by a_seagulls_hubris
Rating: Mature, Multi (M/M, F/M, F/F), Complete Work
Published 29 July 2025
‘I’m a degenerate that’s what I am. I look at your… other body and I… You’ve seen what I do. I’m no better than the superiors in the Fatui who force their Cicin Mages to visit their tents late into the night.’
Zhongli’s eyes narrowed. Tartaglia felt his fingers go completely still.
Finally he spoke. ‘How trite.’
‘How… what did you say?’
‘I have heard all of these before. Beneath all of those excuses and pleadings for decency is one thing. Do you know what that is, Tartaglia?’
Zhongli’s eyes glowed in the poor lighting of the kitchen.
‘Fear.’
‘I’m not scared of anything.’
‘Except yourself, apparently. You fear what you will find once you begin to dig. How extensive the damage is, how much you have denied yourself. Come on, Tartaglia. It will catch up with you eventually. Never let it find you undefended.’
~~~
I unironically think giving this character estrogen could fix them and this is my thesis
Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact), Zhongli (Genshin Impact), Tartaglia | Childe (Genshin Impact), Hu Tao (Genshin Impact), Tartaglia | Childe's Family (Genshin Impact), Transfeminine Tartaglia | Childe (Genshin Impact), Toxic Relationships, Blood and Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gender Dysphoria, if you squint you can see me projecting my own thoughts on gender and identity, Gender Identity, he/him pronouns for childe, For the most part, She/Her Pronouns for Tartaglia | Childe (Genshin Impact), Implied Character Death, unreality, Hallucinations, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied Sexual Content, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, or at least hopeful, slight transphobic language, Internalised Transphobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War setting, Cannibalism
somebody finally watched I Saw the TV Glow which triggered Gender Crisis #3. wrote this to deal with that. enjoy
Standard six-shot revolver, Fontaine-made. The barrels were empty until this morning when he dropped onto his stomach and reached a hand underneath the bed, fingers groping through dust and carpet until they closed around the smooth metal of a bullet. He picked the lock on the safe and extracted the revolver, loading the bullet and sliding the cylinder back in place with a gentle ‘click’.
It’s a one-in-six chance, but the barrel of the gun against the roof of his mouth, the cold of the metal seeping into his front teeth cleared his mind more than the salves, the elixirs, the strange powers of an adeptus. He was on the battlefield again, hair’s breadth from death, adrenaline in his veins as his body changed and morphed into something that was his. Power and death. Blood warm on his hands, a star burning away in the heavens.
He was not supposed to survive. Dying on the couch of someone who was not quite a friend, brains splattered on the walls behind him, unable to control the surge of ugliness that had been festering and festering inside of his ribcage for years and years, was not the way he wanted to go. He supposed he could go out on the streets without his mask, yell out, yes, I am the Eleventh Harbinger, I am the person who wreaked destruction upon your harbour, necessary collateral damage for my Tsaritsa’s suicide march. But this nation still fell under the watchful eye of its dead archon, and he would be under lock and key again in this prison of an apartment.
His fingers tightened on the trigger. He’d fired once, a blank, but that sent him crying and sobbing on the floor until Zhongli had returned home, scratches on his arms as he tried to explain that he wanted to die and he was scared of dying and he wanted to go home, all at the same time. Zhongli had stayed home with him for the entirety of the week after, changing the password to the safe every day, throwing out bullets wherever he found them. He does not remember anything else from that week. Like a short-circuited meka, nothing else could imprint itself upon his mind apart from the memory of brilliant gold eyes, suns in the fog, riddled with concern and love and something else he could not read. Going through the motions of being alive.
His mind was clear.
Keys jangled in the keyhole outside of the apartment.
Tartaglia pulled the trigger.
~~~
‘What were you doing?’
‘ …chores.’
‘You have only ever been good at lying by omission.’
‘ …’
‘Childe.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘The bullet… underneath the bed. It is a dummy round.’
‘It was a blank anyway.’
‘I got you dinner.’
‘You enjoy playing me like this.’
‘I do not wish for you to die.’
‘I still think you should have slit my throat in the hospital.’
‘Ch—Tartaglia. Your brother would not have wanted—’
‘Shut up.’
‘You are going to heal. In all my years, many warriors that I have met—’
‘You talk about me like I’m a ghost from your story.’
‘I wish only the best for you. Please.’
‘...’
‘Put the gun down.’
‘I wish people would stop doing that.’
‘Put it down.’
‘Fine.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Papa, mama… it’s always “when Ajax was younger” and “remember when you used to go ice fishing with me?” And then it was “you were more than a weapon before all this”, and “when you still had your other leg”. “When Zh—he was still with us”, “when you used to send those letters”... I thought you’d at least see me now.’
‘I do, Tartaglia. I do.’
‘Then you’d understand that I have nothing.’
‘...’
‘Everything that was me before, my duties, my hopes, all gone. I wish you’d hurry up and do the same to my body.’
‘You haven’t slept in days.’
‘Stay where you are.’
‘You do not wish for another one of those incidents, do you?’
‘Kill me this time around. Stay back.’
‘Go sleep.’
‘...’
‘We can talk about this later. Your mind is fragmented. You are not thinking clearly. I—’
‘...’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I should do better. I should continue to do better. She died for… I’ll take you to bed. I’m sorry.’
‘... Fine.’
~~~
He dissolved into the shadows of the night, the fragments of his mind streaming from a half-broken, leaking skull. Red for his anger, blue for sadness. Gold for the emptiness that suffused him. He laid out those threads before him and felt nothing.
The warm body beneath him breathed out slowly.
He grabbed Zhongli’s shoulders. Defined muscle, flawless skin. A vessel for the divinity within.
‘Could you…’
The adeptus-former-archon understood. The body beneath him morphed slowly, hips widening between his thighs, shoulders narrowing. Tartaglia leaned forward and laid his head on newly-formed breasts, trying to listen for the heartbeat underneath.
Zhongli’s voice was still a low rumble. ‘Is there anything else you need from me?’
‘Just the usual.’
He moved his head to bite at the side of a breast. Zhongli’s breath quickened, and she—not he anymore, Tartaglia reminded himself—reached up to grab Tartaglia’s shoulder before thinking better of it. Her hands rested on the mattress, digits twitching with aborted desire.
‘I don’t understand why you don’t live in this body all the time,’ said Tartaglia, rubbing the jut of Zhongli’s hip.
‘It is a matter of preference.’
‘Of course. It’s just skin to you. Put it on one day and take it off the next. I’m stuck with the one I was born with.’
Zhongli’s eyes narrowed. Tartaglia reached between his own legs, eyes fixed on this lovely body before him as he began to stroke himself.
In between quiet gasps, he continued to speak.
‘I never had a choice, you know? Being—ahh—a son. A brother. Everything that you must be—argh—everything… everything you have to do. I chose to be a weapon so when I died they’d reconstruct—reconstruct a ghost they could love. No way—ah—to wipe the slate clean now.’
Zhongli watched him, gaze following a bead of sweat that dripped past his chin. Tartaglia gulped to keep down the building pressure in his groin, his throat, the pinpricks of salt in the corners of his eyes. He grabbed at Zhongli’s shoulder, and she placed her hand over his.
‘If only—I could choose. I’d be so much—so much better as a person.’
‘Tartaglia.’
The man keeled over at the height of his arousal, keening, bracing himself against Zhongli’s chest. His legs were wet with seed, thin strands that connected the two of them stomach to groin.
‘Tartaglia,’ Zhongli said again, softer.
‘Don’t touch me.’
She let her hands fall back to the mattress once more.
‘I may have a solution.’
‘Don’t. No more elixirs.’
‘I assure you,’ said Zhongli. ‘I believe this will be better for your well-being. If it will ease your pain, would you be willing to try?’
Tartaglia closed his eyes and rested his head on Zhongli’s shoulder.
Zhongli continued, ‘Mortals cannot change their bodies. However, if your current form is sufficiently altered, you would perhaps feel more at home. I once knew a woman who was—‘
‘I’m not a girl.’
Lightning-quick, Tartaglia flung himself to the other side of the bed, as if physical contact with Zhongli was causing him pain. In the half-shadow of the bedroom, Tartaglia’s eyes glittered with something terrible.
‘I know what you’re trying to say. I’m not going to take the easy way out. This burden is mine and I will bear it or die.’
He sprang off the bed and landed, his prosthetic leg hitting the tiles with a loud ‘thunk’. Zhongli began to sit up, arm outstretched, pleading, but Tartaglia was already gone, and along with him the robe Zhongli had discarded over the back of a chair.
Zhongli lay back down, body morphing back into the form of a man.
~~~
His dreams were filled with colours. A deep sea of blue, cold against his skin, his own blood slowly dyeing the surroundings red. A thin thread of gold near the surface that flickered and died when he reached out to grab it. The white of his exposed bones, and the scarlet rot that spilled out of his failing body.
The night after he shot himself with another blank, a woman’s hand pulled him out of the water.
The night air was cold, but less so than the ocean. He listened to waves crash into the shore, symphony in chaos, his hands grasping onto the soft, golden sand beneath him. A gentle pressure rested on his stomach, rocking back and forth. Someone was humming.
Tartaglia opened his eyes.
Straddling his hips, a woman looked down at him with bright blue eyes. His first thought was that she was his mother, but that couldn’t be right—she was wiry, strong, and what he could see of her arms were heavily scarred. He followed the line of the scar that reached from wrist to elbow, knowing that it led all the way to her shoulder. Surgery for the bones in his arm, shattered after a battle.
The woman flicked her short ginger hair out of the way and smiled. He hated the way it looked, off-putting and people-pleasing and so unnatural. She smiled wider, as if knowing the effect she was having on him.
He’d lost his old military jacket in the war. She had it slung over her shoulders, red shirt half-undone beneath it, revealing the top half of her breasts.
She reached for her belt. The deep blue glow at her hip made him try to get a better look, but she was pushing him down, imprinting his body into the sand.
‘Shhh.’
‘That’s mine,’ he gasped. There was a hole in his windpipe and his voice leaked out of it like wind into an old wooden house. ‘That’s my Vision.’
‘Mine now,’ she said in his voice, playful. ‘You put it away. It’s mine now.’
‘You’re—you’re not real. This is a dream.’
‘Correct,’ she said, sing-song. A Hydro dagger materialised in her hand, glowing with elemental energy. ‘Only about the second one, though.’
She plunged the blade down into his stomach. He didn’t scream, couldn’t scream, not even when she slid the blade upwards until it hit his ribcage. Her work was clinical, cold, and most importantly neat.
He couldn’t move his head; she’d pressed a hand into his forehead, humming to herself as she gutted him like a fish. He could feel her move within him, fingers reaching blindly—liver, spleen, intestines, pancreas. She tore out each one and tossed them onto the sand where they continued to squirm.
‘How long,’ she said, plunging her knife into his arm to free up her hand so she could wipe her forehead, ‘how long have you let yourself rot? Years?’
She picked up his twitching liver, watching as it crumbled and melted into tender, red flesh before their eyes. ‘How long will you keep lying to yourself?’
‘When are you going to kill this version of you?’
~~~
He didn’t know when he started feeling like this. When he was fourteen? Even younger? The persistent voice at the back of his head telling him that something wasn’t right was a companion so intimate that he could not imagine a life without it.
Even now it gnawed at him as he tried to force down food (meat, or some kind of bun). Hungrier than the guilt, with sharper claws than the desire to die. He knew that the only way it would die was if he died first.
Acid scorched his throat when he threw up in the bathroom, head hanging limply over the rim of a toilet bowl, hair lank and greasy. He hadn’t showered, couldn’t bear looking down at his body without wanting to tear into and look through the remnants for an answer: why didn’t he die in battle? Why were his loved ones dead or distant? Why couldn’t he go home?
He thought back to Zhongli, and his offer.
Zhongli was an adeptus who knew intimately the changing of forms. Begrudgingly, Tartaglia had to admit that he was right: this body, once changed, would be truly his.
And therein lay the problem.
He’d never been particularly sane, not since he was fourteen. Why treat a problem of the mind with a remedy that acted on the body? Surely this was it: a delusion. He was a coward who wanted an easy way out, a different body, a different self, rather than confront what he did and what he was.
A movement in the corner of the room drew his gaze.
Tartaglia lifted his head shakily. There, propped against the bathroom door, was a mess of flesh and bone. He could vaguely make out the shape of a person, its head cleaved in two and both legs shattered, maggots spilling out of its rotting, broken ribcage.
Its long red scarf fluttered weakly in a non-existent breeze.
Tartaglia got his legs underneath him. The body was moving ever so slightly, its single intact hand twitching. He could smell the rot that trailed from its insides, filling up his nostrils and into his lungs and invading his own body. He held his breath and took a step back.
The body lifted a hand. Tartaglia’s own fingers curled around a non-existent dagger. His Vision was too far away, locked in a box to which only Zhongli had the key. He curled his hands into fists.
The door opened, pushing the corpse forward, and Tartaglia pounced. He clawed into its soft insides, tearing out flesh dotted with pus-filled pockets and maggot-eaten holes, wincing as a bone fragment pierced his finger. He punched the thing in its bisected head, hard, hearing the crunch of its skull. Blood splattered onto the clean white tiles, smearing across the floor as they struggled.
‘Childe?’
Tartaglia looked up.
Peeking around the half-open door, Zhongli’s face was a textbook expression of concern. Tartaglia looked down. In his hands, ripped to shreds, was his shirt from yesterday, the one he had taken off before Zhongli had taken him to bed.
Zhongli’s eyebrows twitched slightly. Tartaglia tensed up. Surely this would hurt him enough, enough to make him slam Tartaglia against a wall and threaten him, teeth close to his jugular like the beast that he was.
Zhongli opened the door, stepped into the bathroom, and gently took the shredded remnants of the shirt from Tartaglia. He was weak, too weak to resist, so the shreds left his grip with the lightest tug. All the while those golden eyes stared at him with so much warmth and pity that he felt sick.
Snarling, Tartaglia pounced and sank his teeth into the side of Zhongli’s neck.
~~~
The wound healed quickly, and within an hour it was a faint imprint of red, only visible if Zhongli pulled down his collar. Tartaglia sat opposite him at the dining room table, long unused, a thick layer of dust coating the surface. A layer of dust that Zhongli could easily have cleaned if he didn’t need to deal with Tartaglia all of the time, making sure he didn’t starve or hurt himself, refusing to lash out no matter how badly Tartaglia hurt him.
Zhongli touched the side of his neck, and Tartaglia fell to his knees from his chair.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, voice breaking. ‘I’m sorry.’
Zhongli tilted his head downwards. He remained silent.
‘You can give me one as well,’ said Tartaglia, tugging down his shirt collar to reveal his collarbones.
‘I will not draw your blood,’ snapped Zhongli. ‘I swore a vow.’
‘Eye for an eye, huh?’
‘Things are never that simple.’ Zhongli slid off his chair to sit on the ground, crossing his legs neatly before him. He never took off his workwear anymore, not after the war.
‘You are a person, Ch—Tartaglia.’
Tartaglia felt something heavy settle in his throat.
‘Then why—why don’t I feel like one?’
Everything was spilling out of him, everything ugly and awful and unnameable. He couldn’t stop, not even when the corners of his eyes began to sting and Zhongli hesitantly reached out and pulled him into an embrace. Tartaglia inhaled, searching for the familiar smell of silk flower perfume, but found none.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You don’t even have time to—you’re spending all your time looking after me.’
‘Which I do out of my own free will.’ Zhongli’s voice was soft. ‘You cannot make me stay.’
Tartaglia clenched his jaw. The skin of Zhongli’s cheek was pressed to his temple, soft and supple. How he wanted to take this man within himself, the only person who could look at him now and still try to love him.
‘What is it like?’
‘Hm?’ Zhongli gently extracted himself from Tartaglia’s arms.
‘Becoming a woman.’
Zhongli’s gaze focused on Tartaglia, and he had never felt more exposed. Was that an invasive question to ask?
Zhongli opened his mouth. ‘If I am to be completely honest, I do not feel anything in particular. I am as I am, regardless of my body.’
‘Could I feel like that too, if I tried?’
‘Why would you need to?’ Zhongli reached out for Tartaglia’s hand, awaiting permission. Tartaglia let him twine their fingers together. ‘You are suffering. You know what you can do to alleviate this suffering. Why do you refuse? You are not me. Perhaps change would suit you better.’
‘I’m a bad person.’
‘Hm?’ There was a hint of mischief in that hum. ‘Do elaborate.’
‘I have slaughtered so many people in my quest for power. Her quest, my quest, it matters not. I crushed the thrones of gods, empowered by the blood I shed. And after all that I have the decency to remain alive.’
‘Hm. So have I. Not enough.’
‘You want more? I abandoned my family. I avoided them whenever I could because I could not bear the shame of them looking at me and seeing the son they lost.’
‘Go on.’
‘The reason I want to be—you know. Foul Legacy, that shell’s always felt more like home to me. Even when it started killing me. It felt like an escape. But now… me, a woman? No actual woman thinks being a woman is some sort of escape.’
‘Maybe you could be the first?’
‘I’m a degenerate that’s what I am. I look at your… other body and I… You’ve seen what I do. I’m no better than the superiors in the Fatui who force their Cicin Mages to visit their tents late into the night.’
Zhongli’s eyes narrowed. Tartaglia felt his fingers go completely still.
Finally he spoke. ‘How trite.’
‘How… what did you say?’
‘I have heard all of these before. Beneath all of those excuses and pleadings for decency is one thing. Do you know what that is, Tartaglia?’
Zhongli’s eyes glowed in the poor lighting of the kitchen.
‘Fear.’
‘I’m not scared of anything.’
‘Except yourself, apparently. You fear what you will find once you begin to dig. How extensive the damage is, how much you have denied yourself. Come on, Tartaglia. It will catch up with you eventually. Never let it find you undefended.’
Tartaglia twisted around to glare at Zhongli, but the adeptus was already gone, leaving behind only a faint imprint on the dusty floor.
Tartaglia reached up to scratch at the scab on the side of his neck.
~~~
He’s not scared. He’s not scared of anything, not after he fell into the Abyss. Not since his bones reformed to become a monster that fed on fresh blood and torn tendons.
Perhaps Zhongli was right about the damage. He could feel it, the rot eating at his body as he walked through the streets of the harbour, a hood to cover his face. Someone get him away from these people, ordinary and unaware of the gaping, hungry maw he buried in his ribcage.
His feet brought him to the funeral parlour.
The receptionist perked up as soon as he entered. She grabbed her hat off the table and stuck it firmly on top of her head, the single plum blossom in its brim drooping slightly.
‘There’s my favourite Fatuus! How’s it going?’
She extended her hand. Tartaglia shook it, carefully. Her palm was sweaty, summer heat plastered against his pale, sickly skin.
She looked at him expectantly. Oh, right. People usually expect a reason for your visiting them. Tartaglia dug around in his pockets.
A handful of Mora coins brushed against his fingers. One by one, he picked them out and placed them on his palm before offering them to Hu Tao.
‘Wanted to give you a gift.’
Hu Tao looked from the coins to his face slowly, cheerful grin still on her face. Tartaglia can hear her brain turning, analysing the reasons for this strange behaviour. She’d go with grief, of course, given her job.
‘Thank you.’ She took the coins and placed them on the table. There was a kindness in her eyes that he could not bear.
‘It hasn’t been the same.’ Hu Tao stood with her hands folded in front of her. ‘Not since my consultant—your—‘
Tartaglia took a few steps back before bolting for the door. The door handle jammed once, twice, and no matter how much he tugged and struggled he could not block out Hu Tao’s next words.
‘If you’re ready… whenever you’re ready. I will grieve with you. Not as a funeral director, but as a friend.’
Tartaglia opened the door and dashed through without looking back.
~~~
The other him—the other her showed up in his dream again, and this time he was ready. She was straddling him again, pinning him down, but he still had enough strength to throw her off him, scrambling to get to his feet as she placed her hands on her hips, looking mildly amused.
In a flash, her blades were back in her hands.
‘I can do this all day,’ he said to her, panting, grabbing at his stomach. His ribcage had split down the middle, and his lungs and diaphragm dangled by thin strands of tissue. ‘I can fight you every night, and I will win.’
She smiled, that artificial, terrible thing. ‘You still don’t get it, do you?’
‘I only have to win once.’
She tutted. ‘We both know that’s not true.’
‘I have crushed the thrones of gods.’ Tartaglia felt his windpipe collapse in on himself, but he was still speaking, his voice tearing itself out of his ruined torso with all the desperation of a trapped animal. ‘I can get rid of you.’
‘Darling.’ She strode over to him, her blades dissipating into water. He winced when she grabbed his face, turning it upwards so that she could look into his eyes.
‘There’s no running from yourself.’
She leaned down, her teeth brushing almost gently against his neck before sinking down, crushing bone and tendon and spinal cord.
~~~
It took so much pleading for Zhongli to agree to this. Tartaglia lay spread-eagled on the floor of Zhongli’s apartment, arms and legs tied down with a set of heavy steel restraints, naked and blindfolded.
The first bite was tentative, testing; Zhongli chewed on the skin of his ear for a good five minutes before sinking in his canines and tearing off the cartilage, chewing and swallowing with barely a sound. Tartaglia felt his blood drip down the back of his head, forming a shallow pool as a pillow.
‘You are completely powerless,’ said Zhongli. Tartaglia felt his teeth graze his ankle, his tongue tracing the shape of his tendon.
‘I thought maybe… this would give you an idea.’ Tartaglia winced as Zhongli’s teeth neatly severed his tendon. ‘Of what I am. Of what’s left of a weapon without a purpose.’
‘Really?’ Zhongli kissed the soles of his feet before moving on to his shin. There was a faint ‘click’ as his teeth met bone. ‘Are you so determined to deprive yourself of a choice?’
‘I never had a choice. And even if I did… what right do I have to take it?’
‘What right?’ Zhongli bit into the meat of his thigh. He chewed faster this time, swallowing the lump of flesh within a heartbeat. ‘Who took this right from you?’
Tartaglia gulped. Zhongli’s breath was soft against the jutting bone of his hip.
‘You are alive, Tartaglia. Your path stretches on.’
‘Regretfully.’
Zhongli bit down on the hip. Still, no pain surged through Tartaglia even as he heard the crack of bone.
‘You can punish yourself for the rest of your life,’ said Zhongli, a low growl creeping over his voice. ‘Try to kill yourself, starve yourself, all because you believe you deserve to suffer. And the only person who will derive any satisfaction from this will be yourself. You selfish bastard.’
Zhongli grabbed his waist. Tartaglia felt him flexing his hands, as if calculating the exact force needed to shatter his spine.
‘You will live anew. I command you. For me, for your family. For yourself.’
Tartaglia’s blindfold was ripped away, and there was Zhongli. Teeth bloodstained, a mad glow in his eyes. Beautiful, terrible god-king Zhongli. Commanding him to live.
Zhongli’s lips brushed against his intact ear.
‘Will you let me remake you in my image?’
Tartaglia opened his mouth, ready to refuse—
A flash of bright blue before his eyes. His strength metamorphosed, in a body that did not rot from the weight of its destiny.
Tartaglia nodded.
~~~
The woman in her dream is as beautiful as ever. Her short ginger hair is blown askew by the sea wind, and her boots sink further and further into the sand as she rocks back and forth in place. Tartaglia strides up to her with legs no longer shattered by the force of the waves, her body stronger than it has ever been since after the war.
The other woman brandishes a knife, and Tartaglia wraps her hand around the blade. The blade cuts into her palm, drawing blood, and both women grin widely.
‘You left him behind. Good work.’
Tartaglia flexes her hands. ‘Not exactly. I think he lives within me still, the weapon with human skin.’
The other woman shrugs, her weapon dissipating into Hydro droplets.
‘I didn’t need to kill him,’ says Tartaglia.
‘Oh?’
‘You were wrong. He and I… we share a past.’
A moment of silence passes.
‘I love him, even now.’
The other woman crosses her arms. ‘You will never be free like that.’
‘Maybe,’ says Tartaglia.
‘I can carry this burden for you. His hopes, his desperation. I can rebirth you anew.’
‘No.’
The other woman’s eyebrows rise.
Tartaglia says, ‘I am as greedy as ever, madam. He was loved. I want that for myself, even in my new life.’
The other woman freezes in place. Tartaglia watches her carefully as her hands twitch, closing around the hilt of an imaginary weapon.
Then, the other woman throws her head back and laughs.
‘What did I expect. Here.’
She strips off her military jacket and removes the Vision from her belt, wrapping the jacket around the glowing gem before tossing it to Tartaglia.
The other woman is smiling widely.
‘We will never meet again.’
‘Don’t worry. I know where to find you.’
She bows at the waist and turns towards the ocean, minuscule waves lapping at her feet. As she treads into deeper water, Tartaglia watches her disappear into the calm mirror of the ocean, not a trace left behind.
~~~
To my dearest Princess Tonia:
Apologies for the time it took for me to respond to your last letter. Your big sister has been very busy taking care of a friend’s business. And before you ask, yes, the friend is Director Hu, and yes, she did send you a gift. Enclosed should be a package. I hope you, Anthon and Teucer will find it interesting.
I’ve been cleaning the apartment. I still can’t believe that I have a place all to myself in a nation so far away from home. The artefacts I keep finding in every nook and cranny of this place. Course, I can’t sell them, so I’ve been trying to brainstorm some solutions with Director Hu. Nothing lasts forever, but I think Zhongli would like it if his collection continued to bring the same joy to his countrymen as it did to him.
Papa and mama have been asking about the next-of-kin stuff? Don’t worry, I don’t plan on dying any time soon. In fact, I’ll reach you a week after this letter does, and I’ll be able to explain to them in person that no, I’m not the one who died. I’ll even bring the documents, show them the name on those papers, though I don’t know how much it’ll mean to them. Maybe I’ll pay someone to translate them from Liyuean.
I’ll be spending quite a while at home this coming winter. Can’t miss the solstice. I’ve missed you all so much. I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t contact you earlier. My health hasn’t exactly been the best since he died. But I’ll be there soon. Wait for me, love.
Your loyal knight,
Ajax
the title is a line from Weakling from the album Filth by Swans. i was on a Swans listening-streak when i plotted and wrote this fic and Filth had the exact atmosphere i was going for. i was like 'i HAVE to name this fic after a title from that album'. do try it out if you like noise or industrial.
also a lot of the hallucination/unreality stuff was heavily inspired by Psycho Nymph Exile by Porpentine Charity Heartscape. it's super short and i'm pretty sure there's a free pdf floating around somewhere. it is really heavy though. in the author's words: trigger warning for everything.
posting this like five days before i go to university