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Shenhe didn't know when getting home to Xingqiu and Chongyun sitting on the floor in front of the sofa with schoolwork scattered around them became what she expected to see and not an empty house with precious little in the fridge.
Chongyun had been a constant in Shenhe's life since before he came up to her thigh. Her nephew had latched onto her the moment he could walk more than a meter by himself. After he turned eleven, the blue eyed boy started to show up unannounced at her door after school. Shenhe was always suspicious of how little her nephew seemed to like going home, but the fear of destroying one of his safe spaces had always kept her mouth shut. In the meantime, she quietly stocked up on clothing that would fit him and offered to let him stay for longer and longer periods.
Shenhe ignored the twisting in her gut at imagining that her older brother and his wife would ever, willingly or not, put their child in harm's way.
As Shenhe turned her gaze to the other child on her floor, while Chongyun hadn't yet noticed her presence in the room, bright amber eyes came to meet her own. Xingqiu stared at her for only a fraction of a second before averting their eyes from hers, knowing how much Shenhe detested eye contact.
Feiyun Xingqiu was an enigma. He noticed far too much for a twelve year old, they were far too hesitant to trust yet attached himself onto Chongyun like a leech, and trying to get a straightforward answer out of him was like pulling teeth. The amber-eyed child could speak without saying anything, even more so than some of the Adepti that Shenhe had trained with in the past. There was something deeply wrong with the fact that he was even in Shenhe’s apartment to begin with. The second son of a major trading guild regularly hanging out in a fairly unknown hero’s home, with no alarm bells being run by their family, despite the fact that Xingqiu clearly doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going? You don’t have to be a genius to realize there is more to the kid than meets the eye.
While Shenhe would love to say that it started small, she would have to lie through her teeth to do so. Not even a full year prior, Shenhe had come home after a late evening patrol to her door ajar and nephew applying gauze to a delirious Xingqiu, the latter's forearm blistering and burned. In that moment, heart racing from what she had assumed was a malicious break-in, staring at Chongyun’s pale face as he did everything he could to help the child he was willing to break into Shenhe’s home to help, the hero within her knew that these children wouldn’t exit her life if she tried.
That burn never did heal properly.
It took barely any time at all for the two children to attach to each other permanently, and Shenhe knows she got attached to the bizarre young boy her nephew kept bringing back startlingly fast as well.
Xingqiu looks away from her and elbows Chongyun’s arm, Xingqiu uses his scarred arm, not that anyone would notice. Shenhe hasn’t actually seen the burn stretching from the child’s wrist to elbow since she treated it all those months ago. She knows for a fact that Chongyun has; he’s mentioned the state of the scar a couple times. But, towards Shenhe (and likely everyone else)? The scar was constantly covered in bandages, then later: sleeves. Chongyun looks up from what is probably math and gives Shenhe a near blinding smile. Shenhe gives him an awkward smile back and heads towards her room to change out of her hero outfit into something more casual.
As she’s gently removing her ornate mask and pulling the skin-tight bodysuit off, Shenhe maps out the rest of her night. She’ll pick her comfiest lounge wear as a reward for a good week and gather all her hair up in a hasty bun to avoid making herself even sweatier, then she’ll go back out to the boys, ruffle Chongyun’s hair, and determine Xingqiu’s current state. If they’re mostly present they’ll also get a hair ruffle; if it’s a bad day, Shenhe will place her hand in front of him and let Xingqiu choose if they wish to give her hand a gentle headbut or not.
After checking in with the boys, Shenhe will then go into the kitchen and prepare a simple noodle dish. The boys like it, as long as Shenhe doesn’t make the mistake of adding carrots (the first and only time she ever made something with carrots for Xingqiu was mere weeks after they started showing up in her home, she may not understand why the child has such a strong aversion to the root vegetable, but she will not damage the hard-won trust they have in her again), and she does too; good flavours, good nutrients, good food. She will call out to them when the food is ready twenty minutes later, the first sound that will be made since she returned home. They will all eat at her table in a companionable silence, and Shenhe will ignore the wiggling in her gut that the little vigilante she has somehow befriended should also have a seat at her table.
Tonight the boys will curl up on Shenhe’s guest bed together, Xingqiu holding Shenhe’s nephew like a lifeline and Chongyun more comfortable in this strange child’s embrace than Shenhe has seen him in years; and tomorrow morning Xingqiu will slip out before Shenhe leaves her room, leaving behind a 100 yuan bill that Shenhe will use only to buy treats for them and Chongyun to enjoy while she is working in the office as a Teyvat liaison or out patrolling the streets of Shanghai.
Except, tomorrow, the pattern will shift.
Tomorrow, everything will go as normal until the afternoon when Shenhe will be told that there was a cave-in and six Teyvat students are trapped inside the Chasm with no trackers and limited food. She will be told they have likely been trapped for a week already.
Tomorrow, Shenhe will text Chongyun that she will be gone for the foreseeable future and take the next flight from Shanghai to Shenyang (approximately three hours air time, closer to five total. Because even though Shenhe has certain prioritized travel in many areas due to her status as Teyvat’s coordinator in her home country, airports and air traffic take time) before picking up a rental car and driving for an hour to reach the Chasm (the mine used to have another name, the Quirk Wars took much from history), located on the edge of the city of Benxi.
Tomorrow, at nearly midnight, Shenhe will fully don her hero identity and remain solely as Ice Spirit for the next two weeks, focused on nothing but retrieving these kids.
Tomorrow, Ice Spirit will find out that two of these children are barely two years older than her nephew and his other half. She will find out none of them are over eighteen.
Over two weeks, Ice Spirit will hear through the people taking on her patrol routes that her vigilante (a child. Another child she has failed) will have disappeared off the streets. She will not have the time to be worried (once the children are freed from the mine, her worry over Zhenyu, her little vigilante, will almost crush her. She will not see hide nor hair of the little sword-wielding vigilante for weeks after she returns to Shanghai. She will cry when they goad her into another chase all that time later).
The mine is a cruel and unforgiving place. Ice Spirit will pray that as she searches the endless pathways she will find some trace of the Teyvat students.
She will not.
It will take Yanwang Zhongli flying in from Geneva–because it will be him as Zhongli, not as a hero (while he may have come to aid regardless, it is his son that is trapped in that mine). He will come angry and scared. At that point, there will be no conceivable way the students will still have any food left, let alone any water, and Zhongli will blaze through the mine like a man possessed because of it.
The two of them together will find the unconscious form of Arataki Itto first. They will find the rest of the students less than five minutes later.
Streetward Rambler will be at base camp when Ice Spirit and Zhongli exit the mine with all of the children in tow. Aether (Ice Spirit doesn’t think the child even has a surname) and Yanwang Xiao are the only two that will be still fully conscious; Jì Yelan will walk out by herself, but will only be moving through sheer force of will; Huo Yanfei, Kuki Shinobu, and Arataki Itto will all have to be carried out as their bodies conserve what little energy stores they have left. The older hero will lead the immediate care of the students while Ice Spirit will let herself relax back into Shenhe and Zhongli will give Tianquan and the rest of Teyvat the miraculous news.
Cloud Retainer will fly in early the next day and relieve Shenhe of her duties. Shifu will look at her student with immeasurable guilt and Shenhe will remind her that she had always known that she would be on the front lines of a crisis eventually. Shifu will not be reassured in the slightest.
Shenhe will spend the drive to the airport and the rest of the trip home in some degree of shock. She will only remember to text Chongyun letting him know she’s on her way back after she lands in Shanghai.
Shenhe will arrive at her apartment in the middle of the day to Chongyun and Xingqiu sitting on her floor doing schoolwork.
But, for now: Shenhe is changing into comfy clothes, smiling to herself as she enjoys that her home no longer just belongs to her.
(And, if two years later, Zhenyu sustains a significant injury by accidentally showing up an entire group of heroes, both from the Adepti and not, and Shenhe is the one stuck dealing with the fallout of her vigilante crashing onto the global stage? If Shenhe walks into their home to find a sheepish Xingqiu halfway out of costume sporting the same injuries as Zhenyu? Little inconsistencies might suddenly fall into line. Shenhe might sigh and finally claim guardianship over these two boys, sending both of them off to Teyvat with her heart in her throat.
(She will pray to anything that will listen to her, even if nothing is actually there, that she will never have to search for them in anything like the dark of the Chasm. She will hope that, on some level, Xingqiu’s experiences in irrationality will keep them safe.))