Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ajax does not mean to fall.

He is not careful about his journey, but he’s not stupid, either—when he leaves home behind it is with packed bags and his father’s rusting sword and the sun just about to rise. He walks through the snow for hours, as the winter sun shines cold through the shadows of the trees and the untouched white snow; he walks until his hands are shaking, until he thinks, at last, that maybe he should turn around and go home.

He walks until the sun starts to set, and then he hears the wolves. 

All the preparation in the world cannot help him here—Ajax is far from home and cold and exhausted, and the wolves smell weakness just as well as they smell blood. He can hear their howling through the shadowing trees; he can hear the breaking branches as they come for him.

He is, in this moment, too tired to run. His fingers are numb and shaking. Ajax grips his father’s sword, refusing to go down easy, but his hands are frozen cold, and even as he prepares to fight, he thinks, I won’t make it.

I’m going to die here.

I don’t want to die here.

The forest stretches on before him: endlessly white, and patiently waiting. The wind is howling mournful through the trees. The wolves have surrounded him now. The monsters of this wood know where he is. The setting sun has turned the cold blue sky a bloody red, the trees to shadowed silhouettes, and Ajax steps back with a hitched breath and feels the ground crumble apart beneath his feet.

When he falls, he is too surprised to scream—too cold to cry, or to even close his eyes, and the last he sees of his homeland is not the wolves nor the snow nor the trees—just the sky, only the sky, burning red and cold as ice.

.

He wakes up freezing, in a bed that’s not his own, so numb he can barely move. He doesn’t open his eyes—can’t open his eyes—but he can hear, still. The silent shuffle of footsteps. The creak of a wooden floorboard. A rhythmic tapping, thump-thump-thump, like someone’s drumming their foot against the wall. Shut up, Tonia.

Except that can’t be Tonia. Ajax left home behind for the woods, and then—and then—

He fell.

So where is he now?

He doesn’t know. The air here is cold but bearable, and the sheets pulled over Ajax’s shoulders are warm but useless. He can smell something nearby—warm, spiced, with a heavy scent that speaks of something filling. It’s not a scent he recognizes. 

Thump, goes that tapping foot again. Thump, thump—  

“Boy,” someone says, suddenly. A woman, Ajax thinks, with a coarse voice and low tone. “If you don’t knock it off, I’ll throw you out.”

The tapping quiets. Ajax keeps his eyes closed, straining his ears. There is a long pause, and then a second voice says, young and high and petulant, “Why’s it matter, though?”

The woman mutters, too low for Ajax to catch. “Manners, little fool. If you wake my patient—”

A sharp scoff. 

“Boy, I am not joking.”

“I know,” the younger boy says, sounding openly annoyed now. “But he’s already awake.”

The woman goes silent. Ajax stills, stiff under the sheets. How had he known? 

It’s too late to react. A hand presses hard and heavy against the side of Ajax’s neck, checking his pulse; the woman mutters again, her voice worn low with irritation. “Hmph, so he is. Now then. Care to open your eyes?”

Ajax rolls over, carefully, and pries his eyes open at last. He sits up slowly, taking in his new surroundings. He is not sure where he is. A small one-room house, perhaps, with wooden floors and stone walls and a low, sloping rooftop. There is only one bed, and he is sitting in it; a chest rests beside his bedside table and a kitchen takes up the second half of the room, nicked table and chairs and worn-wood cabinets. The stove is rough stone, built in a style utterly unlike Snezhnayan cooking pots. Even the blankets look bizarre to him: tight weave with a light cloth unlike the heavy Snezhnayan wools, dyed dark blue and stitched with fine embroidery.

“Sit up,” the woman says, and Ajax almost jumps. “Slowly now.”

Ajax sits up in a rush, breath catching. 

“Damn it, boy, I said slowly.”

Ajax is hardly listening. He stares at the woman with wide eyes, almost awed. She’s a warrior—she must be. There is blood under her nails and strength in the set of her feet. She is broad-shouldered and tall and as old as Ajax’s father, with scars crawling up side-by-side the wrinkles in her tanned face; she is dressed, also, in the strangest clothes Ajax has ever seen. A dark turtle-neck and blue poncho-cloak that hangs to her waist, embroidered with stars and diamond-like tassels. Even her boots look odd—thinner, missing the fur lining to keep out snow.

It is not just her, either. Behind her, sitting up on a countertop, is a small boy maybe the same age as Tonia, newly seven, with brown skin and dark hair. He is dressed in the same strange clothes as the woman—the dark turtle-neck, the tight sleeves, a pale blue coat that clasps in front and flutters with three tails behind him, stitched with diamond shapes.

Ajax stares at them. The woman has turned away, messing with something beside the bed, but the boy stares boldly back. His eyes are blue and full of stars, and Ajax has never seen the like.

“Okay,” says the younger boy, at once, and turns to the scarred woman. “He’s up. Can we throw him back over the border now?”

“Hey,” Ajax says, offended. His voice rasps. He jolts and brings a hand to his throat.

“Don’t touch that,” the scarred woman says, sounding tired, and smacks his hand away. “My knowledge of first aid is mediocre at best.”

“What?” Ajax says, still confused and starting to grow alarmed. “What does that mean? Who are you? Where am I?” Because he is not in Snezhnaya—he can’t be, because this house and the bed and the clothes these people wear, it is nothing like he has ever seen or known. He’s not home. He’s not sure where he is, but home most definitely isn’t it.

“One thing at a time,” the woman says, but behind her the boy kicks his heels and lifts a hand, counting off.

“It means you screamed a lot and hit the ground hard, so if you move too much you’ll die or something,” one finger counted, “her name is Skirk and she’s the one who found you,” second finger, “and you’re in… Khaenri’ah.” A third finger. The boy considers his hand and nods. “Yep. That’s it.”

The woman—Skirk?—turns around and gives the boy a dark look. The boy stares back. “What? He asked.”

Ajax feels dizzy. “I—what?” He remembers falling. He doesn’t remember falling so far he’d hit another country. How does that even work? “Wait, I—I was still in Snezhnaya then. How am I—Khaenri’ah? I’ve never heard of it. What’s that? Where’s that?”

Skirk runs a hand down her face. She looks exasperated, or something like annoyed; her eyes are a deep brown but for a moment they catch in the firelight, and Ajax can see a star-like pupil, same as the boy’s. “You are not in Khaenri’ah,” she says, in a deliberate way that implies her patience is thinning. “You are in the Abyss, which is close to Khaenri’ah, but that is not the same. You fell through the border and wound up here. I found you. It is the only reason you’re still alive—if the mages had come across you then, you would not be breathing.”

“How…”

“You fell through a hole in the world, boy,” she says, dryly. “And now you are ours. Stuck here with every other lost and broken and fallen thing.”

“Congratulations,” adds the boy. 

Something about the boy’s airy tone hits wrongly. Here Ajax is, aching head to toe and far from home, and the boy is laughing at him. Ajax curls his fingers into fists and glares, feeling something spark painful and sharp in his chest. “And just who are you, anyway?”

“Who are you?” counters the boy, at once. He’s smiling, small and sharp. He doesn’t look like Tonia at all anymore; Ajax’s little sister is cute and cheerful and bright-eyed, and this little boy is just bladed. “Don’t you know it’s rude to ask without giving your name first?”

“I’m Ajax,” he says, and the boy blinks like he hadn’t expected Ajax to give in that easy. Ajax smiles back with all his teeth. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Skirk says, and Ajax blanks for a solid second, mainly because he’s never heard an adult use that swear knowingly in front of him. She stands heavily from the chair, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Ajax, was it? This is Kaeya. He’s a menace. Don’t mind him.”

“What?” Kaeya says, sounding offended. “No, I’m not.”

“You are, and you know it—which also makes you insufferable.” Skirk’s words are bluntly said, neither fond nor scolding; still, the boy named Kaeya makes a face, and she snorts. She rolls back her shoulder in a stretch and then heads across the room, reaching for a weapon lying long across the table. It is gigantic—two swords interlocked into a single deadly spear, kept in gleaming perfection if not for the blood still drying in the nicks and grooves.

She hefts the weapon in one hand, and moves to the door. “Get him up,” she says to Kaeya, before Ajax can speak. “If he’s awake enough to fight with you, he’s awake enough to be judged.” Kaeya isn’t smiling at all now. “Don’t make that face. You and I both knew it would come to this.”

“Come to what?” Ajax says, suspicious, but this time neither of them answer. Kaeya leaps down from the countertop and comes to Ajax’s side, reaching for his arm. Ajax scoots back against the pillow. “Wait. Didn’t you say if I moved too much I’ll die, or something?”

“I was lying,” Kaeya says, like it’s obvious. 

Ajax doesn’t budge. “Where are you taking me?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kaeya sounds sullen. The younger boy won’t meet Ajax’s eyes. He reaches for his arm again.

“If you don’t tell me—”

“Then Skirk’ll drag you,” Kaeya says, toneless. His eyes are bright and burning, and he makes a face at the floor, half-way to bitter. “And you don’t want that.”

Ajax hesitates, unsure of how to respond to that. “Hurry,” Skirk says, from the door. Her tone is dispassionate. She doesn’t disagree. 

Something settles cold and small in his gut. Ajax stares at them. He remembers—falling, through the earth and the sky and the snow. The bloody sunset. The howling winds. He remembers, almost, hitting the ground. He remembers he fell for a long time.

He remembers where he’s heard of the Abyss before.

This time when Kaeya reaches for his arm, Ajax does not stop him.

.

Kaeya is smaller than Ajax, being probably-seven and starving thin and tiny besides; given Ajax is a healthy fourteen-year-old on his second growth spurt, it comes as little surprise that Kaeya is not much help in walking Ajax out of the house. Still, he is better than no help at all. With one hand braced on Kaeya’s shoulder, Ajax can hobble out the door and not even look like a fool while doing it. Win-win. 

(It is easier to mock Kaeya’s help than think too deeply on it. He is so thin, Ajax can feel his collarbone, he is smaller than even Tonia and they look to be about the same age and that’s—he’s not sure what that is. Worrying, maybe.)

Even then, leaving the room is hard. Ajax is trembling even before he reaches the door. His whole body aches. Everything aches, the small of his back and his left leg and his throat most of all. And he doesn’t like how calm Skirk is, or how still Kaeya is, expression so neutral and controlled it feels unnatural.

But what else is Ajax supposed to do? He’s hurt. He can hardly walk right, even with help. The only way left to go is forward.

Except then Skirk opens the door and Kaeya helps him past the threshold, and Ajax finally sees the outside world and freezes right where he stands.

It’s dark, he thinks first. Because it is dark. Like the pitch nights in Snezhnaya, when the clouds cover the moon and stars and even if you hold your hand to your face, you can hardly see it. It’s the same kind of cloying gloom, but worse, because there is a low fog like a steel gray lingering close to the ground, half-dust and half-ash, and tall pillars rising like crooked towers through the icy black. The only light comes from spots of yellow-orange halos, probably lanterns, and a strange silver-like webbing that crawls up the stone pillars and spirals out to net even over the sky. 

The sky looks odd, Ajax thinks next. The sky, he realizes then, and his heart drops. The sky is—

It’s not there, he thinks, suddenly numb. He feels dizzy. It’s not there. It is solid stone so high up it’s as dark as the night sky, except star-less and moonless and… and there is light, there are silver-thin lines weaving all across that darkened canopy, but most of all there is no sky and suddenly Ajax can’t breathe.

She was right. Those stupid sayings—they were right. The Abyss is home to monstrous things, to darkness eternal and lightless sky; careful now or else they’ll catch you, doomed the instant you draw their eye. All of his mother’s bedtime stories. I don’t want to be here.

“Is it different?” Ajax starts. His eyes flicker down to Kaeya. The boy tilts his head. “Well? You went all still. Is it?”

His throat feels dry. “…Where’s the sky?”

“Far, far away.” Kaeya almost sounds amused. He smiles, but it’s a very hollow thing. “There’s cracks closer to Khaenri’ah. Sometimes you can see the sky through those. And Khaenri’ah proper is mostly above ground, though the clouds mean there isn’t much difference to here.” Kaeya shrugs. “But mostly it’s just this.”

“And… the silver—”

“The leyline trees. Their roots and branches and stuff.” Ajax doesn’t move. Kaeya makes a noise. “You don’t have those? Huh.”

They stand in silence, together. Skirk is walking ahead. The road is small and wandering—scattered homes, scattered settlements in the gray, and skeletal reaching things that look like trees, if bare of life and greenery and half-turned to stone.

The quiet only lasts for a moment. “Come on,” Kaeya says at last, and leads Ajax on through the wasteland.

.

They don’t have far to walk. From the sparse almost-village, the stone road winds up to a hill that is melded to the stone sky. It looks almost like a tower, begun deep underground and built to rise past the earth. 

There is one door—small, silver, and carved with the symbol of a tree, the branches curled like claws and reaching up and up and up, empty-handed. It opens split down the middle, and even though Ajax tries to drag his feet, Kaeya pulls him inside anyway.

The corridor is dark. Ajax can hear his own breathing. “Are you going to kill me?” he asks. His voice doesn’t shake.

“Depends,” Skirk says, mild.

“I’ll fight.”

Kaeya snorts. Skirk doesn’t laugh. “You can try,” she says, in that same even tone. “And you will lose.”

Ajax quiets. His hands are shaking now. They reach the end of the corridor, and exit out into open air.

Despite everything, the sight almost takes his breath away. It is beautiful. They’ve entered a wide, circular room bigger than Ajax’s whole house, pillars of stone running up along the walls and silver-veined pieces of earth floating through the air as if gravity does not exist. He cannot even see the ceiling, the walls rise so high. The floors are like polished stone, so shiny he almost thinks he can see his own reflection in them.

Most stunning of all, however, are the trees.

There are so many he can barely see the walls at all, a grove of petrified silver-barked branches, surrounding the entirety of the room. They grow so close together their roots and branches both seem embedded in the walls and floor, all shining soft as starlight. The only place free of them is the center of the circle and a small section in the very back of the room—a tall door standing between two pillars, sealed tightly shut.

“Is this him?”

A new voice. Ajax stiffens again. 

At the center of the grove of silver trees, a man stands beneath their shadow—tall, spindly, and thin in the face like he is older than he looks and has been destroyed by it. His eyes are like Kaeya’s, Ajax thinks—like Skirk’s. Brighter than they should have been, and full of stars. 

“Bough Keeper,” Skirk says, and dips her head. “Yes.”

“He’s annoying,” Kaeya adds, chirpy, and the man’s empty eyes—burning, blue, and one of them framed by a half-mask—turn onto him, next. There is a pause.

“Very annoying,” Kaeya assures. “Just wait and see.”

“Ignore him. The boy just woke up.” Skirk sounds irked. To Kaeya, pointedly, she adds,  “Show some respect.”

Ajax doesn’t understand what is going on. This place, these people—this man, the Bough Keeper, still standing beneath the shadow of the trees, tired and blank in the face. Is he like the Tsaritsa of Ajax’s homeland, then? But then why is Kaeya so flippant? Why does he stand instead of sit in a throne, and why is the door of this place open?

“It’s no matter,” the Bough Keeper says then, and steps out half-way from under the trees. “Boy,” he says to Ajax. “Do you  know why you’re here?”

Ajax flickers his eyes to the side; Skirk does not look at him, and Kaeya’s face has gone blank again, humor lost. In fact, Ajax realizes, Kaeya isn’t even looking at the Bough Keeper—he’s staring beyond them all, eyes fixed on the silver trees, and behind the shadow of his hair Ajax can see Kaeya’s eyes trace the branches all the way up, as if trying to spot the stars.

The man is still waiting. Ajax flicks his eyes back. “To be—” He remembers what Skirk said. Something about it twists at him. He hasn’t even done anything. “To be judged. Or something.”

Skirk’s eyes flicker to him, disapproving. The Bough-Keeper tilts his head. “You take offense.”

“I—” His mouth is dry, but they’ll probably judge him harshly anyway. So whatever. “I haven’t done anything. I, I don’t know where I am—or even who you are—it’s not fair.”

“Hmm,” the Bough Keeper says. He considers this. “I see. To answer your first question—I am Dainsleif. The Bough Keeper, as Skirk has said.”

“What does that even mean?” 

“What indeed,” Dainsleif says. Kaeya, next to Ajax, ducks his head quickly; a smile flashes across his face. “It’s no concern of yours, even so. Tell me—how did you come to be here?”

“I don’t know.”

The silence weighs heavy. Ajax swallows hard. “I don’t. I’m not lying. I, I’m from Snezhnaya—I was talking a walk and then… I fell.”

“Fell,” Dainsleif echoes. He considers Ajax carefully. Something flickers over his face—a frown, there and gone again. Ajax’s hands curl to fists. “…You were running away.”

And suddenly all Ajax can feel is cold. “How—h-how did you—”

The frown deepens. “Tartaglia.”

Ajax blinks fast, torn between being bewildered and getting angry out of sheer confusion. “W-what?”

Dainsleif turns very suddenly. His eyes fix on Ajax with surprising strength. “Your name,” he says, sharp. “What is your name?”

“A-Ajax. Why?”

“Ajax,” he echoes. He turns his face away. “…So it is not yet time. And that means… a skill as if obtained overnight. I see. It all makes sense now.” 

Ajax looks to Skirk, and then to Kaeya, desperate to see if this makes any sense to them, either. Skirk does not look at him. Kaeya does, though, and he seems surprised, eyeing Ajax with new curiosity. “He got your name wrong.”

Ajax stares at him, honestly and truly confused. “What?”

Kaeya looks thoughtful. “He got my name wrong once, too. Last name, anyway. And he almost never does.”

“Okay, but how would he even know my name—”

A cleared throat. Ajax turns back around, dreading all over again and starting to seethe with it. He hates this. He feels—trapped, useless, helpless in a way he has never felt, his life held in balance between this man’s weighted gaze, Skirk’s scarred hand, and Kaeya’s blank smile. Ajax didn’t ask to come here. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here at all. He doesn’t understand. 

Dainsleif’s expression is neutral again, but somehow the way he regards Ajax is—not kinder, maybe, but almost resigned. “Ajax,” he says again, and he says it as if it is a reminder to himself. “I see.” He straightens. The branches of the trees cut a dark shadow across his face; he rubs at his eye. “…You may stay.”

Kaeya doesn’t react beyond the flicker of a frown. Skirk doesn’t move either. Ajax doesn’t relax. He gets the sense Dainsleif isn’t done yet.

“However,” Dainsleif adds, and he speaks slowly, reluctantly, as if bitter with the words even as he says them. “You can only stay to the Abyss. Khaenri’ah—the city above, the remains of our nation—is closed to you. You will not climb this tower. So long as you remain in this dreamless place, you shall stay below.”

Skirk stiffens, at that. “You cannot be serious,” she says, sharply, and when Dainsleif’s eyes turn to her, she bristles. “The Abyss is no home for a—a weakling boy. He will die by the end of the week, if not the day. If that’s the decree, then killing him now would be a mercy.”

“He won’t die.”

“Keeper—”

“He won’t die,” Dainsleif repeats, “because you will be watching over him. Skirk.”

At this, Kaeya twitches. 

Skirk, too, is staring. “…You cannot be serious.”

“Please, don’t be serious,” Kaeya mutters.

“Train him,” Dainsleif is saying. “Teach him what you know. You have always wished to pass down your legacy, have you not? Here is your chance. An apprentice, freely found.” His eyes are tired. “Believe me. I think he will learn… much, from you.”

Skirk is quiet. Then she sighs, just barely, and dips her head again. “Very well,” she says. Stiff and cold, her coarse voice rasping on the words. Then she straightens up. “What is done is done. Come along, boy.”

Ajax jolts. “Wait,” he says, and his eyes dart back and forth—Skirk and Dainsleif and back again. This quickly? This easy? This is how Ajax’s fate is decided—on a whim? “You didn’t even ask me. What if I don’t want to—”

“Do you want to?” Skirk’s voice is cold and steady. She turns abruptly to face him, and holds out a rough palm; there are scars biting deep into the curve of her fingers. “It is this or death, boy, but it’s your choice to make. For now, your home is lost to you. Would you rather face the Abyss alone? Or will you follow me out this door, and take what I will teach you, and learn my lessons—and maybe, just maybe, live to the end of the month?” 

Ajax’s mouth feels glued shut. Skirk raises an eyebrow.

“Well?” she says.

The grove of silver trees is a silent place: there is no wind here, no whispers, not even snow. Kaeya is blank in the face and hollow behind the eyes; Dainsleif’s gaze weighs heavy on Ajax’s shoulders, a frown on his face as if he is seeing something—or someone—else in his place. From the sunless sky above them to the dust that lingers on every breath, the Abyss is everything Ajax hates.

But when Ajax packed his bags and left home behind, he left to seek something more. He had left for a story—for an adventure—for something all his own.

His breathing settles. The shaking stills. Ajax meets Skirk’s eyes with a mulish tilt to his chin, and reaches out to take her hand.

Chapter Text

Ajax opens his eyes to a sloping stone roof and dim light, and for a moment is struck with a mindless, subconscious fear: Where am I?

It’s a mistake, even if it is involuntary. His back is a mess of bruises and knots, and when he stiffens, it sends pain all along his spine. This leads to the second thing Ajax does upon waking—yelping in pain, and then stuffing his wrist into his mouth and biting hard so he doesn’t scream.

That wakes him up fully, at least. The final pieces of his memory click into place. The woods. The wolves. The drop. The Abyss, and Skirk, and Kaeya— Ajax’s choice to take Skirk’s hand. His own words: Okay. Teach me.

He stares at the ceiling. He takes his wrist from his mouth—ow—and for a moment, he just stays there. Skirk’s house is small and dark and half-way to warm because of it; there are no windows, and only one lantern now burned to the wick. It’s nothing like Ajax’s home. He misses, suddenly and helplessly, the sunlight and the way it shone across the floorboards, brightened by the snow.

“You up, boy?”

Ajax turns his head. Skirk is sitting up in the bed, her legs thrown over the side. There is only one bed in this house, and it is hers; Ajax is on the floor, in a mess of blankets that is actually pretty comfortable. When he had asked why she had so many extra already, Skirk had said, I don’t. The little fool brings them, when he wants to hide, and then he leaves them here for me to deal with.

Little fool meaning Kaeya, probably. At the time Ajax had been too tired to ask.

“I’m up,” he says back, now. He doesn’t get up, though— his back still hurts. “Is it morning?”

“Who knows,” Skirk grunts, and doesn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest. She rises to her feet. She is dressed only in the tight turtle-neck and black pants; she walks across the room, and slips her cloak on over her head. She brushes a hand through her hair as she does so, and mutters. “Bah, I need to cut it soon.” To Ajax: “Why are you still on the floor? Up, boy. Training begins.”

“But—”

Her expression doesn’t even twitch. She seems unimpressed. “Up.”

Ajax thinks about arguing. Skirk picks up her giant sword-spear. Ajax shuts up, and gets out of bed.

Outside of the house is far colder than inside— still, it’s nothing compared to the bone-biting chill of Snezhnayan winters. It’s way more gloomy, though. There is no light to suggest whether its morning or afternoon or even midnight, the lamp-halos unfaltering and the glow of the leyline tree roots ever steady. Ajax searches the false sky with nervous eyes, wondering if there’s even the slightest bit of sunlight—and oofs, caught off-guard, when the sword Skirk shoves at him catches him in the gut.

Skirk, somehow, looks even more unimpressed. “Pay attention, boy.”

“I do have a name,” Ajax tells her, clutching the sword close. It is his father’s sword—the one he brought down with him, disused and sheathed in cracking leather. “It’s a really good one, too. It’s from a story about a hero—”

“Draw your sword already, boy,” Skirk says dryly, and Ajax frowns, displeased, but finally draws the sword.

His grip on it is awkward; he is unsure of his stance. Skirk is silent for a long moment. “You have never fought a day in your life.”

“Not true,” Ajax argues, at once. “I got in a fistfight with a prick behind the general store once.” He’d been mean to Tonia, and Ajax had broken his nose for it. Of course, he’d almost broken his hand while doing so, but that doesn’t sound nearly so impressive. “I just… uh, haven’t been formally trained. At all. Yet.”

Skirk runs a hand down her face. “Right,” she says, to herself. “Right.” She straightens. “Okay. First off—don’t grip the sword like that, stupid boy, you’ll cut off your own toes, and second that stance is awful, never stand like that again…”

And so Ajax receives his first lesson. 

It’s infuriating and overwhelming and a lot—twenty minutes in, his arms are almost shaking, and from the look on Skirk’s face she has only just begun. The sword is heavy in a way Ajax has never fully noticed before, a solid weight that grows more unwieldy the longer he has to hold it straight, and he never knew stances could be so important—or his grip!—and the strikes alone, simple though they may be, pull at his shoulders in a way swinging an axe for firewood never could.

An hour later, Ajax really has started shaking, and Skirk adjusts his stance again and makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Enough,” she says. “I’ve said all I can for today. Get in place, and raise the blade as far as you can—you won’t get anywhere until you taste blood, but this is good enough for now.”

“What?” Ajax says, too focused on holding his sword to pay attention, and Skirk rolls her eyes.

“Fight,” she says, and kicks his foot into the proper position before grabbing her own weapon, and noticeably putting one arm behind her back. “Well? Give it your best shot.”

Ajax narrows his eyes a little. “You’re only using one arm?”

Her expression is stone. “Cocky already, boy?” Her blade is steady. “If you want me to fight you seriously, you have to earn it.”

A challenge, Ajax realizes, and he is smiling wide before he can even think about why. “I’ll make you eat those words, teacher!” he says, brightly, and lunges for her, sword swinging up.

Skirk’s eyes shine bright in the lantern light. It is the only warning Ajax gets before the world flips.  His sword flies from his hands and suddenly he is on his back, he has hit the ground so hard all the air has left him, and every old wound burns anew. Ajax stares at the ceiling, wide-eyed and stunned, too shocked to even scream.

For a moment, everything just hurts. Skirk steps back, saying nothing. Her eyes are on him—ready, focused, watching close. In some distant corner of his mind, Ajax realizes: this is what she meant to do all along. She has pushed him to exhaustion and challenged him to a fight he cannot win; she has tossed him hard to the ground, shaking him down to his bones. And now she is still. She is waiting.

Ajax is not used to fighting. He is a boy from a village where trouble is scarce and wolves are beat back with fire rather than iron— there is a reason his father’s sword has rusted. But Ajax has always loved the idea of battle. The stories his father would tell him; the endless thrill of those fairytale battles. Ajax’s home is a peaceful one, but Ajax has never fit it. He is too impatient, he is too restless, tapping fingers and itching palms, always looking too far past the village border. His eyes always drawn to the woods, whispering, and the wolves within.

He wheezes in a strained breath. He pushes himself, shaking, back onto his feet. For the first time the restlessness is gone from him. He feels emptied, settled, cold and focused and awake, and when he curls his hands around the weapon’s handle, it fits into his hands as if it was meant to be there. 

“Again,” Ajax says, and he is grinning with it. 

And Skirk does not smile back, but he gets the sense she approves.

.

Ajax’s days in the Abyss blur together in a haze of pain and training and oblivion—and Kaeya. The younger boy had vanished not long after the Bough-Keeper’s announcement; two days later he appears again, without fanfare or warning, mid-way through training. 

“Not dead yet?” he says, when Ajax stares at him. 

“No,” Ajax says, off-guard by the sight of him.

“Give it time,” Kaeya assures him, and then vanishes into the house and does not appear for the rest of the day. Skirk says nothing. Ajax thinks to comment, but then Skirk beats him black and blue in training, and that night he falls instead to dreamless sleep, and by morning Kaeya is gone again.

“Does he always do that?” Ajax asks, and Skirk scoffs midway through brewing morning tea, a strong bitter drink apparently commonplace here. 

“That fool child does as he pleases,” she says, and presses the cup of tea into Ajax’s hands. Ajax makes a face at it. He is of the opinion that the drink is too strong, and not nearly spiced enough; Skirk is of the opinion that he is fussy. 

Skirk notices, of course. “And drink your damn tea.”

“Yes, teacher,” Ajax says, sighing, and tips the cup back with a wrinkled nose. Skirk nods approvingly, and then spends the day teaching him the best way to slip past an opponent’s guard to slit their throat.

“Just have to edge past the armor, if they have it,” she says. “And if no armor, all the better.”

She adjusts Ajax’s stance and grip less and less as the week drags on. 

In a strange way, Ajax is slowly getting used to it. The throat-burning tea and the training and the days that are not days. He watches the sky, still, but slowly his fear of that eternal darkness ebbs. Maybe, Ajax thinks, at end of the week and sore from training once again, the Abyss isn’t so bad after all. 

The Abyss, Ajax quickly finds, apparently takes offense to that thought.

He is asleep when the attack first happens; he wakes up to a sharp scraping and a howl like shattered glass grinding in his ears. He has just enough time to open his eyes and see Skirk lunge for her weapon, when the thing breaks open the door.

“Fuck!” Skirk says, and Ajax jumps to his feet, half-asleep still but awake enough to feel afraid. The lone lantern in Skirk’s home is swinging wildly on its hook, and the shadows warp with a life of their own. In the doorway is a creature as big as the house—white-wild eyes, a mouth split down the seams, serrated teeth in bloody rows. It howls with a breaking voice, and claws at the inside of the house.

Ajax freezes. His sword, he thinks, where did he leave his—and then Skirk picks up her weapon and turns, seeing him there, standing frozen as the beast screams in his face, and her back-hand sends the thing’s head smacking against the doorframe.

“Boy!” Skirk snaps, and Ajax’s breathing rattles. Her voice rises. “Ajax! Under the bed, Ajax!”

His name jolts him from the haze. Ajax fumbles. “But— I can—”

“You haven’t even tasted blood yet! I’ve been training you for a week!” The beast claws at the floor, the wood splintering under its talons, and Skirk hits it again. “Get under the fucking bed, boy!”

The beast howls. Skirk stabs it through the eye. Ajax gets under the bed.

He doesn’t look away, though; he doesn’t close his eyes. He watches the fight through the bed frame and by the flicker of the lantern’s light; he watches the beast howl and Skirk snarl back, something almost like a smile on her face. There is blood on the floor. Then, there is a body.

For all the noise this monster made, it dies silent. Skirk digs her blade into its neck and a snap echoes quiet through the room. It is a mess of fur and blood and talons, and Ajax watches and waits and startles, just a little, when the beast’s body does not turn to smoke.

Skirk is staring at the corpse. Ajax climbs out from underneath the bed, and her eyes turn to him. Her expression unreadable, once again. “Is this your first time seeing death?”

“No,” Ajax says. It’s true. But to himself, he can admit this much: it is the first time he has seen death like that. It has shaken him, in some strange way; he does not know what to think about it, or even what he feels about it. “Why isn’t the body disappearing?”

“Is it meant to?” Skirk steps back, and pulls her blade free. The beast’s blood is dark at first glance, but in the lantern glow it holds a strange violet tint. Ajax almost shivers. “Maybe monsters vanish where you’re from, boy— but nothing leaves this place. Not even the dead.”

Something about the way she says this leaves him cold. Ajax looks away, unsettled. “…What is this thing, anyway?”

“A tainted-blood wolf.”

“Tainted blood…?”

She is silent for a time. “Later,” she says, quieter. “It’s too damn early in the morning for a history lesson.” She surveys the blood and gore, and finally heaves a sigh. “Get up, boy,” she says. “It’s time to burn a body.”

The trees in the Abyss are dead and hollow things; this is terrible for atmosphere, but surprisingly good for starting fires. In less than an hour the beast’s body is burning and Ajax has scrubbed most of the blood from Skirk’s wood floor.

Even the flames in this place are strange. Somehow the darkness makes them burn brighter than fire should, and it hurts to look at it for too long. Ajax watches Skirk instead. 

“Why did it attack us?”

“Welcome to the Abyss,” Skirk says, almost dryly. Her eyes are fixed on the flames. They turn her dark eyes almost amber, and her star-shaped pupil almost seems to glow. “Where all life is hated and humanity especially gets the lovely privilege of being hunted down and attacked at every turn.” She snorts a little. “Did you think I was joking, when I told the Bough-Keeper this place was not fit for life? This is a pit, boy—it is no nation. No one would be fool enough to live here.”

“…Except you?”

She is quiet for a long moment. “I have my own reasons,” she says, at last, and before Ajax can ask, her eyes drift from the fire and narrow at the shadows. “Hmph. You’re up rather early.”

Ajax jumps, startled, and Kaeya steps out from the shadows. He doesn’t seem bothered at all, unchanged from the last time Ajax saw him: the same three-tailed coat, the same small smile. “Wow! I thought I was being really quiet, too. How did you know?”

“Dodging the question?” Skirk says, eyebrow raised, and Kaeya shrugs. She shakes her head. “No matter. If you are here, then you can help clean; there is blood on my floors and I want it out. Go make yourself useful.”

There is a pause. Kaeya tilts his head, as if thinking about it. Skirk waits.

“No,” Kaeya says.

“Damn fool boy.”

Kaeya’s smile just grows. The boy seems bizarrely pleased by this response; he links his arms behind his back and rocks on his heels. He doesn’t seem to care about the corpse burning just a few feet away. His nose doesn’t even wrinkle at the smell. “Just for that I’m raiding your cupboards.”

Skirk seems unimpressed. “I have nothing in there you like.”

“I’m gonna take it anyway!” Kaeya sounds delighted, laughter threading his voice. He vanishes indoors, and Skirk runs a hand down her face, looking exasperated. 

Ajax watches them both, feeling strangely forgotten and not exactly liking it. “What’s his deal?”

“I told you not to mind him,” Skirk says, simply. Her eyes stay on the house. “A menace by trade.”

“No, I mean—he’s always coming and going and…” Ajax frowns, trying to put it into words. “He’s your kid, right? So why—”

Skirk snorts, and Ajax stops, a little offended; she waves a hand down at him, shaking her head like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or sneer. 

“What!?” Ajax says, too tired to keep the annoyance from his voice.

“Kaeya is not mine,” says Skirk, in the tone of voice that says she thinks the question is entirely and wholly stupid, and thus cannot be taken seriously. 

“Then why is he always here?” Ajax asks, and it isn’t that he’s jealous (he’s not) or that he thinks Skirk’s time would be better spent teaching Ajax cool new ways to murder things rather than watching Kaeya (it would, though), but, well. 

“Who else would watch the fool boy?” Skirk asks, and she sounds almost horrified by the thought. “His father? Absolutely not.”

And that kills Ajax’s complaints at once, if unintentionally. Like a shaking of the world beneath his feet. Why not his father? The thought of a boy who has never feared nor wanted anything from his own. 

But Ajax has learned things in his time here, in this place outside of the world. He has learned so many things just today, with this body burning to ashes on the fire and Kaeya humming quiet from inside the house. He may not understand, not yet—but he is starting to. 

He doesn’t complain about Kaeya again.

.

Ajax’s one week in the Abyss turns to two, and Kaeya appears more frequently. One day, when Ajax wakes up, it is to find Kaeya sitting at Skirk’s table and already drinking that morning throat-searing tea, with a proclamation: “I’m staying here for a few days.”

Why? Ajax thinks, but says nothing. “Of course,” Skirk says, in that blank but stone-cold sure way of hers, and Kaeya pulls his knees to his chest and smiles into his cup.

“Okay,” he says. Then he perks up. “Oh! I brought things.”

Skirk immediately makes a face like she’s tasted a lemon. Kaeya doesn’t seem to notice, digging into a bag by his side; he pulls free a wax-cloth package, and with it comes a familiar smell. Ajax sits up immediately. 

“Skewers?” he says, startled, and Kaeya unwraps the package. Ajax blinks. “Wait, these are…”

They are chicken-mushroom skewers, as far as Ajax can tell—but different from what he is used to, the chicken and mushroom broken up by what looks like a green vegetable and something that might be red onion. 

Kaeya is grinning. “Skewers!” And then, to himself, “I mean, I make them better though, you have to cook them in alcohol to make them really taste good… but the seller said it’d be extra if I wanted them cooked differently… so skewers, but slightly disappointing skewers. Oh well.” He holds one out to Ajax. “I got one for you, too. That old Bough-Keeper said you couldn’t go to Khaenri’ah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try some of the food.”

 Ajax takes the weird-skewer skeptically, but years of manners drilled into his head by his parents keep him quiet. “Thanks,” he says. He takes a cautious bite, and then his eyes go wide. “These are—sweet!”

Kaeya looks pleased. “Good, right?”

Ajax had never thought of skewers as plain before—skewers are skewers—but with the green vegetable and the tang of the onion, they truly do taste different. He takes a bigger bite, much more enthusiastic now. “Guess so,” he admits.

“If you like those, then you’ll really like my version,” Kaeya assures him. “I’ll make them sometime. The alcohol makes all the difference.”

Skirk is chewing on her own skewer, and thus far watching the conversation progress silently, but at this she scoffs. “You’ll have a hard time finding a spirits seller willing to trade with a child.”

“I just have to put up something really good on the table,” Kaeya insists. 

“Then you’re just getting cheated.”

“It is what it is.”

 Ajax is just about done with his skewer; he’s almost sad to see it go. “I can help,” he tells Kaeya, lulled into goodwill by the food. “I used to cook all the time for my siblings.” For the first time, the full meaning of the Bough-Keeper’s judgment weighs on him. This place, Khaenri’ah… Ajax will never see it. He frowns at the floor. “…I guess you’ll have to bring the ingredients here, though.”

Kaeya looks at him for a long moment, startled. When he smiles again, there is something softer in it. “Okay,” the boy says, for the first time sounding shy, and then ducks his head and goes back to eating his skewer, apparently determined to pretend nothing happened. 

Kaeya is not much like Tonia: he is just as small and just as young, but the other boy had been too bizarrely nonchalant and alternatively bitter for Ajax to see much resemblance between them. Now, though, the comparison feels stronger. Apparently Kaeya can be cute too.

Ajax bites back a laugh. As solemnly as he would if it was one of his little siblings sitting there instead, he says, “I can’t wait.”

.

Kaeya’s arrival doesn’t change much. Ajax has less blankets for his bed-floor and an extra mouth to feed when cooking (Skirk has apparently taken Ajax’s announcement of his prior cooking skills as enough reason to saddle him with all the cooking; he’d tried to protest and she’d called it training. Ajax’s still plotting revenge for that.) Overall, though, little else gets affected. Kaeya is a silent sleeper and just as early of a riser as Skirk is; for the next few mornings Ajax wakes to find them already up, Kaeya sitting up on the table with his legs kicking over empty air, both drinking tea. 

Kaeya joins Ajax for training sessions too, for the first time—with his usual smile and empty hands, and a wry, “Please don’t hit me too hard, okay?”

“No promises,” Ajax tells him, cheerful, and when Kaeya makes a face Ajax goes to strike.

Kaeya, as it turns out, is not empty-handed—he has two daggers and he is better with them both than Ajax is with just his sword, which is annoying. Even more annoying is the fact Kaeya is also stupidly fast, which means Ajax doesn’t hit him at all.

“Stop running!”

“No,” Kaeya says, and laughs when Ajax misses him again.

Later, after Ajax has been exhausted and even Kaeya has slowed, they settle back inside and Ajax goes about making dinner. He is lacking all of his usual ingredients—fish, fish, and most importantly, fish—but smoked meat isn’t so bad, and he’s determined to make this work. Yep.

He’s just setting the meat to fry—(“That’s a slow-cooker pit, why isn’t he slow cooking it?” “He doesn’t know how to slow-cook.” “He doesn’t know how to—?” “Shut up, Kaeya,” Ajax snaps)—when Skirk leans over and says, quietly, to Kaeya: “How much longer are you staying?”

Ajax goes very still. He fixes his eyes on the cooking food and strains his ears, but doesn’t look back. 

Kaeya says, somewhat sullen, “Do you need to know?”

Skirk is silent. 

Quieter, Kaeya says, “Five days? Maybe.”

“Have you vanished again, boy?”

“So what if I did?” Kaeya’s voice rises a little. Something bitter has slipped back into his tone, almost heated. “He knows where I am. I’m always here. It doesn’t matter.”

Skirk is quiet again. “This is a bad habit, boy,” she murmurs, and her voice is not soft but it is the closest to gentle that Ajax has ever heard it. “You can’t keep—”

“If you don’t want me here—”

There’s a muffled smack, then silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Ajax can see Kaeya clutch the back of his head. “Ow,” Kaeya says, grudgingly.

“Stop assuming,” Skirk says, sounding irritated again. “How many times have I told you? You have a clever head, boy, if you’d care to use it.”

Kaeya makes a face, but he drops his hands and stays silent. Skirk heaves a sigh. “You can’t keep coming here without warning,” she says, with a deliberate slowness. “You are quick, Kaeya—but the Abyss is no place for children.”

“I haven’t been in trouble yet—” Skirk glares. Kaeya looks away. “…I’m fast.” 

“And you are also human, and we all know what the Abyss thinks of humanity.” Her voice is flat. “Talk with the Bough-Keeper, at least; get a blessing or a leyline branch or something. I would hate to pick your bones from the pile.”

“Ew,” Kaeya says, but he sounds resigned, and Skirk nods like she’s just won the argument. Ajax keeps an eye on them both and then yelps when the cooking meat spits oil in his face. 

“Eyes on the pot,” Skirk tells him, voice dry again. Ajax fixes his eyes on the food with a hot face, and pretends with all his being that he didn’t hear anything.

.

On the sixth day of Kaeya’s stay, Ajax gathers the courage to ask the question he’s been chewing on since he fell here.  

“Teacher,” he says. “What is the Abyss?”

Skirk swings at his head—one-handed, still, and clearly holding back, and argh, Ajax is going to make her take him seriously one day—and Ajax adjusts his foot, ducking beneath the blow. “Clarify.”

“I mean—” He dodges again, and tries to swipe for her side. He misses. “Why is it like this?”

“Why, why, why,” Skirk says, and kicks his feet out from under him. Ajax lands on his back with a yelp. “The why doesn’t matter and it’s too long of a story besides. Don’t ask why this place is what it is. Ask what you need to survive it.”

“But—”

“Do you want to go home one day?”

Ajax quiets. He stares at her. Skirk sighs. “There you go,” she says. “Trust me, Ajax. Once you know why, you can’t go back. Better to just keep to the simple things.”

“…Okay.” Ajax climbs carefully to his feet, and picks up his sword again. He takes his stance. Kaeya has not joined them today; he is watching from the sidelines, flipping his knife in his hands with rhythmic motion. Up and down and up again. “So—how do I survive it, then?”

Skirk doesn’t smile. She never seems to smile; it is not her way. But something shines in her eyes now, and when she speaks there is something almost like laughter, or laughter as Skirk would laugh. Something expectant—something waiting. Like that first day on this field, when she slammed Ajax into the dirt and waited to see what he would do. 

“By causing trouble,” she says, and this time when she swings at his head, Ajax sets his feet and catches the blow.

.

Eight days after Kaeya’s abrupt arrival, the boy says, without warning— “I’m heading back tomorrow.” And then, before Skirk can frown and Ajax comment, he adds, “I’ll be back in time for the market, I think. Do you want anything?”

Skirk’s frown deepens, but all she says is, “Nothing in particular.”

Kaeya’s expectant gaze turns to him. Ajax falters. He has gotten used to Kaeya being here; it is almost like having one of his siblings with him, the comfort of having someone younger to look after, and with everything he has overheard—he realizes, all at once, that he is wary of letting Kaeya leave. 

But there is a strange coldness to Kaeya’s face again that feels like a wall slamming down, so Ajax bites back his protest and says, instead, “Well, what is there to get?”

“Skewers,” Kaeya says immediately. (Ajax suspects a favorite food, here.) Then the boy tilts his head and thinks about it. “Um, sometimes there’s honey nut cake… or new weapons and clothes and books and things.” He brightens. “I could pick you up a new sword. That one isn’t bad, but it looks a little old.”

“Well, sure…  but that sounds expensive,” Ajax says, a little worried. How would Kaeya get the money? Ajax has spent long hours by his father’s side, fishing through the ice and going to market to sell; somehow, he can’t imagine Kaeya fishing. “Do you have the Mora for that?”

There is a very awkward silence. Ajax realizes both Kaeya and Skirk are staring at him. He stares back, confused by the looks on their faces. “W-what?”

“Mora?” Kaeya echoes, sounding curious. “What’s that? Can you trade it?”

Ajax feels dizzy again. “What?”

Skirk makes a noise; unlike Kaeya, the look on her face is not curiosity but something disapproving, almost disgust. “Mora is the coin of the archon-led nations,” she says to Kaeya, and her nose wrinkles. “That god money.”

Ajax has never once heard of Mora as being that god money, and he has equally never heard the word said the way Skirk says it—almost like there’s something distasteful in it. “Uh.”

“Ohh,” Kaeya says, looking interested. “So it’s like… a trade stand-in, then? That seems like an unnecessary step, but…”

Skirk waves a hand. “It’s no matter.” To Ajax, she says, “We don’t use that shit here. Khaenri’ah lives on trade alone—one thing in exchange for another.” 

“Oh,” Ajax says, still caught off-guard. “…Okay.”

“Hm. The boy has a point, though.” Skirk stands, and takes Ajax’s sword from where it rests against the wall. She surveys it, squinting, and then sighs. “Short-swords won’t suit you in the long run. What say you try wielding a weapon like mine?”

The change of subject is a welcome break; Ajax grasps it gratefully. “Two-sword spear thing?” He has never imagined himself fighting in such a way, but now he tries to picture it—the maneuverability of the spear, the swift cuts of the two blades. He grins. “Sure!”

“Then a training weapon it is.” She puts back down the short sword and heads for a chest. “I still have the teeth and claws from that damn wolf… Kaeya. Will that be enough?”

Kaeya has gone quiet though, almost hesitating. He looks at the claws and then at Ajax’s smile like something in it unsettles him. “I…”

Ajax looks back. His smile falters. Kaeya looks away before Ajax can ask. “Can I hold them?” 

Skirk hands the claws to him; Kaeya weighs them in his hands. “I think so. The smith always likes raw materials, and these can’t be found anywhere but in the Abyss…”

He trails off. His eyes are fixed on the claws, gleaming bone-white in the light. The broken end of it is still flecked with blood. 

“…Okay,” Kaeya says at last. “I’ll get you the swords.”

There is such reluctance on his face that Ajax is half-starting to doubt him. “Are you sure?” he says. “If it’s too much trouble, you don’t have to. I mean, you’re really young, too…”

Kaeya blinks. “Huh?”

Ajax blinks back. “Well, you know. Seven-year-olds buying swords, I don’t know if that’s…” Skirk snorts. Ajax stops.

“I’m not seven,” Kaeya says, something almost like offense in his tone.

Ajax stares. “What, really?”

Kaeya definitely looks offended now. “I’m nine.”

As far as Ajax is concerned, there isn’t much difference between seven and nine, but he keeps that thought to himself. “…You’re really tiny for a nine-year-old.”

“Almost nine,” Kaeya corrects. “Will be nine. But I’m not seven.”

“Right, right…”

“And I can trade just fine,” Kaeya adds. “I can haggle better than Skirk and everything.” (“Oi,” Skirk says, sounding annoyed again.) “Just wait. I’ll have the swords in two day’s time.”

“Okay,” Ajax says, biting back the urge to laugh. Oh, no, he must have really hit a nerve. “I, uh, look forward to it?”

“Seven,” Kaeya mutters, looking sullen, and he drinks down the last of the tea and swipes the wolf claws into his bags with an expression of stone-cold determination on his face. It is the most like Skirk he has ever looked. 

.

At some point between falling and fighting and living here in the shadows of the world, Ajax loses track of time. Kaeya comes back to the house with the blades three days after he left; he returns again, two days later, to stay the night. It is on this morning that Skirk leaves them.

Time does not exist in the Abyss. There are no days or nights to mark off the march of the clock. Still, Ajax is adjusting: he knows, somehow, when he opens his eyes to the darkness, that this is early in their day, so early it may still be night. Kaeya is curled against the wall, dead asleep; Skirk is standing in the doorway, her swords hitched to her back, her hand on the door. 

Ajax sits up. Skirk stands still at the door, but after a moment, she looks back at him. “Did you know?” Her voice is low. “It has been a month since you fell here.”

Ajax doesn’t react. “Where are you going?”

Her eyes shine. “Hunting,” she says.

“Can I go with you?”

Her head tilts. She considers him. “No,” she says. “You are not ready, not yet. But maybe one day.”

His lips press. He feels impatient, irritated at the dismissal; for the first time in ages, his palms itch, and he curls his fingers as if dreaming of holding his weapon in his hands. Skirk watches him do this, and for a moment her teeth flash in what might have been a smile.

“Soon,” she says. She says it like a promise. Then she leaves, and closes the door behind her.

The house is silent, for a long moment—Ajax, frowning at the door, stung at being left behind; Kaeya, still as stone on the floor. Then Kaeya sits up too. His eyes are awake and crystal-clear, and he is looking right at Ajax.

“Does she do this a lot?” Ajax asks. He feels restless. He wants to pace. He wants to pick a fight. “Hunting. What does she hunt?”

Kaeya says nothing. His jaw is tight. 

“Has she ever taken you?”

“I don’t ever want to go,” Kaeya says, flat. His hands have curled tight in the blankets. Ajax waves a dismissive hand. 

“I do,” he says. “I wonder what’s out there? Like the beast that attacked us—but I’ve gotten better. I bet I could beat it now, if it came again. I want to try.”

“Why?”

Something in Kaeya’s tone startles him. Ajax looks over. Kaeya is standing now, shoulders stiff and hands curled to fists. His eyes are cold. He searches Ajax’s face and then his lip curls. 

“So,” Kaeya says, bitter again. “You are that kind of person.” 

“What are you—”

“Never mind.” Kaeya speaks short and clipped; he’s already up, snatching his coat from the table. He vanishes out the door without a word. 

Ajax stares after him, stung and insulted and starting to get actually angry now.  “Fine,” he snaps at the door. Who cares what Kaeya thinks of him? Kaeya is no-one and nothing; he is not Ajax’s teacher or his little siblings or even really a friend. Whatever has upset him this time is none of Ajax’s business.

Ajax flops back down into his bed and drags the covers angrily over his shoulder. He cannot go hunting and Kaeya is cross with him; it is too early in the not-day to deal with any of it. He turns his head against the floor and tries to fall asleep.

.

He doesn’t sleep, in the end. 

Ajax’s anger is a quick and hollow thing. There is honestly nothing substantial to stay angry about. Soon, Skirk had promised, and for all of Kaeya’s bitter words, Ajax still can’t quite separate the younger boy from Tonia. They are both so young. They are both so small. If Ajax has learned anything from having numerous little siblings, ranging from seven and stubborn to newly born and screechy, it’s that sometimes they get angry about things that have nothing to do with you at all. 

And, Ajax thinks—and Kaeya has been upset for a long time.

He rolls over, staring up blankly at the ceiling. The anger has left him, and with that, his head has cooled. Ajax has hurt Kaeya, somehow, either in something he asked or maybe even the way he asked it. And Kaeya isn’t Tonia—isn’t Ajax’s cute little sister and definitely not Ajax’s responsibility—but Ajax doesn’t dislike Kaeya, either. The kid isn’t so bad. 

Ajax makes a face at the ceiling, and then rises to his feet. Kaeya is probably long gone by now, but… it wouldn’t hurt to check.

Ajax pulls on his coat and picks up his weapon in case a creature of the Abyss comes calling, and pokes his head out the door, squinting out into the Abyss’s habitual gloom. There is a muffled thump from above. Ajax steps out the door and looks up, and almost laughs—Kaeya is on the roof.

Kaeya notices him, too. His eyes go wide and he ducks his head, turning away out of Ajax’s line of sight. Something about that makes Ajax want to smile. He feels foolish for getting upset. So young! Kaeya is still just a kid.

Ajax reaches for the walls and climbs up the house, poking his head over the roof. “Hey. Can I sit here?”

Kaeya has gone stiff. He frowns. “…Do whatever you want.”

“Okay,” Ajax says, breezily, and climbs up on the roof. He sits down next to Kaeya, who has gone so still he might as well be a Snezhnayan ice sculpture, and then Ajax links his arms behind his head and lays down on the roof, closing his eyes like he’s about to go to sleep.

There is a long silence. He can hear Kaeya’s feet shuffle across the roof. Quieter, lower, the boy says: “Sorry.”

He forgets how young Kaeya is, sometimes; Kaeya is small but wound up tight, always wary, and in that way sometimes his eyes seem too old for his face. And then there are times like this.

Ajax shrugs, and keeps his eyes closed. “It’s okay.”

Kaeya seems dissatisfied with this answer. His boot scrapes across the roof again. 

Ajax opens his eyes, and considers the Abyss’s false sky. “There a reason you’ve been so snappy lately?” he asks, casual. 

“I haven’t been snappy,” Kaeya says, and then immediately undercuts it by adding, “have I?”

“Ehh…”

“Oh.”

“It’s fine.”

Kaeya frowns off at the floor. He curls up small; his knees to his chest, forehead tucked behind his arms. “It’s not.” His voice is muffled. “I just… do you really want it that much?”

Ajax pushes up to his elbows, confused. “Want what?”

“The hunt.”

What a funny way to word it. “I mean, yeah? I’ve been training all this time. I’d like to see how far I’ve come. Of course I want to go on a hunt.”

“Going isn’t what I meant,” Kaeya mutters, but when Ajax frowns at him, he shakes his head and doesn’t elaborate. 

“Seriously—”

“But doesn’t it ever bother you?” 

Ajax stops again. He sits up fully, watching Kaeya carefully. “How do you mean?” 

“I mean…” Kaeya frowns a little, chewing on the inside of his cheek. His pale eyes are bright as ice and twice as flinty. “I— I’m good at lying,” Kaeya says at last, and there is something very thin in the way he says it. “But I—I don’t want—I don’t want to.”

“To lie?” Ajax says, trying to track the thought.

“Not like that.”

He doesn’t understand. Kaeya curls up. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I— it’s just—sometimes it’s not good, to be good at things. Because then people want to make that everything you are.”

“Maybe,” Ajax says, slowly. “But it’s not like that for me. I like fighting.”

“Hmm.” Kaeya is neutral. He won’t look Ajax in the eyes. “Okay.”

Ajax drags his fingers through his hair, frustrated. He gets the sense they are only half-talking about Ajax and the hunt now; there is something else bothering Kaeya, something Ajax doesn’t know and isn’t privy to. Like Kaeya’s father, and Kaeya’s lies—something he has only the pieces of, but the picture is still out of reach. 

“Whatever,” he says, because these word-games and hidden meanings have never been his forte. “I’m sorry, okay? For… whatever I did.”

“You didn’t really do anything,” Kaeya admits. He scowls a little, and sighs hard, bangs fluttering away from his face. Then, after a pause, he flops back against the roof. “Argh.”

Ajax considers him, then lays back down too. The silence is better, now. Not quite warm, but almost patient—like somewhere in-between the not-fighting and the almost-talking, they have reached something like an understanding. 

“You know,” Ajax says, into this kinder silence. “You kind of remind me of my sister.”

Kaeya shifts a little. “…Is she the seven-year-old?”

Ajax blinks fast, and almost sits up again. “How did you—?”

“Just a guess. You assumed I was seven for ages.”

Ajax still doesn’t think there’s that much difference between seven and nine—a kid’s a kid—but he knows enough about little siblings to keep that thought in check. “Huh. Uh, yeah. Her name is Tonia. She just turned seven, and she’s the same height as you…” He grins. “She’s cuter, though.”

“Hmm,” Kaeya says, skeptically. 

“She looks like me,” Ajax tells him. “Most of my family—I’ve got a lot of siblings—anyway, same red hair. She’s got freckles, though. And she’s got a better eye than me; dad always takes her when he needs an archer.” His smile fades, a little. “I… he probably took her out to look for me.”

It’s a thought he’s been avoiding, honestly. It’s been a month since he fell. What does his family think of him now? Do they think he’s dead? Do they miss him? What have they told Anthon, old enough to miss him but too young to understand; what will they tell baby Teucer, when he’s all grown up? What happens if Ajax doesn’t get back?

The thought burns at his eyes. Ajax blinks, hard.

Kaeya is watching him, unreadable. “You’re worried.”

“It’s—” He swallows. “It’s been a long time. I guess I’m just wondering… how much longer.”

Kaeya tilts his head a little. “I… I don’t think it’s as long as you fear.”

Ajax frowns, sitting up at this. Kaeya mimics him. “Meaning…what, exactly.”

Kaeya hums a little, thinking it through. “Well— I don’t think you’re from this time.”

Ajax says nothing.

“No, seriously,” Kaeya says, insistent. “The Abyss is like that. Time goes by strangely here. People don’t just fall here by dropping through random holes in the world; the Abyss has to call to them. Dainsleif once told me it drags people through space itself if it has too. Why can’t it drag you through time, too?”

Ajax stares at him. Just when he thought the Abyss couldn’t get any more bizarre. “How can you tell?”

“I don’t know. I just can, I guess. Sometimes your steps look out of tune… or like there’s an echo of you— like it’s trying to put you back right.” Ajax squints at him; Kaeya shrugs. “I don’t know a better way to put it. I think you’ll be okay, though. When you leave, I’ll bet you’ll be back almost as soon as you left.”

Meaning—his family might not be missing him. His family might barely know he was ever gone. He can return without having hurt them. He can learn all he can, and go home without even leaving a scar.

Even if it isn’t true, it’s a nice thought.

Ajax considers this. “Huh,” he says. “So what I’m hearing is, you might be even younger than me?”

Lo and behold, that actually makes Kaeya giggle. Ajax preens. His years of practice with his younger siblings is not in vain; Kaeya is just stubborn. 

“Maybe,” Kaeya says, looking delighted by the idea. “Or maybe we’re the same age. Ooh! What if I’m actually older than you?” He leans forward, eyes shining. “I bet I am.”

“Uh, I bet not.”

“Who can say?”

“Me. Because I’m older.”

“Mm-hm,” Kaeya says, grinning widely now, and Ajax shoves him off the roof of the house. Kaeya catches his feet and rises without a scratch, laughing hard. After a moment, Ajax laughs too. 

And it doesn’t fix everything, maybe, but it leaves things a little better than they were before.

.

Skirk returns, that night, but it is only the start. She leaves more and more as the days drag on; by the second week of the second month she goes almost once every two days. The restlessness from being left behind the first night only grows. Ajax trains until his legs shake, until his hands are rough with bloody callous and his feet ache to stand—but the restlessness remains. It is not enough. It is not enough. 

He wants to get stronger. He needs to get stronger. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the more he stays still, the weaker he is. 

It is a stalemate that is doomed to break. On the third week, on the third day, on a night when Kaeya is not there, Skirk returns from the hunt once again. There is blood on her sword and flecking her face; there is steel in her spine.

Ajax is awake. His sword in his hands. His armor already on. Skirk stands dispassionate in the doorway, and Ajax meets her eyes with a smile half-way to a sneer and his hands white-knuckled on his father’s old sword. A challenge, silent but sure.

Skirk considers him. Ajax waits. 

At last, she nods. “With me,” she says, and she turns back to the Abyss with Ajax just behind her.

She takes him out far—deep, deep in the darkness. There are no fire-lit lamps here; the only light is the thin glow of the leyline tree roots, and a few patches of pale weed that shine bioluminescent blue. The land here is bare and dusted; a desolate field sprawled out beneath the surface of the world, bones and petrified creatures buried in the ash, a battlefield left out to rot. 

They must walk for hours out there, somewhere deep in that darkness. When Skirk finally stops them, it is without warning. She says nothing. Ajax stops too, and scans his eyes through the gloom. There—in the distance. An orange glow. A lantern?

No, he realizes. There is a creature in that haloed sphere: humanoid, with a hooked mask for a face and tree-like claws for hands. It hovers over the land like a distant blot of flame.

“A mage of the Abyss.” Skirk sounds pleased. Ajax looks up at her. “There are many of their like.”

Ajax considers this. “Are they a good fight?”

It is the right answer. She barks a laugh. “See for yourself,” Skirk says. There is something almost like excitement in her voice; her eyes glow. “Go on, boy. Prove your mettle.”

“To you?”

“Hah! If you please. To yourself, maybe. To the world.” For the first time since he has known her, Skirk is smiling. There is a fervor in her eyes, and a glee in her aged face that seems to light her from within. “Challenge, boy. That’s how you survive. By being better. By getting better. By seeking all the things this world will never give you.” 

“By causing trouble,” Ajax remembers, eyes on her. He’s starting to smile too.

“By being trouble,” Skirk says, and her teeth gleam white in the dark. “Go on now, boy. It’s time to taste the blood.”

There is a rush in battle that Ajax had not known before; there is thrill in victory and loss both that pounds through his head like a heartbeat. Each time Skirk teaches him a weapon she does so with forced patience and a quiet approval—each time he trains, she watches with expectant eyes, always pushing him on. Be better, do better, fight, boy, until you feel as if you are dying. The smile that stretches his face, sometimes, in the heat of a spar. The laughter that bubbles in his throat. When the day’s training ends and he is shaking, the taste of blood on his tongue, it is the closest he has ever come to truly feeling alive.

(And Kaeya said, eyes strangely cold: So, you are that kind of person.)

The Abyss mage falls faster than Ajax thought it would; unlike the monsters in the world above, its body does not fall to smoke. There is blood on his hands and soaking through his shirt, and Ajax stands victorious over the corpse, his arms shaking from the strain and his heartbeat humming siren songs in his head. 

He adjusts his grip on the bloodied sword. He smiles to himself. And there, over the body and the blood and Abyss ash, he tilts back his head and starts to laugh.

Chapter Text

Ajax returns from the first hunt still beaming, blood drying stiff on his cheek and hands flipping his swords in playful rhythm, giddy from the thrill and the victory and the rush. When he slips back inside the house, Kaeya is sitting up on the table, even though he wasn’t there when Ajax left. His legs dangle over the drop; in his hands is a cup of tea, gone cold. He doesn’t seem to have drunk even a single sip.

Ajax falters in the doorway. Some of his smile slips off his face. He is abruptly aware of the gore still scouring his hands. 

“Kaeya,” Ajax says, blankly. “What are you doing here?”

Kaeya doesn’t say anything. He’s staring down at his cup, eyes cold and dark. Ajax curls his hands around his twin swords, not in threat but in something like comfort. The victory has turned ashy on his tongue. For a moment he sees Tonia in Kaeya’s place, his bitterness on her face.

Then Skirk steps up behind Ajax, and her hand settles on his shoulder, pressing down only for a second before she moves past him and into the house. “Boy,” she says to Kaeya, in her usual dry rasp. “You’d better have left enough tea in that pot for me.”

Kaeya twitches at that. He looks up, and in the moment where his head is raised, Ajax meets his eyes and tries to smile. Kaeya looks away again, too quick to be natural. Then his shoulders slump. 

“You liked it,” he says, and he says it quietly, to the cold tea and the empty room. 

Skirk is silent for a moment. Then she steps up to Kaeya and flicks a finger at his forehead. Kaeya doesn’t even flinch. He looks up slowly, one hand rising to his forehead, his eyes blank. 

“And now we are back,” Skirk says, in a soft, firm voice that makes Kaeya look down again. The silence settles. Louder, more waspish, she says, “Now drink your tea, little fool, do I have to start badgering you too? Ajax is bad enough.”

“Hey,” Ajax says, before he can think better of it. Then he snaps his mouth shut. It’s too late—Kaeya has curled up, curled in tight, shoulders shaking, and for a moment Ajax thinks—but when Kaeya lifts his head he is smiling, very small and very thin, but smiling all the same.

“I didn’t leave any tea for you, Skirk,” Kaeya says, almost normal, and when Skirk scowls and makes to cuff him over the head, Kaeya ducks under the mock-blow and drinks down the last of the cold tea with one quick swallow. Faster than Ajax can blink, Kaeya has jumped off the table and is darting out of the way, across the room to the door to just behind Ajax. 

“Don’t hide behind me,” Ajax says, alarmed, and Kaeya grips at his sleeve in a play at begging for aid, his head ducked down and bangs shadowing his face. He is smiling, but Ajax still cannot see his eyes.

But Kaeya says nothing else, and Ajax can’t give up the thrill of fighting now that he’s finally found it—so he takes the peace offering for what it is. He ruffles his hand through Kaeya’s hair like he would with one of his siblings, and does not notice, carefully does not notice, how still Kaeya goes at the gesture.

There is blood still drying on Ajax’s hands; there is blood, now, sticking stiff to stray strands of Kaeya’s hair. But Kaeya looks up, just briefly, almost stunned, and even if he’s no longer smiling now, that hollow shadow in his eyes has gone, and Ajax will take all the good he can get.

“Thanks for waiting up for us,” he says.

“I wasn’t waiting for you,” Kaeya replies after a long pause, expression quieter, the most obvious lie he has ever told, and back inside the house Skirk puts the pot back on to boil.

.

Ajax’s first hunt changes more than just Ajax. In the days following, Skirk changes his training schedule entirely. She doesn’t teach him anything new, per se, but she takes everything she has taught him thus far and turns it on its head. She teaches him how to hit harder, stronger, faster—how to learn, from loss and from victory and from others. She goes on hunts more and more—or, perhaps, the way she always used to before Ajax came into her care—and on the days when she does not mind the weaker prey, she takes Ajax with her.

He’s never known fighting could be so much, and the thrill of the battle never fades, no matter how often he dives into it. Ajax smiles through the days and passes out at night, and he is happier than he’s ever been. 

(It feels like a betrayal, sometimes—Ajax tries not to think about it. But sometimes in the nights when he can’t fall asleep he thinks about his family and his little sister and his father, and the guilt lumps in his throat. He thinks about the look on Kaeya’s face and the way he said—So you’re that kind of person, and then he sees Tonia instead of Kaeya and it’s like getting hit in the gut. What if—what then—

He tries not to think about it.)

 In the days between fighting and hunting and getting stronger, Kaeya’s visits also turn odd. He leaves for long stretches of days and when he returns, it is quick, an hour visit before he leaves. The younger boy is restless, jittery in a way Ajax can’t trace. At first, he’s afraid it is because of him. Except—except Kaeya never brings up the fighting again, and seems to ignore it, and in truth his distraction feels distant, as if his mind is elsewhere. He keeps looking away—not so much avoiding their eyes as he is looking for something else, something beyond this house and Ajax and Skirk, something lying far off on the Abyssal horizon.

“What’s going on?” Ajax asks Skirk, once—but she knocks his feet from under him and doesn’t reply, and this mystery too becomes yet another secret of the Abyss left unanswered. 

.

It is two weeks after the hunt when Skirk puts down her cup and says, to Kaeya, who has stayed with them this night, “Pack your things, boy. I want to be at market by the mid-hour.”

For a moment both Ajax and Kaeya are still. Kaeya reacts first. “You… you’re going up?”

This is how Kaeya refers to it, and Ajax has caught the habit—going up, meaning Khaenri’ah, meaning the world behind the Bough-Keeper’s silver door and the place Ajax cannot see. In all this time it has only ever been Kaeya to go, so this is a change from the usual: a shock that Ajax, for a moment, has no idea how to react to. Why? Or, perhaps the better question—why now?

If Skirk notices their shock (and she must, she has eagle-eyes and trouble-finding ears, and Ajax cannot get away with anything so he knows this to be true), she doesn’t seem inclined to acknowledge it. “Just for the day,” she says, plainly, like this is normal, and takes a long drag from her cup, eyes fixed on Kaeya. “Is that a problem?”

“…No,” Kaeya says, but he looks uncertain. “I just—but you hate going up.”

“I’m not too damn fond of being stared at, no,” Skirk says, voice dry again. “But hate is… not that.”

“Stared at?” Ajax echoes, startled. “Why?”

“Well, you know,” Kaeya says, distracted, not looking at Ajax at all. He waves a hand. “The Abyss, it’s not…people don’t really like…” He loses his train of thought half-way through, eyes focused and fixed on Skirk, narrowed and wary. “Are you really sure?”

Skirk scowls and reaches out to scrub her fingers through Kaeya’s shorn hair. The younger boy yelps, less from pain and more from surprise; his hands snap up to cover his head. “What is that look for? Little fool, I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure, now would I?”

“But—”

Skirk rolls her eyes and takes her hand back. Kaeya rubs his fingers through his hair, looking annoyed; still, his gaze is fixed on her, some strange mix of worry and fear and a deeper, bitter suspicion. Ajax, almost forgotten by them both, frowns at their backs. He’s missing something here, he thinks. What is he missing? What aren’t they saying?

“This isn’t up for debate, anyhow,” Skirk says, starting to sound annoyed herself. “We’re going now, Kaeya. Gather what you need for market and let’s go.”

Kaeya scowls at her, but lets the argument lie this time. Ajax, too, has learned this little quirk—that when Skirk uses their actual names she means business, and listen up, and pay attention. He watches Kaeya head for his bag, hanging loose over the back of a lone chair, and with one last frown at Skirk, he follows him.

Kaeya is ruffling through the bag and frowning hard enough it crinkles even at the corners of his eyes. Ajax leans against the table and says nothing. After a moment, Kaeya’s shoulders slump.

“…Sorry,” he says, and the words are thin. Kaeya always speaks true things like they’re being pulled through his teeth. Ajax waits. “I’m being selfish. I know. You can’t even go up.”

“It’s fine.” Ajax frowns a little. “Actually, no, it’s really annoying—I wish I could go. I didn’t mind at first, but… argh. I’m so curious.”

Kaeya snorts. “Really?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

Kaeya considers this. “It’s just… home.”

“Not to me,” Ajax says, with a casual brightness, and Kaeya looks down at his bag with his brow furrowed. 

“It’s dark,” he says suddenly, looking up at Ajax very quick. “I mean—not as bad as the Abyss, but still dark, you know. Either because of the clouds or—and the main city, it’s built in the mountain range. Inside it, I mean, most of it, the heart of it.”

Ajax hefts himself up to sit on the table, and tries to imagine it. “Inside the mountain?”

“Is that weird?” Kaeya’s eyes are on him. “Not all of it. There’s some settlements and villages outside, but… market street, it’s inside. Near the center, it’s like a long tunnel and it circles all around the great tree—“

“Great tree?”

“Like the silver trees in Dainsleif’s grove, but bigger. It’s huge. It’s—the roots are all set deep down here and the body rises right through the mountain to the peak. It’s beautiful.”

Ajax grins at him. The bitterness is gone from Kaeya’s face; the younger boy speaks quick and earnest and focused. Trying to paint a picture of his home in words Ajax can understand, that strange wary guard fallen away. It still pangs, a little, this loss—this place Kaeya clearly loves so much, and that Ajax will never see—but the ache is lessened by the look on Kaeya’s face. 

“It sounds amazing,” Ajax says, for once honestly meaning it, and this time Kaeya’s smile is less sharp and more delighted.

“It is! And the market has so much… I—I’ll try and bring you back something. I promise.”

Pinky swear? Ajax almost says, an old reflex, but he bites it back behind his teeth. Neither Skirk nor Kaeya would know the saying, and that’s always been more of a habit between Ajax and his little siblings anyway. His chest hurts. 

“Sure,” he says, quietly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Kaeya.”

Skirk is standing by the door, bags packed and eyebrow up; Kaeya startles and straightens.

“Right,” he says. His tone is subdued again, but when he glances back at Ajax his smile, though a little forced, has regained its usual mischief. “See you soon, Ajax. Don’t die while we’re gone, okay? That’d be really pathetic.”

Ajax is going to fight him. “What is that supposed to mean?” he says, half-way offended at this slight to his abilities, starting to stand. “Hey, hey, say that again.”

Kaeya laughs and slips out the door. Ajax makes a face at his back. Brat.

“Ajax.” His head snaps up; Skirk regards him quietly. She doesn’t smile—never smiles, outside the thrill of the hunt—but her gaze is warm. Ajax straightens a little. “Keep your weapons close and the door locked. I’ll be back before the eve.”

Ajax squints at her. 

“Count six hours,” Skirk says, much drier. “Time-keeping isn’t that hard if you just paid attention, boy.”

“Right, right…”

She shakes her head. “Stay safe,” she says shortly, like its a threat, and when she leaves she closes the door firm behind her.

Ajax waits until he’s sure she’s not coming back, and then his smile drops. His gut has twisted itself into knots, and worst of all he doesn’t even know why—whether it is all the things they aren’t saying and haven’t told him, or if it’s from something else. The silence, maybe. It settles as soon as they’ve left.

Ajax turns away from the door and looks back at the one-room house. He realizes, suddenly, that he has no idea what to do. There is no one to talk to and little room to train. If this were home, he could help his mother with the chores and cleaning and cooking, but…

This isn’t home. This is an empty house without windows or snow or sky. 

He wonders what Skirk is actually going to market for. He wonders what Kaeya isn’t telling him. He wonders if he can even ask. He hasn’t forgotten Skirk’s warning, all those months ago—the more he knows, the less likely it is he can leave. Some things, for Ajax, are meant to be a mystery. If he ever wants to go back, he has to turn his eyes away.

Ajax sits at the table in a house that has always seemed small but now feels hollow in its silence, and stares at his father’s sword. He realizes he misses it. His family—his older siblings—Tonia, little Teucer, the snow and the woods and the burning sky.  He’s never been alone before. It’s funny, but he’s never really realized that until now. His whole life, he has had his siblings, his parents, his small town and his little sister and—

And even here. From the moment he’d awoken: Skirk, gruff but well-meaning; Kaeya, sly and secretive. But here, up until this moment. Keeping the tradition alive.

His heart aches. Ajax blinks slow and careful. He doesn’t cry, but he keeps his eyes on the blade, and the whole time Kaeya and Skirk are gone the silence weighs a little heavier.

.

When Skirk returns, Kaeya is with her, and the look on his face is an odd one—half-cold anger, half-bitterness, his shoulders wound up so tight Ajax can see the muscle tense in his jaw. But when Kaeya sees Ajax, he smiles as if nothing is wrong, and bounces back on his heels like his hands haven’t gone white-knuckled on his packages. “Oh, good! You didn’t die down here after all.”

Ajax pauses, unsure how to react. He glances at Skirk from over Kaeya’s shoulder, and she meets his gaze and shakes her head. She looks tired. She looks visibly tired, which is almost frightening, the closest Ajax has ever come to seeing something like defeat on her face.

Whatever the market trip was really for, evidently it did not go well. Probably actually went very bad, given how clearly—and obviously—Kaeya is ignoring Skirk, like she’s not even there. And she’s letting him, which…

Ugh, Ajax’s head hurts. Where’s the simplicity of battle when its needed?

Still, as much as Ajax hates mind games, he can read the room well enough. “Of course I didn’t die,” he tells Kaeya, with all the condescending-big-brother-energy he can muster. “I, Ajax, am always getting stronger.”

“Not that much faster, though,” Kaeya, runner extraordinaire, says brightly. Ajax narrows his eyes. Kaeya blinks back, all false innocence and fake smiles, but some of the tension has eased from his grip and Ajax supposes that’s good enough.

“What’s all this, anyway?” he asks, gesturing to Kaeya’s armful of packages, and the younger boy blinks and pauses. He is silent for a solid second and then he lifts his head and smiles again—all false, this time, like he’s bracing himself.

“Cooking ingredients!” Kaeya says. “You promised you would help me make proper skewers sometime, remember?”

He says this lightly, but his face is blank behind the smile. Messed up of a kid as Kaeya is, he’s still a kid. Like Tonia, standing in doorways and hiding her hands behind her back, always speaking slowly with her eyes on the floor. The way people talk when they’re careful of rejection.

“I remember,” Ajax says, and grins. “Let’s make it for tonight, then.”

Kaeya studies his face, silent, as if to see if Ajax really means it. Ajax raises an eyebrow. Slowly, Kaeya relaxes. “Okay,” he says. He probably means it to sound casual; instead it is very quiet and almost relieved, and Kaeya ducks his head at once as if that can hide the sincerity. “I’ll set up.”

And then he is off to the countertops, studiously pretending Ajax is no longer there. Ahaha. Kids.

Ajax grins at Kaeya’s back. 

Skirk closes the door behind her and steps to Ajax’s side; she places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes once, an echo of her gesture from a few days back. Ajax looks up at her, startled.

“You’re good with him,” she says, low, so soft Ajax can barely hear her.

He shrugs, embarrassed but pleased. “Practice. So many tiny siblings.”

“Hmm.” She squeezes his shoulder again and then takes her hand back. “Though I could not take you to market, I brought some of the market to you.” Pause. Ajax waits. “I brought you soup.”

He snorts. “Thanks, teacher.”

“Hmm. Well, go on, help the boy. I’ll bring it over.”

Ajax grins at her. That disquieting exhaustion isn’t gone, really, but for a moment the sharp lines of her face ease. It’s enough. He is so grateful they’re back, weird tension or not. The quiet had been getting to him, and anyway, everything is much less depressing with other people around.

Ajax heads over to the kitchen area, and looks critically over the ingredients set out on the table. Raw chicken, wide-brimmed mushrooms, some long green vegetable and a small, reddish-onion. And—

“Is that a liquor bottle?”

“I traded two bits of raw silver ore for it,” Kaeya says, looking immensely pleased with himself, and in the back of the room Skirk snorts.

“Is that… good?”

“He was cheated out of house and home,” Skirk says, solemnly, handing Ajax a bowl. Inside is a dark reddish-black soup, thin vegetables floating in a heavy broth. Ajax sniffs at it. It doesn’t smell fishy at all. In hindsight, expecting fish stew as their soup was probably a miscalculation.

Kaeya has gone stiff at Skirk’s approach, but apparently Ajax is good for something, because the younger boy doesn’t immediately shut down again. “I got the alcohol,” he says, and it’s only a little terse. Ajax would applaud the acting skills if the whole thing didn’t give him a headache. “That’s more than other kids could do.”

“Hmm.”

“What is this, anyway?” Ajax wonders, looking down at his bowl, before the argument can start. He sips at the soup. It’s warm, and salty, and so rich in flavor he has to take a moment to adjust. “Oof.”

“Black broth,” Skirk says, and when Ajax squints at her, adds, “It’s a blood-based soup. Have you never had it?”

Ajax sits on that for a second. He has never once heard of eating blood; isn’t the point of cooking meat to boil it away? But, well, neither Skirk nor Kaeya are acting as if there’s anything odd about it. So.

He sips at it again. Still very, very rich, but… not bad. “Salty,” he remarks.

“Good for you,” Skirk returns, with the same sharp look in her eyes she gets when badgering Ajax about the morning tea, and Ajax hurriedly takes another sip. The flavor is growing on him. Really.

Kaeya has set out all of his ingredients and is reaching for a knife when Ajax catches him. He puts down the bowl and snatches up the knife before Kaeya can react, and laughs when Kaeya immediately stares disapprovingly at him for it. 

“Tiny children should not handle knives,” Ajax says, smugly, well-aware of the daggers in Kaeya’s sleeves, and grins even wider at the face Kaeya makes in return. 

“I’m—”

“Still younger than me.”

“You cut this chicken then,” Kaeya snaps, looking annoyed, and Ajax flips the knife in his hand the way Kaeya does with his daggers, and goes to do just that.

It’s all for the best, anyway. The slight is quickly forgotten as soon as Kaeya realizes he gets to sit on the counter and steal Ajax’s soup and—the deciding factor—issue orders to Ajax like a miniature prince. Ajax takes the treatment with a solid effort not to bust a rib laughing.

Khaenri’ahn skewers done Kaeya’s way is unlike Ajax’s usual cooking endeavors—he misses fish so much—but it’s not too difficult. Ajax slices the chicken and dices the green vegetable and onion and mushrooms, and in the end slides them all on a thin metal skewer, the mushrooms settled firmly at the bottom of the sticks like a bowl for every other ingredient. The prep is done in about an hour, and Ajax places the skewers off to the side to marinate in alcohol for a few hours before he sears them. Ajax is already looking forward to dinner. It smells really good.

The time spent cooking is enough to cut the tension. The smell of warm soup and fresh spices lingers strong and warm in the small space of Skirk’s house; the heat of the warming pan chases away the chill of cold air and colder thoughts. It doesn’t feel like home, but it feels close enough.

The whole time, Ajax keeps his eyes on Kaeya. He laughs and he talks and he pretends not to notice the way Kaeya’s expression will flicker when he thinks Ajax isn’t looking. Kaeya isn’t Tonia—Ajax knows that. Kaeya isn’t anything like Tonia. Tonia is cheerful and bright and happy, full of dreams, full of hope, eager to please. Tonia has always believed in every word Ajax ever said. Without question. Without hesitation. 

It says something, Ajax thinks, that Kaeya cannot hear promises without being driven to test them. That something as simple as agreeing to hang out with the younger boy, and cook food his way, is something Kaeya was uncertain would be honored. 

It’s too late, maybe. Kaeya has been small and hollow-eyed and bitter as long as Ajax has known him. If he has dreams still, he won’t share them; if he believed in the things people told him once, Ajax wasn’t there when that belief broke. And Ajax doesn’t know how to fix such a thing. He doesn’t know how to piece together dreams and promises already shattered. In a way, he has only just learned that such things can be broken. Even happiness is a fragile thing.

Ajax doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t even know what’s wrong. But he thinks of Tonia, and he thinks of Kaeya’s rare true smiles, and as he sets the skewers down to fry he thinks maybe it’s enough, just for now, to start with keeping this simple promise.

.

Whatever happened during the trip to Khaenri’ah, neither Skirk nor Kaeya end up talking about it. Ajax asks and gets zero answers, and after three days of feeling irritated and snappy about it, he resigns himself to the simple fact that either neither of them want to talk about it, or it’s just not something for him to know.

Ajax is really starting to hate not knowing stuff. 

Still, it’s not all bad. For the first time in a while Kaeya stays at Skirk’s house for longer than a few hours; he stays the night, and the whole of the next day. Presumably he’s avoiding something—or someone, Ajax thinks, but he doesn’t dwell on it. (Sometimes he still hears the echo of Skirk’s voice, low with disgust: Who else would watch the fool boy? His father?)

Whatever Kaeya’s reasons, Ajax is just glad to have him around. Kaeya always seems to run into the worst troubles when Ajax either isn’t there or isn’t looking; clearly, Ajax has to be around to do damage control. 

Even better, something in the last few days seems to have thawed the last lingering reservations Kaeya must have had towards Ajax, because—get this!—he actually starts talking about stuff. Straight answers and everything. It’s fantastic.

“Your alchemy creates stuff?” Ajax is saying now, sitting at the table and frowning up at the ceiling. It’s night, or at least the time Skirk has labeled as night, and they’ve all come inside for the evening. “Like—living things? Seriously?”

“Why is this so weird for you?” Kaeya wonders. He is sitting at the edge of the bed and tossing his daggers through his hands; next to him, Skirk sits and cleans her weapons, content to ignore them, the smell of oil sticking to the air. “What else is alchemy supposed to do? I don’t even do it much and even I know that.”

Ajax shrugs. “It’s… okay, I don’t know much alchemy either, but—you know, it’s like… combining things. You take the mist flowers and crystal core and—uh, channel it with Mora? Or something? Anyway, then you get cold resistance drinks for bad weather, stuff like that.”

“That’s bizarre,” Kaeya says, sounding fascinated. Skirk makes a face at her weapon at the mention of Mora, but doesn’t interrupt. “I thought Mora was your, like… trade-stand-in?”

“Money,” Skirk corrects, sounding bored.

“Whichever.”

Ajax wishes he’d paid more attention to alchemy things. “It’s… both?”

“How?” Kaeya says. “Why?”

“…I have no idea.” Kaeya looks unimpressed. “Don’t look at me like that, I only saw it in practice once! It’s a big city thing.”

“You mean it isn’t commonplace?”

“No,” Ajax snorts, and then blinks. “Wait, you mean— is it so common here?”

“It’s everywhere,” Kaeya confirms. “Even I can… wait, I’ll show you.” He flips his knife back into his sleeve and goes to the cupboards, picking up a small sprig of withered herb. He pinches it between his fingers and closes his eyes, brow furrowed. Ajax opens his mouth to ask—and then stops, almost choking on his breath, when the dried herb brightens a lively green and sprouts new growth.

Kaeya opens his eyes and holds out the sprig with a self-satisfied look on his face. “Ta-da.”

“How!?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. This is easy stuff.” Kaeya looks over to Skirk, as if seeking back-up, but all Skirk does is shrug.

“I’ve never had the talent for it,” she says, and picks the sprig from Kaeya’s fingers. He frowns at her and she ignores it; she pinches the herb tight between her nails, and the new growth flowers a little more. Ajax whistles between his teeth. “Nor the patience. To learn how and why and the more complicated formulas—well, the scrutiny would drive me mad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alchemy is common here, but alchemists less so. To learn the art of Khemia is to be watched every moment of every day. Every little experiment must be requested and approved; every discovery subject to sharp eyes. And to create new things, to try to break from the mold—hah. No.” 

Ajax can’t even fathom it. “Why?” he says, quieter now, his enthusiasm dampened by the solemn cast to her voice. Alchemy may be something scattered in Snezhnaya, but Ajax knows for a fact it has never been treated like that. As if it is something dangerous, rather than useful.

Skirk is silent. Kaeya shuffles on his feet, for once looking visibly uncomfortable. “Better not,” the younger boy says, reluctant. “Sorry. Khaenri’ahn history isn’t really for outsiders. There’s stories about that.”

Ajax blinks. “About what?”

“Like…” Kaeya waves a hand through the air, voice taking on the cast of a storyteller. “And the bloody knight walked into Khaenri’ah and saw the truth that lay at the heart of it. The despair consumed him, and he took the path of Gold, fallen to the Abyss and then a part of it…”

Ajax doesn’t even know where to start with that. And people think Snezhnayan stories are grim. “‘Of Gold?’”

“Not the element,” Skirk says, still quiet. “A name.”

Kaeya bites his lip, looking uncertain, but finally offers: “An alchemist.”

…And yeah, okay. Ajax can kind of see where this is going. “Oh.”

“Mm.”

They sit in silence for a moment. There is a look on both Skirk and Kaeya’s face that Ajax doesn’t really like; some unspoken knowledge that lingers like a ghost in their eyes. Ajax says, “Well, in Snezhnaya, we have a story about two friends who betrayed their promises to each other and one killed the other on the ice, and that’s where our pinky-promise saying comes from.”

“Wait, wait, what?” Kaeya says, distracted immediately, and Ajax sticks out his hand, loops their pinkies, and recites. The conversation moves on, and Ajax lets it rest.

.

Ajax drags his blade from the body of a Tainted-Blood wolf, and stands tall and still as the creature slumps. Despite the ever-cool air of the Abyss he feels feverishly warm; the blood of the beast burns with corrosive heat, or maybe that is the siren song singing in his head. He’s grinning, again. He always ends up smiling at the end of the hunt.

This time, though, Ajax doesn’t move. He stares at the body of the beast, breathing hard from the fight. There is a sharp line of pain all across his back where the wolf had gotten a lucky strike; there is an ache in his knee when he’d braced himself against the next blow. He’s getting better. He’s gotten better.

He keeps looking at the body. His smile is slowly fading. The siren song—the rush of his own heartbeat—is smoothing back down to nothing. But his breathing is ragged, still. Breathing is harder. 

Skirk is a silent specter behind him. Her voice, when she speaks, is low and certain. “You’ve gotten stronger.”

Ajax doesn’t move for a long moment. Then he laughs and tilts back his head. “Thanks to you, teacher.”

“Ajax,” she says, and he stills. “I promise. You’ve done well. If you keep your head down, if you keep going— One day, you will go home.”

He doesn’t say anything. He watches the wolf bleed out on the dead dirt of the Abyssal undergrowth, and then he sighs and stows his weapon away. “Okay, teacher,” he says. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Despite everything, he trusts her. If Skirk says it, it must be true. One day he will leave this place. One day he will be strong enough to leave. 

One day, some day, Ajax will come home.

.

“Congrats,” Kaeya tells him a few days later, on their return from yet another hunt. The younger boy had already been sitting at Skirk’s table when they returned, and besides a mild thinning of his lips Kaeya doesn’t make any mention or move to acknowledge the bloody weapons or their spoils of war. “In one week, you’ll have officially been here two months. I think that’s the longest an outsider has ever gone without getting eaten.”

“How long do they usually last?” Ajax wonders, putting down his two swords by the wall. He’s going to have to clean them, later—the blood has gotten under the grip. The one downside to murder is the mess; Ajax resists the urge to sigh. 

“They don’t,” Skirk says flatly.

“Maybe like two days?” Kaeya says, thoughtfully.

Knowing what Ajax knows about the Abyss… yeah, sounds about right. “So haven’t I already set the record, then?”

“No one gives prizes for surviving just three days,” Kaeya tells him, scornful, and Ajax turns his head away so he can roll his eyes in peace.

“Two months, though!” Kaeya continues, brighter. “That’s much better. Sounds more impressive, too.”

“If you say so.” Two months, Ajax thinks. He stares at his swords, seeing nothing, feeling the lost time like a knife between his ribs. 

Skirk is still standing at the door; she snaps her fingers, suddenly, and both Kaeya and Ajax look up.  “Ajax, clean up by the water barrel; I won’t have you touching food until your hands are clean. Kaeya, draw water. I’ll make stew.”

“Black broth?” Ajax asks, interested. Kaeya had brought down another bowl a few days ago after his last top-side visit; the blood soup has grown on Ajax. He thinks it might be his favorite dish here.

“No, none of the Abyss animals are edible and the raw ingredients are too messy to bother bringing over the border. It’s just stew. You will eat it anyway.” Her tone brooks zero argument. 

“Yes, teacher.”

Kaeya is already grabbing a water bucket. Ajax makes a face at the blood dried on his hands, and follows him out the door.

Fresh water is hard to come by in the Abyss; off the side of Skirk’s house she has a barrel for washing, and a hand-dug well. Ajax had thought it a proper well right up until maybe a week ago, when he’d been drawing water for morning tea and saw the pale blue glow at the far-off bottom. A Cleansing Heart, Skirk had said, when he asked. An Oceanid’s power. A good source of near-endless water; I only have to replace it every five to eight years.

Kaeya draws the water. Next to him, Ajax sits at the edge of the barrel and gets to work on scrubbing the blood off his hands. The blood of the tainted beasts is still one of the oddest things he’s ever seen—even now, that almost violet hue, the lingering pale red shine, strikes him with an instinctual dislike. 

“Has something happened?”

Ajax blinks from his hands and looks up, frowning. Kaeya has drawn the water but not yet gone inside; he is watching him, looking disinterested if not for the sudden sharp gleam in his eyes. “What? What do you mean?”

“You’re…” Kaeya trails off. He frowns a little.

“I’m fine,” Ajax says, when the silence stretches a little too long. “Just. Hah. Two months.” His throat feels weirdly tight again, and Ajax scowls down at his hands and goes back to scrubbing them clean in the water. “Besides, shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Kaeya says, at once.

“Hm.” Ajax draws his clean hands from the water and sits back to frown at him. “You don’t have to tell me. But it’s not hard to guess, I mean—I’ve noticed.” Kaeya isn’t meeting his eyes. “It’s fine,” Ajax says, in the tone of voice he usually ends up using for his younger siblings. “Really. But, is there anything…?”

Kaeya is silent for so long, Ajax almost regrets asking. Then his shoulders slump. “No,” he says, and he says it blank, says it cold, and somehow its worse, actually, that he says it like that. Bitter, but also unsurprised. “There’s nothing you could do.”

“Maybe Skirk—” Ajax tries, and the look that flashes across Kaeya’s face then—he cuts himself off, unsettled. “Never mind. What about… uh, the Bough Keeper, Dainsleif? He’s powerful, right?” Like the Fatui of his homeland, maybe. “If he’s close to your Archon, or something, maybe he can—”

But Kaeya is laughing, sudden and sharp. “That’s—” He’s smiling, but not a real one. It’s all bladed and thin and kind of awful. “I keep forgetting, that you… Khaenri’ah doesn’t have gods.”

“Doesn’t have—” The words wither on his tongue. For a moment Ajax feels like he’s been slapped, struck wordless. Khaenri’ah does things differently, yes. They have different clothes and different cloths and different foods. But he’d never once considered… how can a nation exist without an Archon? Why would they not have gods?

“We don’t need them, either,” Kaeya says, still sharp. “Though I doubt any gods would care about what I have to say. They think the Abyss and Khaenri’ah are all the same and so I’m sure they’re perfectly fine to let us rot.” He scoffs, and then adds, so low Ajax is half-certain he’s not meant to hear it: “It’s half their fault I’m in this situation anyway.”

There’s just so much in Kaeya’s words, Ajax doesn’t even know where to start. “No gods,” he echoes, incredulous. “And—wait, what? The Abyss and Khaenri’ah—I mean—aren’t they the same?” Kaeya stares at him. Ajax frowns. “I mean… basically.”

“No,” Kaeya says, slowly. “I, I mean, they’re close, but it’s not—it’s—” He stops, looking frustrated, fingers clenching and unclenching like he’s wishing for his daggers, just to have something to flip in his hands. 

Ajax waits.

“Khaenri’ah hates the gods,” Kaeya explains finally, like this is just something that exists, that people can do, like this doesn’t go against everything Ajax has ever learned or heard or felt about the archons. “And, yes, the Abyss hates the gods too; the Abyss and Khaenri’ah have this in common. But the Abyss hates everything.” 

“Everything,” Ajax checks, carefully.

“Life, living, other people…” Kaeya shrugs. Something of that strange bitter anger has faded; now he just sounds worn. “The old Bough-Keeper has a lot to say about it.” He raises his voice in a high, mocking imitation, still unsmiling. “‘We humans have our humanity!’ That’s a big sticking point.”

Ajax struggles to track this. “So… Khaenri’ah hates the Abyss.”

Kaeya scoffs a little. “Oh, I don’t know. People always seem more sad about it than anything. Like, you can’t agree, but you can’t blame them, either, maybe…?”

Ajax frowns, confused. Kaeya looks away. His voice has gone quiet. “A lot of people… they give up, I guess. Not just on the gods, but on themselves. And when you don’t believe in anything, not even other people… that’s when you start hating everything, instead of just some things.” He stares at the ground. “My father once told me that the Abyss was everyone who couldn’t bear to hope, or even dream of dreaming. And it’s not just people from Khaenri’ah, obviously, but…”

Ajax thinks of the mages, humanoid but twisted. He thinks of the way Skirk avoids leaving the Abyss, well aware of how Khaenri’ah will see her. He thinks of how Kaeya once said the Abyss calls to people, and maybe if it could call to a boy seeking strength it could also call to those in despair.

He thinks of Kaeya’s story, of a bloody Knight falling to the Abyss, and suddenly he is more sure than ever that falling means something entirely different from what he’d first thought. 

“Anyone can fall to the Abyss,” Kaeya is saying, still quiet, almost rambling now. “It’s not—picky, it’s just…”

“Yeah,” Ajax says, quietly. 

“We’re too close to it. We can’t stop thinking about it. Even if we wanted to, we can’t…”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s not the same,” Kaeya says. His hands are wide-knuckled on the hem of his cloak. His eyes are fixed on the ground. He talks like he’s trying to convince himself. “Khaenri’ah doesn’t want to kill anyone. We just want—we just want to live.”

He goes silent, then, his mouth snapping shut like he’s said too much. He looks very small. Ajax watches him, not knowing what to say, and the helplessness twists itself to knots in his chest. Something is wrong, here. There is something terrible that’s been left weighing on Kaeya’s shoulders, and Ajax cannot help him. He is starting to realize that there is more to this situation—to the Abyss, to Khaenri’ah, to Kaeya himself—than Skirk and Kaeya have ever told him. There is a tragedy here, in this place, that has been left lying in wait.

But he can’t ask. He hates it, but he can’t. Because Skirk said he could go home, still, but if Ajax pushes too far or learns too much, that door will be closed to him. And a world without Tonia and Anthon and baby Teucer and his parents... no. Ajax can’t live in a world where he can’t return to them.

“I’m sorry,” Ajax says. He’s not sure what he’s apologizing for, except maybe for everything. 

Kaeya seems to understand anyway. He laughs, small and shaky, and then he slumps all at once, fingers uncurling and shoulders loose and something defeated in the thin smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know. Everyone always is.”

.

In the days following, Kaeya’s visits become noticeably brief, if he appears at all. 

As if this weren’t worrying enough, the few times Kaeya is there, he is… noticeably stressed, to a degree that is actually starting to freak Ajax out. In this, it’s clear to see the hand Skirk must have had in raising Kaeya. Like that moment weeks ago, when Skirk seemed almost defeated, so tired that it showed on her face—Kaeya is the same. He smiles, still, but it is strained and weak. He fidgets. And Kaeya himself, no matter what he says or how he says it, seems too tired to meet anyone’s eyes.

Ajax can’t ask. He knows he can’t, but it's starting to grate on him, and after all this time it is also starting to enrage him. Something is wrong. Something has gone so wrong, and it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, maybe, to have spent all this time fighting and learning and growing stronger, and yet know, wholly and helplessly, that no sheer amount of strength can help here. 

Things get worse, of course. This is no surprise. One day, only a scant two weeks after that stiff conversation by the well, Kaeya arrives at Skirk’s house with red-rimmed eyes and a dead look on his face. He doesn’t answer when Ajax calls out a hello; he doesn’t even twitch. He just goes inside and beelines for the far wall, sitting on the floor by the base of Skirk’s bed, drawing up his legs and hiding his face behind his knees.

Skirk says nothing. She stares at Kaeya for a long moment, expression unreadable, and then she turns away like she can’t bear the sight of him. “Ajax,” she says. “Go draw water for tea.”

They already have water for tea. The dismissal snaps at him. He curls his hands to fists and then makes the mistake of looking Skirk in the eyes. His snapped retort falls flat.

Ajax looks away. “Fine,” he says, and snatches the bucket from the wall and closes the door behind him when he leaves.

It’s darker than usual in the Abyssal open air; the lone lantern by the road has gone out for once, and the habitual shadows of the Abyss have all clustered close. It’s cold, and hollow—there are never any winds here, in the Abyss. Never any noise. Just this quiet darkness like a fog and the faint glow of the leyline roots, those distant pillars rising tall and endless through the gloom.

Ajax stares up at them. Then he puts down the bucket and sits down, his back to the wall. He tilts his head against the wood and listens.

He can’t hear anything, for a long moment. Patches of silence and a quiet murmuring. A low conversation. Then, all at once—“would you do,” Kaeya says, young voice rising sharp, and he sounds almost angry.

If Skirk answers, Ajax doesn’t hear it. Kaeya speaks again, still too loud, something awful and shaky in his words. “I don’t want to go! He knows I don’t—it doesn’t matter!”

“Of course it matters.” Skirk speaks louder, now. Her voice is snapping, but her anger is rootless; she sounds, suddenly, as strained as Kaeya. As if they’ve been caught in the same trap. “Calm down, boy. Just because I cannot help—”

Kaeya says something to this, hissed and angry, and too low for Ajax to catch. Skirk’s voice goes stiff. “Excuse me?”

“If you actually cared to—”

“I tried, boy, and we both saw how that went—” 

“You barely tried at all,” Kaeya says loudly, and his voice is actually shaking now. Ajax stares at the Abyssal sky, gut twisted to knots. “You aren’t going to do anything in the end, are you? They’re going to say I have to leave and I have to lie and I have to do it for years and I’m never going to see home again—”

“We all have our duties,” Skirk snaps. “I may not like it either, but—”

“—and you’re just going to let them take me!”

There is a dull and deadened silence. 

Kaeya says coldly, “Look. You won’t even deny it.”

Ajax doesn’t hear him approach; when Kaeya opens the door, he is stiff and controlled and so quiet it is almost creepy. His face is entirely blank. His hand is clenched so tight around the rim of the door his knuckles are pale and taut. 

He doesn’t react to Ajax standing there—he leaves and does not close the door, just marches out into the gloom with his hands fisted by his sides. Ajax stares at him and then steps inside, looking to Skirk, waiting. She’s not going to let Kaeya just leave. 

Except Skirk isn’t moving. She is staring at the far wall with a tense jaw and cold eyes, and when she sees Ajax standing there she shakes her head, once, and sits down on the bed. She presses two fingers against her temple. She stays there.

“You’re kidding me,” Ajax says, suddenly furious. “You won’t—”

“Shut up, boy,” Skirk says. Her voice is hard. Her hands are shaking, light and faint.

But she doesn’t move.

He stares at her. Then he turns and runs back outdoors. He can’t see Kaeya at all. Damn. Where did he go?

The endless gloom and the distant houses and the pillars. Ajax hisses through his teeth, and starts looking.

.

He must spend hours scouring the landscape.

Kaeya has always been quick—Ajax knows that very well, thanks, after numerous frustrating and not-fun-at-all spars, in which Kaeya never attacked and just ran away laughing like a brat—so it’s not surprising, maybe, that Ajax has lost him so quickly. He searches anyway. Even Kaeya has to stop running at some point, and he’d looked exhausted from the moment he’d entered Skirk’s house. He had to have stopped somewhere. Hopefully, somewhere safe.

The thought leaves a pit in Ajax’s stomach.

He tries not to think of Tonia, just as small. He tries not to wonder if this is how his family felt when Ajax vanished.

He’d wanted an adventure, Ajax thinks. He reaches a distant pillar intertwined with glowing root; there is a wolf there that he kills violently and with prejudice, but this time no smile follows the battle. He feels distant and cold. 

He just wanted an adventure, Ajax thinks, again. Behind his eyes he can still see it: Snezhnaya, his homeland, that last glimpse. The snow and the dark shadows of the trees and the sky, burning red and brilliant above it all. The way the air had frozen so cold in his lungs it had burned.

He had wanted an adventure, but that hadn’t meant he wanted to leave.

I don’t want to go, Kaeya had said, back there in the house. 

Ajax grits his teeth hard and turns back to the gloom, trying to think. Okay! Okay. He’s dealt with this before, surely. Little siblings are always running and hiding in small places. Kaeya has to stop running at some point. So where would Kaeya hide?

Maybe he’s already left. Maybe he’s gone where Ajax can’t follow, Khaenri’ah—Kaeya’s own beloved homeland. Or maybe not? Kaeya had come to Skirk’s house with red eyes and a cold expression. He’d been running from something even then.

So not Khaenri’ah. Not Skirk’s home. And Kaeya has never liked the hunt, so none of the hunting camps either, if he even knows of them. Where else can Ajax look? Where else does Ajax know to look?

…the Bough Keeper.

Ajax turns to the pillar in the center of the Abyss, and starts walking.

.

The entrance to the grove, that great silver door, is still unlocked. Something about that rubs Ajax the wrong way; when he pushes open the door, he is already frowning. 

It is the same as he remembers from all those months ago. The dark corridor, and the cold floors; his footsteps echo. He moves forward, unfaltering. When he steps out into the great chamber, the soft shine of the silver trees makes him squint.

The Bough Keeper—Dainsleif—is already there. He stands with his back to Ajax, his hands laced behind him and head tilted back, eyes on the ceiling. He speaks with a mild tone. “Hello, child.”

Child? Ajax is fourteen; maybe that’s young to people like Skirk and his father, but Dainsleif doesn’t look that old—maybe the same age as Ajax’s oldest sister, twenty-something. The slight makes him bristle. 

“Is Kaeya here?”

Dainsleif looks back at him. Ajax stares boldly back.

“Of course,” Dainsleif says, as if it's obvious. “Where else could he go?”

Ajax has nothing to say to that. Dainsleif nods to himself.

“Hm. So you did come to find him.”

“What else could I do?” Ajax asks, mimicking him, voice a little hard. “Is he okay? Where is he?”

Dainsleif watches him. Ajax tightens his hand on his swords. If he has to force his way through, oh well. A fight would at least be simple. Ajax is almost hoping for it. He meets Dainsleif’s gaze and grins, stepping forward—

Dainsleif turns away. “I see.” And then, “This way.”

It feels like getting the wind knocked out of him. Ajax’s smile flickers. “You—”

Dainsleif is already walking. Ajax grits his teeth, sighs, and follows him.

In the back of the chamber there is a great door, tall and silver, closed tightly shut. Ajax has seen it before, but never taken notice of it. As Dainsleif leads him closer, he realizes just how tall the door really is—it seems to reach up without end, stretching all the way to the ceiling, so high he can barely see it. 

Dainsleif does not open the door, however. Instead, he stops by one of the trees just beside it, looking down to the roots.

Ajax steps up next to him, silent. Curled up between the roots of the silver tree is Kaeya. His three-tailed cloak is half-covering his shoulder like a poor attempt at a blanket; his head is pillowed in the crook of his elbow. He is asleep. His breaths are even and soft.

Even in sleep, there is a tension in his face, lining his eyes. He looks so tired. Ajax looks away.

“He would not speak to me,” Dainsleif says, at last, voice low. Kaeya doesn’t even stir; in his exhaustion he seems to have fallen into a sleep so deep that even if Ajax were to kneel and shake his shoulder, he doesn’t think Kaeya would wake up. “Though I could have asked more directly, I suppose. The problem with foresight is that others always expect you to know everything already.”

Ajax looks back at him. “He fought with Skirk,” he says, coolly. “I don’t know what about. It’s not like they’ve told me anything.” His eyes narrow. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“I can guess.” Dainsleif doesn’t flinch under Ajax’s glare. He doesn’t look at Ajax at all. “It is good, that you are angry about it. We are all of us bound to an oath we can’t bear to break. Even Kaeya. But you know nothing of it. Perhaps that gives you a clearer view of everything.”

“It’s cruel,” Ajax says, bluntly. Dainsleif hums. “Whatever you lot asked him to do. He said—he doesn’t want to go.”

Dainsleif is quiet. “Yes,” he says, finally. He sounds tired again. “I know.”

It’s hard to keep up anger when the Bough-Keeper doesn’t match it; it’s hard to spark a fight when Dainsleif already seems defeated. Ajax grits his teeth and looks away. 

“You said… foresight.” He eyes Dainsleif from the corner of his vision. “What does that mean?”

“What do you think?”

“You can’t see the future.” Dainsleif doesn’t respond. Ajax stares at him. “No.” Still no answer. “Really?”

"Some of it,” Dainsleif says at last. “Pieces of it. Never enough of it." His eyes rest quietly on Kaeya. There is a strange bitterness to his voice. Ajax looks away again.

“I don’t understand,” Ajax says, and stares down at the roots. “Why… why Kaeya? Why are you guys sending him away?”

“There is more to that boy than you know,” Dainsleif replies. “And Kaeya… the boy has always been clever. In a place like this, it is not a skill to be celebrated. For some, it is simply a skill to be used.”

“But he’s just a kid.”

“Yes. He is.”

Ajax doesn’t know what to say to that. He looks back to Kaeya. The nine-year-old has always been small, but in this moment he seems smaller still, curled up there at the roots, half-hidden by the shadow of the silver tree.

“Is it really so important?” His voice is thin. He thinks of Tonia, Anthon, baby Teucer. He tries to imagine someone doing to them what has been done to Kaeya.

His throat feels tight. The anger sparks anew. “Whatever you—whatever you need him to do, whatever it's for. Is it really…”

“Maybe,” Dainsleif says. “Maybe not. We will all see soon enough.” Ajax whirls on him, and Dainsleif shakes his head. “You do not understand, child. I think perhaps you will never understand. So much faith in gods you have yet to meet.” His eyes are cold and sharp. “As if the gods have ever been deserving of it.”

Ajax scoffs, something bitter bubbling up in his throat. “I don’t understand you,” he snaps back. “None of this—and you guys won’t tell me anything!” He just barely remembers to keep his voice down. “Why do you hate the gods, anyway?”

Dainsleif doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He doesn’t move. He just looks at Ajax, his eyes icy and sure, as if weighing the words in his mind. The half-mask casts a strange shadow on his face.

At last, Dainsleif answers. “What do you think about her?”

Ajax has no idea what he’s talking about. He crosses his arms. “About who?”

“Your god, your Cryo Archon. The Tsaritsa. Do you love her? Do you think she loves you?”

Ajax falters at the question, caught off-guard. He blinks, then frowns, and watches Dainsleif back as intently as Dainsleif had watched him. He doesn’t know what to say. Ajax has never met the Tsaritsa, but he knows of her. She is the one his father prays to when the ice storms batter their small house; she is the spectral figure of strength that holds together their distant nation. 

“Does it matter?” Ajax asks finally, honestly confused, and it seems this is the wrong answer to give. Dainsleif’s lips thin. He looks away.

“It does,” he says, flat. “To some people. And those people are Khaenri’ah. So that is the answer to your question.”

Ajax scowls at him again. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It will, one day,” Dainsleif says, and he says it as solemn as a promise.

Ajax stares down at the ground, hands curled to fists, frustrated and unsure of what to do about it. He wants, suddenly and clearly, to fight something. But there is no one here to fight.

Well, Dainsleif. But something about the Bough-Keeper’s cool gaze tells Ajax that this man won’t be entertaining a brawl. And while Ajax could start a fight anyway…

He looks back to Kaeya. He closes his eyes. All at once, Ajax feels tired too.

“I’m glad,” Dainsleif says, suddenly. “That you looked for him.”

“Whatever,” Ajax says, unwilling to keep talking with him. Somewhat spitefully, he adds, “Someone should.”

“…Yes. I suppose so.” Dainsleif is looking at him again. Ajax ignores him. “Are you angry?”

“Haha! What gave it away, Keeper?”

Dainsleif doesn’t react. He just watches. Ajax is really starting to hate that. 

“Child,” Dainsleif says, at last. “You have done enough.”

Ajax looks up at that, sharply. His shoulders stiffen. “I haven’t done anything.”

“There is nothing else you could do,” Dainsleif says, and his voice isn’t kind, but it is almost gentle. “Not really. Kaeya’s path is his own. You have your road to walk, as well. That these paths have crossed in this moment is a blessing, but—that does not change that it was already far too late for either of you to turn away.”

For a moment Ajax can’t even breathe. “Saw that in the future, too?”

“Perhaps.”

Ajax looks away. “Will I see him again?” he asks, voice suddenly thin. “After I leave? Will he be okay? If I’m stronger then, could I do more?”

Dainsleif doesn’t say anything. Ajax stares at the ground.

“Yes,” Dainsleif says.

His fingers curl. “You’re lying.”

“It is not that simple.” Dainsleif sighs low under his breath. “Maybe you will meet again. Maybe you will be strong enough to make a difference in this conflict. But that doesn’t mean you will be on his side.”

“Meaning what?” Ajax snaps.

“This is simply the way of some things,” Dainsleif says, and there is something about how he says this that holds Ajax still. “Skirk has taught you much of victory. Let me then teach you of loss. No matter how tightly you hope to hold onto something, still, time will slip it from your fingers. Sometimes, you will lose things little by little. Until the day comes when it hardly means anything at all.”

He says this plainly, he says it simply: he says this as if he has lived it again and again. Ajax doesn’t respond. 

“A softer kind of loss,” Dainsleif adds, finally. “But a loss all the same.”

His throat feels very tight. “That's terrible.”

Dainsleif breathes a bitter laugh. “It is, isn't it? But I wonder if it even matters.”

Dainsleif steps away, then. He walks up to the roots of the tree, and with one hand he unfastens the cloak sitting heavy on his shoulders. Dark cloth, star-stitched designs, and three-tails the same as Kaeya’s own cloak. “Even if this will one day become meaningless,” Dainsleif says, still in that strange soft voice, “that doesn't change the fact that it must have once meant something.”

He kneels down beside Kaeya. He watches the boy’s sleeping face. “Once,” Dainsleif says, “it was important. Once, it made all the difference. For now, in this moment, it means everything.”

He places the cloak over Kaeya’s shoulders. “And perhaps that is all that will ever matter."

Ajax doesn’t say anything. 

Dainsleif tucks the coat around Kaeya’s shoulders, and sits back on his heels. He turns, and meets Ajax’s eyes. There is a worn look to this man, the Bough Keeper; his eyes are too old for his face. But for the first time, Dainsleif does not look so tired. For the first time, he seems almost alive. There is something knowing in his eyes, and something kind.

“Thank you, child,” Dainsleif says, quietly. “For being his friend."

.

Dainsleif says nothing more, after that. He sits by the door and watches the darkness as if keeping guard, and Ajax settles down beside Kaeya and lets the younger boy sleep. He watches the ceiling, most of that time. The last time he was here, Skirk stood scowling and Kaeya stood distant, his eyes trailing up, as if looking for something. Now, months later, Ajax searches for what he saw. He doesn’t find it.

When he finally shakes Kaeya awake, the boy is slow and quiet and barely aware. When he sits up, Dainsleif’s large coat almost dwarfs him. It takes him a moment to open his eyes, and even longer to focus on Ajax. His face, still, is blank. For the first time in a long time, Ajax cannot read Kaeya at all.

He doesn’t know what to say, so in the end, Ajax doesn’t really say anything. Just offers his hand, and prompts, “Come on, Kaeya. Let’s go back.”

Kaeya stares at him for a long moment. He closes his eyes. Then he opens them again, and takes Ajax’s hand, and lets Ajax pull him to his feet. Somehow, this doesn’t feel like a victory.

Dainsleif takes back his coat from Kaeya without comment, but presses a silver-leafed branch into Kaeya’s hand before the boy can leave. “This place will always be open to you,” he says, simply, when Kaeya just stares at it.

“The door is always open,” Kaeya replies, dully.

“Not if I don’t wish it.”

Kaeya stares at the branch. He looks away. He walks off into the darkness of the corridor, and he doesn’t look back. Ajax avoids Dainsleif’s gaze, and follows after him.

They go back together, silent and quiet. Nothing lurches from the darkness to attack them. When they reach Skirk’s house, she is standing outside, already waiting.  She looks at Kaeya for a long time, expression unreadable, something strained around her eyes. Kaeya stares blankly back. In the end, she doesn’t say anything either.

There is food on the table and tea gone cold. They share a quiet meal. Kaeya’s head bobs and weaves, his eyes half-lidded as if still stuck in a dream. 

Skirk takes the bed. Ajax and Kaeya take the floors, the blankets split between them. It is as if nothing has changed.

That night, Ajax wakes up only hours after he’d finally drifted off. He opens his eyes to a darkened house and a thin sliver of light—the door, opened halfway, exposing the shadowed gloom and distant silver lights of the Abyss. 

Kaeya is sitting against the doorframe, looking up. His knees are curled to his chest. His face is washed out and shadowed in the light. His eyes tracing the pillars and the tree roots all the way up to the false sky, as though maybe if he keeps his eyes on those shining branches they will lead him to the stars.

Chapter Text

Ajax doesn’t sleep well that night.

His dreams are restless things. He dreams of running through snow, from home into the unknown. He runs and he runs and the sky is dark above him—the woods, whispering, soft and secret—the world turned away. He is not sure if he is running to something, or running away. 

When he wakes up, hours later, he is sore and aching and there is a dull taste on his tongue, stale as dust. He feels awful. The lantern of Skirk’s house has blown out sometime in the night; the air is cold and uncomfortable, so still it is as if even the Abyss has started holding its breath. 

Kaeya is no longer in the doorway. The younger boy is asleep and back in his pile of blankets, looking less like he curled back up in them and more like someone tucked him in. His head is turned away, tucked out of sight beneath his arm; even in sleep, he looks like he’s bracing for a blow.

Skirk alone is awake. She is sitting on the bed, her feet flat on the ground, her weapon and a cleaning rag in her hands. The blade is already shined clean. She holds the rag loose in her hand, useless, her eyes staring off into nowhere.

Ajax sits up, slowly. Skirk’s eyes lift and move to him. For a moment there is silence.

“Thank you for finding him.”

Skirk thanking him for anything—the absurdity would have made him laugh only a few days ago. Instead Ajax fights not to get angry all over again. “You should have,” he says. He can’t say why for sure, except it rings true to him. Of course Ajax looked for Kaeya; Ajax’s small and very cute siblings would have looked for Ajax. But it’s another thing entirely for Skirk, for Kaeya’s father, for Ajax’s own parents. If Ajax’s parents didn’t look—if they didn’t care to find him—

Skirk should have found Kaeya. The wrongness of it burns sour in his throat.

“Perhaps,” Skirk says. Her voice is flat. “But it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

The Bough Keeper’s words come back to him. Even if this will one day become meaningless… once, it made all the difference. For now, in this moment—

It means everything.

“You still should have,” Ajax says, and he says it certain.

Skirk is quiet again. She is quiet so long Ajax almost stops expecting her to answer, and then she bows her head a little and her shoulders fall, and when she answers her voice is thin. 

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

And there isn’t really anything to say to that at all.

It’s wrong, to see Skirk like this. Ajax looks away, unsettled; his hands curl in and out of fists, restless. There is a buzzing beneath his skin. He stands up, eyes kept carefully away, and wanders to the kitchen area with silent feet. No need to wake up Kaeya again. No need to wake up Kaeya at all. Maybe it is that the longer Kaeya keeps his eyes closed, the longer he can stay.

The thought feels distinctly childish. Ajax relights the lone lamp on its hook and puts on the pot for morning tea, and stands there watching the water heat. His hands hover useless over the pot. He frowns at the ground and curls his hands back to fists, forcing them still by his side.

The house is so quiet. It needles at him. The house has so rarely been quiet.

“Skirk?”

She doesn’t react. She is staring at the wall again. “Hm.”

Ajax looks away. Then he forces himself to look back at her. He wants to see her face for this—he wants to see how she will answer. 

“How much time?” Ajax asks. “Until…”

The faint light of the lamp is already flickering, dim and dull against the strange air of the house. Each breath is tight and thin; each exhale shudders. Kaeya is asleep in the corner, his back to the wall, and even the covers tucked carefully around his thin shoulders aren’t enough to hide the exhaustion that surrounds this small boy like a ghost.

Skirk doesn’t move. She doesn’t blink. She shakes her head, once, and then puts her head in her hands. She is shaking, just a little. There is a tremor in her fingers, in her shoulders, that seems to strike bone-deep. 

She doesn’t say a word. 

Ajax waits. Ajax keeps waiting. Ajax waits and the silence stretches, and slowly, surely, the awful knot in Ajax’s throat sinks low and dreading to his gut.

“Oh,” he says. His voice is shaking too now. “Oh. Okay.”

.

Kaeya wakes up at the smell of the morning tea, because of course he does. 

Ajax could almost laugh at the sight—hysterically, maybe, but still a laugh. The instant he pours the tea out from the pot and into the cups, the second that strong scent hits the air, Kaeya is sitting up in bed. Habit, Ajax thinks, as a wild and almost terrible smile tugs at his lips. Creatures of habit. Like how Ajax always reaches for his father’s sword when he wakes. Some things you just get used to.

Still. Kaeya is quiet this morning, not that Ajax is surprised about it. He walks over with a blanket pulled high over his shoulders like a cloak and takes the cup of tea without ever looking Ajax in the face. The younger boy seems almost listless—there is a dullness to him, a worn sort of tired, that makes it look like he hardly slept at all either.

Ajax’s smile fades. When Kaeya turns to sit at the table, Ajax reaches out and tugs Kaeya to his side—a half one-armed hug, quick and fleeting, like Ajax’s older siblings always did for him and how Ajax always does for Tonia. It is not a gesture he has ever tried with Kaeya. Still. It seems right, to do it now.

Kaeya doesn’t return the half-hug. He just goes still, and very stiff, eyes wide and staring at nothing. Ajax squeezes at his shoulder one more time and then lets him go.

“Morning,” he says. Then he reaches out and pulls at the blanket, settling it high over Kaeya’s shoulders. The effect is almost comical—small child, very long blanket. Ajax snickers a little. “You look like a little prince.”

Kaeya blinks at him, vague and off-guard. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, but at last, he says, “You never know. I could be.”

The humor falls very flat, but Ajax admires the attempt anyway. “Is that so?” Ajax wonders, false cheer, and pulls the blanket up and over Kaeya’s head. “A prince with a blanket crown. Your enemies will surely tremble and fall before you.”

Kaeya makes a noise, cut-off and short and almost a laugh, and Ajax is so startled by the sound he loses his grip on the blanket. Kaeya pulls the cloth off his head with his nose wrinkled in annoyance and a smile pulling reluctant at his face. His eyes are almost bright again.

“That’s no way to treat a prince,” he tells Ajax, and for a moment he sounds like himself again.

He’s as precocious as Tonia ever was; Ajax snorts, half-way to fond, and reaches out without thinking, ruffling Kaeya’s already mussed hair into disarray. “That’s cute.”

Kaeya bats his hand away, looking annoyed, and then hitches the blanket back over his shoulders. The smile fades from his face. He looks down at the floor. 

Ajax’s smile fades too. “Hey—”

“Thanks,” Kaeya says, sudden and quiet. His eyes are on his cup of tea, held close. 

“For what?” Ajax says, startled.

“Yesterday.” Kaeya speaks very softly.  “For looking.”

Ajax stares at him. “Oh,” he says. “…Of course. I’m—glad I found you. I was starting to get worried.” Skirk, too, but Ajax bites these words off. He doesn’t think they will settle well.

What he has said is already more than enough. Kaeya looks startled—eyes wide, head lifting, as if the idea of someone being worried about his absence is an odd one—and then he nods, slowly, accepting of it. He blinks very hard. His breathing is thin and shaking.

“I see,” Kaeya says. He lowers his head a little, hiding his eyes, and before Ajax can speak again Kaeya has turned away. His shoulders are hunched under the blanket. He seems smaller than before.

Ajax watches him go, feeling helpless, not sure what he’d said wrong.  His hands fist by his side. 

He hates this. He hates this. He doesn’t know what to do. 

He grits his teeth, forces the anger back, and goes to join Kaeya at the table.

The meal is quiet and awkward. Skirk rarely talks, and Ajax is too irritated to think of conversation—and Kaeya, the usual conversationalist, is utterly out of it. It is only when the meal is over that he finally talks. As Skirk stands to gather the dishes, Kaeya scrapes his fingernail against the side of his cup and says, “I have to go back now.”

Ajax stills. He glances between them—Skirk and Kaeya—and Kaeya’s head lifts, his eyes dull and fixed on Skirk. Skirk looks almost lost.

“You vanish often,”  she says, at last, in her usual rasp. “Stay another day. It will make no difference.”

Kaeya doesn’t react. He just looks at her, or maybe through her, and in the silence he hardly seems there at all, like some part of him is still sleeping. 

“He’s not looking for me,” Kaeya says finally. “I just don’t want to be here anymore.”

He doesn’t even sound angry; he just sounds very tired. It doesn’t stop the words from cutting. Skirk’s expression shutters and her fingers twitch against the table, almost a flinch. Kaeya looks down at his cup. He doesn’t take the words back.

“Ah,” Skirk says, her voice forced even. “…All right. Fair enough, I suppose. If that is what you want.”

Kaeya doesn’t look at her. He shrugs, just a little, eyes fixed on the table, the words dull. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

Skirk presses her lips. She doesn’t answer.

Kaeya does not seem in a rush to leave, but neither, for once, does he linger to stay. The meal ends too quickly; Kaeya grabs his bag with movements gone rough and jerky, his balance off. He heads for the door with his back too straight and his hands still fisted, and stops, almost rocking back on his heels, when Skirk stands to go with him.

“No—”

“Believe what you will of me, boy,” Skirk replies, and reaches for her weapon. Ajax eyes them both and then stands too, grabbing for his swords. “You are probably right to. But I will still walk you to the gate.”

Kaeya stares holes into the ground. But he doesn’t argue, and when Ajax slips forward to stand next to him, his shoulders fall, just a bit.

They walk to gate without speaking. The Abyss is as quiet as it ever is; the chill seems more intense by the hour, a different kind of cold from the Snezhnayan winters. It is a slow darkness that seeps into the corners, a shade that casts a shadow on the light and warmth of any fire that burns beneath the earth. Ajax keeps his eyes on the horizon, watchful for any monsters—for any fight that might take the edge off this awful and cloying anxiety—but there is nothing. He is almost disappointed.

The walk feels longer in the quiet. Kaeya, too, is faltering; now that they are out of the house his steps have gone slow and listless. He is dragging his feet. His conviction has faltered. His breathing is even in a way that feels almost forced.

After the third time that both Ajax and Skirk have to slow down to let Kaeya catch up again, Skirk turns around. She latches her weapon to her back and walks over to Kaeya, kneeling down and picking him up in one swift motion, settling that small boy in the crook of her arm.

Probably she shouldn’t be able to do this, given Kaeya is nine and even Tonia, at seven, has gotten too big for piggybacks; but Kaeya is small for his age and Skirk the strongest (and one of the tallest) people Ajax knows. She settles Kaeya in her arms like it is effortless, and Kaeya curls his hands in her cloak collar to steady himself. The movement is instinctive; Kaeya himself is frozen, his eyes wide and blank, sitting so still and so stiff that Ajax is certain that rather than let Skirk carry him, Kaeya is going to hit her.

He doesn’t. Kaeya stares at nothing and Skirk adjusts her hold on him, settling the boy against her side, near her shoulder, like he is a much younger child. Kaeya’s fingers curl in the soft fabric of her cloak, bunching to fists, holding tight. Skirk stares ahead and doesn’t look at him, but when she starts walking again her steps are slow and steady.

After a long moment, Kaeya finally slumps. His jaw is tight and he is blinking quick, something shuddering in his face, behind his eyes. His breathing is hitched all funny. He lowers his head and hides his face in Skirk’s shoulder, leaning into the hold, letting her carry him. 

Skirk is still walking, but for a second she almost seems to falter. The look on her face—Ajax can’t even describe it. It is unknown to him; he has never seen it on her before, some strange and twisting thing caught half-way between grief and guilt. Skirk lifts a hand to Kaeya’s head, slowly, as if to smooth down his hair—and at the last second, she becomes a coward. Her eyes close, and she places it on his back instead, her touch featherlight. Kaeya doesn’t even twitch. 

Ajax looks away before he can see the pain on Skirk’s face, and the walk continues in silence.

.

By the time they reach Dainsleif’s grove, Kaeya seems half-asleep. He doesn’t look up from Skirk’s shoulder, and when Skirk places her hand to his back again, he doesn’t stir. Skirk looks strangely helpless at this.

Dainsleif doesn’t comment on any of it—just waves them through to another side corridor that Ajax has never seen before, half-hidden by the silver trees. The path to Khaenri’ah, probably; it looks no different from the corridor behind them, leading back to the Abyss.

Skirk hesitates before the door.

“It’s okay,” Ajax says, before Skirk can say anything. She eyes him, sharply, and he shakes his head at her. “I can walk back on my own. I’ll wait for you at the house.”

Skirk’s expression twitches. “Look at you, talking as if it will be easy. I let you run off around the Abyss once on your own, and now you think you are invincible.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t die,” Ajax says, and when Skirk looks unimpressed at this, he sighs, loud and annoyed. “Come on, teacher. I’ll be fine. You should take him back.”

She watches him for a long moment. Kaeya is quiet in her arms, his breathing soft and even. She closes her eyes. 

“None of you ever listen to a word I say, do you,” Skirk says, finally, and Ajax smiles at her. Her expression is somewhere between fond and annoyed. “Little fools—the both of you.”

“Aw, teacher. I’ve been good! I’ve learned a lot.” He beams. “I’m much stronger now. I’m not the same as I was when I fell, right?”

He means it as a joke but Skirk’s eyes are clear and searching. “No,” she says, at last. Her gaze is steady. “No. You aren’t.” 

Another pause. She shakes her head again. “All right. See you, boy.”

“Safe travels, teacher.”

She snorts.

Ajax watches Skirk and Kaeya leave, his eyes never leaving her back until the darkness of the passage takes them entirely. The Bough Keeper stands with him. His expression is as calm as ever, and it sort of makes Ajax want to hit him.

Ajax waits until he can’t see Skirk or Kaeya at all anymore, and then he turns to go. He’s not in the mood to speak with Dainsleif; his words from yesterday linger heavy in the air, whispering in Ajax’s ears like ghosts. Ajax has no desire to add to them.

Apparently Dainsleif disagrees. 

“Child,” Dainsleif says, when Ajax is halfway to the door. He doesn’t raise his voice but the words carry anyway, and despite himself Ajax stops. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to look at him. 

Dainsleif is quiet for a moment. Then he sighs. “This far—but no further. I know you must be frustrated. But you cannot cross this line.”

“I’m aware,” Ajax replies. “That’s what you’ve all been saying, right? If I learn too much, you won’t let me go.” He glances over his shoulder, something like a sneer pulling at his lips. The irony curls at his toes. Kaeya, who is trying to stay; Ajax, who wants to leave. It’s so fucking stupid. 

“Don’t worry,” Ajax says. Pleasant, mild, full of venom. He looks Dainsleif in the eyes. “I think I finally understand.”

Dainsleif’s expression never changes. He watches Ajax with a neutral stare that seems almost contemplative, and if Ajax’s anger touches at him at all, well, Ajax doesn’t see it. 

“I see,” Dainsleif says. 

Ajax laughs a little, bright and almost challenging; his fingers itch with the urge to fight. His smile feels more like a bare of teeth. “Do you?” he wonders. Then he turns away. “Well, whatever. See you around, Keeper.”

He is almost to the door when Dainsleif says, “I had my doubts about you, child. I still do. But even so—” He stops. There is a long pause. “Even so. I am glad he met you.”

Ajax doesn’t understand the Bough Keeper at all. He doesn’t understand how this man can look at Ajax and tell him that one day Ajax isn’t going to care about Kaeya enough to help him, and yet thank him for knowing Kaeya the very next morning. Ajax stops at the door and stares out at nothing, and then closes his eyes tight.

“Yeah?” he says. “Then are you going to let me say goodbye?”

Dainsleif is quiet. Ajax turns on him. He is smiling again, and it isn’t kind. “Or is this another loss I’m going to have to ‘learn’ too?”

Dainsleif tilts his head, unperturbed as ever, but his gaze skitters and drops away from Ajax’s face. He looks off at the silver trees, as if lost in thought.

“I should not,” he says, softly. “This far, and no further—to carry Skirk’s legacy is knowledge enough. You are too close to the edge. And yet.” He is silent for a long few seconds. His eyes turn back to Ajax, and Ajax meets his gaze and holds it, eyes cold, jaw firm, bracing himself.

Dainsleif looks at him as if seeing someone else. Not in the way he usually does, like Ajax is something distantly distasteful or something to be wary of; in this moment Dainsleif seems to be looking at someplace else entirely. He doesn’t seem to see Ajax at all.

“I shouldn’t,” he repeats, to himself. 

Ajax eyes him, uncertain. He stays where he is.

There is a beat of silence. At last, Dainsleif closes his eyes. His sigh is almost soundless. “Yes,” he says, finally. “Yes. All right.”

Ajax doesn’t startle, but it’s a near thing. “All right?”

“Yes.” Dainsleif opens his eyes again. He looks down at Ajax with something unreadable in his face. “Ajax. I will let you say goodbye.”

When he says Ajax’s name there is a careful weight to it, a reminder, not to Ajax but almost to himself. Ajax stares at him. Dainsleif stares calmly back, and after a long moment, Ajax nods. His throat feels tight and strangled.

He doesn’t thank the Bough Keeper. He doesn’t say anything. He turns back to the Abyss and leaves the grove of silver trees behind, and tries to convince himself that Dainsleif will keep his word.

.

Later, Ajax thinks— shouldn’t he be angrier about this?

There is anger, of course. There is a restlessness under his skin and a twitch to his fingers; there is a terrible tightness winding around his throat every time he thinks about it too long. A weight to his chest. A slick sort of fury on his tongue, like a building scream. There is anger—

But Ajax goes back to the house and he sits at the table and he holds the swords Skirk wanted for him and Kaeya traded for him, and he doesn’t move. He doesn’t start a fight; he doesn’t break a thing. He wants to. There is a tension so terrible it’s like white noise in his head, buzzing in his ears. He wants to, but at the same time, he can’t. The anger is something more than rage. It is a feeling he can’t even name. It feels, a little, like falling.

It takes a long time for Skirk to return. She walks back to the house with silent steps; her head up, eyes facing forward. There is a grim set to her mouth and Kaeya is not with her.

They don’t talk much that night. Ajax barely eats. The anger has risen again, closed off his throat. He thinks about breaking the plate. He doesn’t.

Later, much later, he hears Skirk get up and leave in the middle of the night. Ajax sits in the dark and thinks about following her. He doesn’t. His hands are restless, curled into aching fists. Still, he doesn’t say anything. Still: he doesn’t move. 

When Skirk comes back, hours later, there is blood on her hands and gore in her hair. Her sword is slick with shining blood, the taint like a neon glow. Most times after a hunt, Skirk smiles. It is the only time Ajax has ever seen her smile—from the thrill, from the challenge, from the rush of it all, and sometimes on the good days that smile will linger, small and vicious on her aging face. 

But Skirk is not smiling now. She is not smiling at all. Instead she stands in the doorway, looking almost lost, and looks down at her bloody hands like it feels, instead, like nothing at all.

Ajax watches quietly her from the darkness. He looks down at his own hands, white-knuckled and shaking, restless and itching for a fight. He uncurls his fingers and remembers the blank look in Kaeya’s eyes, the way he hid his face as Skirk carried him back over the border—and Ajax wonders, for the first time, if this feeling squeezing tight in his chest is still anger, or if maybe all it has ever been is fear.

.

He’s not sure when he finally drops off to sleep; when he wakes up again it’s to Skirk’s hand on his shoulder, a firm shake. 

“Up, boy,” she says, when Ajax yawns and squints and reaches, half on instinct, for his weapon. She catches his wrist before he grabs it and shakes her head. “Not this time.”

Ajax sits up, blinking into the gloom of the house. “What…?”

She doesn’t answer. She stands, her face shadowed, and simply repeats, “Get up.”

Ajax watches her face. He gets up.

There is already tea on the table; Ajax drinks it down in one swallow and puts the cup down fast, ignoring Skirk’s disapproving eye. “Why can’t I bring my weapon?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

Skirk pulls her eyes away from the cup and gives him an unreadable look. “Too much time with the boy,” she says, not so much soft as it is bitter. “Ajax. Don’t ask questions you know the answer to.”

Silence. She shakes her head. “Grab your coat.”

His throat is tight again. He feels hollowed out and cold. Ajax swallows hard, and then he goes and grabs his coat.

When they walk across the dark roads of the Abyss, it is with Ajax weaponless and with Skirk clutching her great spear close, her eyes set forward, her jaw tight. Ajax follows her, as dutifully as he does every hunt; this time, however, the silence is not anticipatory but dreading. He is torn between dragging his feet and running ahead; already, he recognizes the path. They are heading to the silver door—to the grove of silver trees. Dainsleif’s place.

There is an awful twisting in his gut, and by the time they reach the door it has coiled into something ill and living, a terrible and sickening lurch to his every step. He feels almost dizzy; his breathing has gone shallow. He stops before Skirk can push open the door.

Skirk stops too, her hand on the silver. She looks back at him. She is his father’s age, but this time she looks truly old, in a way Ajax has never before seen her—the lines carved deep in her face and the shadows bruised beneath her eyes, a strange pallor beneath her dark tan. Her hands aren’t shaking, but somehow this is worse. Instead of torn, she just looks empty. 

It is familiar. It is painfully familiar. Kaeya looks like this too; Ajax knows what that expression is because he has seen it on Kaeya’s face. Did he learn it from her? Ajax has never looked for it, but now he tries. The way Skirk flips her weapons; the way she stands, tall and proud and settled on her feet, ready to move. There is a reason, maybe, that when he first met them he assumed Kaeya was Skirk’s son.

Ajax doesn’t move. Skirk shakes her head, and pulls away from the door. Her hand falls heavy on his shoulder. “With me,” she says, at last. “Stay close. And do not speak, boy. Do you hear me?”

Ajax bites his cheek until he bleeds, and then smiles up at her. He can taste the blood on his teeth. “Loud and clear, teacher.”

Skirk exhales. “Promise me.”

“Sure, sure,” Ajax says, lightly, and her hand on his shoulder tightens like a bruise. Ajax quiets. The look on her face almost frightens. 

He says, quieter: “Okay. I won’t talk.”

Her grip eases. “Good,” Skirk says, in a whisper, and the fear curls in his gut for a different reason this time. 

Skirk turns away, and pushes open the door.

The same old dark corridors; the same grove of silver trees. The light always blinds him, no matter how many times he’s come here. The trees are unchanged, the room as unearthly as ever, but one thing is different: Dainsleif is not here.

Neither, Ajax realizes, is Kaeya.

Ajax rubs at his shoulder and presses his lips. It takes effort to stay silent.

Skirk leads him through the room, past the grove of trees all the way to that very back wall—to that great and towering heavy door, ever shut. Dainsleif is still not there, but someone else is, and Ajax’s steps slow as they approach. 

The stranger is a man about as old as Skirk, tall and thin with gray-streaked dark hair braided heavy and stiff down his back. He wears a mix of gold and black, and a cloak like Kaeya and Dainsleif’s, three tails and diamond stars. He has dark skin and blue eyes so pale they are almost silver. When he sees Skirk walking to him, he frowns. When he sees Ajax, his eyes narrow, sharp as Snezhnayan ice.

“Skirk,” this man says, only barely a greeting. His voice is strangely soft, almost muted; there is a weight to every syllable. “And…” His eyes stay on Ajax. Something cool touches his gaze. “The boy from elsewhere.”

Ajax grits his teeth, just barely remembering his promise. Skirk, in contrast, doesn’t react at all. “The Bough Keeper has already given his judgment,” she says, toneless. “The boy knows nothing. He will continue to know nothing. He is here only—” She stops. She doesn’t look at Ajax, but he goes still anyway. “He is only here to say goodbye.”

Ajax doesn’t move. He stares at the ground. He feels strange again, half-here and half-not. Not so much angry as dizzy, and the confirmation makes something in him seethe. I knew it. 

“Goodbye,” the man echoes.

Something flickers in Skirk’s face, too fast to catch. “Kaeya has met him. They are friends.” Unspoken, implied—you didn’t know. Ajax flicks his eyes between them both. 

The man—Kaeya’s father, and even though Ajax has almost known it since the beginning he still cannot make it click—does not even have the decency to look ashamed at this. He says, “I see,” and only that, and Ajax puts his hands behind his back and grips his wrist until his fingers stop shaking. 

This is Kaeya’s father? Soft-spoken, neutral, and he would look almost dignified if the sight of him didn’t inspire such rage. The shadow of this man’s presence has been looming over Skirk’s house since Ajax came here; the ripples of his actions have haunted Skirk and Kaeya like ghosts. Ajax has never even tried to imagine the man, and still, the reality is bittering. 

Now he knows. Polite, Ajax thinks. Terrible fathers can be polite and soft-spoken and stately, and it is awful, in a way Ajax never knew awful things could be. Worse—he doesn’t care. That Kaeya never told him. That Kaeya did not want to tell him. All those times Kaeya vanished into the Abyss, did this man look at all? 

Ajax can’t look at him, so he watches Skirk instead. Skirk doesn’t look at anyone. She stares at the silver doors with a stare that sees millions of miles away. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes almost seem to burn; the look on her face is terrible.

But she doesn’t say anything, and she has asked him not to speak, and if he breaks this promise they might drag him away—so Ajax stays quiet too. He hates it. His fingers itch for a weapon; he has never before wanted so badly to fight, to forget all these awful things under the haze of blood.

He’s not sure how long they wait; maybe a minute, maybe many minutes. Eventually something shifts in the air of the room. Skirk stills, and Kaeya’s father snaps his eyes to the great doors. There is silence. Then dust rains from above, and the heavy stone doors slide open, pushing into the dark.

In the darkness of the room behind the door, the world seems to have fallen far away. There are no walls; there is no ceiling; there is just darkness, an endless stretch of space that exists only so far as the light reaches. The stone floors of the grove give way to earth and dust, the soil dark as charcoal, the grass small and soft and silvery-blue like the sparse greenery of the Abyss wastelands. In the center of it all—a silver tree, the greatest tree Ajax has ever seen, the roots alone as wide as a city street and what little of the trunk he can see even bigger than a river. It takes up the whole of the space; it reaches up into the aether with endless strength. It has silver bark and blue veins shining strong with power, and all around it are the first flowers Ajax has ever seen in this land, small white blooms by the roots.

“Bough Keeper,” Kaeya’s father says, and Ajax startles, breaking from the spell. Beneath the great tree there is a shadow of a figure: Dainsleif, ever unchanged, looking the oldest Ajax has ever seen him, some terrible exhaustion lining the Keeper’s eyes.

Kaeya is there too, Ajax realizes. The boy is kneeling by the roots of the great silver tree, his head bowed, the glowing branches casting soft shadows on his face. Ajax almost steps forward, and catches himself just in time—but it is Skirk who forgets herself, stepping into the room, something sharp and fearful in her voice. “Kaeya.”

Kaeya is still. Then he looks back at them, and Ajax freezes, his eyes going wide, because—

Because Kaeya’s right eye is gone.

Bandages have wrapped entirely around that side of his face; through the bandages, red is blooming. Kaeya does not seem in pain, though. Despite the covered eye and the blood sticking to his cheeks, his face is blank. He is looking not at Skirk, not at Ajax, not even at his father—just at the flowers, tiny white blooms sprouting near the roots of the tree, like upside-down bells in the breeze.

For a moment there is only silence, heavy and weighted. Kaeya’s father reacts first. “So it is done,” he says, simply, in the same tone of voice that he has said everything—neutral and soft-spoken and devoid of meaning. “Very well then. Are you ready?”

It is noticeable, too, what Kaeya’s father does not say: nothing of the way his son ignores him, nor of the bloody bandages winding rough across his face. Kaeya does not move—does not look up—but his lip curls, a little, and beside Ajax, Skirk has gone stiff with disapproval.

The silence that settles is much colder, now. In the shadow of the tree, Dainsleif closes his eyes.

“Kaeya,” Dainsleif says, softly. Kaeya glances up at him, reluctant. “It is time to go.”

Kaeya is frozen still. Then he ducks his head and climbs to his feet, expression turned hollow and cold again. He walks to his father’s side without a word, and he doesn’t look at Skirk or Ajax at all. 

Ajax stands still, and watches, and waits—but no one says a word. No disapproval, no objections. Kaeya’s father turns to the door and Kaeya walks silent at his heels, and Skirk does nothing, Dainsleif says nothing, the both of them standing there looking older than they should, the both of them just letting Kaeya go. 

And Ajax promised to be silent—had wanted to say goodbye—but he doesn’t understand. 

Kaeya and his father are almost to the door, and Ajax reacts without thinking.

“Wait,” he says. Skirk twitches, and Dainsleif’s eyes flash to him, but Ajax is beyond caring, he is beyond all of this, he is so angry he is almost blind with it. He can’t look at them at all. “Wait, no, wait—”

Skirk reaches for his arm, and Ajax smacks her hand away. Before she can react, he turns and runs for Kaeya. The doors are open, Kaeya’s father already entered the hall, walking the darkened road up to the Khaneri’ah. Kaeya hasn’t even looked back. 

“Wait,” Ajax snaps, and grabs at the younger boy’s shoulder, pulling him back to face him. Still, still, Kaeya’s father doesn’t react—he walks down the hall as if Ajax hasn’t interrupted at all, stride unfaltering. Kaeya is wound tight and stiff beneath Ajax’s hand, his one eye cold and empty. “Wait. Wait, Kaeya, what—where are you going? What’s going on?”

Kaeya doesn’t react. Ajax shakes him, suddenly furious. “What are you doing?” he snaps. “Your eye—why are you—say something.”

Kaeya just stares at him. The bandages around his eye are steadily staining red. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

Ajax stiffens. “You’re in—”

Something in Kaeya’s voice sharpens. “I’m not your sister.” Ajax freezes. “I’m not Tonia, or Anthon, or Teucer—I’m not your family. And you aren’t mine. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything at all.”

Ajax stares at him. He feels struck, unsure of what to say. His grip loosens, and Kaeya steps away, out of reach. “It was funny, for a while,” he says, still in that blank tone. “I’ve never had a brother before; it was nice to pretend. But it’s not funny anymore. You can stop now.”

“What are you talking about,” Ajax says.

“I’m leaving,” Kaeya replies, and he says it simply. “And I’m not coming back. I’m not your family, Ajax. You aren’t going to pick me over them.” He smiles, and it does not reach his eyes. “I’m not mad. I get it. We’re really alike, you know? You just want to go home too.”

Ajax says nothing. He doesn’t know what to say. He stands frozen in the doorway and watches, feeling something cold and still settle over him, as Kaeya turns away and follows after his father’s retreating footsteps. At the end of this hall, there is one final door: unlike the entrance to the Abyss, this one bears no image of a tree, but rather a star, singular and shining and carved deep in the stone.

Kaeya’s father has stopped at the door; he has turned back just a bit, watching them both. When he sees Kaeya following he turns away and pushes it open—another hall, endless, leading up. Leading away.

In the hollow shadow of the open door, Kaeya stops again. He looks back. He is swallowed whole by the gloom; he is too small compared to all the empty space surrounding him. His remaining eye is clear and blue. He is quiet for a long moment, and then he takes a careful breath.

“Goodbye, Ajax,” Kaeya says, young and small and not even bitter. “It was fun while it lasted, right?”

Ajax stares at him. Then he steps forward. Kaeya blinks at him and doesn’t move, and Ajax leans down and hugs him, careful, tight, the way he would—the way he would hug his sister. The way he hasn’t hugged Kaeya at all until this moment, because Kaeya was right—he isn’t Tonia, he isn’t Ajax’s family. He is not Ajax’s little brother, but he is a young kid who deserves better than this—a better friend than Ajax, for sure—and even if it is playing pretend, Ajax thinks maybe Kaeya needs it anyway.

Kaeya doesn’t hug him back. He doesn’t move. But he is shivering, a little. He is very small, and thin, and strangely fragile in Ajax’s arms.  He is very young.

“Kaeya,” says his father, standing by the door. His eyes are cold. Kaeya goes still and then slumps, and Ajax holds him tighter. 

But Kaeya pulls away, and Ajax curls his fingers to keep from grabbing his arm and pulling him back. Even here, he can feel it—Skirk’s watching gaze, Dainsleif’s knowing eyes. His throat is tight. 

“See you,” Ajax says, at last, voice thin. “Kaeya. Don’t do anything stupid.”

He’s not sure what he expects— a pithy response, Kaeya’s usual laughter. But all Kaeya does is smile. He nods. Then he turns and leaves, and closes the door behind him, and Ajax watches him go and doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, his hands curled to fists and teeth gritting so tight it hurts, shaking hard, shaking somewhere deep down, a strange kind of pain that strikes all the way to the bone.

.

And he says nothing. And he does nothing. Because Ajax believes in childhood dreams and in keeping them, but he is still just a child himself, and he is selfish, he is afraid. Because Kaeya is right. He wants to leave. He wants to go back.

He wants to go home, one day, and so Ajax, too, lets Kaeya go.

.

He can’t hate Skirk, in the end. He wants to, but he doesn’t know how. 

The days following Kaeya’s departure are as strange as they are awful. In a way nothing changes, and that is its own brand of terrible—every morning, the same burning tea; every day, training again. Skirk takes him on hunts and Ajax goes because fighting is like breathing now, and it drives him almost mad with boredom to be without it—but he does not speak with her, and she barely speaks with him. She doesn’t smile on the hunts anymore. Even days after Kaeya has left, that hollow look in her eyes never quite leaves her.

Ajax knows, without having to ask, that his days are numbered too. Not much in the Abyss can frighten him anymore; even if he has yet to face the true horrors, there is no question that one day Ajax will be strong enough too. He has learned the most important lesson: how to learn. Ajax has met the Abyss and the Abyss has seen him; he will fight, and survive, and grow stronger, for all the rest of his days. 

His time here is coming to an end. There is not much else for Skirk to teach him, and any longer in this deadened land and Ajax might stumble across something no one wants him to know.

The days pass to weeks, and one day after a hunt, Skirk pulls him aside from the corpse of a tainted wolf. She has always been tall, always looming; nowadays in Kaeya’s absence she might as well be stone. She moves slowly, her expression dull and eyes fixed; sometimes, on the nights when she thinks Ajax isn’t looking, she will sit and look at her weapons, as if she might find answers in the iron blade.

“Tomorrow,” she tells him now, her voice rasping over the words. “Tomorrow will be three months total since you fell here.”

Ajax stands and waits. He has his weapons in hand; blood is still drying beneath his fingers. It glints almost violet in the light.

“Tomorrow,” Skirk says, steadily. “As I promised. You will go home.”

Ajax watches her. Ajax waits. Skirk sinks the blade of her weapon into the earth and lets it stand there, and offers one scarred palm for Ajax to take. “This is the last thing I have to teach you,” she says, in that worn and steady voice. “You fell to the Abyss for the same reason I did. I knew it the moment I saw you. The Bough Keeper did too. It is why he gave you to me to teach.” 

Not Kaeya? But no. Ajax understands. Kaeya never fought the way they did; Kaeya did not like it. Kaeya never came to the Abyss to live. Maybe he just came to the Abyss to hide.

“It is a foul legacy I am leaving you,” Skirk says, “but it is a legacy all the same. If you will have it.”

He has seen her use it only once: power sparking bright and violent around her form, one instant before Ajax set his feet and struck back against the beast first, holding his ground. He has seen it in the shadows around her, an echo like the stars, a power as otherworldly as the Abyss itself. 

He wants to hate Skirk, sometimes, but he doesn’t know how to. She is his teacher; she is his mentor—she is the one who showed him what it meant to live, to fight, to be. He cannot hate her. When he smiles at her it is true, and when he takes her hand, he means it.

“Teach me,” Ajax says, grinning wild, and Skirk does not smile, then, but her eyes almost seem to glow.

.

In those shadowed hours of his final day, she teaches him the foul legacy and the power of the deadened stars. It is the final piece to a puzzle he hadn’t even known was there. Life-or-death struggles, bloody conflict—bloodlust, insatiable, like a living thing. You shall ever be the eye of the storm, Skirk tells him then, as the power burns vicious through his blood. And the clashing of steel shall ever accompany you. 

There is a dream that has haunted Ajax through the years; there is an echo, still, of that final glimpse of home. Bloody sky and shadowed trees. The wolves, drawing near. The woods, whispering. 

This pitch-black memory of stepping into uttermost darkness— 

He understands now, how much of the Abyss Skirk has shielded him from. He understands, at last, where he is. 

—shall become the strength by which you will overturn this world.

It hurts, but Ajax doesn’t scream. It hurts, but Ajax doesn’t falter. There is blood between his teeth and power singing through his skull, and Ajax trails the stars through his fingers and laughs, loud and bright and unfaltering, and breaks it to pieces in his hands.

This is the legacy I shall leave you, Skirk tells him, and readies her sword to his throat. Now that you have seen this world, raise your weapon. Show me what you can do against the might of the Abyss … and don’t you dare disappoint.

.

When he wakes up again he is in the grove of silver trees, Dainsleif staring at the ceiling and Skirk cleaning her weapons of his blood. Ajax pushes himself upright, breathing shallow through the pain. He laughs, softly, and says, “Master, that was brilliant! Fight me again!”

Skirk pauses, but doesn’t address the change in title. Ajax just beams at her. She has taught him everything worth knowing; she is more than just a mentor. Whatever teachers Ajax finds in the future, the only legacy he will wield is hers. If he is her apprentice then she is his master; it is a vivid and wonderful thing, to have such a bloody legacy to uphold.

“It is no good to fight you now,” Skirk informs him. “Too easy, and not worth the effort.”

“Aww.”

She shakes her head at him and stands. “You are awake and you are breathing. Get your blessing. I will meet you outside.” Ajax stares at her. Her voice softens. “It is time to go home.”

He exhales, shaky, watching her walk away. Home. It is so close. He is so close. His hands are trembling with it.

He looks to Dainsleif, next; he is careful to keep his eyes away from the grove itself. It has been weeks now, but the sight of this place burns bitter in his throat. The sight of Dainsleif is not much better—Ajax catches his eyes on the half-mask and has to keep his lip from curling, remembering suddenly and vividly Kaeya’s missing eye.

Still, he has to ask. “Blessing?”

“Hmm.” The Bough Keeper reaches up, and pinches a sapling growth from one of the silver trees between his fingers. From his sleeve a dagger glints; the branch is cut clean from the tree. “The Abyss is full of holes. It is how someone like you found yourself here. But they are not stable nor are they safe.” He tilts his head. “You have fought the mages.”

“Yes,” Ajax says. He eyes the branch. “They carry those things with them, don’t they? The leyline tree branches.”

Dainsleif is frozen still. “Irminsul,” he says. “The trees are called Irminsul.”

“What?” For a moment Ajax is startled. “But Kaeya called them—”

He stops, but the words linger. Dainsleif closes his eyes. He looks, in this instance, almost as Skirk does—that same terrible ache, lingering somewhere behind his eyes. 

“Yes,” Dainsleif says, distantly. “He did. He thought that name… suited them better.” The quiet drags on. Dainsleif shakes his head. “Regardless. The branches of the Irminsul tree guard against the corrupting power of the Abyss. It is how those creatures manage to escape to Teyvat at all. Without those branches, those mages would burn to nothing.” He straightens, and folds the branch tight in his hands. Blue sparks across his fingers. “But stolen power is weak, and flimsy. To have a branch given freely—with a blessing— is a true guide. It will lead you through the Abyss to wherever and whenever you wish to go… if you are strong enough to bear it.”

He folds the glowing branch into a dark cloth and holds it out to Ajax. “Skirk will take you to find a break between this world and yours. When you have found it, take this and hold it tight. When you step through the world, think of home, and it will take you there.” 

Ajax reaches out and takes the package gingerly. He looks at it, and then tucks it into his pocket. Despite the glow, it isn’t warm—instead, it is almost cold, a gentle sort of chill like the waters of a brook. “Okay.”

 He turns to go.

“About Kaeya.”

Ajax stills.

Dainsleif does not seem to know what to say, after that. He hesitates for a long time. Finally, he says, “The boy will be all right. In the end.”

Ajax doesn’t move. Then he looks back at him.

“He will be happy,” Dainsleif settles on, at last. He is looking Ajax in the eyes; he speaks surely, with intent. He believes it. Maybe he even knows for sure. Maybe he saw it in the future. “One day.”

Ajax doesn’t know what to say to that at all. The silence stretches.

“Good for you,” Ajax settles on, finally. His voice is flat. When Dainsleif doesn’t respond, Ajax turns away and walks out of the room. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t see the point.

He will be happy one day—in the end. What a joke, Ajax thinks, what a pale fucking comfort. What about now? Kaeya is just a child; Kaeya is just a kid. Kaeya just wanted to go home. 

(Adults cannot be trusted with dreams, Ajax thinks then, and it is a certain thing, a knowing thing. A truth scarred deep on his heart. Dreams and happiness are fragile and fleeting, and someone else has to protect them.)

He meets with Skirk outside the door, and he is grateful when she doesn’t speak with him. She leads him across the wasteland, and neither of them looks back. Past the great tree that rises up to Khaenri’ah; away from the pale scattering of settlements in the Abyss ash. She walks him past even the lands where she brings him to hunt—beyond the burned battlefield—beyond ruins. They walk for hours, through this ever-growing darkness, until at last Skirk stops him, and lifts up her hand. 

He almost can’t see it, the crack is so faint. But it is there—in the silver shine of the distant Irminsul trees, he can see a place where even darkness does not reach. No stars, no earth, no sky or sea or devouring deep—a place of nothing, a hole in the world. When he brings his hand close, he can almost feel a hint of cold, a whisper of Snezhnaya.

He beams at it. He reaches into his pocket and pulls free the branch. He opens the cloth and looks down at the blessing, his eyes lit in the silver-blue glow. Home. He is going home.

“Ajax.”

He looks back. Skirk is holding out her hand; in her palm is a small short sword, rusted with blood and age. His father’s sword. The blade Ajax held close when he first fell here, all that time ago. 

He beams at her, and trades her for it—his double-bladed spear for his father’s sword, because wouldn’t that be an awkward question to answer should his family see it? The handle of his father’s sword fits oddly to his palm; this weapon has been dulled rather than sharpened from battle. Long gone are the days when it was too heavy for him to hold—Ajax has outgrown it.

Still, he holds it close. “Thanks, master.”

“Hmm.” She steps back. She looks him up and down. “Go on, then.”

And it is the strangest thing—but for a moment, Ajax hesitates. He stands there in the darkness of the Abyss and watches Skirk, careful and quiet. He thinks of the look on her face when Kaeya left; he thinks of the way she held the boy close, carrying him up to Khaenri’ah. He thinks of her house and how small it is, and how much smaller it felt without Kaeya there. He thinks of the way Skirk missed Kaeya—silently, painfully, hollow behind the eyes.

And now Ajax is leaving too. For the first time, he wonders: will she miss him? Will she be okay? She is the strongest person he knows, but power has nothing on how awful it is to sit in that house alone.

“I’ll come back,” Ajax says, abrupt, surprising even himself. Skirk raises her eyebrows at him. “One day. I’ll come back—when I’m stronger. I want a rematch.”

“You are a damn fool to even think of coming back here,” Skirk replies, but there is no heat to the words.

“So long as there is a battle I will be there,” Ajax informs her. “And there’s always fighting here.” He smiles at her, sudden and bright. “And next time we fight, master—you will have to use both hands to defeat me.”

He has never seen Skirk smile outside of a hunt; he has never heard her laugh. But something in Skirk’s face softens, then.

“Is that so?” Skirk says, and her raspy voice is almost warm. “All right then, Ajax. I will hold you to that promise. Grow ever stronger, boy, or the next time we meet I will bury you in the dust.”

“You can try,” Ajax replies, arrogant. He grips the silver branch of the Irminsul tree in his hands and steps back into the break between the worlds. The nothingness takes him. The world crowds his ears. He thinks of home and Snezhnaya and Tonia, the woods and their whispering, and the last thing Ajax sees before he leaves is Skirk’s smile, small and fond and already grieving.

When he opens his eyes again, he is ankle-deep in snow. The world is shadowed and dark and just as he remembers it. The trees are looming silhouettes—the cold like a knife—the wind howling in his ears. His father’s now blood-rusted sword is like ice in his hands. 

Ajax stands, stunned, feeling the wind against his face for the first time in months. He sees the stars burning high above in a darkened sky—the sky, endless and lovely and almost forgotten to him. It’s night. It’s cold. It’s beautiful.

In his hands, the branch of the Irminsul tree has turned to ash, and it blows away to nothing between his fingers. He watches the dust vanish into the breeze. It is starting to snow—soft, slow, familiar.

And in the distance, Ajax hears someone calling his name.

He lifts his head. He turns and calls a reply. He hears footsteps breaking in the snow, a desperate run, and behind those footsteps Ajax’s mother says, “Ajax? It can’t be—Ajax!”

Ajax laughs. He drops his rusted sword to the snow and steps forward, arms open. Tonia slams into him, crying so hard she can’t even speak. Ajax wraps his arms around her, spinning her through the snowfall, and in this moment, as he holds his little sister tight, he knows he has finally made it home.

Chapter Text

He never does tell them, in the end. 

Ajax considers it, at least at first. He worries his family too much, is the thing—worries them too often, in ways he has never worried them before, and that alone almost makes Ajax spill the secret. When Ajax returns from the Abyss it is with a blood-rusted sword and a smile that has gone sharp and dangerous at the edges. He laughs too long at things that aren’t funny, and the longer he is without a weapon in his hands the more restless he gets. 

His family notices— his family worries. Ajax has been dreaming of home for three months, but they have only missed him for three days, and it is too short a time for any of them to feel comfortable with the person he’s become. (It does not help, probably, that Ajax is almost always laughing— because three days, Tonia says, and all Ajax can think of is Kaeya and his time travel theories, and it's really almost too much to take.) They are unnerved—they are hesitant—they don’t understand. 

For that alone, Ajax almost tells them. 

He doesn’t, though, in the end. He’s hurt them enough by vanishing, and isn’t it better this way? The poor boy of Morepesok village got lost in the woods and came back just a touch bit funny; a story that sounds so much nicer, so much kinder, than the truth of the Abyss. 

Better to leave it behind, Ajax thinks, as his mother frets and his father frowns and Tonia cries into his shoulder. He hugs her absently and smiles. Better to pretend otherwise, right? If Ajax sticks with the kinder story—with that little white lie—maybe it really will be okay.

Kaeya probably would have approved.

It is, of course, easier said than done. The Abyss has left its mark on Ajax, and it is obvious: it takes Ajax weeks to sleep again, let alone sleep soundly. It takes him even longer to settle. No matter how much time passes, Ajax will never lose the restless bloodlust singing beneath his skull. 

The moon and stars are bright and blinding in their newness; the sunrise, that first morning, almost makes him yell, eyes unused to the light after months of lantern-lit darkness. He is happy to be home and chafing against it in the same instance. No more training. No more hunts. No more danger or challenge or thrill, and Ajax barely lasts a week before a boy insults Tonia and Ajax flies forward, grinning bright.

His fist breaks the boy’s nose in a clear stream of blood. Ajax laughs and hits him again. He doesn’t realize anything is wrong until Tonia starts screaming, and then a hand fists in his coat and yanks him off the weak boy with a shout.

Ajax almost hits the intruder, too—but then he sees Tonia, eyes wide and face bloodless, crying all over again. He stops. The villagers throw him back and rush for the weak boy; Tonia doesn’t move at all.

The weak boy doesn’t die. No one is impressed by Ajax’s show of restraint—Ajax’s father is disappointed in him, and his mother is all righteous horror. His older siblings whisper behind his back. 

The worst is Tonia. Little Tonia, ever-smiling—except after that day, for weeks Tonia is quiet and wide-eyed in a way that makes Ajax sort of uncomfortable, always avoiding his eyes. (So, Kaeya had said, after that first hunt, like it was an awful thing: You are that kind of person.) 

Ajax tries harder, after that. Fighting where no one can see, fighting things no one can miss. That monsters vanish into smoke and ash here is bizarre but welcome.

It’s fine, Ajax tells himself, two weeks, three weeks, a month after leaving the Abyss behind. It’s all fine, he thinks, two months after, four months, five. Ajax is home. Ajax has finally come home. He tells himself this every night, every morning—he tells himself this until the day his father puts his hands on Ajax’s shoulders and says, six months after the Abyss, “My son, you are different. You are changed. Sometimes I feel as if you have gone far away.”

Ajax doesn’t move. 

“You will go to the Fatui—serve our goddess—perhaps she will grant you control.” His hands are warm and free from the callous of bloodshed. His father’s face is lined with something like fear. He says, “Come back to us, Ajax. Come home.”

When the Fatui come to finalize his recruitment, Ajax does not argue. 

.

Ajax is a restless recruit. 

Part of it is boredom. For the backbone of their nation’s great strength, the Fatui are frightfully dull. There are too many rules, too many formalities, and no fights worth having. Ajax lasts three days before he picks his first brawl. This fight leads into a second. To a third. 

By the time the Harbinger arrives at the base a few hours later, Ajax has already beaten the majority of his classmates and instructors bloody.

He knows the Harbinger is there before they even speak. There is a weight to their arrival, a strange sort of presence—an echo of power, or threat, or maybe just violence, that reminds him painfully of Skirk. Ajax rises from the mess of bodies and grins over his shoulder. There is blood all across his knuckles. His hands are shaking. He is angry, and he is not sure why. He can’t even remember why he started this fight in the first place.

The newcomer has a wide hat and flat, pale eyes. He does not know them, then. Later, after the Harbinger dodges Ajax’s first strike and then flings him so violently through the far wall he sees stars, the Harbinger will tell him their name.

“I am Pulcinella, or the Fifth.”

“I am going to kill you,” Ajax says, struggling to rise from the floor, and he is smiling so wide it hurts. The anger has faded under the thrill of challenge. He is fighting the urge to laugh; there is blood sticking behind his teeth and rubble dusting across his shoulders.

Pulcinella does not smile back. “Well,” they say, almost bored. “You may certainly try.”

It is Pulcinella who pulls him from the rank file of the grunts to the upper legions—but it is the Tsaritsa who chooses him. Two months after Pulcinella begins training him, the Tsaritsa calls him to the Palace. He is not Harbinger yet. He will not be Harbinger for months. 

It is the first time he has ever seen the Tsaritsa, though, and it is a meeting that will shape him for the rest of his life. She is tall, stately; there is arrogance in the casual way she leans back against her throne. He expects to find her cold. Instead she smiles at him—warm, and a little sad. There is frost crawling across her cheek like cracks in the ice.

She is the most terrible thing he has ever seen, and it is enough to leave him speechless. He smiles when he kneels to her. When she asks him to pledge to her cause—he is smiling then, too, when he agrees. When he leaves the throne room behind, still giddy at the glimpse of violence he’d seen behind the Tsaritsa’s empty eyes, he finds the Hydro Vision in his pocket as if it has been there all along. 

He stares at it for a long time, that night. Thinking of home, of his father, of come back to us. Thinking of Skirk and Kaeya, and how they would recoil at this, at Ajax taking a knee to an Archon’s authority and receiving a sign of another’s favor.

“Sorry,”Ajax tells the Vision, and curls his fingers over the glow. Hydro, he thinks. Justice, judgment, judge and jury. Executioner. Yes, Ajax thinks, he can fight for this. For the Tsaritsa’s vision—for keeping his little siblings happy and safe, as they should be, even if he cannot come back to them—for a world in ashes, as it deserves. 

Months later, when he becomes Harbinger and Delusion-wielder and weapon, he takes up the name Tartaglia with something like gratitude. It is a good name. Curling, sharp in his mouth: it fits the person he has become. The more the time passes, the more the bodies pile up, the more he starts to think that maybe Ajax had died down there in the Abyss after all.

.

Being a Harbinger, Tartaglia finds, is far more fun than being a recruit. 

He kills a lot of things and sometimes a few people, and at least once a week Pulcinella drags Tartaglia off to a flat expanse of ice and snow to throw him through trees and, if they are feeling generous, teach him how to use his Vision and Delusion in tandem. These are the lessons he enjoys most. The Hydro Vision is a grand and useful thing. Powerful, and adaptable—truly, the power for him. 

Tartaglia re-creates Skirk’s two-bladed spear the first chance he gets. It is wonderful to hold it in his hands again. Tartaglia is getting very good at weapons—swords, claymores, pole-arms, and whatever random item Pulcinella decides to throw at him today—but he finds this one comforting. It is Skirk’s weapon; it is a reminder. Tartaglia is a Harbinger and Vision-wielder and killer for the cause: he is also Skirk’s only student. The keeper of her Foul Legacy, and sometimes in battle he lets the stars and static run across his fingers just to remind himself of it. This power is his; this power is hers. No one else can take it. No one else could dare.

Even Pulcinella pauses at their first glimpse of the Legacy. It makes Tartaglia want to laugh. My master, he thinks once, smiling wide at Pulcinella’s still shock, is stronger than you.

And soon, I will be too. 

Battle is not all Tartaglia does with his days. He goes home, when he can. Just because Tartaglia can’t come back does not mean he loves his siblings any less; it does not mean he can’t visit. 

It is still hard. His father will not look at him. His mother is too quiet, and his elder siblings watch him, wary. But Tonia hugs him when he arrives—wraps her arms tight around his waist and squeezes like she’s trying to choke him—and Tartaglia is so relieved, then, to see her smiling at him again, that he kneels down and picks her up in a spin before tossing her, cackling, into a snowdrift. 

“Mean!” Tonia shouts when she comes up, spitting out snow, and for a moment it is like he has never left at all. 

Later, that night, after Tartaglia has cooked dinner and tucked Anthon in and rocked fussy baby Teucer to sleep, Tonia sneaks into his room and hugs him quietly. 

“I missed you,” she says into his shoulder. “Are you okay?” 

“What is all this?” Tartaglia asks her, fond, and pushes her back. “I’m fine, see? Don’t be such a fret, Tonia, you’re too little for it.”

“It’s because you keep going away!” Tonia says, and Tartaglia’s smile falters. Tonia looks down. “Sorry. Sorry. I just…”

“I’m not leaving,” Tartaglia tries, carefully. “Right here, aren’t I?”

Tonia still looks uncertain. Her eyes are on the floor, foot kicking at the floorboards; for a moment, Tartaglia is reminded, suddenly and sideways, of Kaeya. It hurts. He breathes out slowly, then kneels down before her, eye to eye.

“Toniaaaaa,” he says, and drawls his voice the way he would have before, obnoxious. “Are you hiding something from your big brother?” 

“No!” she says, and her nose wrinkles, but it is Tartaglia’s win—because for a moment she is smiling, fighting the urge to giggle. “I just… um…”

Tartaglia waits. 

“You’re different,” Tonia says, at last, and she says it small. Ajax stares through the walls. “And… and you do things, sometimes, and I don’t really understand. Like— like—” She stops again. “Why—why did you tell Anthon that you're in training to be a toy seller? I mean… you’re not, right?”

Tonia is too old to believe that lie; Tonia has seen too much to believe it. Tartaglia could almost regret that. “No,” he says. “You’re right. I’m not. Sounds impressive though, doesn’t it?”

“But…”

He is not sure how to explain it to her; he cannot explain it to himself. It is just that Anthon is young. He is little and cheerful and looks at Tartaglia like he’s hung the stars in the sky, and Tartaglia does not want to break that. He does not want to break that dream. He does not want Anthon or little Teucer or even Tonia to look like Kaeya, that bitter little boy in the Abyss whose eyes had already been empty. 

He has spoken of the Abyss to no one; similarly, he has never breathed a word about Kaeya. Maybe it is that some part of him was left down there, maybe it is the Foul Legacy— maybe it is just that the Abyss is Ajax’s secret.  Even when Pulcinella beats him into the dirt and asks who taught him, Ajax laughs and does not answer. When he kneels to the Tsaritsa and promises his blood and blade to the cause, to her cause, still, he does not speak of it. It is not betrayal. It will not stop Tartaglia from being Harbinger, or one of the Tsaritsa’s faithful. 

But it is still his secret to keep.

For a moment, though—he almost wants to. He wants to sit Tonia down and tell her where he went, and why he could not come back. He wants to tell her about Skirk and Dainsleif and the silver trees that rustled like a song. He wants to tell her about Kaeya, that almost-family in that small wasteland house—and he can almost hear himself say it. I met a swordsman. I met a seer. I met a boy, down there, and Tonia—

He was just like you.

Tonia waits. Tartaglia looks away and smiles.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, instead, and Tonia does not ask again.

. 

It would be a lie to say Tartaglia forgets the Abyss. He will never forget the Abyss. He does not forget being Ajax, or the small house in the wasteland, or Skirk, or Kaeya. He does not forget those final goodbyes. He does not forget how it felt. When he refuses to tell little Anthon and later Teucer of his job as a Harbinger, he does so because he is thinking of Kaeya’s face, the hollow behind his eyes and the way he said, So you are that kind of person.

On some level he will never forget it. Those three months-that-never-were are carved into his memory so deep they might as well scar his bones. The house, Skirk’s rare smile, the endless darkness and silver-netted sky; Kaeya’s laughter, sharp as knives. He does not forget. The memory of those days lingers on eternal.  

But life goes on.

One year, two years, three years. The time piles up. Ajax moves on. He does not look back. It is a memory, cherished, but it has been put to rest—faded like all things are, part of the past, no place for it in the future. 

He doesn’t forget. But long ago Dainsleif said, it will not matter, and—and he doesn’t forget, but that is not the same as remembering. Ajax grows up. Tartaglia leaves the shadows and the woods behind for more violent fields. He kneels to an Archon of ice, and grins through every fight in her name. He summons old gods and dooms cities to a watery grave just to call out his foe. He challenges the Traveler to a fight with a laugh. 

He is not a different person. But he is someone else, now. He has grown up. He has moved on. He has left the Abyss behind him. The memory of Kaeya is a thin one, fond but distant—the boy who reminded Ajax of his siblings, that bitter child who Ajax couldn’t save and couldn’t help. He is reminded of Kaeya every time he fights to keep a childhood dream alive; he thinks of Kaeya in past tense. Someone he used to care about, someone he no longer knows. There are more important things, now, more recent memories: the Tsaritsa’s plan, the Geo Archon, how to use those thrice-damned chopsticks.

 You will lose things little by little, the Bough Keeper told him once. Until the day comes when it hardly means anything at all.

He misses the Abyss, sometimes. But he misses it less and less with every year that passes. A loss so slow and so gradual, he barely even recognizes it.

.

And eight years after Ajax returns from the Abyss, Tartaglia leans over the Traveler’s shoulder and laughs. 

“Mondstadt, hm?” 

His hand weighs on the Traveler’s shoulder, and he is craning his neck to peer obviously at the map, for no other reason than to annoy them. It is working. The Traveler gives him a tired and true look of one used to an irritating sibling; beside them, the floating fairy puffs up like an angry cat. 

“What’s it to you, huh?” 

He is not offended by the vitriol; in actuality, he finds it all really funny. Tartaglia laughs, and it is almost genuine. “How interesting! I’ve never been. Mind if I come along, comrade?”

The Traveler folds up their map, thinking hard, and Paimon bobs and weaves in the air, making dramatic X’s with her arms in a desperate attempt to persuade them. Tartaglia smiles, and the Traveler watches him evenly. At last, they nod. 

“Mondstadt won’t like you,” they say, a little dryly. “But if you want to come along, I won’t stop you.”

Tartaglia smiles. He is on the verge of laughter, and half-dreaming of all the fights he can pick in the city of the wind; it is only later, after everything, that he will look back on this choice and feel something akin to regret.

“Sounds wonderful,” he says. “Count me in.”    

.

.

.

Tartaglia can see Mondstadt long before they reach the city. It is early morning after a week of travel, and they hit the turning point in the road just as the sun starts to rise up over the hills and distant cliffs. It’s a rather different sight from Liyue—a different cut to the stone and sky that makes the light shine more red than gold—and Tartaglia stops on the road to shade his face, whistling into the wind.

“Traveler,” he says, “you should have told me Mondstadt skies bleed red— I would have come sooner!”

“We don’t want you here at all!” Paimon says, as she has been saying for a week now, and Tartaglia laughs. 

“Pretty, isn’t it?” The Traveler is always so wary around him, but in this moment their shoulders are loose, and they turn their face into the sun, smiling a little. “I always really like Mondstadt. The way the grass sways in the wind…”

It really is something—like a sea of green tinted gold from sunlight, cast against a burning sky. Tartaglia hums. “You should see my homeland,” he tells them. “The sun on snow. It’s blinding. Quite unlike here, or even Liyue.” The Traveler looks deep in thought at that, and Tartaglia grins, looking back over the horizon. He squints against the dawning sun.

“Oh?” he says, and leans into the glow. “That shadow there—is that what I think it is?”

“Mondstadt,” the Traveler confirms.

Even from a distance and half-eaten by the shadow of the hills, Mondstadt makes for a striking image. It’s smaller than Liyue, not nearly as sprawling—still, it rises tall, situated high on a hill, surrounded by shining waters and cast against distant cliffs. The sunlight catches on the edges of it—windmill towers, a heavyset wall, and a tall spear of stone that might be the roof of the cathedral.

Very picturesque; Tartaglia is already thinking out the letter he will write to Tonia and the rest. He’ll have to grab them something unique from the city…. Ah, what was Mondstadt known for again? Wine? Archery? Actually, Tonia might like that—he’ll have to see if they have any bows that surpass the Snezhnayan models.

He splits ways with the Traveler at the small town of Springvale, maybe an hour out from the city. Paimon looks wary and the Traveler gives him a long and searching look for it, but Tartaglia only grins back, daring them to ask. He has no intention of waiting for them and the Traveler has some business in Springvale—they’ll meet up with him in a few hours, easy, but that’s only if they’re willing to let him out of sight. He’s curious to see what they do.

“If you get arrested don’t expect us to bail you out,” is what Paimon says, eventually, very uncertain, and the Traveler sighs and covers their face with their hands, already despairing. Tartaglia laughs.

“Don’t worry,” he consoles. “I don’t have any business here.” His smile widens. “This is just for fun.”

Neither Paimon nor the Traveler looks appeased by that, but when Tartaglia sets off back down the road, neither do they try to stop him. 

Tartaglia doesn’t even bother trying to enter the city through the main gate—it's no fun if he gets apprehended right away, after all. Instead he waits until the noon hour and then scales the wall while most of the guards are dreaming of midday meals, and lands on a patch of grassy area, near the far-east side of the city. Easier than ice fishing. And really, what a city. Trees, grass, and stone-work houses with moss and mushrooms and wooden roofs. It’s entirely unlike every other capital city Tartaglia’s ever visited—so quaint.

Anthon would like it here. Tartaglia finds himself rather bored. Mondstadt is… kind of quiet, isn’t it? Thank the Tsaritsa he wasn’t assigned here. 

Tartaglia sighs, spins his bow idly in his hands, and starts off down the street.

.

Mondstadt is quiet, somewhat quaint, and apparently frightfully effective despite it all. Tartaglia has barely spent an hour on the streets before two people approach him—a young girl Tonia’s age all dressed in red, and a woman with a wide-brimmed purple hat. Tartaglia straightens from his searching of the shop’s wares to grin at them. The girl frowns. The woman smiles back, mild and amused, something like lightning in her eyes. 

“Fatui,” says the girl in red, already eyeing him. Tartaglia laughs before she can continue and ruffles a hand back through his hair.

“Harbinger, actually,” he says easily, and beams at the way the girl stiffens. The other one—lightning lady—doesn’t seem to react at all, mild expression unfaltering, except that the air around her has gone charged and biting. Oh-ho, Tartaglia thinks, there’s a possible fight right there. How exciting. “Most call me Childe. Something I can do for you, little lady?”

“Oh, it’s really nothing much,” lightning lady says, demure, and steps in front before the girl in red can snap back, or even better, try to fight him. “Our dearest Master Jean heard you were in the city, and we’re so embarrassed not to have greeted you properly! She would absolutely love to speak with you now, in her office.” Her hand sweeps out, gesturing up the stairs. “After you, cutie?”

It’s so smooth a finish Tartaglia is almost admiring of it, even if all the double-meanings and diplomacy makes him want to sigh. Ah, he knew it would be too good to be true. Mondstadt was bound to notice him eventually, but it still would have been nice to have more than just one measly hour. 

It’s funny, in a way. For such a bright city, Mondstadt apparently has very watchful shadows. How… interesting. 

“I’m honored,” is what Tartaglia says aloud, because it’s expected, and he walks up the stairs with only the slightest of sighs. Oh, well. At least if it all goes wrong, Tartaglia can get a good fight out of it.  

Perhaps Mondstadt will prove an exciting trip after all. Tartaglia cannot wait to find out.

. 

The lightning lady’s name is Lisa; red-girl is Amber. They don’t give him their names directly—he learns them side-hand from their whispered conversation at his back. Apparently this heavy-handed approach is due to previous experiences with a Harbinger: Signora. Ugh. Of course he has to get caught up in her mess. Of all people, right?

Tartaglia is not sulking, but he is a little put-out. How terrible that the Traveler was proven right after all. He can never let them know. He would never hear the end of it, if not from them, then certainly from Paimon. That tiny fairy zooms in on blackmail material almost as intently as she latches onto treasure. 

Lisa and Amber lead him to the Knight’s Headquarters, which is one of the more impressive buildings in Mondstadt, tall and built heavy like a fortress. The gray stones almost seem to glow in the sunlight. The inside somewhat reminds him of Northland Bank, though much less decorated, and far more boring—smooth floors, warm wood walls, nice lighting. 

Tartaglia steps into the Grand Master’s office with a smile and a cheery wave, Lisa and Amber at his back. This, too, is nothing like home: the grandiose set up of the Harbingers' quarters seems gaudy next to this small office room with its wide windows and small bookshelf. Mondstadt, it seems, is a city that likes to be underestimated.

Lisa had not lied—they have been waiting for him. A few Knights linger by the shelves; at the desk, the Acting Grand Master Jean stands tall, her eyes steady. He has heard of her, but never met her: Master Jean, as it turns out, is a small blonde young woman with sharp eyes and a confident set to her shoulders. 

A fighter, Tartaglia thinks. She meets his eyes directly, expression neutral. Tartaglia brightens a little. A good fighter. There is a poise to her, a control—she knows her own limits and capabilities in a battle. Leaders always make for interesting combatants…

There are others of interest as well. A young man even shorter than the Acting Grand Master, pale skin and pale hair and pale blue eyes, wielding a Geo Vision. In the very back, too, just behind the Acting Grand Master, there is a one-eyed man about Tartaglia’s age, with brown skin and dark hair, wearing blue. 

Tartaglia casts his gaze around the room, appraising, but despite himself finds his eyes drawing back to the one-eyed man. There is something… off about him. Familiar? He can’t place it.

Tartaglia studies the man carefully; the man raises one eyebrow and studies him back. Arms crossed and leaning back against the wall—casual posture, but his shoulders are stiff and there is something deliberate in the way he holds himself. Ready for a fight. Oh-ho.

“Harbinger Tartaglia,” the Acting Grand Master says, and Tartaglia draws his gaze away from the other man reluctantly, focusing on her. Ah, well. It’s probably just his imagination. “Welcome to Mondstadt. I am Jean, the current Acting Grand Master.”

“Harbinger Tartaglia,” he replies, and bows a little. “But many call me ‘Childe.’ I’m happy to be here!”

“Why are you here,” Amber mutters from behind him, and Tartaglia straightens up with a smile and a sheepish shrug of his shoulders. The man in the back of the room laughs before he can reply.

“A little blunt, but our dear Outrider does have a point.” The one-eyed man steps out from the wall—hands up in an open shrug, sighing. Theatrical. “We received no word that another… esteemed guest from the Harbingers would be entering our lovely city. Why, we didn’t even have time to greet you properly! Truly a shame.”

The veiled threats and insults only vaguely register. Tartaglia is abruptly aware that he is frowning. There is just—something—and the longer he thinks of it the more it needles at him. Something about the way this stranger holds himself, the way he speaks… the way he’s smiling. It feels like a memory, twisted and turned by time. 

The atmosphere of the room has chilled, the Knights reacting to Tartaglia’s own bad mood. Lisa is still and Amber has straightened; he notices, distantly, that the man’s smile has gone sharp. Something about that needles all the more; ah, Tartaglia thinks, how annoying—what is it?

And then the Acting Grand Master says, “Kaeya,” with something like concern, and everything goes quiet in his head.

The man—Kaeya!?—laughs a false laugh and raises his hands, stepping back, playing apology. Tartaglia barely notices. He feels struck. Different pieces snap into a puzzle he had not even realized was there—the way he speaks, the way he smiles, the missing eye, his eye, bright and clear with the Khaenri’ahn star—and Tartaglia lifts his head and stares. 

“Kaeya?” he repeats—and now both Kaeya and the Acting Grand Master are looking at him.

“Yes?” Kaeya says, and he is smiling a smile that is at once unknown and far too familiar. Tartaglia stares at him, flat-footed, eyes wide and expression stricken. Kaeya blinks and starts to frown. 

Tartaglia says, a little distantly, “Kaeya.”

The frown deepens. Kaeya and the Acting Grand Master exchange a quick look, a silent conversation; Tartaglia turns away, staring at the floor, trying to keep his breathing even. Something in him is reeling. That smile had unsettled him all the more because he recognized it: a sharp bite of clarity, almost forgotten, a little detail written down and saved in the back of his mind the same way he saves Teucer’s favorite toys and Tonia’s newest interest. The smile Kaeya gave when he was annoyed or angry or something, when he was trying to hide it. The same smile Kaeya wore when Ajax had first met him, years ago, when that bitter little kid had turned to Skirk and said, smiling— Can we throw him back over the border now?

The first thing he really thinks is: Damn, we really are the same age. Because the possibility that Kaeya is older than him—even if only by a year or so—is clearly unacceptable. 

The second thing Tartaglia realizes is: He doesn’t recognize me.

Which… makes sense. Because Tartaglia hadn’t recognized him either, not until the name fit all the pieces together, and what of Kaeya? He had been nine years old then, and Tartaglia had been Ajax then, and in that light it’s not a surprise at all.

“Is something the matter?” Kaeya says, and Tartaglia startles, lost in thought. The room is staring at him. The Acting Grand Master looks concerned; the boy with the Geo-vision by the bookshelves is watching him. 

Kaeya is watching Tartaglia too. His one remaining eye is sharp and dissecting, cold in a way that Tartaglia has long since forgotten.

“Ah, no,” he says, and forces a smile. It’s a bad idea; he feels suddenly dizzy. Kaeya. Is it really him? Maybe Tartaglia is just projecting. Surely there must be others out there with the name. 

And yet… the eyepatch. The Khaenri’ahn star in his eye. Even the way he holds himself, light on his feet. Tartaglia never forgets an opponent, and Kaeya had been one of the first he’d ever truly fought.

Kaeya. Kaeya is here. In Mondstadt, of all places— and Tartaglia does not know what to do.

And so: “I’m fine,” Tartaglia lies, baldly, and it is the most bizarre thing in the world to see Kaeya, grown-up and cold and speaking like a stranger, smile at him and lie back, “Well, if you say so.” 

.

The meeting blurs. Tartaglia isn’t even sure what he says next; at some point it occurs to him that he has to get out now, before everything gets to his head. Whatever he says, it's satisfying enough; he leaves the building behind un-arrested and apparently with the diplomatic tension intact. Tartaglia lingers on the steps and blinks in the sunlight. He feels dazed—dreaming. 

It’s not a good feeling. He frowns at the sun and rakes his hand back through his hair. Exhales hard. Breathes in, and does it again; feels a little more present, but there’s a restlessness creeping in instead. Not good.

He feels jittery. He beelines for a free wall, in the shadows, some distance away from the Knights of Favonius Headquarters. Kaeya. The name, and the realization, repeat in his mind on loop. Maybe if he says it enough, it will finally make sense. 

He leans against the wall. Kaeya, he thinks again. Kaeya is here.

Kaeya is alive.

…Tartaglia puts a hand over his face, hissing his next breath through his teeth. It’s not that he’d ever thought Kaeya was dead, really; it’s just that for all intents and purposes he might as well have been. Memories are meant to fade with time but the Abyss has never been normal: those three months are the most vivid memories he has. Sometimes, even now, decades later—he will wake up and forget, if only for a moment, that he ever left.

It had thus required a lot of weird coping mechanisms, among other things. Getting used to the sky, reminding himself of the present, learning how to deal with a certain set of memories that just wouldn’t fade. So yeah, Tartaglia had—had buried Kaeya, essentially. He’d laid him to rest. Wherever Kaeya was now, whatever had happened to him, he was out of Tartaglia’s reach. Tartaglia couldn’t help him anymore. He’d never really made his peace with that, but he’d accepted it.

And now all those buried things have been forcefully turned up to light. Master, Tartaglia wonders, thinking back to Skirk, what would you do?

He presses a hand against his chest, staring off at nothing. The Foul Legacy buzzes at the tips of his fingers. It hurts, but it is a clean hurt. Burning sharp and pure like a flame. He thinks of the way Skirk used to smile when this power wrapped around her, and closes his eyes.

“…Childe?”

He looks up sharply, hand reaching for a weapon—sees the Traveler and Paimon, both looking surprised, and freezes moments before the Hydro blade can condensate in his hands. 

There’s a long pause. They stare at him. Tartaglia stares back. “Ah,” he says, and blinks. “Oh, comrade! Back so soon?”

“What do you mean, ‘soon?’” says Paimon, sounding bewildered. “We’re late!”

“Hm?” Tartaglia cranes back his neck; sure enough, the sky is overcast with a sunset. He stares at it. “Huh. That you are, I guess.”

A long silence follows this. The Traveler’s brow furrows, and they take a step forward. “Are you…” Pause. They tilt their head. “…All right?”

“Fine,” Tartaglia says, absently. Neither Paimon nor the Traveler look convinced. “Mm, actually, I might have had a problem, but you’re here!” He grins, loud and bright. “Dear Paimon—” The fairy frowns at him. “—I remember hearing about you being something of a tour guide? Yes?”

Paimon crosses her arms. “Paimon is Traveler’s tour guide.”

“Hahaha, I remember!” Think, think… What did the little fairy like again? Ah, no, he’s being silly—she’s a kid. Kids are predictable. “I’ll buy you a meal if you indulge me jusssst this once,” Tartaglia says, coaxing, and Paimon’s eyes are like stars.

“Sticky honey roast!?” she squeaks, and Tartaglia solemnly holds up his hand as if taking an oath.

“Harbinger’s honor.”

Paimon looks at the Traveler. The Traveler still looks concerned; they eye Tartaglia for a long moment before nodding very slowly. Paimon whips back around. “We have a deal!”

“Wonderful!” And it really is—some of the awful restlessness fades. Answers. Okay. Some context to fill in all the missing time his head isn’t wrapping around. This might just work. “Lead the way, comrade.”

Paimon zooms down the street like a shot. The Traveler lingers. “Did something happen?”

“Concerned?” Tartaglia laughs, a little faint. “Ah, comrade, I didn’t think you cared!”

There’s no accusation in the words; Tartaglia understands. The Traveler doesn’t like his methods and even though Tartaglia might feel some distaste for them himself, clearly that has never stopped him from following through with it. The Traveler’s tolerance for him is based on their care for Teucer alone—and in truth, this is why Tartaglia likes them as much as he does. Anyone who is willing to place a kid’s happiness so high, who understands the importance of childhood… well. A person like that is worthy of respect.

The Traveler’s a little young for Tartaglia to really see them as equal, but they are (perhaps) something like a friend. At the moment, though, there is something piercing in them. They look at Tartaglia for so long, in such silence, that it almost unsettles him. There is something knowing about the look in their eyes, and for a moment—and maybe it is just because the Abyss is at the forefront of his mind—but for a moment, they remind Tartaglia of… of someone else he once knew.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” says the Traveler, at last, simply. “But, if you need help… I’ll consider it.”

Tartaglia looks down at them. A smaller smile twitches at his lips; he reaches out and ruffles their hair, and when the Traveler’s eyes go wide and they jerk back, annoyed, he laughs. The illusion of the Bough Keeper breaks away. 

“I met a few interesting characters today,” he says, casually, grinning a little as the Traveler straightens back up and fusses with their hair, obviously irritated. “Girl with a red bow, lady with a big hat, an Acting Grand Master… one man had an eyepatch, that was intriguing. Friends of yours?”

The Traveler eyes him. “Yes.”

“I’m really curious, that eyepatch, do you know…?”

“Kaeya once told me he inherited it from his grandfather.” There’s a beat of silence. Tartaglia is abruptly torn between hysterical laughter and a terrible, painful nostalgia. The Traveler takes the silence differently; red rises to their cheeks. “I didn’t believe him!”

“I didn’t say anything.” He’s grinning, though, and it’s real, even if the pain in his chest is growing sharp. “A Mondstadt regular, then?”

“He’s the Cavalry Captain. Quartermaster? He helps Jean with a lot.” The words are absent-minded; Tartaglia takes them in. A captain. That isn’t a title one gets as a visitor. So this really might be where Kaeya went all those years ago. Mondstadt. He thinks back to the scene in the office—the Acting Grand Master and Kaeya, the way they played off each other. 

The knowledge doesn’t settle him the way he’d hoped. He feels restless again, some strange burning under his skin. Tartaglia exhales slowly and digs through his pockets, then hands the Traveler a small bag of Mora, sure to cover whatever expensive meal Paimon was shouting about. “For the honey roast,” he says, cheerful, and moves for the gate.

The Traveler is frowning again. “You aren’t coming?”

“Not hungry, that’s all.”

“I thought you wanted a tour.”

He’s seen enough. “It’s fine, it’s fine!” He waves a hand over his shoulder. “Just going to wander the countryside a bit—enjoy your meal, comrade.” 

He can tell the Traveler isn’t convinced. But, mercy of small mercies, they let it go; no footsteps follow him. Tartaglia strolls out of the gate free to think, the restlessness burning through his head.

Cavalry Captain, huh? So that was what Khaenri’ah wanted Kaeya to do, all those years ago. Or maybe Tartaglia is guessing all wrong; maybe Mondstadt isn’t the mission but a happy accident. Tartaglia sort of doubts, though. Captain is a pretty position, and Kaeya, even young, had been too good at lying for his own happiness. They would make him a spy. Look at Tartaglia—the youngest Harbinger by far, an assassin before he could drink, all because he likes fighting just a bit too much. Not that he’s ever complained, but… well. The point still stands, doesn’t it?

Kaeya’s alive, Tartaglia thinks again. Kaeya is here.

It doesn’t really mean much, in the grand scheme of things. But to the part of the Tartaglia that desperately protects his family, Teucer’s innocence, their pride in him—to the part of him that has never forgotten how awful it was to fail someone he’d decided, however quietly it snuck up on him, to protect—to the part of him that is still Ajax, still in the Abyss, still lingering in that timeless place: 

It means something.

. 

He stumbles on the first hilichurl camp by accident. He stumbles on the second on purpose. By the time he runs into his third Ruin Hunter, his Hydro blades have been dyed pink with his own blood and his grin has stretched so wide his face hurts more than his injuries.

There’s nothing quite like a good fight, and though nothing he encounters is a challenge, the ceaseless nature of the battle will wear him down little by little and make each new opponent all the more dangerous. The thrill is a relief after the twisted knot of feeling from today. Battle is simple: pure, clean, mindless. There are no questions. There are no memories. For a moment, as his blade cuts through the air, Tartaglia feels utterly at peace, blood singing in tune. 

He carves a cheerful trek of destruction across the Mondstadt landscape, and in the very early hours of dawn finally hits a ravine of ruins, lost in the far reaches of the Mondstadt wilderness. Here the winds roar endless and cutting—here the clouds gather close. Tartaglia’s master had been a thorough teacher, and for a moment he can almost hear Skirk’s voice in the wind. Listen, boy. Look. Do you feel it?

There is a great foe, somewhere in these ruins. There is a terrible power just waiting to be sparked to violent light. There is a fight that could make his blood sing. 

Tartaglia stumbles into Stormterror’s Lair still grinning, and the dragon swoops down on his head.

It’s a beautiful thing—he can’t wait to kill it. Six wings and feathers as long as his whole body; talons sharper than any blade. It breathes a wind so terrible and cold it almost stings—beats its wings and the stray grass on this abandoned earth lies straight flat. Tartaglia braces himself against the ground with his sword sunk deep in the earth, and reaches for his Delusion.

Lightning crackles; his new wounds burn like ice. Tartaglia laughs, delighted by the challenge—already exhausted, and this fight would be a challenge even at top form—and swipes for the dragon’s legs whenever it dives for him. Even with Electro and Hydro on his side, he can feel himself losing ground. Oh, how wonderful—he might have to use the Foul Legacy after all!

He is just about to draw on the power when the dragon roars with a voice fit to shake the heavens, and the earth cracks beneath his feet. 

Tartaglia ducks back, dodging the worst of it, but one large bit of debris knocks his shoulder hard enough to bruise, and nearly knocks him flat on his back. Something else has nicked his face: there is blood trickling down his temple, building in the back of his throat. 

He laughs, coughs, and then rises back to his feet—still grinning, but with an edge to it now. Tonia will be upset with him if Tartaglia dies before sending her letter. Actually, on second thought, his little siblings will be sad to learn Tartaglia has died at all. Falling in battle against an opponent such as this would be an honor, but Tartaglia does not believe in loss—and especially does not believe in dying here.

Ah, he thinks, this is really going to hurt. 

And he is just about to reach for that heretical power from the Abyss, when a blast of Cryo hits the dragon in the side.

Tartaglia pauses, blinking. The dragon rears back, snarling, and power gathers in its jaws again, the winds starting to howl. Someone curses in a low mutter, and as ice swirls to life around them in a way reminiscent of the powers of a Cryo Abyss Mage, that new voice snaps, clearly irritated— “Cool it!”

Tartaglia straightens up and glances back over his shoulder. One eye and dark hair and clothes of that pale blue. Kaeya. Of course it is Kaeya. This world has never believed in giving Tartaglia a break.

That timing, though… too perfect by far. Has he been following Tartaglia the entire time? That’s—  well. Rude, but probably to be expected. Mondstadt has never been fond of the Fatui, and if the Acting Grand Master trusts Kaeya as much as the Traveler claims…

Something stutters to a halt in his head. Wait. Cryo. Kaeya. That glow hanging off his side—

“You have a Vision?” Tartaglia says, utterly thrown. “A Cryo Vision. Are you kidding me?”

“My, my, have you never seen one before?” Kaeya’s reply is glib and empty—the casual words turned terse with irritation. “How unusual for one of the Tsaritsa’s own number.”

The response is so beyond expectation that for a moment Tartaglia has to reorient himself. Kaeya with a Vision—Kaeya who talks to him like he’s a stranger and a threat—a Kaeya who has grown up at all. Though Tartaglia has never quite understood it, he still remembers the bitterness in Kaeya’s voice when he spoke of gods. To wield a Vision—

Ah, but Kaeya doesn’t know him, and anyways there is still a dragon. Tartaglia turns away, back to the battle. The joy of the fight has turned ashy on his tongue. Kaeya’s arrival has soured the song, has reminded him of all the things he didn’t want to think about. He finds himself strangely irked by it. 

The dragon’s wings beat and it rises above them, looking about ready to dive, and even though he knows Kaeya has no idea who he is, Tartaglia finds himself laughing anyway. “How long were you following me, anyway?” he wonders, cheerful, voice rising to be heard over the howling wind. He rifles through faded memories and the smile twists. “Don’t tell me—the whole time? I bet you didn’t even tell them you were going.”

Kaeya glances back at him, cold, and Tartaglia’s smile widens. “Ahaha. What’s that look for?” 

Kaeya narrows his eye, smile curling dangerous at the edges, but before he can speak the dragon swoops down for them. Tartaglia rolls away and back up to his feet in one smooth motion, laughing again; he lifts a hand towards his face and forms a spear of water, preparing to strike.

Cryo blooms again: this time, a shield, blocking Tartaglia from striking at the dragon’s exposed neck. The Hydro blade sinks midway through before it freezes from the residue ice, and Tartaglia’s feral smile falls to a frown.

“You—”

“Now, now,” Kaeya says, with cheerful and chilly threat. “The whole point of my interference is to avoid a diplomatic incident. Killing one of Mondstadt’s Four Winds—well, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Four Winds? Tartaglia has no idea what he’s talking about, but then, the name alone implies importance. Kaeya is already turning to the dragon, which has risen back to the sky and is now circling around them, unharmed. 

“Dvalin,” Kaeya calls to it, voice raised, “The Acting Grand Master sends her regards. Our sincerest apologies for the interruption.”

In the swirl of wind and icy flakes, Kaeya is utterly calm: hands up, eye steady, smile small and secure. The dragon rears back again, and Tartaglia tenses—but rather than attack, the great beast almost seems to be considering something. 

Then, shock of all shocks, it speaks. “A Knight… of Favonius. You would protect this intruder?”

Tartaglia’s eyebrows shoot right up. The dragon’s voice is a strange, whispery thing, hissing like the violent winds of a storm. Teucer will love this.

“Peace demands we make friends of all sorts,” Kaeya demurs. 

The dragon hisses again, and Tartaglia shifts his feet, ready to move. It seems unimpressed with Kaeya’s play at peace. “The Abyss… is no one’s friend. He reeks of the tainted blood.”

Tartaglia stiffens at that—Kaeya too stills, and for a moment his eye flickers back to Tartaglia, sharp with a dangerous sort of curiosity. “Oh?” Soft, barely a murmur; Tartaglia meets his gaze and smiles, hard and cold. Kaeya tilts his head. Then he turns back to the dragon. “I see. But still—Mondstadt has this well under control.”

Another beat of wings. The storm rises to near unbearable howls—and then fades, supernaturally quick, dispersed as if it was nothing more than a puff of air.

“Very well,” Dvalin breathes, in that voice like the wind, and then the beast’s great wings beat against the air once more, and it shoots off into the sky with a speed that is dizzying to witness. Just as quick as it descended— gone again in an instant.

For a moment all is silent, Tartaglia and Kaeya both staring into the empty air. The sky is just about starting to lighten; though the sun has yet to rise, the world has dyed the deep blue of early morning, rare and soft. Tartaglia breathes fog in the chill. 

Kaeya clicks his tongue, and at last lowers his hands, casually crossing his arms. “Well,” he says. “That most certainly could have gone—”

Tartaglia reaches for his swords and swings.

Kaeya blocks the blow for his head as if he knew it was coming, and despite the thin edge of the knife bearing for his throat he has the audacity to click his tongue, chiding, like this is nothing more than a nuisance.  “Come now, Harbinger,” he says, almost scolding. “Didn’t anyone ever give you lessons in diplomacy?”

It is so irritating; Tartaglia reaches back his other hand and summons a second blade, and this time he aims right for that awful (familiar) smile.

This time Kaeya doesn’t try to block; he steps back and dodges, light on his feet. He has always been fast, Tartaglia remembers suddenly—faster than Ajax, always. Slipping away from every swipe of the blade and laughing all the while.

“Listen,” Kaeya is saying. “As amusing as this is—”

Kaeya is still smiling. It does not reach his eyes. Tartaglia reaches out and instead of a sword forms a spear, Hydro gathering at the edges of the weapon, and when he swings he releases the gathered power in a tidal wave of water.

Ice crystallizes up his arm. Tartaglia staggers. Kaeya has ducked into the blow instead of away, escaping the worst of the damage, but blood is darkening his left sleeve. 

Kaeya’s smile is strained. His one eye is sharp with anger. Tartaglia grins right back.

“What’s the matter?” he says, light and cheerful. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to dodge?”

Kaeya doesn’t answer this time. His smile is gone; he looks suddenly furious, and all around them the fog twists and freezes over, turned from gentle mist to hundreds of smaller icy spears.

“I do hope someone taught you,” Kaeya observes, and the icy shards drop. 

Tartaglia laughs and throws himself back. It doesn’t feel real. Even his own laughter feels forced; he can’t find any thrill in this fight. All his former delight has turned sour on his tongue. There is a knot in his chest that weighs heavy like a stone, strange and unwieldy and a little like grief. 

The ice is as deadly as it looks. Little cuts dash his arms, his shirt staining bloody. Nothing fatal, though. Of course not. Picking a fight with a Harbinger is one thing—killing one means something entirely different. Diplomacy again. It figures Kaeya would be that sort of person.

The ice is amassing again. That deadly rain. In better form Tartaglia would have no issue; at the moment, though, fresh off a night of violence and still reeling from the dragon, Tartaglia is a little more unsteady on his feet. He could still play this, if he wanted to. Warriors are nothing but adaptable. But Tartaglia is—curious. 

He doesn’t dodge, this time. He doesn’t attack. He just reaches for that power instead, the Abyss, Skirk’s foul and honored legacy, and lets those false stars settle on his shoulders in a shockwave of power that vaporizes those icy droplets into nothing.

Maybe it is the power of it: maybe it is nostalgia. Tartaglia watches, through the haze of burning in his skull, as Kaeya’s one eye goes wide, expression bleeding off his face. Kaeya recognizes it. He knows what it means. 

He falters so badly he drops his sword.

Opening, sings the warrior. Ah, Kaeya, sighs Ajax, and it is a voice Tartaglia has not heard for decades, and maybe that’s why he lowers his weapon too. The fight gave him nothing, in the end. No joy. Just a strange sort of bitterness.

He lets the power of the Abyss fade, hands open and loose by his sides. Kaeya’s mask has clipped right back into place—sword returned to his hands, blade turned towards him. But the other man isn’t smiling at all now. And Tartaglia can see, just faintly, a shaking to his fingers.

“So you did recognize it,” Tartaglia says, and he’s smiling, still, but he can feel it twist a little funny. “Huh. I’d always wondered.”

Kaeya doesn’t move. Despite the fact that the Legacy has clearly shocked him, he isn’t wavering at all, the sword still pointed steady and sure at Tartaglia’s throat. 

“Is there a point to this?” Kaeya says, and there is a coldness to him—to his voice, to the way he speaks—that Tartaglia finds irritating. I know you. That world Ajax kept close and never spoke of… and here, before him, the one person who could understand. Stop talking like I don’t know you. 

“There is,” Tartaglia says, bright and cheerful, and opens his arms, palms facing the sky. His hands itch for a weapon. “Are you aware we’ve met before?”

Kaeya doesn’t even blink. “That so?” he says. He’s smiling again, hard and cold. “Haha, my apologies. My memory seems to be escaping me.”

“That’s fine.” Tartaglia shrugs his shoulders. “I mean, that’s not your fault. It was so long ago, and I went by a different name back then; I don’t know if you’d remember.”

Kaeya is still smiling, but something has gone stiff in it. His eye is narrowing. Tartaglia waits. 

There. Kaeya has gone still. He isn’t moving. His eye has widened, just a little.

“Skirk missed you, when you left,” Tartaglia says, because it’s the only thing he can really think to say that would put it all in focus. And then, grinning wide, “Do you remember me now?”

Kaeya is no longer smiling. Tartaglia knows the answer is yes.

“…Ajax,” Kaeya says, finally. His face has gone very blank, which strikes Tartaglia as oddly familiar; still, his one eye is just that bit too wide, and his breathing seems to have abruptly gone shallow. “You… you’re Ajax.”

Tartaglia laughs, again, almost involuntary, and even to his own ears the sound is strange, soft and with an edge of almost-hysteria. His laughter trails off—Tartaglia sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “I am.”

He hasn’t heard his real name in—some time, he realizes. His little siblings call him brother. His elder siblings call him trouble. And his father has only called him Tartaglia, ever since he sent Ajax off to the Fatui. Only Ajax’s mother likes to use that first name, but even then only rarely.

And maybe, too, it feels like a confirmation. Kaeya does remember. Kaeya still knows his name.

Kaeya is quiet. His hand is tight on the sword. That awful sense of reeling that hit Tartaglia back in the Grand Master's office is hitting Kaeya now. It’s a little bit funny. 

“Ajax,” Kaeya says again, as if to confirm it to himself, and Tartaglia shrugs his shoulders. “…Well. That certainly explains—” He stops. “Ah. Jean's office. You recognized me.”

“The name was a bit of a giveaway,” Tartaglia says, a little wry. “It was… certainly a shock. I have to say, I never thought I would ever…” He trails off again. He’s not sure how to finish it. “Ahh, well, not that I thought you were dead. But I think you know what I mean.”

Kaeya doesn't say anything. The situation seems to have finally sunk in fully for him; he is watching Tartaglia closely, eye sharp. Like the way he did earlier, scanning for threat—except now it feels as though Kaeya is trying to match Tartaglia to his faded memories of Ajax, whatever memories he has. His lips have pressed thin. 

Tartaglia, if he’s being honest, has no idea what to say either. He’s not even sure how he feels about Kaeya. As a kid—in the Abyss—Kaeya had been, even if only for those few brief months, maybe something like family. With the ease of hindsight Tartaglia can definitely say he'd treated Kaeya like it; with Tonia and Anthon and Teucer out of reach, he’d latched onto looking after Kaeya instead. Maybe that’s why this feels so strange—maybe this is to blame for the restless crawl under his skin. Because this is more than a reunion of old friends. This is a person Ajax saw as his responsibility. Kaeya is the reason why Tartaglia knows dreams are fragile.

“You got out, then, I presume?” Tartaglia blinks at him. Kaeya’s expression is unreadable. “From… that place.”

His hesitancy to say the name is odd— maybe especially for Kaeya, if only because Tartaglia can’t quite recall Kaeya ever flinching away from the Abyss. But then, maybe Tartaglia understands that too. It’s one thing to name the Abyss Mages, and their origins. It’s another to recognize the Abyss as a place he once called home.

“I did,” Tartaglia says. “Only a few weeks after you…” Left. Came here? He gestures, expansive, and Kaeya’s expression tightens a little. “And then I went home.”

Kaeya’s eye lingers on the Fatui mask. “How modest. It seems to me that you did much more than that.”

Tartaglia laughs. “Very fair! And I have to say it's been very worth it. But enough about me.” He steps forward, a little, just to get a closer look at him— and Kaeya shifts his grip on the sword. Tartaglia raises both hands again.

“I’m not here to fight,” he says, and feels strangely tired. “Er, not anymore, anyway. It’s just… it’s been a while. Hasn’t it?” His smile feels faded. “Though it looks like it’s been even longer for you, ahaha. Guess you were right about the Abyss dragging me through time after all, huh, comrade?” 

For a moment Kaeya’s expression is blank. Then he blinks, and smiles. It does not reach his eyes. “Of course I was right,” he says, a little too flat to be convincing. “I’m always right.”

There is nothing about this that makes sense. There is nothing about this that feels right. Kaeya is a stranger and speaks like one; Tartaglia, too, has changed in these many years from the Abyss. But there is something about Kaeya’s words that rings so familiar, so hilariously alike to who Tartaglia remembers Kaeya to be, that Tartaglia has to look away, fighting the sudden urge to laugh.

Kaeya’s false smile has faded a little. He looks at Tartaglia for a long moment. “You are Ajax,” he says, quietly. 

“Of course. Didn’t I just say so?”

Kaeya’s lips thin. He stays quiet. He’s frowning, but there’s something different in it now. Less anger, and more like he’s trying to remember something from long ago.

Tartaglia doesn’t really know what to say. He watches Kaeya for a moment, and when the silence drags on too long for comfort, rocks back on his heels, hands linked behind his head. Kaeya watches this movement with the oddest expression—nostalgia, maybe. It heartens him. 

“Skirk really did miss you,” Tartaglia settles on, at last. Kaeya doesn’t move. Tartaglia studies him, thoughtful. “I wasn’t kidding about that. Though I don’t know if that means anything to you now, huh.”

“It doesn’t,” Kaeya says, a bit flat.

Tartaglia clicks his tongue. “Right, right…”

The silence settles. Kaeya is all closed-off again, cold and empty-faced; strangely, this is almost comforting to see. He remembers it, is the thing. Dimly, faintly—but he remembers it, how that wary child used to go blank as a doll whenever there was something he didn’t want to think about. 

It’s funny, in a way. All these years, and all this time, and yet in this small way—Kaeya is still just the same. 

Kaeya shifts a little. “For curiosity’s sake,” he says, in a tone of voice that makes it clear the question obviously has nothing to do with curiosity. “How did you find me? Not that I’m, ah… against this little reunion, but…”

Tartaglia raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t.”

“Come now. Lies are beneath us at this point in the conversation, don’t you think?”

As if Kaeya wasn’t the sort to lie as he breathed, if only for the fun of it. Tartaglia is remembering all sorts of things today. He raises both hands again, open-palmed. “Truly,” he says. “No tricks! It was a happy accident, if you will.”

“…a happy accident.”

Tartaglia frowns a little. “I didn’t know who you were—or that you were here—until your dear Acting Grand Master called you by name. It was, as I said before… a bit of a giveaway.” He laughs, and it isn’t funny. “And after all, it’s not like I forgot you.”

Kaeya is silent for a moment too long, entirely still. Tartaglia lowers his hands a little, blinking. 

“I didn’t forget,” he repeats, and Kaeya considers him, coolly. Tartaglia’s frown deepens. “What’s with that look? Did you really think I would?”

“It was a long time ago,” Kaeya says, simply. “So… ah, yes.”

Tartaglia stares at him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t know what to say to that. 

“Regardless,” Kaeya continues, bright and a little pointed. “Why are you here, then, Ajax? If this is truly by coincidence.”

“Tartaglia is fine,” Tartaglia says, a little discomforted by the sound of his old name. It feels too distant to fit; it belongs to a person he left behind long ago, and Tartaglia is in the business of making graves, not digging them up. “Really, I just came here to sight-see. A… hm, vacation?” His eyes narrow, a little. “...And you? Why are you here?”

“A rogue Harbinger decided to clear out the entire west side of Mondstadt of monsters, and I’d hate for a death by stupidity to become an international incident.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tartaglia says, evenly. “Mondstadt, city of the wind… why are you here?”

This time, Kaeya doesn’t answer.

“Is this where you were heading, all those years ago?” Kaeya’s hand is really starting to strangle that blade. Tartaglia adjusts his footing a little. He’s never been fond of all the underhanded tricks of his co-workers—  but, as he once told the Traveler, all children must eat their vegetables. He’s never liked it. But he can recognize it.

And this mystery, too: once it was everything to Ajax. Once it drove him furious. In the weeks since Kaeya left, and even in the months after he returned home, and sometimes still, even all these years after— the mystery of what happened to Kaeya, of what they had wanted Kaeya to do, had worried at him like the ache of an old wound.

“If you won’t say it, I have a pretty good guess,” Tartaglia says, and tilts his head. “They sent you here to spy, didn’t they?” He grins. “You’re here to start a war.”

Kaeya gives him a pleasant smile back. “I almost forgot,” he says, nostalgic. “You really are the worst kind of person, aren’t you?” 

And before he can even think to reply, Kaeya lifts his hand and sends a spike of ice right for Ajax’s eye.

Tartaglia dodges into the blow, ducking under the flash of searing cold. Kaeya starts to move back—Tartaglia is faster. He seizes Kaeya’s wrist and twists, forcing him to point the sword up and away from an easy hit at Tartaglia’s face. 

“That’s a bit rude,” Tartaglia says, a little breathless from the strain. Ah, injuries; the challenge is no longer fun. “How about a deal? I’m sure we can come to an agreement! Old friend to old friend, right? The Tsaritsa is a reasonable negotiator, and I’m sure Khaenri’ah will find a great deal of worth in—”

Kaeya had stilled when he started talking—now he twists. Tartaglia loses his grip on his arm and Kaeya flits out of reach before he can recover. Tartaglia barely has time to dodge the next searing strike of focused ice. 

It is the look on Kaeya’s face, though, that really catches him off guard. There is something— it is unexpected. His teeth grit. His eye a little too wide. 

Tartaglia is… confused? Insulted? Perhaps both, he thinks. He has no idea what’s going on; it is not a nice feeling. “No?” he says, bewildered. He’d thought for sure— “Why not?”

Kaeya doesn’t answer. This time he sweeps out his hand and summons a whole swath of ice, great clusters of cold that circle around Kaeya in deadly rings of razor-sharp shards. Tartaglia backs away out of range—and grits his teeth, annoyed, when Kaeya lunges forward to try and spear him on the ice once again.

This is getting truly frustrating: such an interesting fight, and he can’t even enjoy this. “Can we just talk?” He ducks forward again—catches Kaeya’s wrist—lets the Foul Legacy spark up his arm, bracing himself against the cold. 

Something is off. Kaeya is deadly, sharp—but there is something raw to it all, too exposed, a live wire. It is—  familiar. 

Tartaglia stares at him. “Oh,” he says. “You aren’t with Khaenri’ah at all, are you?”

He’s not sure how he realizes this. Maybe it's just that he’s seen this sort of fear on Kaeya before. 

Kaeya freezes. Tartaglia is still gripping his wrist, tense, waiting for the next blow. For a moment they are both still. Kaeya is staring at him. Then he says, “Not quite.” 

It’s a very vague answer for a situation that clearly allows for no blurred lines in the sand. Tartaglia stares blankly at him. “Well,” he says. He feels a little like the footing has been upended again, and he’s not sure why. Maybe it’s because—Skirk. Dainsleif. That house and the trees. In his head Kaeya has always been a part of the Abyss, of Khaenri’ah.

Has he guessed wrong? Is Kaeya not a spy after all? Or perhaps— maybe Tartaglia has not guessed wrong. Maybe Kaeya is a spy. Maybe he is here for Khaenri’ah, that dying land that just wanted to live.

Maybe he loves Mondstadt anyway. It would fit, wouldn’t it? I don’t want to go. Kaeya, always so easily attached to places and people and anyone who would look for him.

“If you’re worried I'll say anything, don’t be,” Tartaglia says, finally. Kaeya still hasn’t moved. They’re just—locked in the blow. Waiting for something to fall. “I’m certainly not in contact with them.”

Kaeya’s expression flickers. “You make it sound like a bad thing.” His voice almost sounds normal, but he still hasn’t moved. The Vision is a blinding white glow at his side.

Tartaglia does his best to ignore it. “I promised Skirk a fight, did you know? Years ago. I’d like to get in touch—if only to try and make her use both hands to beat me, at the very least. Ah, I’ve had no luck, though.”

Bizarrely, shockingly, Kaeya almost smiles at that. Utterly involuntary, a quick twitch at the corner of his mouth. It dies quickly, of course. But it was there. There is something pleasing about that. Like an old trick. Something Tartaglia has always done.

“That’s not a surprise,” Kaeya says, a little distant. “Lightning rarely strikes the same way twice... and most of what emerges from the Abyss wouldn’t be keen on carrying a message back there.” He looks down at the sword, Tartaglia’s hand gripping his wrist, tight with warning and still stained starry from the power of the Foul Legacy. Then he laughs—sudden and a little sharp, and the sound makes Tartaglia tense up again, waiting for the next attack. 

But instead, Kaeya pulls away. The sword vanishes to light between his fingertips, banished back to that vacuum space. Kaeya steps further back—leans a little on a nearby jut of ruin—and then slides down to sit with a sigh, knees to his chest, head tilted back against the stone. 

“Ah,” Kaeya says, to the sky. “You really did pick up her lessons well. Skirk. Even injured I’m not sure I could take you in this fight. It would come down to luck. And clearly, if this day is any clue, luck is not in my favor.” He laughs again. 

Tartaglia watches him. The tension is bleeding away. Or rather—the threat of the fight. But there is something about Kaeya that seems braced, still. Like… waiting for a blow.

Yes, he thinks. Distantly, dimly—  this too is familiar.

Ah, that kid. Always a good liar. Always fond of hiding. But he’d loved Khaenri’ah—  Tartaglia remembers that well enough. He can almost see it. He can almost imagine how it played out. Kaeya came here bitter and small and willing to lie anyway. And yet, for whatever reason, somewhere along the way— 

I don’t want to go.

He feels like laughing. It’s an entirely inappropriate response. “You haven’t changed at all, have you?” he says, and it’s a strange sort of fondness that tangles the words. It’s a strange sort of sadness.

Kaeya doesn’t react. Tartaglia puts a hand on his hip, watching him. For the first time, he takes Kaeya in fully. 

He’s taller. Sharp in the face; it’s turned the smile Tartaglia vaguely remembers as blank into something much more bladed. He is… he is… Tartaglia isn’t sure what Kaeya is. Unreadable, maybe. The echoes of the boy he once knew are just that: echoes. Tartaglia cannot read him. For the first time it occurs to him to wonder if Kaeya can read him.

Khaenri’ah sent Kaeya to spy; Tartaglia is almost positive about that. Except Kaeya has—maybe—chosen Mondstadt? He doesn’t know. He wants to ask. It is a strange feeling. Maybe this is what hurts most of all—because Ajax knew Kaeya, or at least he tried to, the same way he knew Tonia and Anthon. But he has been there to watch his little siblings grow up… and Kaeya, instead, has become a stranger.

Maybe Ajax, too, has become a stranger to Kaeya.

The thought tires him. Tartaglia looks away. 

The Anemo Archon has already been taken out of commission. The Tsaritsa’s plans for Mondstadt are—not complete, maybe, but closing. Perhaps he can just… overlook this? It’s not as if it matters anymore. If the Abyss will become a problem, it’s not a problem yet. Surely this is… something he doesn’t need to note.

It’s a thin excuse, even to himself. Kaeya’s secrets, so well-guarded—and Tartaglia has always known a weapon when he sees it. The Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius, the trusted aide to the Acting Grand Master. Though he’s unlikely to cave to blackmail, that doesn’t mean it won’t have other uses. Breaking up that knit-tight weave of the Knights, for one. Leaving that Acting Grand Master exposed.

This is leverage, this is a knife. This is Kaeya, caring for something. 

It fits. It makes sense. That fight from earlier— ah, of course Kaeya attacked him then. No wonder he was so quick to react. No wonder he is so desperate to keep the Abyss buried.

Buried, Tartaglia thinks. He’s buried many people. He has also buried things—buried memories—buried this moment, especially. The silver trees and the darkened road leading up. The way Kaeya smiled, not quite right. The way he said: You aren’t going to pick me over them.

Kaeya too is a buried memory; Ajax laid Kaeya to rest long ago. And yet. Kaeya is alive and well and here in front of him, and maybe those regrets were never so much buried as they were put out of sight.

“Kaeya,” Tartaglia says now. The name is awkward on his tongue. His memory of who Kaeya was and who Kaeya is now—the overlap is uneven, blurred thin. “I… Let’s make a deal.”

Kaeya laughs again. “Oh, I’d rather not.”

“Here me out, would you?” Tartaglia rolls his wrist, restless, wishing for a weapon. “I—I won’t say a word.” 

“Will you now.”

“In return—” Kaeya’s expression is empty. His one eye dark. There isn’t any hope in him at all. No belief.

“In return,” Tartaglia says, not even entirely sure what he is saying. “Just… ah…” Hmmm. “Get me the recipe for the blood soup?”

Kaeya stares at him. There is a long beat of silence. 

“The black broth?” Kaeya says, finally, like he’s thinking of stabbing Tartaglia again.

“Yes, that!”

“…If this is some kind of joke, I’m not laughing.”

“The taste has haunted me,” Tartaglia says, sighing a little. “I never got the recipe from Skirk… and I’ve yet to encounter it anywhere else.” Kaeya still isn’t reacting. Tartaglia sighs again, heavier, and looks away, hand ruffling through his hair. “Look. I mean it. I won’t… I won’t do anything.”

“A Harbinger, betraying his Archon?” There is a false lightness to Kaeya’s voice that Tartaglia doesn’t know. “Forgive me if I’m skeptical.” 

Tartaglia smiles, hard. “Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not betraying anyone. The Tsaritsa will get what she wants.” The smile fades. “But this has nothing to do with that. I really am only here for a visit. I’ll leave by tomorrow—or is it later today…?” Pause. “Anyway. You won’t have to see me again. And I won’t…”  

He doesn’t know how to say it. He sighs again. “I just won’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kaeya decides, and Tartaglia almost laughs.

“That’s—of course you don’t. Ah, in some ways, you’re just as I remember…”

“In some ways,” Kaeya replies, voice hard, “so are you.”

How strange. Everyone else who’d known Ajax has disagreed; Tartaglia had been too changed to even keep the name. He’s not sure if he finds Kaeya’s words comforting or laughable.

They are both silent, for a time. Neither of them knowing what to do, both considering. The ruins are empty, quiet but for the low mournful howl of the wind through the rubble. Over the far-off cliffs, jagged and sharp, the sun is starting to rise. 

Tartaglia watches it, for a time. It is easier than looking at Kaeya. The way the sunshine lines the broken edges of the stone; the glow, soft and gold, breaking apart the unyielding darkness of the night. Shining down on empty ruins, hollow but for the distant whispering of the wind. A moment of—not peace. He doesn’t think this is peace. Maybe it is just a moment.

“Why should I believe you?” Kaeya says, at last, and he is not looking at Tartaglia at all, when he asks.

Tartaglia stays silent. The question, in some way, has taken him off-guard. He doesn’t know. He’s not sure what to say. Because he’d failed Kaeya before? Because he’d let Kaeya leave so he could go home? Because he’d buried him instead of looking, because Kaeya reminded him of Tonia—because Kaeya reminded him of home? Or maybe because down there, in that darkness, Kaeya had been like family too.

Because Dainsleif once told me this would not matter, and I don’t want him to be right.

So many reasons. None of them quite ring true. They have grown up. They have moved on. This bond, too, has faded; not so much withered as it has been out-shadowed by all that came after. His oath to the Tsaritsa. His family. Liyue, and Zhongli, and the Traveler. 

It does not mean as much as it once did. But it meant something, once. And, Tartaglia thinks—maybe it still means something now, because why else would Tartaglia make that offer—and why would Kaeya stop to listen to it? Why else would they even bother?

There is a faraway shout. Kaeya visibly startles. In the distance, a few figures appear against the landscape of the ruins: a girl in red, a woman with lightning at her fingertips, even a man dressed in black with red hair so vibrant there’s no question at all about his identity. They are approaching swiftly—they are heading right for them. Kaeya looks almost surprised.

Tartaglia steps back. Tartaglia looks over at them. Ruined landscape and crumbling towers—Kaeya, and the people who went searching for him.

“Because you have people who look for you, now,” Tartaglia says. Kaeya glances back at him, wary. Ajax meets his gaze. “And for some reason, I suppose that matters to me too.”

Kaeya says nothing. Something about these words has quieted him. When the newcomers catch up—looking over Kaeya first, before casting Tartaglia scathing glares that make him almost grin with the thrill of a challenging fight—

Kaeya still does nothing. He watches Tartaglia for a very long moment, and then he looks away.

.

The newcomers (aggressively) suggest on walking Tartaglia back to Mondstadt. Tartaglia could—and does!—laugh a little at it all; ah, he never gets a warm welcome. 

It barely even bothers him, at this point, and anyway, he is far more interested in how they react to Kaeya. Amber complains about the trouble, Lisa murmurs something about ‘next time, perhaps leaving a note?’ and the redhead says nothing at all, just crosses his arms and keeps his eyes fixed on Tartaglia, a piercing sort of stare. 

They also, very clearly, make sure to stand between Tartaglia and Kaeya. Amber especially is obvious; her eyes flicker from Kaeya and Tartaglia and back again, lips thin with something like concern. They know Kaeya well enough to guess where he’d be—they know him well enough to tell he’s shaken. Tartaglia is not sure how to feel about it. He is sort of annoyed by the interruption—sort of grateful for it, too, if only because Kaeya seems grateful for it. These people are… the people Kaeya found. When he left. They are the people who have, perhaps, made Kaeya want to stay.

“What happened?” the redhead asks Tartaglia, in a dark tone of voice, and Tartaglia laughs and says, “Ah! Comrades! You never told me this place had a dragon.”

It is not what the redhead meant. It is the only answer he is getting. In the corner of his eye, Tartaglia can see Kaeya watching him. His expression unreadable once again. 

He remains that way the whole walk back. Every question makes him go still. But Tartaglia’s disdain for manipulation has never meant he doesn’t know how to keep secrets. He’s kept the Abyss silent for nearly a decade. He will not be breathing a word of it now.

The tension never quite leaves Kaeya. His eye rests heavy and suspicious on Tartaglia’s back. When they reach the Mondstadt gates—upon which Kaeya laughs, waves a hand, and happily separates from them to flee back to the Knights’ Headquarters—for a moment, he glances back at Tartaglia. 

Tartaglia meets his gaze steadily. He smiles. Kaeya looks at him, expression blank, and then turns away. 

He does not look back again. 

Tartaglia exhales slowly. Then he tilts his head, and grins at the redhead, lingering on the street and still watching him with that cold suspicion. “Like what you see?”

Ahaha, if looks could kill. “Captain Kaeya,” the man says, chilly.

“Yes…?”

“Don’t talk with him again.”

Tartaglia quiets. He looks at him. The redhead holds his stare, cold and sure. It’s really not hard to guess who he is. Diluc Ragnvindr—a thorn in the Fatui’s side for quite some time. Something about losing his father to a Delusion; Tartaglia had never read much into that briefing. But that fact comes back to him now. Something about losing family—it makes people sharp.

“Don’t worry,” Tartaglia says, and it comes out rather tired. “I don’t plan on it.”

Diluc Ragnvindr watches him for a long moment. Then he nods, and walks away. Tartaglia watches him go, foot tapping idly at the ground. Maybe he should have read more into that briefing. Father lost to a Delusion—and what was that section, near the end, about remaining leverage? The winery staff, and perhaps a brother.

Maybe. Maybe. He’s not sure. It feels sort of bittering, even so, in a way he can’t quite pin down. Tartaglia has—he has locked the Abyss away, yes, but he’s never forgotten it. He buried it but he left behind a grave. 

He is starting to suspect that Kaeya left the Abyss behind— left Skirk, and that small stone house—in a far more permanent way. 

Bittering, bitter. Tartaglia has never been buried before. He shifts on his feet, restless. Amber and Lisa leave too, eventually. They’d wanted him in sight, and now no one knows what to do with him. Tartaglia isn’t sure what to do with himself either. This whole trip feels like a fever dream. 

Footsteps on the tile. Familiar. Tartaglia lifts his head, and watches as the Traveler and Paimon walk down towards him. 

Paimon looks alarmed. The Traveler is neutral. Tartaglia grins at them both. “Good morning, comrade.”

“You look terrible!” Paimon splutters.

“Really? I feel fine.”

“There’s blood everywhere!”

“Ahaha, but bloodshed is the best part…” 

“Don’t say things like that while smiling!”

The Traveler, for once, does not join in on the banter. They are frowning again. “Last night…”

Tartaglia tilts his head.

“…Did something happen?”

He doesn’t have the energy to laugh it off. He still feels… he’s not sure what. Tired. Something else. Tired, though, yeah, definitely.

He sighs and runs his hand back through his hair. “This and that. Is it that obvious?”

“Not obvious,” the Traveler says, carefully. They are watching him closely. “Was it… something good?”

He snorts before he can stop himself. “That’s—” Ah, how to word this. “Complicated. But no. Really, what made you think that?”

The Traveler is always a little wary around him; they’ve been so since he met them, and while the rage over his actions in Liyue has faded to a minor annoyance, the watchfulness is always there. This is different, though. They search his face less like they’re sizing him up for a fight and more like they are seeing right through him. 

“You seem sort of sad,” the Traveler says slowly. “But also… happy. No, that’s not right. Maybe both? I don’t know.” Their eyes linger on him. “I don’t know,” they repeat. “But... are you okay?”

Happy— that surprises him. But maybe they’re right. Seeing Kaeya again… it is painful, true, but there is something else there too, underlying it all. An old wrong, an old regret—that long-ago injustice at last set to rights.

He couldn’t help Kaeya back then. He is too late to help him now. But Tartaglia can choose this. He can keep this secret. He can keep this quiet. He will say nothing, and in doing so, perhaps, he will succeed where Ajax failed all those years before. 

It is not a betrayal of the Tsaritsa—he will never let it get to a betrayal. But it is a choosing. It is the choice he could not make before.

He turns to the Traveler. He smiles.

“I’m okay,” he tells them. He is earnest. He is smiling. He realizes he is telling the truth.

“It’s okay,” Ajax says. “It really is—okay.”

Sad, perhaps. A little like losing something. But the smile is real.

“I’m ready to go now,” he tells them, next, and he means that too.

.

They can’t leave right away. The Traveler has loose ends to tie up and ingredients to buy; Tartaglia sticks with them, this time. He doesn’t need to go now. He just knows he can’t stay. With the ease of hindsight he understands a little more of that conversation with Kaeya, out there in the ruins. Kaeya—that kid who loved Khaenri’ah with everything, who didn’t want to leave, who never trusted in promises and wanted them all the same—he’s grown up. He’s different now. But he’s not so different that Tartaglia can’t guess. 

Kaeya probably loves this place. Tartaglia being here—Ajax being here—it's not a reunion, for Kaeya. It’s not an answer. It’s… a threat.

Tartaglia doesn’t know how he feels about it. It’s a very twisted feeling, honestly. Something like regret, something like pride. He’s glad that wary kid found a place to call his own.

The Traveler’s loose ends take the rest of the day to tie up. It’s evening again by the time they’ve gathered all their things, and nearing sunset as they head for the gate. The Traveler and Paimon had hoped to spend a week here, originally, and now here they are, all ready to go.

The Traveler is such a funny sort of person. All that grudge against him, and they still let Tartaglia tag along—still hurry to leave without a second thought, if only because he asked. They’re a good friend. Even Paimon hasn’t said a word, though she looks mournfully at the restaurants as they pass. He’ll buy them a gift or something—make up for this. Or maybe he’ll just hand them a bag full of Mora. Those two always find a dark delight in wasting his money.

The sky is golden and tinged with pink when they finally reach the Mondstadt gates. To Tartaglia’s surprise, there’s someone waiting for them—standing half in the shadow of the archway, leaning back against the wall.

Kaeya. 

Tartaglia quiets. The Traveler slows; their eyes flicker from Kaeya to Tartaglia and back again. But they don’t ask. Just hitch the backpack up higher, and pass under the awning without faltering. 

Kaeya doesn’t look at Tartaglia. He is smiling at the Traveler, light and false, one hand lifted in a casual wave. “Safe travels.”

“Bye, Kaeya,” the Traveler replies, warmly. Their eyes flicker to Tartaglia again. They step forward—step wide. They leave Tartaglia behind them in the shadows of the gate. 

Kaeya’s gaze is unreadable. He looks at Tartaglia for a long time.

Don’t do anything stupid. It’s on the tip of his tongue. That last goodbye. He doesn’t say it. There is an odd, old instinct to reach out and—and—he doesn’t even know what. Ruffle his hair? Hug him? Kaeya isn’t a kid. He isn’t even a friend. Tartaglia doesn’t do that either.

Still, he lingers there, for a moment. He’s not sure what to say. Any words he could say… it's too late for them, maybe. They were for a different place. They were for— a different person.

In the end he turns away without saying anything. 

He walks at the Traveler’s heels. He glances back—just once. Maybe out of curiosity. Kaeya is watching them go. Something about him standing there, in the shadow of the gate… it rings familiar. Like a memory. Except this time, Tartaglia is the one leaving. 

Kaeya gets to stay.

He meets Tartaglia’s eyes. Just for an instant. Then Kaeya rises from the wall, hands in his pockets, and walks back into the city. He doesn’t look back.

There are echoes to it; so many memories, newly re-lived. Tartaglia watches Kaeya vanish back into the softer gray shadow of Mondstadt, and turns his head away. There is no point thinking about it. There is no point in wondering. 

Tartaglia links his hands behind his head, and thinks instead of the letter he will write to Tonia. The gifts to send home, the things he will tell her. The ivy on the wall; the dragon in the ruins. The truth he has never written—but maybe he can tell her this. Dearest Sister, I met a knight who wielded our Tsaritsa’s ice. Dearest Tonia, I met a Captain who wore many masks. Dear Tonia, I met someone who reminded me of home. 

Dear Tonia— once, I knew a boy who was nothing like you. 

I wish you could have met him. 

.

.

.

That night, Tartaglia dreams of the past.

He dreams of being Ajax, fourteen and gangly and still so young—Ajax before he left the Abyss, before devotion, before masks, before he really understood what sort of foul legacy Skirk had pressed to his hands. He dreams of a small house he has almost forgotten, old wood floors and stone walls and sloping roof, a single bed and a lone table. 

He dreams of Kaeya—younger, bright-eyed and wary and laughing, still—of Skirk, who rarely smiled but whose dark eyes shone bright, the way they did in the early days, before Kaeya left and Skirk let him go.  

He dreams of a happier moment. Sitting at that table, holding a cup of that old tea that used to sear his throat. Kaeya sitting up on the countertops—laughing, kicking his feet. Bright and sharp in the way the kid was when he was happy. Skirk, cleaning her weapons. There is no blood. 

There is warmth. The lone lantern on the shining hook; the blankets piled on Skirk’s floor, folded deliberately, with care. Kaeya jumps from the countertop and goes for the door. Ajax follows, rolling his eyes. He feels fond. 

When Kaeya pushes open the door, instead of darkness there is snow. When Ajax steps outside, there is Snezhnaya. Not his village: the wild lands, the woods, tall dark trees and the monsters within and a sky turned bloody by the sunset. A whispering like the call of a fight, the call of blood, danger and freedom and conquest.  

He stands in the doorway, watching the snow fall. Behind him, he can hear Skirk humming. A tuneless song. A forgotten lullaby. 

Ajax stays by the door. He watches, lingering back, as Kaeya steps out into the ice and snow like he belongs there, footsteps barely sinking. The shadows of the trees are long but the cut of them is soft; there is something gentle about the burning red of that clouded sky. 

In that silent wilderness, Kaeya stands in the snow and lifts his hands up to the air. The flakes drift to his outstretched fingers; he laughs, delighted, and closes his fingers over the ice and cold like it is something precious. He runs back to Ajax's side, this younger boy—this child who is not one of Ajax’s little siblings and not his friend and yet somehow both, or maybe something all his own—and offers his closed fist. His smile is secretive and small. His eyes are bright and blue.

Look, this child says, this echo of a memory long lost to time. Look, he says again, and opens his hands, and cradled there in his palms Ajax can see the stars.

 “I found them,” Kaeya says, and smiles. 

Chapter Text

It takes Skirk barely three minutes to realize the boy is following her. 

It is not that the boy is bad at it, nor even that she was looking for him; it is just that it is very hard to sneak up on Skirk at all. It is even worse, especially, up here in the main Khaenri’ahn city. Skirk wears the stolen cloak of an Abyss mage and the weapon of a hunter, and the people of Khaenri’ah know her as soon as they see her. The Abyss is Khaenri’ah’s dirty little secret and bittersweet grave all in one, and Skirk is a walking reminder— when she steps into the market circle the crowd parts, less from respect and more from disgust, and the boy doesn’t hide behind the crowd quick enough.

And it is a boy: she had thought those echoing footsteps sounded young. In-between the crowd she can almost see him—some thin waif of a child, all stick-limbs and fluffy hair. He’d be unremarkable, really, but his eyes give him away—too pale, too blue, almost shining in the dim lights of the underground city. She can see a flicker of his gaze and a flash of pale blue coat before he ducks behind a corner, and resists the urge to snort.

A pickpocket? But no, he doesn’t seem the type. That coat had looked too rich for it, and anyway, no child of the streets would try to rob Skirk; they are far too clever for it. So not that. Then what? 

She chews on her thoughts for a moment, working on an approach. The market mills around her, but it’s late in the Khaenri’ahn day and so the crowds are lesser than they could have been. It might even be evening: the hanging lights and the glowstone streets are dimmed, the way they always get when the city plays its hand at pretending its people have a consistent circadian rhythm. If Skirk isn’t careful, the merchants may lock her out. It’s not like they’d be inclined to wait on her.

She flicks her gaze back to the corner, considering. The boy has crept out from behind the carved stone wall, and when he sees her looking, he freezes. Hmm. She really hasn’t seen him before. Light brown skin and blue-black hair, and that coat is embroidered with the Khaenri’ahn diamond, fancier than any clothes Skirk owned even when she too once lived up here. Some rich man’s son? But then, riches are few and far in Khaenri’ah. Maybe a scholar.

The boy meets her gaze and stares boldly back instead of flinching. Skirk raises an eyebrow at him. The boy, instead of doing anything reasonable like quailing or looking away, just tilts his head and smiles at her.

Trouble, Skirk thinks. Not the kind she approves of, either. She narrows her eyes back in a glare that would make any sane person cringe, and watches with disapproval when the boy’s smile just widens. So young, and yet not a drop of common sense at all. Pah.

“Hmm,” Skirk says, and then turns on her heel and leaves.

She hears—incomprehensibly—a giggle of laughter. And then a patter of tiny footsteps. Is the boy following her? 

She narrows her eyes at the ceiling. “Hmm,” she says again, much more annoyed this time, and walks up to the nearby market stall.

Khaenri’ahn trading stalls are always set up for conversation: low-set tables and seats for both parties, even room for food and drink should the bargaining go long. Skirk ignores the chair and stays standing. There is a man weaving cloth squares at a lap-sized loom behind the table; his eyes flick up at Skirk’s approach, and his lips immediately thin. His gaze lingers on the swords strapped to Skirk’s back. Skirk ignores him. “I need a blanket.”

“I’m just about to close up,” says the man, a bit stiff. Not quite a dismissal—that’s Khaenri’ah for you, always loathe to refuse a trade—but definitely a colder shoulder than any normal guest would get.

Skirk has never been the best haggler, so she just grunts before she insults the man and digs in her bag for her things. “I’ve the bones of a beast and petrified tree branches, whatever your preference,” she says, frankly. “I’ll part with one set for one blanket and both for two. Take it or leave it.”

It’s blunter than she should be, missing all the usual polite pleasantries, and the man’s face curls— but bones and tree both are good for tools, which is likely the only reason the merchant doesn’t pull the stall curtain shut in her face. Minor mercies. “Let me look at them,” he says, and Skirk resists the urge to sigh.

She despises trading.

Thankfully, for all of Skirk’s many mishaps, her materials are all good quality. Skirk knows it and the man knows it too; Skirk will be getting her blankets, if that bright gleam in his eye is anything to go by. 

She is just folding up the first of her two new blankets—tight weave and good strong fabric, sure to keep well even in the Abyssal chill—when she remembers the boy. She glances back from the corner of her eye. Has he left, yet?

No. There, a few stalls down the row: a flash of blue. Skirk thins her lips.

“You know a kid?” she says abruptly, and the merchant pauses, hand on his new material, eyeing Skirk warily. “Blue eyes, brown skin. Embroidered three-tail cloak like a little noble.” The merchant’s hands tighten on the materials. “He’s been following me.”

“Following—” But the merchant relaxes, and then he snorts. “Oh, of course he has. That child.”

Hmm. “So you do know him.”

“His name is Kaeya,” the man says. There’s a strange twist to his lips—almost a smile, half-fond. Something in his demeanor has lightened. “He likes to haggle. I don’t know if there’s a single trader here that hasn’t yet met him; he’s a curious thing.”

Skirk sits on that. “Haggle,” she repeats, incredulous. The boy could hardly be more than five. “But he’s an infant.”

The merchant snorts. “Oh, but he tries. He’s actually quite good at it, too. He’ll be a terror when he’s older. Did you know, he’s already cheated old Ødger out of a bottle of wine?” Skirk has no idea who Ødger is, nor why his being cheated makes the merchant grin like its the funniest gossip. She stares blankly. The merchant doesn’t notice; he’s smiling at the memory. “He’s been coming here for almost a month now. Such a dear.” 

Which is all well and good, but not what Skirk wanted to know. “How do I get him to stop.”

“Following you? I have no idea. I imagine he’ll get bored soon. He’s just curious.” The merchant eyes her, thoughtful and Skirk pauses, stiff, eyes watching right back. “Hm. You know… if you ever get more of those petrified branches, I’d be willing to trade again.”

Skirk stares at him. The man nods to himself, like he hasn’t just made an offer to a woman most people avoid like the plague. “If you have need of weave, you know where to find me,” he says, almost friendly, and then he yanks the curtains closed and leaves Skirk squinting holes into the empty air. 

…Bizarre. 

Skirk scowls to herself. Then she folds up the blankets and sets them away, and with one last glance to where the boy is hiding—better, this time, he’s snuck further behind the corner and the crates are hiding even his shadow—she turns around and goes to leave. Whatever. The boy is a mystery that Skirk hasn’t the patience for. 

The Abyss is waiting, and Skirk answers the call. Whatever the boy’s curiosities, she’s sure he’ll lose them as soon as he realizes where she’s heading.

.

Except—maddeningly—the boy doesn’t stop following her.

Skirk waits for it. Each step closer to the drop, each winding abandoned path she takes closer and closer to the edge, she keeps an eye on her shadow and waits for him to realize. Khaenri’ah is a practical nation; there is not a child here that does not know the story of the Bloody Knight and the path of Gold. There is not a child here who doesn’t know the dangers of the Abyss. 

And even a child should be able to tell. The Abyss is not a quiet infestation; it lives and breathes, and its presence is a real and solid thing. This far on the outskirts of the old city, it is tangible. A taste like ash beneath her tongue—a weight to the air, a sense of endlessness, like the void itself is just inches away. The first time Skirk had come here, decades ago, that whisper of promise had chilled her to the bone.

Now she carries the power inside of her; now it feels a little like coming home, or a quiet sigh of relief. But Skirk has never forgotten that first step. She has never forgotten the weight of it, nor the terror. Nothing in the Abyss can frighten more than the Abyss itself.

And yet, even then: the boy still follows her. 

Has he no common sense at all? Is he so foolhardy as to think himself invincible? Skirk contemplates the issue as she walks. If the boy is a fool then there is no helping him—and he is not her responsibility even so. But still. Skirk has done many things in her life—committed many terrible acts—but she is wary of being the reason this boy falls to the Abyss. For one thing, he is tiny; she would feel bad. For another, if the merchants are fond of him, then they would never let her trade with them again.

This far beyond the city, the old nation is full of holes: crumpled ruins and deep craters where the land has sunk into the ground. Beyond here is the sloping hollow that tunnels into the Abyss, the Bough Keeper’s grove and the endless plains of ash surrounding it. Skirk stops mid-step and turns sharply on her heel. 

No visible reaction from the boy; he’s well hidden. Skirk is not in the mood to be impressed. She puts a hand to her weapon. Let her intimidate him. Perhaps the little idiot will glean some common sense from the whole experience.

“Out, boy,” she says coldly. “No more of this.”

A long pause. No movement. Skirk narrows her eyes and bares her teeth, immediately annoyed. “I said out.” 

Another pause. Before Skirk can truly lose her patience, the boy steps out from his hiding spot. He doesn’t look fazed by the threatening; his hands are linked behind his back and he’s swaying on his heels, expression fascinated. 

“Did you know where I was the whole time?”

What a stupid question. “Obviously.”

He looks even more delighted at that. What even. “But I’m good at hiding.”

“I am better at finding,” Skirk replies, annoyed again. He is a brat of a child and she has no patience for whatever game this boy thinks he’s playing. “Do you know where you are?”

“Is that a trick question?”

Skirk is starting to see why the merchants are fond of him: he speaks in the same tricky way they do. A headache pounds behind her eyes. “Are you dense or just playing a fool? This is the Abyss, or the gateway to it. Go home.”

“But you’re going there?”

“It is my home,” Skirk says, losing what little patience she has left. “And it is no place for a stupid child with more curiosity than sense. Frankly it is no place for children at all.” She draws her weapon and smacks the end of the sword against the wall in one smooth motion. The sound booms in the empty air, made all the greater by the echoes of the Abyss building behind her. She lets some of it loose—the static whisper to her words, the stars and void gathering at the tips of her fingers—and says: “Leave.”

The boy doesn’t even flinch. He just looks at her, eyes sharp and searching, and whatever he sees makes him smile. 

“Hm,” he says. He studies her face and then takes a step back. “Okay.”

It is not the answer Skirk was hoping for; the boy laughs at the look on her face and turns away, waving over his shoulder. “Goodbye, then!” he says, and before Skirk can curse him out, the small waif of a child is already gone, slipping back across the ruins and through the shadows so quick she barely has time to blink. 

Skirk frowns at where he stood for a long time. Then she shakes her head and turns away. Whatever is wrong with that child is not her problem; there’s no use wondering about it. She doubts she’ll ever run into that maddening little fool again.

She takes the first step down to the Abyss, and puts Kaeya out of her mind for good.

.

Four days later, the boy corners her at the market again.

The merchant is true to his word, at least. She gets cloth squares for weapon maintenance and at a better deal than before, made all the more infuriating by the smile the man stifles when the boy—if he is going to continue to be a nuisance then Skirk refuses to call him by name—pops up at her elbow. The odd goodwill of the market is entirely due to this young boy’s association with her—she is aware of it, she will take advantage of it, but that does not mean Skirk has to damn like it.

That the boy seems doubly aware of Skirk’s irritation, and finding enjoyment in it, makes the whole thing even more headache-inducing.

Skirk is just heading for one of the food stalls— even from here she can see the steam rising from those giant iron pots, and if the weird goodwill of today extends to black broth Skirk will not be the one to refuse it—when the little fool slides in front of her, beaming.

Skirk narrows her eyes at him. “You,” she says, ominously.

The boy tilts his head and smiles, as lacking in common sense as ever. “You remember me!”

“I distinctly remember telling you to leave.”

“I distinctly remember convincing that merchant to trade you blankets for the usual barter instead of that real rare stuff you had to put up last time,” says the little fool, smugly, and holds out one tiny hand. “I want skewers.”

“I was not aware five-year-olds knew how to trade and barter,” Skirk replies, because the alternative is realizing consciously that the little trickster child is trying to bribe her.

“I’m seven,” says the trickster child, mulish. “And I want to be repaid in skewers. I got you the blankets, didn’t I?”

“Gifts without agreements aren’t trade-in-progress,” Skirk informs him, solemnly. “They are gifts. Learn the market better, little fool, before you try and trap me in a deal again.” Then she takes one big step around him and continues heading for the black broth. She can smell it from here, and she will not be deterred. 

The boy, in what is starting to become an exhausting trend, follows right at her heels. “I’m not trapping you in a deal,” he says, quickly. “I’m making an advance offer.”

“Is that so? Don’t care.”

“Don’t you have any market sense?” asks the boy, incredulously, and Skirk pauses mid-step to give him a dark look. The boy raises an eyebrow right back. “It’s a good deal, isn’t it? I’ll bolster your goodwill with the traders, you get more things for less costly exchange, and in return…”

Skirk narrows her eyes at him. The boy smiles. “I get skewers.”

She considers him. The boy sticks out his hand again, eyes bright like he’s already won, smile wide on his face. 

Skirk smiles back with all her teeth, more a grimace than a grin, and says, “No.”

Then she turns on her heel and gets her damn black broth. It is the best meal she’s had in weeks.

.

It is not the end of things. It is not even remotely the end of things. The child is determined and sulky over her refusal to play along with his silly market games; he corners her at the stairs once more and the market circle often, and makes an offer every time. He convinces the merchants not to trade with her. He convinces them to be nice to her. The merchants, traitors all, seem to find the whole thing the funniest gossip in months. 

She wouldn’t mind it even half as much if the child would just stop trying to follow her into the Abyss. 

Three weeks after her first unfortunate encounter with the boy in the blue cloak, Skirk enters the Bough Keeper’s grove and says, at long last, “How do I deal with annoying children.”

Dainsleif—old, worn, and ever unreactive—barely even blinks an eye. “That depends,” he replies, calm. “Murder, however, is generally frowned upon.”

Skirk turns her frown onto him. She has never really understood Dainsleif; when she had first met him she was sixteen and scarred and newly part of the Abyss, and the immortal man who guarded the gateway between timeless darkness and the ruined city had frightened her in a way the monsters of the Abyss never could. Even now, though Skirk looks decades Dainsleif’s senior, there is an age to Dainsleif’s eyes—a weight to his shoulders—that she simply cannot match, and cannot understand.

The respect she holds for him has never dulled, but at times like this, she wonders how old he really is. So weary, some days. So bizarrely childish on others. The passing of time, if it exists at all for him, must be truly odd.

This does not forgive his frankly abysmal sense of humor. “I have never known you to take possible breaches to the Abyss lightly,” she replies, voice low. “One day that little fool will follow me down here, and then what? He will be lost to the city above forever. I would not wish that exclusion on anyone unprepared to bear it, least of all an infant.”

“Kaeya is young,” the Bough Keeper replies, as Knowing of the world as ever. “But infant is a little… much, I should think.”

“My word choice is not the problem here.”

“No, I suppose not.” He sighs a little, and glances up, gaze gone distant. “That boy… too clever for his own good. And, perhaps, too curious.” 

“He runs amok,” Skirk says, disapproving. “His watcher does their job poorly.”

The Bough Keeper is silent for a long moment. Skirk eyes him. Realization dawns. “He has no watcher?”

Dainsleif hums. “He has his father,” he says, simply. “He has teachers.”

“But no watcher,” Skirk repeats. 

No answer, for a long moment. Dainsleif looks at the trees. “He has you,” he says, and there is nothing Skirk can say to that at all. 

.

She stays in the Abyss for most of that week, ruminating on the words. It vexes her, in truth. The boy is not hers, and he is not her responsibility. She is a stranger from the Abyss that he tries to bribe into helping him with his stupid market games— she is nothing to him, so what gives the Bough Keeper the gall to say she is the closest thing to a watcher the boy has? His little rich coat says otherwise.

But she thinks about it anyway. And when she finally does return to the market, in time to see the boy flit around the trading stalls and make his newest mischief, she watches. No other eyes watch him from the streets. No one keeps track of his comings and goings. When she draws the weaver aside to ask what time the boy arrived at market, the man—who is almost friendly to her these days, baffling enough—informs her the boy arrived at some unholy hour in the morning. Why is he awake at unholy hours? What child does such a thing willingly? What watcher lets them?

“Fuck,” says Skirk, under her breath, and leaves for the Abyss before the child can sense her weakness and try to bribe her with it. 

But the questions linger. And when Skirk walks up to the market one day to find it free from the child’s meddling hands, she is absolutely peeved to find herself worried about it.

The merchants haven’t seen the boy all day. Even the couple cooking skewers haven’t seen the boy underfoot, which is the most worrying news of all. Skirk grits her teeth and trades for two skewers to be polite, and tells herself she is keeping them for supper.

Damn it all.

She walks down back to the Abyss with clenched fists and the skewers packed away by her side, old gore from the morning’s hunt still clinging beneath her nails. The restlessness sings through her veins. As soon as she asks the Bough Keeper to check on the boy, she will go hunting again—sooner than usual, but the restlessness burns. She keeps having to fight the urge to play with her weapons, like some bloodthirsty novice.

Skirk steps into the grove, resolved. “Bough Keeper,” she calls, half-bowing her head in respect. “I’ve a request for you. Do you know—”

She lifts her head and stops.

“Oh,” says the stupid boy, sitting at the base of one of the Irminsul trees with a runic inscription tablet in hand. “It’s you! Have you finally seen sense?”

Dainsleif, expression mild, looks over at her from another silver tree. “Hello, Skirk,” he says, evenly. “Your request?”

Skirk stares at the boy. “You—”

“Do you know the Bough Keeper, too?” the boy asks, before she can continue. It is probably for the best. Skirk is not entirely sure what she would have said. “You didn’t tell me!”

This last bit he directs to Dainsleif himself. Skirk levels him with her own cold stare. Something almost like a smile twitches at his face, there and gone again. “You didn’t ask,” he informs the boy.

The boy has met Dainsleif before. The boy has taken the Abyssal road before—must have, to be so familiar with the Bough Keeper. Most treat the immortal and his silver trees like a warning, and avoid him appropriately, for all the respect he’s offered—and yet, here this foolish child is, perched on the roots of the silver trees and scowling like he knows Dainsleif is laughing at him.

Then the boy’s eyes turn to her. His face lights up. “You didn’t know either.”

Terrible how happy he sounds about that fact. Irritating, also. All her—fretting, chasing him away from the Abyss entrance again and again…

She has been played. She knows she has been played. The boy knows that she knows, and his annoyance fades in favor of a cheeky sort of smugness that is entirely infuriating. 

“Skirk?” Dainsleif says, as if he has not just pulled a trick so childish she quite literally never saw it coming. “You had a question for me.”

She cannot tell if he is doing this on purpose or not. She scowls at them both to be safe. “I will remember this,” she warns him, and then sweeps out for the Abyss without a second look back. Damn the boy and Keeper both.

The last thing she hears before the silver door closes behind her is the boy, asking Dainsleif plaintively: “Do you know how I can blackmail her into getting me skewers?”

“Your struggles are self-inflicted and thus not my problem,” Dainsleif replies, and Skirk scoffs under her breath and closes the door harder than she means to. The two skewers she bargained for up on the market circle feel like a brand on her back.

The closest thing he has to a watcher. If all the boy has is a bad-tempered Abyss Hunter and a Bough Keeper who cannot leave his post, then he is surely doomed indeed.

.

It changes little, in the end. Skirk chases the boy away from the Abyss entrance as she has always done, if not for spite than in the hopes of teaching the little fool some modicum of common sense. Some days she will walk through the market and see no sign of him, and enter the Bough Keeper’s grove to find the boy annoying the Bough Keeper into stony silences or reading quietly at the tree roots. The feared and fabled former Twilight Sword, bullied into babysitting.

Some weeks, too, she will see no sign of the boy at all. When he reappears after these absences, he is sullen and silent and quick to snap, his usual games turned tense and biting. He loses even the market, those times. The shopkeepers are fond of him, but they are not swayed by an angry boy’s childish games. 

The glimpse of his face, in those moments, is… it is something. She is not sure what it is. She gets him black broth, and stands staring unimpressed at him until the boy drinks it all.

He is foolish, and not her responsibility. She feels as if she has repeated those words to the point of mantra. But— but if he is in her sight, then she will watch him. It is the way things should be, after all. It is what, in a better world, someone perhaps should have done for her. 

Skirk likes her life, of course. She has made it her own. But she is not so stupid as to think it a blessing that she found the Abyss as young as she did. And if a teenager is young, then the boy is, regardless of Dainsleif’s pedantic instance, an infant.

It is a strange sort of pattern that she falls into. Skirk does not often go to market, but when she does the boy is there more often than not. She never gives in, and he never stops bothering her. He is sullen and moody and too cheerful depending on the day… but he is there more often than not, and perhaps this is why it surprises her, three months in, when she tromps down to the Keeper’s grove after a boring market day to find the boy nowhere in sight.

She pauses, scanning the Irminsul trees. Dainsleif, looking the sort of relieved that makes him look twenty-something instead of peerless immortal, beelines for her in a way that implies he has been waiting desperately for her arrival. 

Skirk immediately scowls at him. “No.”

“He will go into the Abyss whether you or I like it or not,” Dainsleif replies, not even bothering to pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “I suspect he already has. I would rather he learn to survive it the easy way rather than…”

The way Skirk had? Hah. “I turned out fine.” 

His frown deepens. How hypocritical; it is not as if his jokes are any funnier. 

“The Abyss is no place for—” Anyone. Ugh. “—well. And at any rate, I don’t see why now would be…”

Dainsleif glances over his shoulder. Skirk follows his gaze. The tail end of a little blue cloak drapes over the roots of one silver tree. 

“No,” Skirk repeats, much more tired now. 

“Then do it as a favor for me,” Dainsleif replies. “If he has come here… the market is not enough distraction.”

She almost snarls. “The Abyss is not some— child’s toy, to use as you see fit—”

“You think I don’t know that,” Dainsleif says, and it is startling, how quickly he shifts: tired twenty-something to cold immortal, his eyes burning, his voice like stone. “I am well aware of what the Abyss is, Hunter. That boy will enter it one day, be it today or tomorrow or years in the future. It will be a shadow at his heels for all his life, so forgive me, Skirk, if I would rather put this bitter task to some better use.”

Skirk does not say anything. His rebuke curdles; she has forgot herself, because for all his occasional tricks and wry humor, Dainsleif is no youth to be corrected. Still, she scoffs. The urge to fight is like a boiling under her blood— that he is right does not stop her from wanting to smack him. 

The ice bleeds from his expression. Dainsleif rubs at his eye. “Do as you will. I cannot force you. It is just… I have thought this through, Skirk. Do not insult me by saying otherwise.”

…Well. When he puts it that way. 

She clicks her tongue at him, displeased, and turns on her heel to head for the boy. He is curled up in the silver roots, small coat splayed around him; his cheeks are shiny from old tears and his eyes are shadowed. He looks even younger than usual, and a bit like she could pick him up with one hand.

She nudges him with her boot. “Up, boy.” 

He doesn’t move, but his shoulders stiffen, and by the sudden catch of his breath he is awake. His eyes stay closed. She nudges him harder. “Did you hear me? Get up!”

Bizarrely, he relaxes, and when he opens his eyes, he is smiling. Tears still drying on his cheeks and all. What a truly terrifying creature. Skirk cannot believe anyone ever has children. 

“Bad bargain lady!”

His nicknames are getting worse, possibly on purpose. She scoffs, and leans down to yank him onto his feet by the scruff of his collar. “Use your coat as a pillow next time, little fool,” she tells him, and roughly scrubs the leaves and dirt from his hair. The boy has gone shock-still beneath her hand. She ignores it, and beats the dust off the end of his coat. “Sleep like that and you’ll get a crick in your neck, and I fucking refuse to listen to you whine at me.”

Dainsleif makes a muffled noise of disproval. Skirk ignores him. If he wants her to deal with the child, then he has no damn right to be commenting on her language.

Skirk leans back, scanning him up and down; the boy is presentable. She reaches for her belt and draws out a sheathed dagger about the length of his hand— good for gutting, but she can get another—and hands it to him. “Here. You need this.”

The boy doesn’t take it. He is staring at her with wide eyes, utterly expressionless.

“The knife,” Skirk says, losing her patience. “Take it.”

He startles, and takes the knife with fumbling hands. She does not know what expression is on his face, and she does not care to figure it out. She turns away. “Come along.”

“W-what— wait, where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” She heads for the silver door, not even bothering to slow. The boy is quick; he can catch up. “If you are so insistent on ruining your future, stupid boy, I may as well be the one to help you do it. Hurry up already. I want to get home before my food rots.”

A long pause. Then the boy appears at her side, easily keeping stride, his smile splitting his face in two. “You’re taking me to the Abyss!”

“Under conditions. First condition: shut the fuck up.”

The boy laughs at her. His eyes are bright. The tears have almost dried away entirely from his face.

Skirk looks away.

He has you.

Dainsleif may well be right. Skirk is still fairly certain that nothing good can come of it.

.

The boy walks around the Abyss like a wide-eyed tourist, and only the tight (inaccurate) grip he has on the dagger stops Skirk from dragging him right back to Khaenri’ah. 

He oohs and ahhs at the silver pillars; watches with gleaming eyes the moving shadows in the deep. Skirk is grumpy just at the sight of it: he is awed, but he is not taken, and this more than anything confirms to her that the boy has entered the Abyss before. Perhaps not this far— perhaps not this daringly—but there’s no hiding it.

(No one is watching him.)

Neither, she is displeased to note, is there any real interest. A bit of fight—even a little battle-gleam—well, that Skirk can work with. But the boy is bright-eyed and calculating instead of wanting, and Skirk looks away from him halfway through the journey, unsure of whether she is relieved at the lack or disappointed. She is no babysitter. But she has… entertained thoughts, at times, of an apprentice. Of leaving some sort of legacy. 

(Solitary girl in the endless dark, the Bough Keeper had said once, in those distant early years when Skirk was younger and bloodier. Are you content to be forgotten?)

But if the boy does not seek battle, Skirk will not be the one to introduce it to him. Though if he keeps holding that goddamn knife that way, she might change her mind. 

Maybe not a battle. Maybe just a few lessons? If she leaves him be he will cut his fingers off, and with her luck as it is, he will come complaining to her. It makes Skirk tired just imagining it.

She debates the issue the whole path home, and by the time she reaches her small house—stone walls and wood floors and a flat, slightly sloping roof to blend with the rock of the hill—she still hasn’t an answer. What she does have is an increasing sense of regret.

If the boy was wide-eyed at the Abyss, he is starry-eyed at the sight of her house. His whole face brightens with a delight that Skirk does not trust one whit, and he leaves her heels to skip forward, looking the house up and down and around the corners, his hands laced behind his back. 

“Ooh, camouflage,” he says, sounding admiring, and Skirk loses sight of him momentarily when he hops behind the side of the house. “And a well! Is the water here drinkable?”

“It is not,” Skirk replies crisply, and rounds the bend to keep the boy in her line of sight. “The few pools are slick and poisonous, and will rot you from the inside out. I have my own means of gathering water.”

The boy looks fascinated instead of disturbed by the gory warning. Skirk despairs of him. “There’s pools? Poisonous pools? Can you bottle it?”

What fool idea is he thinking now. “It melts the glass.”

“Glass can’t melt.”

As if the Abyss is a place that follows the natural law of literally anything. Also, she has watched it happen, the pools carry an internal heat enough to make the glass molten, and it is as fascinating as it is disturbing to watch. “It melts the glass,” Skirk repeats, patiently. “It cannot be bottled. If you want a portable poison, look elsewhere.”

The boy immediately looks shifty. “I didn’t want a portable poison.”

Hmm. Certainly. 

She is not going to ask. She has no idea what an infant wants with portable poison, and frankly, she thinks she is better off keeping it that way. It is just as likely he just wants it to want it. 

She pushes past him for the front door, a headache already pulsing behind her eyes. “Get in already,” she tells him. “You wanted to see the Abyss, and now you have seen it. We will rest a moment, and then you must go home.”

His expression flickers. The smile falters and then returns. Skirk watches him, quiet, as the boy wrestles with his faces.

At last he looks away. “Well,” he says. “I guess that’s sensible.”

“…We have a few hours yet to rest. Come along.”

He follows her inside, subdued. Skirk tries to pretend she isn’t bothered by it.

She closes the door behind him, and moves in the pitch dark with old familiarity—lighting her one lantern with a flick of her flint, turning to spark the stove. She is restless again, but she cannot bring the boy all the way into the Abyss and leave him alone for her own hunt. Tea will have to do. She will hunt later. She has time to spare, after all; it is only for today. 

She puts on the pot, dented and old. The boy has settled at her table, ignoring the one chair in favor of sitting on the edge and kicking his feet. He looks around her house with unnatural quiet, eyes watchful, expression unreadable. The small kitchen space to the table, the one bed and back again. When Skirk finishes drawing the tea and sets the chipped mug before him, he cups the ceramic with uncertain hands, and looks at it silently for a long moment.

“Your house is very stuffy,” he says, at last, with all the serious aplomb of one delivering an unfortunate but necessary truth, and then sips at the cup very politely.

The gall of it. 

“…Drink your damn tea,” Skirk replies.

“You make it too strong,” the boy complains back, but does take a deeper draw. He does, despite the strength of it, seem to like it. It is one of the few marks in his favor. There are some in Khaenri’ah who prefer to sweeten it with honey. Like morons.

“I make my tea fine,” is what Skirk says, and then she sits down heavily across from him, drinking deeply at her own cup. The ginger burns pleasantly in the back of her throat, warming her from the inside out. Yes, a perfect cup. The boy has no idea what he’s talking about.

“It’s still stuffy, though,” the boy announces, and because he has drunk at least half his cup, Skirk rolls her eyes and does not bother responding. “And your chairs are too hard.”

Skirk scoffs at him. The boy tilts his head, as if in thought, and then smiles. “Next time,” he decides, “I’ll bring blankets. Blankets will make it better.”

She pauses with her cup halfway to her mouth. Her lips twitch. She fights a grimace. The boy watches her, and his smile does not falter.

Next time. 

Skirk sighs, heavily, and downs the rest of her cup in a single swallow. She rises to refill it, and the boy’s eyes follow her to the pot and back to the table again. His hands are clasped tight around the cup. His smile is like a little knife. 

“Next time,” Skirk says, at last— “you will drink your tea without complaining, little fool. Have some fucking manners.”

His eyelashes flutter. His head dips. He is not quick enough to hide the way his smile falls, and then rises again—smaller, truer. The first smile she has seen from him that fits on his young face.

“No promises,” Kaeya replies, at last, in a voice they both pretend isn’t slightly shaking, and when he smiles he looks every inch the child he actually is.

.

Kaeya does not stay long that day, but it is barely a week later that he returns. She sees him sparingly, and rarely at the same place—a few days at the market, some brief moments at the Keeper’s abode. He comes to her house of his own accord, at his own whims. 

He does not come empty-handed. He brings blankets, as promised: lies them on her chairs and settles himself in the corner of the house to sit and watch the door. He brings market goods, as well—small snacks, woven blankets. Skewers, often. 

She makes a face with every visit, but neither does she shoo the boy away. Instead, a new routine establishes. Skirk has never been fond of going to Khaenri’ah; she goes for necessity, not by choice, and for all the merchants of the market treat her warmer, their mild goodwill does not lessen the stares of the rest. If the boy intends to use Skirk’s home as a refuge, then Skirk will use him as well: the least he can do, if he insists on going back and forth like this, is trade for her.

She barely even has to convince him. The boy takes the deal with a smug expression that irritates her for days. He seems to have taken it as his victory. He goes back and forth for the next two weeks like some miniature Sumerun peacock, all puffed-up pride, right up until Skirk loses her temper and drills him on fighting stances until he drops.

“You’re a sore loser,” says Kaeya to the ground.

“Hold that dagger wrong again and I will be tying it to your hand, you fool child,” Skirk replies, dryly, and drags him up to his feet by the collar of his rich cloak.

“Sore loser,” Kaeya repeats, but does hold the dagger correctly for the first time that day. Wonders upon wonders.

Of course, she cannot avoid the market forever. Some things she has too much pride to let a child trade for her—weapons, for one—and also, if the boy brings back skewers instead of black broth one more time, she is going to snap. There is no helping it. 

Dainsleif, damn him, has the gall to look surprised when she enters his abode, Kaeya following at her heels like a gleeful little shadow. He looks at her with a tilted head, and then to Kaeya. “Well,” he says. “I see you have stopped using children as your bargaining chip.”

Bold words from the one who pushed the child at her in the first place. “I see you still let him into your abode, Keeper,” she replies, annoyed. “Are you aware he goes into the Abyss without an escort?”

Kaeya squawks. Dainsleif considers this, and then inclines his head. “Fair point.”

Skirk scoffs at him and heads for the Khaenri’ahn road. Kaeya rushes to catch up. “Thanks for nothing,” he tells her, looking vexed. “He’s going to be on the lookout now! I don’t know why you two are like this; I’ve been fine so far.”

She gets the looming horrible sense that this will be a returning argument. “That is the stupidest thing you have ever said.” 

“But I have been fine!”

Skirk scoffs. Kaeya frowns. The argument remains unresolved. 

It is a strange feeling, walking to the market with the boy at her heels. This walk is usually a lonesome one, and so it is oddly startling, to walk this familiar path with someone else beside her. Kaeya’s footsteps scuff uneven at the worn rock road, his shadow flashing over the rocks beside her own. Halfway between the ruined outskirts and the surviving city, in a section of ruin best-known for the withered roots that have claimed what was once a great hall in the old glory days of Khaenri’ah, Skirk pushes aside rock-hard vines without thinking, and the boy splutters when the vines swing back to smack him in the face.

It is distracting. She is both hyper-aware of him following her and yet, at the same time, continually forgetting to account for his presence. She has taken her usual road to market, but should she have tried another path? Is this a safe road for a child? Does it matter?

The boy finishes rubbing at his face and mumbling quiet insults. Skirk turns to continue on, and he falls back in her shadow. He is so quiet. He is so small. So bright and sharp and quick-witted a thing, and yet, at times Kaeya feels to her as insubstantial as a ghost. Easily lost, and difficult to find.

She frowns at the air, and resists the urge to look back for him. 

It does not take long to reach the market circle. She can hear the murmur of the crowd long before they reach the trading ring; the market is busy today. Khaenri’ah has never been very cluttered, only remnants of a kingdom, but there are times when even survivors like to shop and sew and gossip, and the early mornings of the eighth week-day have always been a favored time for gathering. It is, Skirk suspects, something of a unspoken cultural joke: Teyvat may have its seven Archons and its seven days, but Khaenri’ah has its own calendar, and they were once the eighth of the great nations, even if they have since fallen from grace. 

Khaenri’ah, ever outside the seven. Even in ruin and despair, it’s people still like a good joke.

It is rare Skirk comes to market on the eighth day; crowds vex her. Still, there is something even she can appreciate about the sight: the shifting streams of people, the distant laughter. With this many people cluttering the market ring, the whole city looks different. The broken cobble is hidden beneath traveling feet; the glow of the Great Tree shines down on them like a softer star. It is almost comforting.

Too bad the noise is fucking annoying. 

The boy is visibly vibrating in place. His eyes dart from stall to stall; Skirk rolls her eyes. “Go off and cause trouble already,” she says, tired just from watching him. 

Kaeya considers it, but ultimately shakes his head. “No, I’ll play later.”

“I am trading for weapons— it is hardly exciting.”

“Aw, but I want to see you get cheated!”

Skirk scowls and marches off for the blacksmith’s stall. The boy cackles at her back. 

In the distance, someone plays a solemn song on a Khaenri’ahn flute; someone else tosses a pebble, and shouts for them to leave that piss-poor despairing nonsense for a funeral. Someone else is arguing with Skirk’s usual weaver; the man looks bored at the posturing, and even pauses from the negotiation to give Skirk an almost friendly nod of hello. It is a strange and bustling day. She cannot wait to get out of this place.

The crowd presses in close; even Skirk, ever shunned, cannot escape it. She maneuvers her way through the crowd with no small amount of disgust—if one more person brushes by her arm, she’s drawing her sword, ruined reputation or no—but she is no new hand at the market, regardless of what Kaeya thinks. She makes her way through well enough, and she is almost to the blacksmith’s when she realizes, sudden and abrupt, that she can no longer see Kaeya anywhere.

She freezes mid-step on the street; a stranger knocks against her shoulder. Skirk barely even notices. She turns around, scanning the road. Where has he gone? The boy is no longer in her shadow—no where in the crowd. Has he broken away for another stall? 

“Did you forget something?”

Skirk looks down. Kaeya tilts his head at her, bemused. He stands just in the shadow of her side. “What’s with that face?” he wonders. He is rocking lightly on his heels, flipping a new toy— a smooth flat stone polished to a shine—in his hands. “Haha, did I surprise you?”

Skirk slowly relaxes. “…I thought you wanted to see the weapons.”

“I do. I will. I just got distracted.” He flashes a smile. “Also, you’re very slow. I’ll just meet you there!”

“Do you even know where it is?”

 “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

She feels unsettled, strangely wrong-footed. “Yes,” she says, after a pause that is just a little too long. “I’m sure you will.”

He shrugs, badly pretending he’s not pleased by the almost compliment, and flips the stone again. Skirk watches him do it. She has seen that same almost-motion when he is training with knives. 

“You’re in a weird mood today,” says Kaeya, laughing. He does not seem to care much; already he is looking away, his attention caught by some new shiny. “Oh! Honey nut cake!”

“Boy—”

Kaeya doesn’t seem to hear her. He is already turning away, about to vanish back into the crowd again. In and out of her shadow, in and out of view—and all at once the thought bothers her in a way she cannot put into words. There is just something about it. There is just something about the way this boy interacts with the world, coming and going but never bothering to linger— never a thought of staying, never considering that someone might wonder when he vanishes so suddenly. 

(Perhaps no one ever has.)

She places a hand on his shoulder. The boy startles and then stills, looking back at her.

“What is it?”

…She is not entirely sure why she did that herself. Skirk ruminates. “Stay in eyesight,” she says, at last. It is the only thing she can really think to say.

He blinks at her. Skirk frowns back.

Kaeya doesn’t move. His smile has faded; his eyes are sharp. He watches her very intently. The look on his face somewhere between wary and strange. Beneath her hand, he is still as stone. She cannot even feel him breathing.

He is quiet for a moment more, and then he reaches up and pats the top of her hand, still resting on his shoulder.

"Don't worry," he tells her, like a fool. "I won't get lost."

What?

Skirk stares at him. She is overcome by a sudden and strange sensation; she moves her hand from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, cradling the back of his head like he’s an infant. She feels as if on the edge of some great realization. It is a terrible and looming feeling. Like a great blade hanging over her head.

Kaeya just blinks up at her. He looks almost bemused.

He really is so young, Skirk thinks, blankly. It is easy to forget sometimes; he is such a bitter thing. But he is a child all the same. 

Kaeya is still looking at her. Skirk sighs. “You are a very stupid little boy," she tells him, matter-of-fact, and then she straightens up and smacks him over the back of his head. 

Kaeya yelps and covers his head. Skirk clicks her tongue at him. "Come on,” she says, speaking loudly over Kaeya’s hissed insults. “No more detours. We are already late.”

Kaeya doesn’t move, staying hunched over his knees with his hands over his head. Skirk rolls her eyes. She moves on down the road and when the boy still won’t follow, she sighs and stops. She puts her hand on her hip and scowls back at him. 

The boy has stopped his playacting. He peeks his head up from over his knees, watching her with bright and wary eyes. His expression is calculating and sharp. Hopeful, perhaps.

Kaeya watches her wait for him.

Then he smiles, and runs to catch up.

.

And the truth is Skirk is lying, if only to herself— she knows the look on Kaeya’s face, what it means when he goes still as stone, why he freezes at every casual, off-hand comfort. She knows the story of his silences, and why he never asks to stay. He is always daring. He is always testing the line, as if asking the world to throw him away. Laughing, laughing. He is always laughing. If she ever closed the door of her home in his face, she suspects he would still leave with a smile.

Kaeya is lying too. 

He is not hers. She does not want him to be hers. She has spent decades alone and it is by her own preference. No friends, no family. No need. And so she cannot explain this, either. Because the child is argumentative and annoying and not her problem— but she has made him her problem, even if she is not sure why. 

Perhaps it is that his smile is too bitter. Perhaps it is that he reminds her of herself, or the child she used to be, before she drowned that girl in the blood. 

Perhaps it isn’t any of those things.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Even now, after all this time, Skirk cannot tell if she is angry at his presence, or simply afraid.

.

She returns from the market with new swords, a sharpening stone, and— at Kaeya’s whims— a loaf of honey nut cake for the Bough Keeper. She is not sure how Kaeya convinced her to get it. She is not sure why he did so, either. The boy becomes more a mystery every day. 

Kaeya is not with her this time, as she descends to the Abyss— he had spent the day in her shadow as if he had nothing better in the world to do, until the very last hour, upon which he had become fidgety and stiff and glancing over his shoulder whenever he thought Skirk was not watching him. 

Skirk had not asked. Kaeya had not answered. Instead the boy had gone cheerful and bright like some sort of poisonous flower, went on a frantic search for sweet treats, and vanished as soon as Skirk had the cake in hand. Off into the crowd with barely a wave goodbye.

She watches him go with furrowed brows. Then she squints at her cake loaf—honey nut cake is not an easy thing to barter for cheap, and she cannot for the life of her figure out which of her monster parts he traded for it—shakes her head, and heads back for the Abyss.

She will never understand that boy.

She knows Dainsleif agrees by the look on his face when she holds out the cake. It’s nicely wrapped in oil soaked paper and plain cloth—truly, worth a good trade—and after a long moment of silence, Dainsleif reaches out gingerly to take it.

“What… is this.”

“Cake,” replies Skirk, delighted to be unhelpful.

“Hm,” Dainsleif says, and unwraps the cake. He looks at the honey nut loaf for a long moment. “…Thank you.”

“It was the boy’s idea.”

“Yes, I figured.” He pries off a piece of cake and tries it; for a moment his expression shutters. He looks down at it, expressionless.

Skirk raises an eyebrow at him. “That bad?”

“No. Just…” He goes quiet. Then he pries off another piece. “It tastes the same, even after all this time. I was just… it surprised me.”

Skirk does not know what to say to that. Thankfully Dainsleif does not seem to be expecting an answer; he places another bit of cake in his mouth, visibly savoring it, and then glances over to her. “Speaking of Kaeya. He did not come with you?”

“He does what he wants.”

“Hm,” Dainsleif says, again. “…You are growing fond of the boy.”

Skirk bristles. “Excuse me?”

“He follows at your heels more often than not, nowadays.”

“As I said. He does what he wants.”

Dainsleif does not look impressed. The expression is somewhat lessened by the cake in his hands, already half-gone. “Skirk,” the Bough Keeper says, blandly. “You let him follow you.”

“He has no sense,” Skirk snaps back. She is angry, suddenly, and she is not entirely sure why— defensive, sharp, for a reason she does not want to name. “He is a little fool of a brat and I have given up on trying to teach him to be otherwise.”

“I’m not trying to argue with you,” Dainsleif says, and this time the exasperation is clear in his voice. “I am simply saying that… look. There is more to that child than you realize. For his sake, I would rather you know now, rather than—”

“Bough Keeper. I hope I am not intruding.”

Dainsleif’s mouth snaps shut. For a moment frustration burns sharp and clear across his face, and then it is gone, and he is calm again, neutral as ever. He turns away from Skirk and inclines his head. “You are not,” he says. “Though I am surprised to see you.”

In the doorway of the path between Abyss and Khaenri’ah, a man walks into the light. He is tall, built wiry, with the settled stance of a fighter and the poise of a general. His hair is long and dark, braided back; his eyes are like silver. His skin is a warm brown only a shade darker than Skirk’s own.

He looks like Kaeya. It is the shape of his eyes, the cut of his face. It is in the rich weave of his clothes and the three-tailed cloak. But this is the only resemblance. There is no laughter in this man’s face at all; there is no light in his eyes. He inclines his head to Dainsleif, respectful, and when he looks over to Skirk his expression shows nothing at all.

“I see you have guests, Bough Keeper,” he says. His voice is soft-spoken but clear: it rings out in the silence of the abode. “How rare.”

“This is Skirk. She is a hunter of the Abyss.” Skirk inclines her head, her eyes never leaving the man. Dainsleif glances over her, pinched around the eyes, and then adds, “Kaeya has met her. She has kept him safe from the Abyss’s harms numerous times.”

Tsk. So this is what Dainsleif meant.

She is not surprised Kaeya’s father is alive. Dainsleif had said as much, after all, all those months ago— Kaeya has family, teachers. It is just that they do not watch him.

Kaeya’s father studies her with sharp eyes. There is no disgust in his face, nor even discomfort; if her status as part of the Abyss disturbs him, she cannot see it. Skirk does not return the courtesy. She eyes him back coldly, and the corner of her lip curls in a sneer. There is an ugly picture forming in her head. She doesn’t like the look of it.

“I see,” says the man, evenly. “So you are the one who taught him to wield knives.”

“So you have noticed that much, and apparently did nothing about it,” Skirk replies, snappish. “It is a wonder your child still breathes.”

His eyes narrow slightly, but he does not respond. Instead he turns back to Dainsleif. “I came to ask your advice, but I see this is not the time. I will return later.”

Dainsleif is frowning. “If it is on the matter of the Abyss Order—”

“I know well your thoughts, Keeper. But we are scarce on allies and on hope.”

“They want revenge,” Dainsleif snaps. “Not healing. You will only—!”

“I will return later,” the man repeats, coldly. He inclines his head briefly to Dainsleif and not at all to Skirk, and turns on his heel to go. Dainsleif looks frustrated. Skirk scowls at the man’s retreating back.

“Keep an eye on your fool of a child,” she calls at his back, unable to help herself. Beside her, Dainsleif squeezes his eyes shut with a look of great internal pain. “Have you even the slightest idea of where he goes?”

The man pauses in the door. His glance back is ice-cold. Skirk stares back, unimpressed. The bloodlust sings beneath her skin.

“You speak boldly,” says the man, “especially since your thoughts were not asked for. Kaeya is cared for, and fed, and clothed. That is more than most Khaenri’ahn children can say, and I have as much duty to them as I do him. I would thank you not to meddle in affairs that are none of your concern, stranger.”

Skirk scoffs. Dainsleif rubs a hand over his eyes and then steps between them, his hand half-raised. “She is only concerned,” the Bough Keeper says, sounding weary. “Kaeya has grown curious of the Abyss. Despite my best efforts, he has also entered it. I admit, I am also… wary. My teachings are not enough against that kind of darkness.”

The man’s expression darkens, but he goes silent, almost contemplative. His eyes fall back on Skirk. “I see. Well, then. You are a fighter, aren’t you, Hunter? If you are so concerned over my boy, then you may teach him. It will prove a useful skill for him.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“But that is my offer.” He turns back to the path. “Do it for the good of Khaenri’ah, then, if not for the good of the boy. But it is your choice. Until later, Dainsleif.”

Dainsleif does not answer. He just shakes his head at the man’s retreating back.

Skirk curls her hands around the hilts of her swords, livid. The blasé response was one thing—practically expected, given what she knows—but his offer is worse. Ordered to watch over the boy, in lieu of his own father? And then to say she should do it for the sake of Khaenri’ah? It is galling. It is—

She would have done it anyway. Has been doing it anyway. 

But this burns.

“Skirk,” Dainsleif says. 

“Leave me be,” Skirk replies, coldly, and shoves past the Bough Keeper for the Abyss. She is sick of this place, suddenly. She is sick of Khaenri’ah and the silver shine of the Irminsul trees and this utter, endless boredom. She needs to fight. It has been too long since she last tasted blood.

She slams the silver doors shut behind her. Dainsleif does not call for her again.  

.

The hunt does not help.

The headache pounding behind her eyes does not lessen; even with gore beneath her nails, the restlessness does not ease. She feels off-center and lacking and bitterly unsatisfied; there is no joy to be found in the fight, no thrill, no risk. She finds herself unwilling to stray too far from her home—or rather, too far from Khaenri’ah—and thus the monsters she does happen across are weak and flimsy things, desperate and half-dead and too out of their minds from the curse to recognize why coming close to the Bough Keeper’s abode is a death sentence.

Her boredom makes her reckless. She lets the Riftwolves drain her to her limit; lets mages and Lectors both get a lucky hit before she tears them apart. This doesn’t help as much as she thought it would. The taste of blood is no longer the comforting sing-song of battle; the wounds just ache, and the taste is only bitter. 

Dainsleif tries to speak with her each time she passes through the grove, and Skirk avoids him. She does not need his help, or his advice. She knows what’s wrong. It is simply restlessness, plain and simple, and the easiest cure is to pack her bags and walk blindly through the dark until she finally finds a fight that makes her blood sing, whether such a search will take her days or weeks.

The problem is that she hasn’t.

(The problem is that she knows why she is hesitating.)

.

She does not bring it up to Kaeya; in the end, she doesn’t need to. One irritating morning, halfway through her tea, the door opens and the boy steps through. No knock, no hellos— this is Kaeya’s way, and while a few weeks ago she would have rolled her eyes at it, now Skirk scowls down at him.

Kaeya ignores her. He has packages from the market beneath his arm and one skewer sticking out of his mouth, and he shoves the door closed with his foot. “Are you and the Bough Keeper fighting?” he asks her, muffled around the skewer. “I haven’t seen you come up in ages.”

“A week is not an age.”

“And that’s not an answer,” Kaeya returns, cheery. “You are fighting! What about?”

He sounds so gleeful about it, too. Skirk shakes her head, tired, and takes the package from him on her way to the counter. It doesn’t matter. Her own ill mood is not the boy’s fault, and he’s here now regardless: she might as well get him to drink some tea. He’s too small. 

“We are not fighting, you gossipy creature,” she says, and pries open the package. Hmm. Salt and spices. Good spices, too; she’d been wondering where those Rifthound claws had vanished to. A good trade. She puts it aside to sort later and ladles the leftover tea into a new cup. “And even if we were, it is none of your damn business.”

Kaeya ignores this. He settles in the chair—her only chair, the little sneak—and kicks his feet over the empty air. “I thought you respected him too much to argue with him,” Kaeya admits, sounding thoughtful. “I mean, I do it all the time, but you’re always like ‘show some respect! Incline your head! Call him by title!’”

“I do not sound like that.” She presses the cup into his hands. He sighs down at it. She scowls back.

“Not even honey? It’s good for you!”

“No.”

“You’re the worst kind of person.” But he drinks it. 

She watches him until she is sure he has swallowed it, and then allows, “I do respect him. I have known Dainsleif for a very long time, and he is tolerable. But respect does not mean we do not disagree.”

“Hm,” Kaeya says, like this is a new concept for him. He looks down at the cup with a furrowed brow. “I guess.”

She waits, but Kaeya says nothing else. She turns back to the counter, and starts sorting through the packets of spice. 

“Are you…”

Kaeya trails off. Skirk glances back at him. He’s staring at the table. 

No other words are forthcoming. “Am I what?” Skirk says, sharply.

Kaeya’s shoulders hunch a little. “Are you guys… fighting because of me?”

He says this very calmly: casual, distant, as if asking about the weather. But his hands are too tight on the mug, and he still won’t look her in the eyes. 

Skirk doesn’t move. She doesn’t realize her hand has clenched to a fist until she feels the grains of salt bleed through her fingers, the paper torn in her grip.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says, and even to her own ears, her voice is icy. “You aren’t that important in my life.”

She regrets the words almost as soon as she says them, and turns away back to the counter before the boy can see her face. Her chest is tight. Grains of salt have scattered over the counter. What a waste. 

Kaeya doesn’t say anything for a long time. Skirk inhales and exhales, hard. Damn her temper. She shouldn’t have said it. But now she is not sure what to say—how to take it back, or if she even wants to.

And then Kaeya laughs. The sound is loud and startling; Skirk turns back around purely from surprise. 

Kaeya is smiling. His eyes gleam in the dim light. “Yeah,” he says, and the words are warm and laughing. “That’s true enough.”

His smile burns bright and false. Skirk looks away.

“Of course it is,” she says, brusquely. And then: “Finish your tea. I want to see if you’ve improved any with that dagger.”

Kaeya follows her instructions without complaint. But for all the rest of that day, his smiles do not reach his eyes.

.

She walks the boy back to the Keeper’s abode, because for all he insists on being stupid enough to walk to her home unaccompanied, that does not mean she has to let him return the same way. Dainsleif is in the main center of the grove when they enter. His eyes linger on Skirk, unreadable, and then he looks down and frowns at Kaeya.

“Again?”

Kaeya doesn’t look at him. Dainsleif sighs under his breath. 

“Stop sneaking into the Abyss when I am behind the door and cannot see you,” he says, at last, with rare annoyance. “It is no trouble to give you a blessing, if you would just wait for one.”

Skirk eyes the boy too, waiting for whatever laughing remark Kaeya has in response to this—but all the boy does is shrug, listless and dull. 

“Yes,” he says, flatly. “I get it. Fine.”

Dainsleif’s brow furrows. His eyes flash to Skirk; she does not meet his gaze. Kaeya, for his part, says nothing more—just walks up the path to Khaenri’ah, and leaves without another look back.

She stands there, watching, until the sound of his footsteps has faded. 

“I am not interested in your reprimand,” she says, cooly, before Dainsleif can speak. “I am well aware of my faults.”

“Your knowledge of them doesn’t seem to have helped you much.”

She turns away from him, disgusted. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Skirk.”

She stops despite herself. Her eyes close. 

“…I apologize. My own temper got the better of me. But— it isn’t his fault.”

“I know.” She does know. Of course she knows.

Dainsleif doesn’t say anything.

“I know,” Skirk repeats, quieter now. She sighs, and presses a hand to her temple. The silence settles bitter in her throat like old blood; the headache, unending, pulses behind her eyes. 

She could leave. She should leave; she is not in a fit state for any conversation, let alone this one. But she finds herself lingering anyway. 

“Bough Keeper.”

His head tilts towards her. Waiting. Listening. She searches for the words.

“…Why did you bring the boy to me,” she asks, at last. It is not quite the question she wants to ask, but it is all she can think to say. “What reason did you have?”

Dainsleif is silent for a long moment. Then he shifts. “I think you are mistaken.”

“Mistaken—”

“I did not lead Kaeya to you.”

She stops.

“Your meeting was not fate,” Dainsleif says, quietly. “I did not see it. I did not arrange it. I only learned he had met you—that he knew you—when he told me so himself.”

Ridiculous. “You think I don’t remember that you—!”

“I said the boy had no watcher, and that the closest thing was you— and you were barely even that, back then, but it still remains true. I asked you to introduce him to the Abyss, but I said nothing of where to take him. Skirk. I may have meddled. But just because you don’t understand your choices doesn’t mean they were not your own.”

She shakes her head and turns away. She does not want to hear any more of this. 

She can feel Dainsleif’s eyes on her every step out of the grove— but he doesn’t say anything more, and in the end he lets her go. Perhaps he knows as well as she does that there is nothing more to say. He has already said enough.

.

If nothing else, the conversation with Dainsleif hardens her. She is resolved, now. The hunt is calling, and Skirk will answer it. She has missed the blood and gore of the fight like an ache.

She prepares that night: a bag with provisions, clean water, her best weapons. A cleaning rag so that the tainted blood doesn’t rust her blade. She dresses in her warmest turtleneck, ever aware of the Abyss’s bone-deep chill, and pulls on a stolen Abyss mage cloak of bright red. The color is pleasing to the eye. It is a good shade for slaughter.

She is ready within the hour. The anticipation has built in her throat; the headache sounds in tune to her heartbeat. She draws one of her swords, and tilts the blade in her one lamplight. The shine is comforting. Her reflection, distorted by the smooth curve of the blade, settles her itching fingers.

She studies her own face and then clips the blade to her back. Stars buzz and burn at her fingertips. She smiles into the darkness of her home, and the shadows grit at her teeth. 

The door opens. “Hey, Skirk—”

Skirk stills. The words cut off. Kaeya. But she just saw him off, barely two hours ago.

She turns around. The boy is standing in her doorway, silent and stiff. The Abyss is like a gnawing shadow at his back; his eyes glint in the lamp glow. He is looking at her swords.

“Kaeya,” Skirk says. “What are you doing here.”

Kaeya’s eyes narrow. He steps into the house, his eyes scanning the room, taking in the packed bag, the weapons. “Where are you going?”

“Out.” She strides towards him. “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you back?”

Kaeya doesn’t answer her. Something ugly has crossed his face, unfamiliar and young and aching. His shoulders are locked stiff. “You’re leaving.”

“On a hunt,” Skirk snaps. “I am a hunter of the Abyss, boy. What did you think I do?” 

None of these words seem to comfort him. His hands have curled into smaller fists; he tucks them behind his back as if that would hide their shaking. “I—”

“Go back.”

His expression turns mulish. His feet lock. “No!”

Of all the times for him to turn childish. “I don’t have time for you,” Skirk hisses, abruptly incensed. She feels outside herself, beyond herself—every little annoyance built up into something crushing and unknown. This stupid little boy, always coming and going. As if her life is at his whims. 

Just because he has been left behind by everyone else, does that make him her problem? She has a life. She has made herself a life. She has never wanted anything more from it. 

She pushes past him for the door. The boy is frozen. Then he whirls on her. “When will you be back?”

“Who knows.”

“Tell me!”

She faces him. She is in the doorway, now, her shadow looming over the boy’s angry face. The blankets he has brought down with him almost every visit are still scattered across the room. The salt still on the counter. His cup of tea, half-drunk, gone cold. It tightens in her throat like a scream.

“I am not your watcher,” she says, sharp and biting and halfway to a snarl. “You are not my problem. I do not have time to escort you back and frankly, I don’t want to. Go home.”

Kaeya doesn’t move. His face has gone completely blank.

“Oh,” he says, at last. “I see.”

His expression changes. His eyes are as cold as his father’s. 

Skirk steps back and shuts the door in his face. She cannot help it. 

She has never seen such an awful smile.

.

In the market square the boy vanishes from her view, and she stops mid-way in the street to look for him. He pats her hand and smiles when she tells him to stay close. This stupid little boy. This foolish, lonely child.

“Don’t worry. I won’t get lost.”

It is not about getting lost. It is about losing him.

She cups the back of his head with her hand. He is so small. He is so young. Halfway swallowed by the crowd, overshadowed by that three-tailed little cloak. A child already bound to an oath. A child too clever for his own good. He does not know, yet, how terrible the world is. He thinks he knows. But he doesn’t. The world is so vast, and so terrible, and this child is so achingly small.

And she realizes, all at once, that she is terrified.

.

She walks into that endless dark for what must be hours.

It is a mindless, soothing pace; there is no need for tracking her quarry, no reason to mark her path. Her humanity alone is enough to draw the Abyss’s ire, and her footsteps stand stark in the dust. The Abyss is endless and it is untouched: no wind will hide her footprints, no weather will destroy her path. The further she goes, even the Irminsul trees thin out, the silver light of their branches gone dim and sparse. The deeper she walks into the Abyss, the hollower it becomes. Only shadow. Only that inky, endless dark. The only stars that exist here is the power that burns at her fingertips.

Skirk walks. She does not look back.

The ground is dust and old stone beneath her feet: pitted, breaking, rotted through with putrid water. The world of Teyvat breaks into the Abyss in pieces—a waterfall of the coldest ocean, the sinking forest depth. Old bones crack beneath her feet and the mountains smell of decayed flowers. It is as quiet as a grave. The only peace that exists in the Abyss is the emptiness.

In the darkness, something shifts. A gleam like a flicker of lightning. Skirk turns her head, and reaches for her spear. She is smiling. She cannot remember when she started, but now she cannot seem to stop.

The headache quiets. The itching fades to a hum. The stars burn behind the grit of her teeth, and when the beast of tainted blood leaps swift and silent for her throat, Skirk brings her fist across its skull with a crack.

The battle that follows is bloody, and brutal. Time blurs into nothing. The beast makes not a sound—not a roar, not a whimper—and all she can hear is the beat of blood in her ears, the muffled breaking, instances of her own rising laughter. When the thing finally stops moving, there is gore scouring her arm up to the elbow, and her smile feels like it’s going to break her face in two.

Ah. How she has missed this.

She stays hunched over the corpse for a long moment, breathing in deep, and then steps back to wrench her blade free. Blood pools between the soles of her boots, slick between her fingers. It is familiar, and comforting in its implications. A battle well fought. A victory made worthwhile.

Something scuffs in the dirt behind her. Skirk turns, weapon raised, a new wild smile on her face.

Wide eyes. A human face. 

Kaeya.

Her weapon drops just in time, the bloodied tip scouring into the ground. Skirk stares down at him, stunned. Kaeya stares back up at her. His face is bloodless. In the shadowed darkness of this Abyssal pit, his little cloak shines like stars.

“Kaeya,” Skirk says, blankly. “Kaeya?”

He doesn’t answer. His eyes flicker past her to the corpse of the beast. His expression is unknown to her.

The euphoria of the fight has turned ashy in her mouth. “You followed me. You little idiot— you followed me?”

She has been walking for hours. So focused on leaving him behind she hadn’t even thought to look back. She can’t tell if she’s angrier at him or at herself.

“I wanted to know where you were going,” Kaeya says, blankly. “…Is it dead?”

“Of course it is dead,” Skirk hisses. “I told you—”

Kaeya’s eyes flicker back to her. “Go home, Kaeya,” he says, in a mocking imitation of her voice. The blankness has cracked open on his face; she can see the whites of his eyes. “I don’t have time for you, Kaeya. You’re right. You’re not my watcher. I don’t care what you think and I don’t have to do what you say.”

“How many times do I have to tell you the Abyss is dangerous before you listen to me!?” Skirk snaps, voice rising. It is the closest she has come to shouting in years. “I did not know you were there! Anything could have killed you! I could have killed you!”

“What do you care,” Kaeya says, shaking.

She cannot understand him. She cannot understand why he returned to her house, and she cannot understand why he followed her out here now. For answers? Out of spite? Just because? She suspects even Kaeya doesn’t know. From empty to angry in a blink; from blank-faced to shaking before her eyes. She doesn’t know what to do with him. She doesn’t know what to do.

“You stupid little boy,” Skirk says, and buries her head in her hands. It is suddenly so hard to breathe. 

There is silence. Kaeya does not say anything. 

Skirk inhales, exhales—inhales, sighs. Her hands are shaking. Her hands have never shook. She is the true fool, here. As if anger has helped with any of this. As if it has done anything but made them both bleed.

She breathes again. Then she lowers her hands. The blood is tacky on her face. Kaeya is staring at the ground. He is still shaking—or perhaps, just shivering. How far he has followed her into the dark. 

Skirk sighs. Then she pulls her Abyss-mage stolen cloak up over her head.

He jumps when she throws it over him. She kneels down to fix it over his shoulders, and he draws away like she has burned him. His lips are tinging blue. He looks freezing.

“Kaeya,” she says, tiredly.

“I hate you.”

“I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t look at her. Skirk closes her eyes, and takes another breath. “You are freezing,” she says, at last. “You have walked a long way. Please just take the stupid cloak.”

He glares daggers at the ground. But at last he reaches up, and pulls the cloak snug around his neck. It is too big for him. The muted red clashes with the blue of his eyes. And yet, she cannot help but think it suits him better than his three-tailed cloak ever did. 

No longer does he look like a boy bound to an oath. Now he looks just as he is—a little boy, small enough that Skirk's cloak is swimming on him.

She reaches out for him, and that sharp stare flies on her, instead. Skirk meets his gaze evenly. “Can you walk?” 

Kaeya’s jaw trembles. He looks away first.

Skirk picks him up and rises, steady, to her feet. Seven years old and yet he is lighter than even her swords, easy to settle in the crook of her arm. 

Kaeya is as stiff as a board. His face has gone terribly blank again. He barely even seems to breathe.

She hesitates, for a long moment. She tries to think of something to say. Nothing comes to mind.

In the end she doesn’t say anything. She holsters her swords on her back, and starts the long walk back.

The darkness is like a breathing thing; it shifts every time she blinks. Her footsteps trail off endlessly through the dust, matched by a smaller set. Nothing else moves, and nothing else breathes. The cold is sharp against her turtle-neck. In contrast, the boy is like a furnace. She can hear every quiet breath, and feel the hummingbird hum of his heart through her hand. 

“I am sorry,” Skirk says, at last, into this silence. “That I said those things.”

No movement. At last, Kaeya turns his head into her shoulder, as if to hide his face. “It was true.”

“It was not.”

There is a wooden quality to his voice. “Yes, it was. I’m not your problem. I just followed you around. You don’t even like me anyway; I always knew you didn’t. That’s why it was funny.”

“It was not true,” Skirk repeats, for lack of anything else to say. “…And I do not dislike you.”

At this, Kaeya actually pulls back a little to stare at her. Skirk snorts. “You annoy me, yes,” she says, briefly amused. “But you are a child. All children are irritating. You are not special in that regard.”

“But—”

“Kaeya,” she says, and he falls silent again. “It is not your fault. It is not you. I am just… I am not a good person, boy. I have never tried to be. But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, regardless.”

He doesn’t say anything. 

“It is not your fault,” Skirk says again, quietly. “And if you must know the truth, little fool, then listen well for once in your life: I am so very grateful to have met you.”

He hides his face in her collar. He doesn’t say another word. She presses her hand against his back to keep him from falling, and can feel him shake beneath her hand. 

She keeps walking. Slowly, the boy relaxes. His hand has curled cautiously in the fabric of her turtleneck. His breathing soft and even. He has fallen asleep, she realizes. His head on her shoulder, his little arms wrapped around her neck. 

He is so small, and she is almost shaken by it. She lifts her hand and palms the back of his head, her fingers curling in his hair. It is the smallest gesture of comfort. But at this touch, the last strain falls away from the boy’s sleeping face. His brow unfurrowed. It is the most at peace that she has ever seen this child look.

Skirk stares off into the darkness, the boy heavy in her arms, and thinks: What am I to do with you?

There is no answer. Perhaps she will never have an answer. Perhaps this fear is an endless thing, and Skirk simply the next in line to inherit it. Did her mother live with this fear? Her father? Does everyone?

Silver roots bleed back into the false sky. The darkness lightens into the usual gloom. She does not stop, and she doesn’t falter. She thinks of her family, long since lost to the curse. She thinks of the Bough Keeper, and the way he stood guard over the boy when he cried himself to sleep. She thinks of Kaeya’s own father. Those empty, uncaring words.

Kaeya, who is always testing the line in the sand. Kaeya, too curious and too clever for his own good. Always with a pithy quip. Always with a sharp word. Always seeking something—regard, or attention, or just a response. He is right that he irritates her. The child is annoying, and bothersome, and always in the way. But then, she had meant what she said too. He is a child. He is meant to be those things. That is what all children are. That is what people are like.

It is not Kaeya’s fault that his father did not want him.

She wonders if he knows that.

Her house is coming in view. The slope of her stone roof is almost invisible against the dark stone up above. It is only the Irminsul that gives her away: her home, that blot of shadow, stark against the silver weave.

She lets her eyes trail up to the false sky, contemplative. She wonders at what the boy sees in it. His wide-eyed, ever-watchful awe. She cannot find it. She cannot see it. The distant shine of the Irminsul trees look less like stars and more like a lie.

He has you, the Bough Keeper had said, all those months ago. The words have haunted her ever since. They haunt her now. He has you.

Skirk stands before the door of her small and shrunken home, and wonders if it could be enough.

She opens the door carefully, and has to force it with her shoulder. The boy mumbles but does not wake. She steps in through her front door, and toes off her boots by the entryway. The silence is different, here. All she can hear is the rasp of her own breath, and the distant shuffle of her footsteps. It warms the darkness in a way she never knew it could be warmed.

She moves to lay the boy to rest in the bed, half-planning to take the floor, but her foot hits a blanket half-way across the room. She looks down. For a moment, she cannot move.

The boy has taken his pile of blankets, and arranged them to make a bed.

Skirk stares at it. The boy sleeps on, oblivious. He has made it up and everything: a folded pillow, one corner of the sheets turned down in a sharp triangle. He had probably done it just to mock her. She told him to go home so he set up shop on her floors— but it looks so real, and she can imagine his pride, and for a moment she is just so still. 

Then she kneels down, and tucks him in. 

The boy doesn’t even stir. He turns his face into his blanket pillow, the Abyss cloak practically swimming around him, and drops right back off to sleep. 

Skirk unhooks her swords and leans them against the wall. She sits down on the lone bed. She looks out into the silent room, and then lays down, brings her feet up, and turns over to sleep.

She dreams of falling stars, and wakes up to the smell of ginger tea.

.

.

.

Time passes. She finds an apprentice passed out in the dirt of the Abyss, and loses him and Kaeya both to the world outside. She moves on. She keeps walking. The months turn to years, and the years to a decade, on and on until even the memory has turned faded and fond.

Skirk remains. She always has, and she always will.

The light of the Great Tree is dimmer now; the lamps burning low. “Here you are,” says the weaver merchant, and pushes the paper-wrapped bundle into her hands. “The usual, as ever. Are you certain you don’t want me to weave you something else, Skirk? A proper cloak, at least.”

The trading ring is halfway to closing, the crowd thinned and lights lowered in a mockery of night. Skirk squints through the gloom at her hand—damn her age and her damn failing eyesight—and then at last pushes the Rifthound claws across the table. “I am certain, Kåre. Let it go already.”

It is an old argument. Kåre shakes his head at her, but accepts the Rifthound claws without further comment. She has traded with him for over thirteen years now, and he has learned her tells almost as well as she’s learned his. 

“At this point, I’d even give it to you as a gift. I mean, really—”

“The mage cloaks work fine, and also they are free. Good-bye, Kåre.”

He sighs, but he is smiling. Next to him, his daughter—now running the loom, for Kåre’s fingers have grown too withered for complicated weaving—muffles a laugh into her hand. Kåre’s hair is streaked with grey these days, his eyes lined; he is lucky, to have grown so old. Skirk is much the same. It is a point of pride between them.

“Until next time,” Kåre says, warmly. “It was good to see you, my friend. Take care out there in the dark, yes?”

She waves over her shoulder, annoyed with him. Kåre’s laughter follows her back out into the street. 

Her return to the Abyss is an almost pleasant walk, these days—long gone are the years of visible disgust and avoidance, at least in the marketplace. The woman who trades in blacksmithing wares gives her a passing smile; the boy who has taken over for his parents in making black broth spares her a friendly nod hello. It is funny, the way things turn out. Once, none of them would have looked her in the eye.

Skirk greets them back, but she does not slow. She has finished her trades for the day. Now, all she wants to do is sleep. Age has never lessened her bloodlust, but it has made her fonder of home.

The path is as familiar as ever, though she still startles, a little, when she enters the Bough Keeper’s grove and finds it empty. The great silver doors have been sealed shut in his absence; the silver trees shine, untouched and unchanged despite the many years. Dainsleif has been gone for almost two years, now. She cannot believe that she almost misses him.

She wonders what he left for, after those five hundred years of waiting. She wonders what he has found.

…Who he has found, perhaps.

She frowns at the trees. Then she turns, and heads for the Abyss. The branch of the Irminsul burns cold in her pocket when she reaches the doors; it is only by their grace that she can still enter and exit through this path.

She reaches home within the hour, and pushes open her front door with a sigh. Her house has only ever been for just her. But it still irritates her, some days, just how empty it looks.

Old age has made her maudlin. Perhaps it is a good thing Dainsleif has gone: he would laugh and laugh.

She lays down her swords, the new weave, and all her other packages. The pot is still half-full and cold on her stove; she sparks the flint and lights the coals, and sets about preparing her tea. The smell is soothing. It fills the room.

She settles into the chair heavily, the cup warm in her hands. The steep is strong enough to tickle in her throat. She inhales, savoring the flavor, and then almost snorts in her cup when the memory hits her sideways: the way Ajax used to complain about drinking it, the wrinkle of his nose when he thought she wouldn’t notice. He used to try and sneak honey into the cup, and she would smack it out of his hands every time.

Kaeya had never helped matters, of course. He had only laughed, and steeped it stronger, if only to see Ajax’s face twist.

The memory fades. The echo of Kaeya’s laughter makes the silence ring all the louder. Skirk stares at the empty air, and lets it settle. That was long ago, now. Her home has sat quietly for almost thirteen years, and yet: sometimes it still takes her by surprise. 

She sips at her tea, deep in thought. The warmth settles in her chest. She thinks of the market, and the empty grove. She thinks of where Dainsleif must be now, the way the generals have started whispering, the golden-eyed youth dyed in Abyssal darkness that she sees, sometimes, beneath the distant arch of the Khaenri’ahn capital. Time has passed, but the world moves ever on. 

There is something coming. There are creatures stirring from the depth. And though she is old, Skirk is not without fight just yet.

She thinks of the child she lost long ago, and smiles.

“Ah, little fool,” she tells the emptiness. “Causing me troubled thoughts even now.”

The lone lamp flickers. Her black broth is growing cold on her counter. And the old blankets, though worn threadbare throughout the years, still sit piled in the corner of her home.

Skirk sets down her cup, gathers her weapons, and leaves to find the future.