of a piece of his soul. Further assessment corroborated it: the pulse was coming near the farm where Lanoire now resided. It was trivial to get there within the hour.
“I am ready to return this,” Cater said, slouching slightly in his true form, holding the pearl of hydro between thumb and index finger.
This had been an anomaly, from the start: Childe only ever offered tokens to those he’d devoured and claimed as his own. Something tangible to prove they belonged to him, that he took responsibility. Lanoire was too young, and Cater had been too unstable, when they’d first met. But when he promised to come back and set Lanoire free, Cater had demanded proof. A guarantee. Every day Lanoire spent in the dark, Childe reckoned, Cater had grown more and more worried. So Childe had made the choice to leave a pearl, even though he wasn’t sure it would work considering he didn’t have his vision with him at the time. The resulting orb was more soul than anything else, but it had allowed Cater to track him down when Meropide blew up and Lanoire was taken, so Childe reckoned it had served its purpose well enough.
He’d never had a pearl returned to him, though.
“I mean, you don’t have to—”
“This is for humans,” Cater said, head tilted at an inhuman angle before he shook his shoulders, ruffling the feathers at his shoulders. “Your humans. Yelena explained it to me.”
Yelena spoke nineteen languages fluidly and nearly forty total, including the ones that were dead and no one alive remained to know how to pronounce. Words were her thing, but more than that, the words people used. She’d ended up a Pyro sniper, after Childe figured out how to keep her from getting herself killed. She’d been stationed in the wilderness, transcribing some ancient Remurian runes in her spare time and keeping an eye on the Institute’s efforts to regain control of all their errant broken bits. She’d taken a shine to Lanoire, while she’d been in their care.
Yelena was also remarkably incapable of holding a conversation with anyone over the age of twelve.
“It’s not for humans, exactly,” Childe said, which was true enough, since he’d given one to Neuvillette, after all. “It’s for interesting people I’d like to keep.”
“I’m not people,” Cater replied, scrupulously even-toned. “I am made of people. Carter and Rene and… others.”
“Did you track it down then?” Childe asked, “the whispers in Canotila’s book?”
“I found a truth,” he replied, head tilting back and forth. “But it doesn’t have to be my truth, I don’t think. Not unless I want it… and I don’t.” He paused and stared at Childe. “Would it kill me, if you eat me?”
“Maybe,” Childe replied, blinking slowly. “I could take the Abyss from you, the same way I did to Rene. Only, Rene had a self before he started stitching things onto himself. You did not. Might not.”
Cater was silent for a long time. In the distance, they heard the barking of dogs, playful, and the faint laughter of a very beloved little girl. Cater’s shoulders raised and fell, sharp, fast, like he was hyperventilating, only his breathing wasn’t panting yet.
Yet.
“Do it,” he said, and the mask loomed at Childe, intent. “Let’s find out.”
Childe didn’t argue with him. It wasn’t his place to argue, not after what they’d pieced together from Rene’s notes. When he’d become a monster, Childe thought, at least he’d had a choice. It was either accepting the Narwhal’s hunger or dying, but it was a choice regardless. Cater, he knew, had been given none, because Rene thought he knew better than everyone else, what was good for them. Childe grabbed Cater’s wrist and pulled him away from the farm. Away from the road.
And then he devoured him.
He didn’t even chew. Not even a nibble.
“You were afraid,” Childe said, as Cater sat on the ground, head level with his knees, and shuddered violently. “So now you know.”
“You didn’t do anything,” he said, accusingly, shaken and still vaguely terrified, and rather upset that he was, it seemed.
Childe grinned.
“I didn’t have to.”
So Cater kept the pearl and joined Yelena in her new dig, south of Poisson. He brought a basket of wild berries, for the next monthly family dinner, and pretended very hard he wasn’t relieved no one seemed to question his presence, after Childe introduced him.
No big deal.
what spoke the silence of lead?
Officially, the Fatui had removed their presence in Fontaine.
If they were still following the same playbook, it would be a few months yet before a Harbinger came in and reestablished diplomatic ties. Unlike Sumeru or Liyue, the Knave did not leave Fontaine negatively prejudiced against them, and Childe was willing to admit he’d taken advantage of that, considering the vast majority of Fontaine did not particularly grasp the nuance of his station. Or the ridiculousness of his situation, either.
But he knew better than to think they were truly gone.
The Hearth for once, had used Fontaine as their headquarters for decades. One just needed to know where to look. Albeit, there was also the fact the Knave’s favorites had made no effort to hide themselves, as if their cover had not been blown spectacularly at the Opera. It was no particular pleasure of his, Childe thought, beating up kids, not even the Knave’s kids. But he reckoned there was no faster way to get her to surface, than to ask. Of course the response to that ask would be violent, and of course he wasn’t going to let himself be killed stupidly, but he took no pleasure in it.
None.
“Why am I here?” Zhongli asked, carefully sidestepping the multiple traps layered all over the secret basement of the twin’s home.
“Because I’m annoyed at you,” Childe replied, not bothering to try and solve the puzzle at the door and instead prying it open with a judicious application of physics and a hydro lance.
“You say that like it’s new,” Zhongli pointed out, eyebrows arched. “You’ve been annoyed at me for years at this point.”
Which was true and also funny, but Childe refrained from laughing out of principle. In all truth, the fact Zhongli had agreed to come to Fontaine at his request was a big enough gesture he ought to consider forgiving the bastard for all he’d done. But then he remembered the knowledge he carried now – the surefire way to smother out his life, in such a way that no harm came to pass to his people, should he lose himself – and how much it weighted him down, the obligation to outlive the oldest fucking creature in the world, and he got mad again.
Not because he couldn’t, per se: he’d put his soul in his vision and turned it into a core, the way Abyssal creatures did to grant themselves endless endurance. And he had the Legacy, perpetually hungering to devour the world whole if he let it. So he did, all in all, stand a good chance to outlive most. If he didn’t get killed in the process anyway. But he couldn’t just recklessly throw his life away, because then who’d come around and put down the Lord of Geo when nothing but his name remained?
Maddening.
Frustrating.
A delicate cage woven out of his own nature, and Zhongli had the audacity to call them friends at the end of it.
Of course he had come to Fontaine when Childe called for him, it was the least the fucking bastard could do.
“We need a neutral party,” Childe said, as the door swung open and led them down a dimly lit corridor. “To witness the agreement.”
Zhongli frowned.
“What agreement?”
Childe made sure to enunciate clearly, well aware the words would travel far in the dark:
“The agreement to buy all the dirt on the Aristocracy the Knave’s spent twenty years hoarding.”
Childe grinned on reflex, as he caught sight of the familiar red glow in the distance, on the other end of the tunnel.
“And what makes you think any of that is for sale?” The Knave asked, very much still in Fontaine, and very much still keeping tabs on her children. “Or that you can afford any of it?”
Childe offered a small bow in acknowledgement of rank and seniority that both of them knew damn well didn’t matter anymore.
“Call it a hunch,” he said, eyebrows arched. “Shall we discuss it over tea?”
crow realized there were two gods-
It was quite the task force they’d put together, once the Spina formally joined their ranks. Navia provided the location, the trays full of macarons and the promise no word spoken in that room would reach the outside.
“This feels unnecessary,” Zhongli pointed out, serving himself, the Duke, Clorinde and Ekaterina from the tea pot he’d prepared.
“Ha,” Childe said, well aware he was being snuffed and choosing to be the bigger person out of sheer spite. “Raise your hand if you think Neuvillette is the best chance Fontaine has at leadership, by a mile?”
Everyone present made a point to raise a hand, except for Furina, who made a point to raise both.
“Yeah,” Childe went on, snorting. “Now raise your hand if you think he’s got what it takes to get through this attempted coup in one piece.”
Notoriously, not a single hand moved, except for Zhongli, who got only halfway up before the Duke grabbed his wrist and gently but very firmly pulled it back down with a grave, solemn shake of his head.
“He’s the Hydro Sovereign,” Zhongli insisted, “he’s a dragon even among dragons. It is his nature to dominate. To exercise control and power in equal measure. He’s—”
“A softhearted, spineless blob,” Furina interrupted with a snort. “They’re going to make him cry and then I’m going to regret that I can’t drown any of them anymore.”
“Exactly,” Childe replied, nodding. “So it falls on us to sort out the loose ends.”
“Oh joy,” Clorinde said, eyebrows arched. “I always wanted to participate in an extrajudicial massacre.”
“Nonsense,” Furina said, before Childe could voice the thought clearly telegraphed on his face. “We’re putting up a show.”
Which wasn’t, strictly speaking, a lie; Furina’s specialty, after all.
one of them much bigger than the other
“That was an act of terrorism I just committed,” the Duke said, sitting on the remnants of the aqueduct where they’d evacuated after deploying the rebuilt contraption that had just exploded spectacularly in one of the highest floating cubes that remained of the original Institute.
Kalina burst out cackling and nearly fell off their perch, if not for Childe reaching out to grab her and drag her up against his side, where she smothered the rest of her laughter into her hands.
“Come now, it was barely even a step above corporate espionage,” Childe replied, valiantly ignoring the heavy look the Duke was giving him. “You were just kindly returning a piece of tech you graciously went out of your way to put together after it was found abandoned. It's hardly your fault it was so poorly made it blew up on its own after you left.”
At least he’d stopped accusing him of trying to seduce Neuvillette, Childe reckoned in the privacy of his own mind. The dragon was unseduceable, clearly. But it was the Duke’s fault, he was sure, that he’d begun to notice here and there, little details about Neuvillette that would absolutely make someone less disciplined than him try their luck at seducing him.
Childe just knew better, obviously.
Obviously.
“How long did it take you to collect all the pieces?” The Duke asked, which was mercifully unrelated at all to Neuvillette, except for the part where they were both doing all of this for his sake.
“About twenty times longer than it took you to put it all together,” Childe replied with a shrug.
The Traveler had told him about their misadventures in the Institute, when Childe asked about their newfound confidence handling Fontanian tech. The bit about the exploding prototype had tickled Childe’s curiosity, and he’d ordered the folk keeping an eye on the Institute to scout out and collect the debris if they could. He’d reckoned it would make a good peacemaking gift for the Duke, what with his penchant to tinker and his grudge against the Institute.
But then the lawsuits and the trial, and Childe had suggested this almost as a joke, except the Duke took him up on it and…
“I’ll kill him for you,” Childe decided, abruptly, sincerely, like all his best choices were.
“What?” The Duke asked, wide eyed.
“If he breaks your heart,” Childe said, and delighted in the way the Duke flustered, immediately catching on. “I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
“You—”
Kalina burst out cackling again, delighted.
loving his enemies
and having all the weapons
He couldn’t eat the Hydro Sovereign.
Physically. Metaphysically.
He couldn’t.
Didn’t mean he didn’t try, though.
He was tired and worn and ravenous and high-strung: Childe felt every layer of restraint snap clean off the moment Neuvillette went limp under him and the next thing he knew, he was the Narwhal, gulping down the Primordial Sea, only not. Not quite. Not yet. The Narwhal was a bottomless gullet, he was more of a glorified sieve. And there, strung along, caught in his net, laid the whole of Neuvillette, trusting and pure and fucking untouched.
So devour, he’d said, like it was nothing. Like he knew what it meant.
He didn’t, Childe knew, the same way Neuvillette suddenly did know, that and a million other horrific tiny truths, thoughts, stray whispers. It went both ways, obviously. He knew that! Everyone he claimed, he devoured. He diluted into himself, dissolved into floating particulate suspended in the amniotic fluid of his soul. He was his as much as they were his.
But this was more.
This was different.
“Are you fucking stupid?” Childe demanded, panicked and pissed the fuck off about it. Not even the majestic sight of the Hydro Sovereign in full dragon form could hope to quench the fizzle in his veins. “You could have died!” He accused, angry at how relieved he felt, to know he hadn’t. “I could have killed you!” But all Neuvillette did was lean in close, glorious, majestic embodiment of everything Childe had ever wanted, consciously or not, and it was very unfair to be confronted in such a way, after having his own soul laid bare in all its ugly, twisted knots. “Fuck you.”
And suddenly he was there, in all his fucking obnoxious ethereal grace, perfectly pristine, not even a little smudge from having Childe rake him between his teeth.
“If you wish,” Neuvillette said, and the words landed on Childe like bricks falling from the sky, each one perfectly aimed to crack open his skull and allow his mortified soul to escape. “Though you seemed rather interested in the opposite, if I understand correctly.”
He couldn’t eat the fucking Hydro Sovereign.
This was proven.
But he felt the hunger spike, nonetheless, the urge to try, the starving yearning for something, stabbing in between each rib as Neuvillette pulled him into his arms.
“I might lose control again,” Childe insisted, warned, challenged.
But all Neuvillette did was smile, bright like the sun, and warm, only more without the burn. A gentle sunlight that didn’t scorch his Abyss-tainted eyes.
“I believe in you.”
And Childe knew he would die of heartbreak, if he lost him: his North, his Lord, his Home.
The rest of the world could fucking deal.