Work Text:
Ajax.
Childe.
Tartaglia.
There are many names he goes by, and many voices that call him.
Ajax.
When the seasons change and a white blanket descends, sometimes, just sometimes, he can feel Ajax, a glimmer of longing for a far distant land across the mountain range that fortresses his icy homeland, Snezhnaya.
On those days, Childe breaks out his limited stash of firewater to quench the bottomless pit he feels that could only be described as thirst. Tartaglia knows no other explanation.
Ajax does. He calls it longing. Childe calls it regret.
Sometimes, Ajax despises himself. He despises the monsters he lives with, who crawl and inhabit the same worn skin that he does. It used to be his. It used to be Ajax.
Now,
Now, he couldn’t recognize what he had become. What he could recognize, was the fear. The fear in his parents’ eyes every time they looked at him. The unsettled glances screaming louder than he could now, stuck in this stupid, fucking body.
You’re not my son. You’re not Ajax. Who are you?
so Ajax slept,
in a sometimes forgotten corner, only to reawaken with the winter snow that graces Liyue’s shores once every rotation.
to remember, to reminisce.
of an icy wonderland, of frozen waters and ice-fishing, and of loving hands that embraced him.
Childe.
Childe knows that Ajax hates him. And he’s okay with it. He’s okay as long as it keeps Ajax away from him.
It’s a kinder fate for Ajax. A mercy. To not deal with his father’s screaming matches. It’s a mercy that Ajax doesn’t know just how estranged from his family he’s become.
Sometimes, Childe thinks, it’s a mercy I granted him.
Tartaglia would scoff, he thinks wryly,
desperation fuels him to attach himself to a weaker being, to provide protection and safety, in order to prove he’s at least strong enough to do this.
But Childe also knows Zhongli.
He knows of Liyue’s sunsets and the way they look from the shores of Yaoguang Shoal,
He knows of Havria’s strength where even Liyue’s citizens see only weakness,
and he knows the best way to steep silk flowers in a pot of tea.
Childe has seen and felt like Ajax never had the chance to, like Tartaglia never allowed himself to. Childe has loved in ways that the others could not comprehend. It enrages Tartaglia. A caged beast in the hand of its master, a bull released into an amphitheatre to fight and fight while the spectators—the humans, observe and cheer. An animal of amusement for this stage, and the bull never wins.
Liyue, a land of gods and monsters. The Geo Archon’s betrayal would not go unpunished, but in the end, a bull is nothing in the face of a dragon.