They’d fallen asleep just like that, on the floor, though Zhongli does inch closer to the fireplace several times during the night. He supposes it is more out of habit than anything else: it has been a while since his flesh had necrosed and fallen off due to the cold. The last time he had taken a look at his bare skin, unwinding the bandages from around his waist, it had even seemed to be healing.
When he can no longer sleep, he lights a small flame in his palm, rolling it between his fingers and watching the silver flicker in and out of existence.
A hand, feverishly warm, locks onto his shoulder.
‘Could you,’ says Childe, ‘could you kiss me?’
Zhongli turns to face him. Childe is lying on his side, lips slightly parted. Exposed ribs peek out from under his thin shirt. He quickly pulls his shirt down, a smile gracing his mouth.
Zhongli gives in, reaching for Childe’s face. The skin burns hot under his touch.
‘No,’ says Zhongli. ‘Not when…’
Childe laughs, leaning into Zhongli’s touch. ‘The difference is that I am asking for it. Come on.’
Zhongli traces his lips with his own, feeling Childe’s breath intermingling with his own. Childe lets out a soft chuckle when Zhongli nibbles at the corner of his lips, but that sound is quickly stifled when Zhongli finally kisses him, savouring the almost red-hot feeling of his quickened breath.
Childe makes the first move, deepening the kiss by lacing his fingers in Zhongli’s hair. Restraint, Zhongli reminds himself as he cups Childe’s face, resisting the urge to run his tongue across Childe’s teeth, taking in the taste of him.
Then Childe pulls back, his hands moving to cradle Zhongli’s jaw, tracing under his lips with a thumb. The smile on his face, almost smug, is the first thing that makes Zhongli’s heart flutter that night. ‘You can have the rest later.’
And that breaks the spell. The many-branched dagger lies out of sight, but Zhongli can almost feel its presence by the door, where Childe had cast off the rest of his belongings before going to sleep on the floor. Zhongli closes his eyes. Childe still has his mission, after all.
‘I have a proposition,’ says Zhongli.
‘Hm?’
‘When you slay the Fingers, let me… grant you mercy.’
‘Good luck with that,’ says Childe. ‘If I give in at any point, the one you will be facing will no longer be human.’
‘I am a child of Marika.’ Zhongli reaches for Childe’s hand, placing it over his chest, over the heart of one of the last demigods alive. ‘There is nothing that I will not survive. But you… I would like you to have something.’
The cold builds in his chest, no longer smothering. A part of him. He reaches towards it, willing it to leave his body, take form—
‘Ah.’ Childe retracts his hand. ‘I think you’ll need your Great Rune more than I do.’
‘You are—’
‘I am mortal.’ Childe lifts Zhongli’s hand to his lips, giving it a quick, chaste kiss on the knuckles. ‘But I am the one who has contained this frenzied fire. Trust me, Zhongli. You do not want to take that risk.’
Zhongli opens his mouth, but Childe is on him again, their lips connecting. Zhongli embraces him, savouring the warmth, the sharp jut of his bones, the thinness of his arms. His last day in this ruined, mortal body.
And he can never go back. We can never go back.
When Childe breaks away, Zhongli threads their hands together. ‘I will face your fate with you.’
‘Thank you,’ says Childe. He is not smiling, but Zhongli knows this tone: raw, quiet. Honest. ‘Thank you for staying.’
~~~
The death of a god is less dramatic than Zhongli had thought it to be.
The Three Fingers had never fought, had never needed to fight. Not when a simple touch drives many to madness.
But their adversary, wrapped in their searing embrace, trembling as he drives the blade deeper, is already there. Childe makes a sound like a wounded animal but persists, gripping the Fingerslayer Blade like a lifeline.
The smell of burning flesh reaches Zhongli.
Do something, he urges himself. But he has been unable to do anything, not since Childe pushed those stone doors open and charged forward, an inhuman scream tearing through his throat.
They had not spoken since last night.
The trek back to the sewers had Childe leading the way, a good distance away. Zhongli followed, knowing he could catch up with Childe in a short sprint, but then there was the memory of Childe’s teeth under his tongue.
You can have the rest later.
Zhongli has never gambled in his life, and he does not know what to do with the uncertainty. He had only succeeded once, after all, and only partially.
He finds himself thinking of Guizhong, a brief, fleeting moment of betrayal, before Childe throws his whole weight against the stone doors.
Would she know what to do? Did she know his ghostflame as well as she did her machines?
And now Childe is wrapped in the embrace of the Three Fingers, shaking from the pain, his mouth opening wordlessly. He turns to Zhongli, still holding onto the blade, before he bursts into flames.
And Childe is burning, the vice grip of the Fingers curling tight around him even in death. He must be screaming, he must be, because Zhongli can no longer hear anything except the ringing in his ears.
He’d left his bag behind, in front of the doors, he thinks dimly as he breaks the Fingers’ grip on Childe, gritting his teeth through blistering skin.
No hesitation.
Zhongli drops to his knees and cradles Childe’s burning body in his arms.
His own colder flames burn in protest, his Great Rune flaring to life. Here he is, his birthright wreathing his arms, but not for a dynasty.
He can endure this. The skin on his face crackles from the heat, and his clothes offer no protection against the ever-consuming fire. But he can endure. He must. Childe had done the same for over half his life.
Burn, he commands his ghostflame. Burn him and start anew. It is a strange feeling, the cold in his veins and his skin on fire.
He feels something pop in his ear.
Zhongli grits his teeth, winding his arms ever tighter around Childe. The man’s screams piece his only functioning ear, and Zhongli knows it is partly because of him. He brings up a hand, wreathed in ghostflame, and closes it around Childe’s throat.
Something soft and vulnerable bursts underneath his fingers. Zhongli withdraws his hand, the shock making his shield of ghostflame falter for just a moment.
And the full extent of his injuries begin to sink in.
He barely has any skin on the right side of his face, and his right eye is shut. Childe’s screams continue to ring in his left ear, but his right ear only hears silence.
Zhongli looks down at Childe, writhing on the ground, too weak to manage more than a singular twitch. Yellow flames consume his body, melding his armour to his skin, his head barely more than a corona of blinding light.
He cannot let go. Not when he made a promise.
Zhongli grits his teeth and embraces Childe once more. His own ghostflame sputters, with the accompanying flare of pain.
‘Guizhong,’ says Zhongli, his voice ruined from the smoke and the fire. ‘Guizhong, help me.’
He knows she cannot hear him. He continues the chant anyway, the only prayer he has ever known in his life.
Zhongli feels his right eye burst in its socket. His own flesh is burning, that much he can smell.
‘Guizhong,’ he says once more.
The cold in his veins reaches a boiling point. His throat is raw, preventing him from screaming out loud as ghostflame flares brighter, enveloping both himself and Childe.
Through the smoke, he cracks open his left eye.
A sheet of his hair hangs over his shoulder to shield Childe, both of them wreathed in silvery fire. He is alive, at least. But the state of Childe’s body…
Zhongli feels the neck under his fingers give way, turning to ash at the slightest touch. He forces himself to look, to take in the charred mess before him, bits and pieces of Childe’s body falling apart in his own unburned hands.
There is a pile of ashes in front of him, already being scattered by the wind, resting in his hair, now free of its braid. Dust motes against a sheet of silvery white.
Zhongli feels small, much smaller than he ever has in his life. But he left his spear by the door, and he only has his hands to stoke through these ashes.
The right side of his face stings. It is remarkable how little pain he feels at this moment. Zhongli forces his right eye open as well, to take in what lies before him.
And he stokes, and stokes.
His hands are smaller than he remembers.
Let me atone, he begs. Let me find his soul. If not…
His hair is longer too, a now-dusty white draped over his shoulders. Strange. He had remembered cutting it all off to give to Childe.
It all clicks, too slowly.
‘Guizhong?’
His voice is different. Oh, how he had missed that voice. All those years of wandering, of atonement, and she had been by his side all along.
Of course, she had always been a part of him. Dust to his ash. The compassion he had been denying himself. To what extent were they two distinct entities?
And now he has no excuse.
He kneels before Childe’s ashes, letting them run through his fingers to fall back onto the floor, his mind clear as it ever was.
He had never been incomplete. She was always there, waiting, watching, so intertwined he had barely noticed when they’d converged.
Don’t doom yourself with that pretty speech. She was lovely, and he could have been too. And that is what he will be, to the man before him.
The ashes in his palm stir. Zhongli—Guizhong—cradles them closer to her chest, where she knows her heart is.
‘Come back,’ she says. ‘I command thee.’
The ashes stir once more, and from their midst—
Zhongli holds his breath.
A shadowy wisp emerges, watchful, waiting.
posting everything in one go because i'm a man(?) of my word. i promised.
anyway i love thinking about zhongli's relationship to guizhong. to what extent did she change him? did she perhaps (metaphorically) become his heart? idk but fusing them into one person was the most genius thing i've ever done in this fic