The snow underneath his feet feels more real than he is.
He has neglected to wear shoes, thinking that perhaps the chill of snow on bare skin will snap him back to reality, if it was ever there in the first place. He knows the look he will find on his mother’s face when she sees him in this state, but he cannot afford to care.
The gods-forsaken aching has gotten worse.
Instead of staying confined to his head, it has decided to travel down the length of his spinal cord, tugging at that fragile string with razor-sharp claws, threatening to snap it and send him tumbling to the ground in a mound of joints and bones.
He should be happy. He has a family again (if he even had one in the first place), and no matter what he has done in the past, they are willing to move on, with one exception. Tonia still shows up to drag her brothers away when they try talking to him for more than a couple minutes.
Teucer is particularly determined, and this morning, right when he was helping his mother with the dishes, he approached and asked.
‘So…’ he said, twiddling his thumbs, ‘Are you all right?’
That threw him for a loop. The past few days had been nothing more than attempts at conversation about his ‘monster’, and if it is gone. Childe could only shake his head and say that he doesn’t remember, no matter how much Teucer tries to help.
He had shown him a toy before, a small figurine of a one-eyed creature. He does not recall ever meeting anything like that, but in that moment he knew it was a ruin guard. However, Teucer liked to call it ‘Mr. Cyclops’.
‘I think it looked like this,’ he had said, watching cautiously as Childe turned the figurine over in his hands. ‘You—your monster, it had one eye and it was big. Like this.’ He had stretched his arms out as far as they could go. ‘They all said it was very scary, but I didn’t think so. It looked like Mr. Cyclops, and Mr. Cyclops is a friend. You told me that once.’
This morning, as Childe washed the dishes, Teucer would repeat his initial question.
‘I’m asking because…’ He is shuffling his feet, rubbing his stockings against the mat in the kitchen. ‘Anthon told me that calling the monster hurts you. He learned about it in school. His teachers said that power was from someplace called the… Uh oh. I don’t remember. But it hurts you very badly.’
It was with much guilt that Childe shook his head and said no, he didn’t remember enough.
As Tonia showed up to drag Teucer away, shooting a cursory glance at him, he figured he should have thanked him for asking.
Now, in the snow, barely able to feel his feet, he figures he should run away.
They are lovely people, really they are, but their eyes are distant every time they speak to him, like they are rummaging through the hollowness inside him to look for someone that isn’t there. His memory may be faulty, but he knows he hates lying to himself, and to his family.
That last word feels less and less real.
Birds chirp from their perches in the pines above, and he relishes each step that brings him further away from the house. The vice grip on his spine loosens itself with every step, like he is doing the right thing for once.
The sun is setting, and he knows his parents will begin worrying soon. Guilt wells in him, but not enough to make him turn back. Maybe he should stay one more day, explain the situation, perhaps try to fit into the mould they have prepared for him, this time with more effort.
The sharp pain through his head tells him that he will not have the strength to do that.
Crunch.
Someone else is here, someone with heavier footsteps and a shorter build. He was a warrior once, or at least that is what Anthon tells him. It seems his senses are the only things that have not left him.
Another crunch. He turns to face the direction of the sound, picking up a branch from the ground. The darkness makes it hard to see anything clearly, but there is a faint silhouette in the distance, and it is approaching fast.
He assesses the situation way too slowly. If he gives it enough time to get close, to prepare, then he is as good as dead.
He takes a deep breath and charges.
The figure dodges his first swing and immediately follows up with a sharp kick to the back of his knees. Childe slumps forward into the snow, arm folded uselessly under him.
This is how he goes out, he supposes. Devoured in the snow by a strange shadow.
The shadow makes a ‘tut, tut’ sound.
‘Really. You poor thing. This kind of engineering… it almost makes me want to thank my mother.’
Then a hand is grabbing his shoulders and propping him up, and he comes face to face with… someone.
The man’s face is mostly hidden underneath the gigantic hat he wears. His clothes recall remnants of Childe’s memories, of cherry blossoms and a land of lightning. There was someone else too, a smiling girl with her fireworks… He pushes those thoughts aside.
The man stands up, and Childe notices that he is wearing wooden sandals.
‘I would say that we are very similar, but I have enough self-respect to stop myself there.’ He checks his fingernails. ‘Automatons… we really ought to narrow down that definition.’
‘What do you mean?’
His voice sounds way too soft. The man chuckles and continues in that slow drawl, ‘Let’s just say… you were sent here for a purpose, a goal. And you are failing spectacularly at it.’
‘What?’
‘Look at me like that all you want,’ he says, tilting his head back. In the fading light, Childe takes note of that awfully smug look and his supremely stupid haircut. Before he can make his opinion on bowlcuts known, the man continues talking. ‘This is the only way I can nudge you in the right direction. Not that I’m supposed to. You don’t want your brain to melt like last time.’
‘My—you know what. Explain now, or I’ll… uhm… I’ll bite you.’
The man laughs. ‘Looks like he still isn’t willing to make himself known. Still hiding from his past, I see. Well, nice meeting you.’ The man tips his hat and begins walking in the opposite direction. ‘Just a word of advice.’ He stops, turns his head slightly. ‘Our kind don’t usually experience injuries like this, but bones can heal incorrectly when broken. And the only way to solve such a problem is to break it again and set it in its original position.’
‘Huh?’
‘I know you’re listening.’ He has turned around, now staring past Childe’s eyes, looking for the same person his parents want to find. ‘If you wish for a peaceful death, you have to experience pain.’
The man tips his hat again and starts jogging away. When Childe gets to his feet, his figure is no longer visible, like the ground has swallowed him up.
If the desire for any answer is an ember before, it now sparks into a burning flame. His memories are a dead end, so there is only one way left.
Gritting his teeth against the needle-sharp pains in his head and spine, he turns on his heel and begins heading back to the house.
His own mind resists every step of the way, stabbing and slashing at the fabric of his thoughts with all its might, sparks of electricity that leap down his spine and threaten to rip it out. He brings his hands up.
They are coated in blood.
He blinks, pulls himself back to earth, and continues.
The pain in his head gets worse, and so do the visions. His mother slumped over in her chair, a knife through her chest, his hands clutching the hilt. His father drowning in a river as he watches on. His siblings—
It stops for a moment, as if it is panting, reprimanding itself for even daring to go there.
He takes advantage of the grace period to start sprinting back to the house.
~~~
His parents are at the door when he gets home, and his mother’s eyes are red, though she tries to hide that fact as she yells at him.
‘You could have told me you were going on a walk! You had us worried sick, and you’re looking mighty proud of yourself for that! And—’ She bristles when she catches sight of his frostbitten feet. ‘I’m done.’
Despite that, she gets him a basin of warm water and makes him put his feet into it. His father, who has been standing awkwardly next to the lamp, sits in the chair next to him.
‘Ajax.’
‘Who was I?’
His mother stops in the act of pouring more warm water into the basin. ‘Darling?’
His father shakes his head. ‘It’s not important. It’s probably better that you don’t remember—’
‘Please,’ Childe says, and his father flinches. ‘I want to know—’ He swallows. ‘I want to know who it is that you want back so badly.’
His father sinks into his chair. His mother is nowhere to be seen, the jug of water she has been carrying sitting on the ground. He has a feeling she will be out of sight for some time.
‘All right,’ says his father. ‘All right. Why don’t we do this tomorrow, it’s a lot—’
‘I want to know.’
His father swallows. ‘Fine.’
~~~
He went missing for three days when he was fourteen.
‘You came back changed. Hungry, and always so desperate,’ says his father, gripping the seat of his chair, weathered face looking so much older than before. ‘I should have seen that, and I should have accepted it. But we—your mother and I both—we thought you were somewhere in there, behind all the blood and hunger and—’
His father stops, and he digests it.
~~~
He killed a man and laughed about it.
‘When we could stomach to open those letters from the man who recommended you, he’d speak of all your achievements on the battlefield. His cheery demeanour, his encouragement of your behaviour… It disgusted me at first. But then I’d see you grow closer to him than your own parents, and I’d wonder, maybe that was what you wanted.’
Childe takes his first swig of firewater, the first of many tonight.
~~~
He died a year ago in his Tsaritsa’s suicidal campaign, leaving no corpse behind.
‘That funeral director from Liyue apologised so much. She said that you deserved to have a body to bury, but leaving any physical part of you in this world would cause unprecedented suffering. She didn’t tell us then, but we both knew that you had traded too much of your humanity for hunger.’
His father’s words are starting to slur. Childe picks up the bottle of firewater between them and finishes it.
~~~
He sits in that chair for a long, long time.
That was who he was. An abomination, who could somehow still love.
But even so, his family wants him back.
They deserve better, says a voice in his head. Only corruption is left for them to hold on to.
He agrees.
He will remove himself from this equation, snuff out the false hope in his mother’s eyes every time her gaze meets his, tell her—them—that there is nothing but emptiness in him at this very moment.
He is a hollow imitation of the son they want to remember, and he will not lie to them about it.
When he is ready, he takes a deep breath and tells his father.
~~~
His mother cries in the morning when she packs for him: spare sets of clothes, cured meats, and a flask of water. A heavy blanket of grief has fallen over the family, so much so that even Tonia looks guilty when she walks past him to the kitchen.
They wait for him at the door, and when he opens it, his mother breaks down again. He lets her cry into his chest and crush his ribcage with her hug.
His father stands a ways back, looking at the ground. His jaw is set when he finally meets Childe’s eyes.
‘Safe travels.’
His voice sounds distant.
His siblings are next, and Anthon refuses to let him go, holding onto his legs with cries of ‘Promise you’ll come back, all right?’ Tonia still refuses to touch him, but she does give him something.
‘Here.’ She drapes a long scarf over his arms. ‘I had wanted to give this to you before your campaign, but you… What I’m saying is, even if you’ve been lying to us our entire lives, you’re still my brother.’
And finally, Teucer. He is still holding onto his figurine, his gaze distant.
When Childe approaches him, Teucer shoves the miniature ruin guard into his hands.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ he says, his voice barely audible. ‘But you say that Ajax is gone, and I believe you. I knew him.’ Here, he puffs his chest out, a small smile curling his lips. ‘And I know that he would have wanted you to have this. Before he left, he said that the world is not always a nice place, and that he wants me to have something nice to hold on to. I’ve thought about it, and…’ Teucer steps back, smiling even as his eyes begin to look wet. ‘I want to do the same thing.’
Childe hugs him back, keeping down the stinging in his eyes.
And then, before he can change his mind, he steps out of the door.
It closes and locks behind him, and he breathes a sigh. There is no relief in the action, but the claws digging into his mind retract for a moment, purring contentedly.
He lets his feet take him away from the house, the no longer familiar snowfields. Somehow, he is taken to the sea, where ice floes creak and break as they bump into each other. He thinks briefly about building a bridge with them and wandering out into the ocean, finding an emptiness to suit him.
‘I should have known.’
He turns, and there is a man standing behind him. Most of his face is hidden behind a scarf, but he is about the same height as Childe himself, and a ponytail of dark hair whips around him in the winter breeze.
Most striking are his eyes, gold against the brown of his clothing, seeming to stare right at him.
‘You seek answers.’
He phrases it like a fact, and it is. Childe nods.
‘I have been putting this off for long enough. Follow me. I will do my best to explain.’
He takes Childe’s hand to guide him through the snow, and Childe knows the spark that comes to life between them.