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Childe meets him on the streets of Liyue Harbor, and something in the air shifts.
It is not the scent of salt or the cry of seabirds, nor the rhythmic hum of the city he has come to know in this life. It is something deeper, something that scrapes at the marrow of his bones, that lingers like a ghost just beyond the reach of memory. He doesn't understand why the sight of this man—tall, poised, golden-eyed—makes his heart stutter.
He doesn't understand why, when the man turns to him and smiles, something in his soul aches.
---
The feeling follows him through the rest of the day.
It clings to his skin like morning mist, refuses to dissipate even when he throws himself into his work. He negotiates with merchants, signs papers, smiles his practiced Harbinger smile—but beneath it all, something gnaws at him. A void where a memory should be. A name he cannot recall.
That night, he dreams of amber eyes watching him die.
He wakes gasping, hand clutching at a chest that bears no wound.
---
The first time Zhongli sees him again, it is in the golden hush of evening, when the sun spills molten light over the rooftops of Liyue. The sight stops him, root and marrow, as if time itself has fractured.
The man in front of him—no, the boy—laughs as he leans against a merchant's stall, an easy, reckless grin carving dimples into his cheeks. His copper hair is a splash of wildfire against the dying light, his ocean-blue eyes so achingly familiar that Zhongli feels his breath stutter.
Ajax.
The name is not his own in this life. No one calls him that now.
Childe. Tartaglia. A Harbinger of the Fatui, forged in ice and war. A soldier, a weapon, a stranger—
Not a stranger.
Because Zhongli remembers.
He remembers a battlefield lost to time, where blood ran thick as rivers, where a spear found home in Ajax's chest, where he cradled his lover's body with trembling hands and called his name long after his soul had fled. He remembers pressing his forehead to Ajax's cooling skin, murmuring prayers he knew the gods would not answer.
A thousand years, a thousand autumns, a thousand lonely cups of tea sipped in silence. The weight of eternity heavy upon him, as he waited for a ghost that would not return.
And yet—
Here he stands. Alive, and yet not.
Reborn.
The world narrows to this moment: the sound of Childe's laughter, bright and sharp as breaking glass. The way his hands gesture wildly as he haggles over the price of silk. The casual tilt of his head, the flash of teeth when he grins—
All of it familiar. All of it wrong.
Because Ajax never smiled like that. Not with such careless ease, such unguarded joy. Ajax's smiles had been hard-won things, stolen between battles, soft and secret and meant only for Zhongli.
This boy before him wears Ajax's face but does not carry his ghosts.
Perhaps that is a mercy.
Perhaps it is the cruelest thing the world has ever done.
Zhongli clenches his hands at his sides. His heart, a thing long petrified, quakes within its stone prison. He should turn away. Should let this boy live his life unburdened. It would be cruel to remind him of a past he does not know, to pour memories into a vessel that no longer holds them.
But then Childe turns, and their eyes meet.
Zhongli cannot help the way his lips part, how his body leans forward before his mind can command restraint.
A flicker of something passes through Childe's gaze—fleeting, hazy, like a dream slipping through fingers. His brow furrows, and for a heartbeat, Zhongli dares to hope—
But then the moment is gone, swept away like autumn leaves in a storm.
"Do I know you?" Childe asks, tilting his head, and Zhongli sways under the weight of his voice. It is a cruel thing, to hear the same timbre, the same warmth, stripped of recognition.
Zhongli exhales slowly, a motion practiced over centuries.
"No," he says, though it shatters him to say it. "You do not."
Childe shrugs. "Huh. Weird. Felt like… never mind." He flashes another grin, sharp and boyish, and Zhongli wants so desperately to reach for him, to pull him close, to tell him—
You loved me once. You swore yourself to me beneath a sky heavy with stars. You died in my arms. I have mourned you for a thousand years and counting.
---
Childe walks away.
Of course he does. He has no reason to stay, no thread of memory tethering him to this stranger with sad eyes and careful words.
Zhongli stands alone in the fading light, watching until that copper head disappears into the crowd. Only then does he permit himself to tremble. Only then does he allow his knees to weaken, his breath to come ragged and uneven.
He finds a bench. Sits. Stares at his hands.
They are steady now. They have held mountains. They have held the weight of contracts that shaped civilizations.
But once, they held a dying man and could not keep him. Once, they were stained with blood that would not wash away, no matter how many centuries passed.
Zhongli closes his eyes against the sunset and tries not to remember the way Ajax used to trace the lines of his palms, murmuring nonsense about fate and fortune.
"Your hands," Ajax had said once, voice drowsy with sleep, "could hold the whole world. But they only ever hold me."
Not anymore.
---
Zhongli is careful after that.
The moment he sees the young harbinger—sees those ocean eyes, that sharp, boyish smile—he knows.
The world has brought him back.
Not as he was, not as the man Zhongli once held in his arms, kissed under the pale hush of the moon, whispered devotion to between the hush of battles and the quiet of morning light. But as something new. A blank slate, untouched by the weight of history.
Childe does not know him.
Childe will never know him.
But Zhongli does.
It is a cruel thing, memory. Like the tide that recedes and returns, like the mountain that stands long after the civilization it bore has crumbled, Zhongli remains. A god in mortal skin, walking among those who do not know his name in the language of worship anymore.
And yet, what is worship to a man who once held love in his hands?
What is eternity when the one he would have shared it with is dust beneath his feet?
---
In the days that follow, Zhongli finds himself walking the same streets at the same hours, a ghost haunting his own life. He tells himself he is not hoping to see Childe again. He tells himself many lies.
But when he does see him—laughing with a street vendor, practicing his swordwork by the docks, counting mora with the focused intensity of someone who has known poverty—Zhongli's traitorous heart leaps.
Each time, he thinks: This is the last. I will not do this again.
Each time, he is a liar.
---
The past is a thing of dust and ruin. Zhongli has lived long enough to understand that.
But it does not stop him from remembering.
The way his name once fell from another mouth, softer, unburdened by violence. The way laughter used to echo against the cliffs of Jueyun Karst, stolen moments carved into eternity. The way fingers once traced the seams of his robes, tentative and reverent, as if memorizing the shape of him.
"You are immortal," his beloved had once murmured, curled against his chest, hair damp from the rain. "And yet, you love as if you are not."
Zhongli had only smiled, pressing his lips to his forehead. "A contract must be honored, no matter how temporary it may be."
There had been so many contracts between them, in the end. Spoken and unspoken. Vows whispered in darkness, promises sealed with touch rather than words.
I will come back to you.
I will wait for you.
I will love you until the stars forget to shine.
Ajax had broken the first. Zhongli had kept the second. The third—
The third, he fears, will outlast even the death of stars.
---
Zhongli does not dream often. Or rather, he does not allow himself to.
Dreams are a dangerous thing for the undying. They are a door left ajar, a wound left to fester. And in a life as long as his, they do not come as gentle phantoms. They arrive as hauntings.
But that night, with the echoes of Childe's laughter still ringing in his ears, Zhongli dreams.
The battlefield is the same as he remembers it.
The scent of rain and iron. The sound of war, distant and fading. A body, heavy in his arms.
It had ended in blood.
Of course it had.
Mortal lives are fragile things, and his had not been spared the cruelty of time. Zhongli remembers holding him as he bled, remembers the way his hands trembled—Geo against flesh, stone against something too soft to last.
The battlefield had been quiet that day. Not in the way that peace was quiet. Not in the way that morning broke with birdsong.
It was the quiet of the dead. The quiet of war settling into the earth like an unholy offering.
Zhongli had kneeled then, his hands stained with something darker than blood. He had known grief before, known it in the way gods knew sacrifice. But this—
This was the first time he begged.
"Don't go," he had whispered, pressing his forehead to the cooling skin of the man he loved. "Not yet."
But even gods do not barter with death.
The rain had started then. Soft at first, then harder, as if the sky itself wept for what had been lost. It mixed with the blood, diluted it, washed it into the mud until the earth drank deep of their tragedy.
"Morax," Ajax had whispered, and his voice was so small, so fragile. Nothing like the fierce warrior who had laughed in the face of impossible odds. "Morax, I'm cold."
Zhongli had pulled him closer, tried to shield him from the rain, from the cold, from death itself. "I know. I know, my love. Just a moment more. Just—"
But there were no more moments.
Time, that great river, had run out for Ajax. And Zhongli, who commanded stone and earth and the very foundations of the world, could do nothing but watch as it swept him away.
"You promised," the dying man whispers.
His hands, once calloused with the weight of a blade, are limp now. The strength that had once rivaled the tide itself is gone, washed away like a castle built on the shore. His breath comes in shallow gasps, and Zhongli—Morax, Rex Lapis, the God of Contracts, the Unyielding Stone—can do nothing but watch as the light leaves his eyes.
"You promised," Ajax repeats, and his fingers grasp at Zhongli's robes in desperation. "You—"
Zhongli grips him tighter, as if he can keep him here, as if his devotion alone could defy death.
"I know," he whispers. "I know."
His beloved smiles, and it is a shattered thing.
"Don't—don't forget me."
As if such a thing were possible.
The gods may not weep, but in that moment, as the man he loved exhales one last breath, Zhongli feels something inside him break.
"I don't want to go," Ajax whispered, voice broken and wet and nearly gone.
Zhongli cradled him, forehead pressed to his, trying—desperately, hopelessly—to anchor him to the world.
But the body in his arms was starting to go still, and the sky had wept for him when Zhongli could not.
"You won't," Zhongli promised, though they both knew it was a lie. "You will return."
And he had.
But not for him.
In the dream, Zhongli stays there long after the warmth has fled. Long after the rain has stopped. Long after the other soldiers have come to collect their dead.
He stays until someone—he cannot remember who, some adeptus perhaps, or one of the few mortals who knew his true nature—gently pries Ajax's body from his arms.
He stays until his knees have gone numb against the mud.
He stays because leaving feels like betrayal, like abandonment, like one more broken promise in a life that will stretch on and on and on without end.
In the dream, he whispers: "I will find you. In the next life, and the one after that. I will know you. I will—"
But the dream changes, shifts, becomes the present.
And there is Childe, alive and laughing, looking at him with eyes that do not recognize. Looking through him.
He wakes with the name of the dead on his lips.
The room is quiet, the scent of incense thick in the air. His body is still, but his hands are trembling.
His hands are always trembling when he wakes from dreams like these.
Zhongli exhales and closes his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temples. It has been so long. He has lost so many. This grief is not new. It is not special.
And yet—
And yet.
Childe's voice—not his voice, not really—lingers in his mind, bright and sharp like a knife against silk. Zhongli wonders, briefly, if the world is playing some cruel joke upon him.
Would it have been better if Childe had never returned at all?
Would it have been kinder?
---
The dawn finds him at his window, watching Liyue wake.
Merchants open their stalls. Children chase each other through the streets. Life continues, indifferent to the grief of gods.
Somewhere out there, Childe is waking too. Perhaps he is sharpening his blades. Perhaps he is writing letters to siblings who love this version of him, who have never known Ajax, who would not mourn him if he died.
Perhaps he, too, had dreams he cannot remember. Perhaps he woke with a name on his lips that he does not recognize.
Zhongli presses his forehead against the cool glass and permits himself one moment of weakness.
One moment to imagine a world where Ajax had lived. Where they had grown old together—or rather, where Ajax had grown old while Zhongli remained, unchanging, watching silver thread through copper hair, watching ocean eyes dim with time instead of death.
It would have hurt, that slow loss.
But it would have been a natural hurt. An expected one.
Not this. Not this endless, echoing absence. Not this ghost made flesh that does not know it is haunting him.
---
"Hey, xiansheng," Childe grins, nudging him with an elbow. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Zhongli only smiles, composed as ever, concealing the way his heart is splintering anew. He wants to reach for him, wants to trace the shape of his face, wants to find the remnants of the man he lost beneath skin that is the same and yet not.
Instead, he simply folds his hands in front of him and says, "You remind me of someone I once knew."
Childe tilts his head, curiosity flickering in his gaze.
"Yeah?"
Zhongli allows himself one last indulgence, lets his gaze linger on the way the afternoon light catches in the copper of his hair, the curve of his lips—so familiar, and yet belonging to a stranger.
Then he turns away.
"It is nothing," he says, voice steady. "Nothing at all."
But when he walks home that night, he whispers a name Childe does not know, into the hush of the wind.
And the stars, uncaring and eternal, bear silent witness to the grief of a god.
The streets are quieter at night. Lanterns sway in the breeze, casting dancing shadows that remind Zhongli of other nights, other walks home.
Once, he had not walked them alone. Once, there had been a hand in his, fingers laced together like a promise. There had been comfortable silence punctuated by Ajax's occasional observations—about the stars, about the way the harbor looked like spilled ink in the darkness, about nothing and everything.
"I like this," Ajax had said one night, swinging their joined hands between them. "Walking. Just being with you."
Zhongli had tightened his grip, afraid even then of the ephemeral nature of happiness. "As do I."
"When I'm gone—" Ajax had started, but Zhongli had stopped him with a kiss, desperate and pleading.
Don't. Don't speak of it.
But Ajax had pulled back, had cradled Zhongli's face with calloused hands, and said with terrible gentleness: "When I'm gone, I want you to remember this. Not the end. This. Just us, walking home."
Now, Zhongli walks home alone, and remembers everything.
The dying, most of all.
---
The stars are cruel enough, after all, to lead Ajax back to him.
Aj— Childe does not remember, but fate is not so merciful as to let him leave Zhongli's orbit entirely. He returns, again and again, laughter in his mouth and fire in his bones, the same as he always was.
Zhongli watches, endures.
There are moments—small things. The way Tartaglia hesitates before touching him, the way his brow furrows when Zhongli says his name, as if he knows. As if something inside him remembers being loved by a god.
But he does not ask, and Zhongli does not tell. Because if Childe remembers, then he will know how he once died. How he once left him behind. And Zhongli—who has spent a thousand years carrying the weight of memory alone—thinks, perhaps, that he would rather suffer this burden forever than ask the man he once loved to bear it, too.
The moments accumulate like sediment, layer upon layer, building something neither of them acknowledges.
A brush of fingers when Childe passes him a teacup. The way Childe's laughter cuts short when their eyes meet across a room. How Zhongli finds himself buying osmanthus wine even though he drinks it alone now, because once—
Once, it had been Ajax's favorite.
"You're strange, you know that?" Childe says one afternoon, sprawled on a bench with the careless grace of youth. "You look at me like you're trying to solve a puzzle."
Zhongli's breath catches. "Do I?"
"Yeah. It's weird. But not bad weird. Just..." Childe trails off, frowning at the sky. "Familiar weird."
Familiar.
The word lodges in Zhongli's chest like a stone.
"Perhaps you remind me of someone," he says carefully.
"Yeah? They must've been pretty great if you look at me like that."
He was, Zhongli thinks but does not say. He was everything.
---
But memory, like stone, does not erode so easily.
And one day, in the quiet hush of a Liyue night, beneath the lantern glow and the hush of the sea, Childe looks at him and says,
"Have we met before?"
The world stills. Zhongli does not breathe.
Childe laughs, shaking his head. "It's strange. Sometimes, when I see you, it's like—" He stops, frowning. "Never mind. It's nothing."
It is not nothing.
Zhongli closes his eyes.
And lets him forget.
Because if Childe remembers, then he will also remember the pain.
The battlefield. The dying light in his eyes. The way his voice had broken on Zhongli's name, reaching for him even as life fled his body.
He will remember the cold. The loneliness of death.
Zhongli will not let him suffer twice.
So he nods, offers the smallest of smiles, and says, "No, I don't believe we have."
And Childe—Ajax—laughs, a fleeting thing, and moves on.
Zhongli watches him go. And does not stop him.
---
The lie tastes like ash.
Zhongli has lived for millennia. He has told countless untruths—diplomatic necessities, strategic omissions, the little fictions required to navigate mortal society. But this lie is different.
This lie is both mercy and cowardice, kindness and selfishness.
He tells himself he does it for Childe's sake. To spare him the weight of a past he did not choose, a love he does not remember, a death that still haunts Zhongli's dreams.
But there is another truth, harder and sharper:
If Childe remembers and does not love him—if he looks at Zhongli with recognition but not affection, with understanding but not wanting—
That would be worse than this. Worse than being a stranger.
At least now, Zhongli can pretend that the love still exists, somewhere, buried in Childe's soul like a seed waiting for spring. At least now, he can imagine that if the memories returned, so too would the tenderness. The soft words whispered in darkness. The way Ajax used to trace Zhongli's spine and call him beautiful.
If Childe remembers and does not love him, that fantasy dies.
And Zhongli has endured much in his long life, but he is not certain he can endure that.
---
Zhongli watches from afar.
It is what the gods have always done.
He sees Childe laughing with his siblings in Snezhnaya, his arms wrapped tight around them as if afraid to let go. He sees him fighting with reckless abandon, that same wild hunger in his eyes, as if he has always been reaching for something just beyond his grasp.
Zhongli watches, and he does not interfere.
This is how it must be.
Ajax is gone.
Only Childe remains.
And that should be enough.
(It is not. It will never be. But gods have always learned to live with sorrow.)
---
Sometimes, in his weaker moments, Zhongli wonders what would happen if he simply... left.
If he returned to Jueyun Karst, or ventured to distant lands where Childe's laughter could not reach him. If he buried himself in stone and sleep and let the centuries pass without witness.
It would be easier.
But he does not go.
Leaving would mean missing the small things: the way Childe's nose crinkles when he laughs, the determined set of his jaw when he's focused, the rare moments of softness that flit across his features like sunlight through clouds.
Ajax is gone. But pieces of him remain, scattered through Childe like fragments of a broken mirror. And Zhongli collects each glinting shard, hoards them in his memory alongside everything else he cannot bear to lose.
So he stays. And watches. And suffers.
As he has always done.
---
The next time they meet, Childe is smiling.
"Hey, xiansheng," he says, as he always does.
Zhongli does not smile back.
"Would you like to join me for tea?"
Childe pauses, as if the invitation surprises him. But then he shrugs, easy and boyish.
"Sure. Why not?"
Zhongli does not tell him why. Does not tell him that, once upon a time, there was another afternoon like this—an afternoon of quiet laughter and stolen glances, of fingers grazing against porcelain, of a promise whispered into the rim of a teacup.
Does not tell him that once, he had reached across the table, taken his hand in his own, and vowed:
"As long as I draw breath, I will never leave you."
(Zhongli does not lie. He never lies. And yet, in the end, it was not him who left.)
They sit in a small teahouse overlooking the harbor. The same one where, a thousand years ago, Zhongli had first offered Ajax tea, and Ajax had wrinkled his nose and declared it 'too bitter' before drinking it anyway, just to be near him.
Childe orders jasmine, not osmanthus. He drinks it without complaint.
"You really like this stuff, huh?" Childe says, gesturing at Zhongli's cup. "The fancy tea, the fancy words, all of it."
"I appreciate quality," Zhongli says. "In all things."
Childe grins. "Is that why you put up with me? Because I'm quality?"
Because you were loved, Zhongli thinks. Because you died in my arms. Because every moment with you is an echo of something I lost, and I am helpless to turn away from it.
"You are... intriguing," he says instead.
"Intriguing! That's a fancy way of calling someone weird." But Childe is still grinning, pleased despite himself.
The afternoon sun slants through the windows, painting everything in shades of amber. For a moment—just a moment—Zhongli allows himself to exist in this present, rather than drowning in the past.
It is not the same. It will never be the same.
But perhaps... perhaps it is something. Perhaps it is enough to sit across from this echo of his beloved and share tea and small talk and the comfortable silence between words. Perhaps it is enough to love him like this: from a distance, with no expectation of return.
(It is not enough. It will never be enough. But it is all he has.)
Instead, he watches Childe sip his tea and listens to the sound of a voice that is familiar but does not know him.
And he wonders if perhaps this is what death truly is—
Not the end of life, but the slow, aching realization that the ones you loved no longer remember your name.
---
The first time Zhongli lets himself say the name, he is alone.
The world is quiet, save for the lulling murmur of the ocean against the cliffs of Guyun Stone Forest. The sky is heavy with the weight of an approaching storm.
He closes his eyes and exhales, voice slipping into the wind.
"Ajax."
A name lost to time. A name spoken by a mouth that no longer remembers it.
A name that once belonged to the man who had pressed his forehead to Zhongli's and whispered, "Even if the world forgets me, you won't, will you?"
No. Zhongli had never forgotten.
That was the cruelest part of being a god.
Mortals lived and died. They turned to dust, to echoes, to myths carved into stone that crumbled with the centuries.
But gods? Gods remembered.
Even when it hurt.
Especially when it hurt.
He says the name again. And again. Lets it tear from his throat like a confession, like a prayer, like a scream.
"Ajax. Ajax. Ajax."
The wind carries it away. The sea swallows it. The stones bear witness and say nothing. This is the only place he allows himself this weakness. This is the only place he permits the full weight of his grief to surface, where no mortal can see the God of Contracts break.
Because that is what this is: a breaking. Slow and inevitable, like stone worn away by water. Each day with Childe chips away another piece of Zhongli's carefully constructed composure. Each smile that is not quite right, each laugh that rings hollow compared to memory, each moment of non-recognition—
Death by a thousand small cuts.
He had thought watching Ajax die would be the worst pain he would ever endure.
He had been wrong.
This is worse. This slow haunting, this living grief. At least death had been final. At least the body in his arms had been still, past suffering.
But Childe lives. Breathes. Laughs. And does not know what he has forgotten.
Does not know that he is killing Zhongli all over again, one unknowing smile at a time.
---
The rain begins to fall.
Zhongli stands at the edge of the cliffs, watching the waves churn, his robes growing heavy with water.
Once, long ago, he had stood on this very shore with him. Ajax had laughed, wind-tousled and alive, reaching for his hand like he had no fear of a god's touch.
"You're so serious all the time," Ajax had teased. "Come on, Morax. Just this once—race me to the water."
Zhongli had sighed, ever patient, ever composed. "You will lose."
Ajax had grinned. "Then let me lose to you, just this once."
(He had lost more than a race, in the end.)
The rain comes harder now, seeping into Zhongli's bones, washing away nothing at all.
He does not cry.
He cannot cry.
But grief is its own kind of flood.
Zhongli sinks to his knees at the cliff's edge, lets the rain hammer down upon him until he cannot tell where the water ends and he begins.
There is a story mortals tell, about the Geo Archon's stone heart. They say nothing can move him, that he is as unchanging as the mountains themselves.
They do not know about this.
They do not know that gods can shatter, too.
He presses his palms flat against the stone—his stone, born of his power, shaped by his will—and feels it respond to him. It would be so easy to let it swallow him. To sink into the earth and sleep for another thousand years, until this ache has dulled to something bearable.
But he does not.
Because somewhere in Liyue Harbor, Childe is alive. And as long as he lives, Zhongli will watch over him.
It is the last contract he can keep.
"Morax."
The voice behind him is familiar.
Zhongli stills.
It is the voice of a man who does not remember that name.
And yet, standing there, drenched by the storm, heart thrumming like a war drum in his chest, Zhongli allows himself one foolish, fleeting hope—
That somehow, some way, Childe has remembered. That Ajax has clawed his way out of the abyss of forgetfulness, that the world has not stolen everything.
He turns.
Childe is there, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in scrutiny.
"You've been acting weird," he says, and there is something hesitant in his voice. Not understanding or remembrance.
Suspicion.
Zhongli's breath is measured. He must be careful.
He cannot afford to hope.
"Have I?" he replies, his tone as even as the tide.
Childe's frown deepens. "Yeah. You look at me like—"
He hesitates, searching for the right words, and for a terrible, agonizing second, Zhongli almost wishes he would say it.
Like you lost me once. Like you loved me before I knew you. Like I was once your whole world.
But Childe only exhales, shaking his head.
"Like you know something I don't."
Zhongli closes his eyes. If only you knew, Ajax.
But he does not say the name aloud.
The dead do not hear their names when they have forgotten who they are.
And so, Zhongli merely turns back to the sea, standing where memory and time collide, and says, "It is nothing."
(But it is everything.)
Childe doesn't leave.
Zhongli expects him to—expects the boy to scoff, to shrug, to walk away muttering about strange consultants and their stranger moods. But he doesn't. Instead, he steps closer. Close enough that Zhongli can feel the warmth of him, solid and alive in a way that Ajax will never be again.
"You're getting soaked," Childe observes.
"I have endured worse than rain."
"That's not what I—" Childe cuts himself off, frustrated. "You know what? Fine. Stand here and get pneumonia if you want. I don't care."
But he doesn't leave.
They stand there together, two figures against the storm, and Zhongli wonders if this is mercy or torture.
To have him so close, and yet so impossibly far.
"Why did you come here?" Zhongli asks quietly.
Childe shrugs. "Saw you heading this way. You looked..." He trails off, then forces a laugh. "I don't know. You looked like you shouldn't be alone."
Something in Zhongli's chest cracks further. Even without memory, even without understanding, some part of Childe still recognizes grief when he sees it. Still cannot walk away from it.
You always were too kind, Zhongli thinks. Even when you tried to hide it behind smiles and violence.
"Thank you," he says, and means it.
Childe shifts uncomfortably, unused to sincerity. "Yeah. Well. Whatever."
They watch the storm together.
And Zhongli thinks: If this is all I can have of you, then I will take it. I will take these scraps of kindness, these unknowing echoes of who you were. I will hoard them like a dragon hoards gold, and I will be grateful. Because even this—even standing beside a stranger who wears your face—is better than the empty centuries without you.
---
It is an ache, this existence. A wound carved so deep it has become part of him.
Childe does not know what it means when Zhongli watches him like he is something lost. Does not know why, some nights, when the moon is too bright and the air is too still, he feels a weight on his chest, like grief that does not belong to him.
He dreams sometimes.
Of hands holding his, strong and warm. Of laughter in a voice he does not recognize. Of a battlefield, and the taste of blood, and the faint scent of something—stone, spice, something familiar.
And in the dream, he is dying.
And someone is calling his name. Not Childe. Not Tartaglia. But something else. A name he has long since forgotten.
He wakes, gasping, with his heart clawing against his ribs.
And he forgets.
Because forgetting is easier than knowing he has lost something he cannot name.
And yet he dreams it again. And again. And again.
The dreams come with greater frequency now, bleeding into his waking hours.
He'll be mid-conversation and suddenly smell petrichor and iron. He'll reach for a weapon and feel phantom hands—larger than his own, steadier—guiding his grip. He'll hear a voice murmur something in a language he doesn't speak but somehow understands:
Come back to me.
It's driving him insane.
"You okay?" one of his subordinates asks after Childe freezes mid-step, staring at nothing.
"Fine," he snaps, but he's not fine.
He's haunted by a ghost he cannot see, mourning a loss he cannot name.
And every time he sees Zhongli—that careful consultant with his amber eyes and measured words—something in Childe's chest hurts. He doesn't understand it. Doesn't want to understand it.
But the ache persists.
He does not know why Zhongli lingers in his thoughts.
There is something about him—something unspoken, something old. It is not the calm wisdom in his voice, nor the way he carries himself with the weight of centuries. No, it is something else, something Childe cannot name, something that gnaws at the edges of his mind when he isn't looking.
Something that feels like a memory he should not have.
He dreams of war-torn fields and rain-drenched cliffs. He dreams of golden eyes watching over him as his body trembles with exhaustion, of warm hands wrapping his wounds in silence.
He dreams of a voice whispering, "You will return."
Childe does not remember, but something inside him does.
---
Zhongli knows. He knows the moment Childe stops calling him 'xiansheng' with the same careless ease. The moment he hesitates before speaking, as if his tongue is searching for something buried beneath lifetimes.
The moment he looks at Zhongli with something almost like recognition.
But "almost" is not enough.
Childe frowns at him one evening as they sit in a quiet teahouse, his fingers absentmindedly tracing the rim of his cup.
"You never slip up," he says. "Not once. Not a single misplaced word, not a single misstep."
Zhongli does not answer.
"You're too perfect," Childe mutters, watching him carefully. "Too careful. You know something, don't you?"
Zhongli lifts his teacup to his lips, masking the ache in his chest.
"All knowledge comes at a cost," he says. "Are you certain you wish to know?"
Childe scoffs, but there is an unease in his expression. "Why wouldn't I?"
Zhongli meets his gaze, and for the first time in centuries, he lets himself grieve where Childe can see it.
Childe falters. His breath stutters, his fingers tightening around his cup as though some unseen weight has just been placed upon his shoulders.
Zhongli watches the conflict flicker across his face—the unshaken certainty of a man who knows something is wrong but does not yet understand what.
Childe does not remember.
But he feels it now, doesn't he?
The weight of something lost. The emptiness of a name he does not know but should. The shadow of a promise made in another life.
Childe exhales sharply, looking away as if he has seen too much.
Zhongli does not push further.
He only closes his eyes, remembering a time when he did not have to hide his sorrow.
---
Later that night, Childe stands alone at the harbor, staring out at the sea.
The wind carries a name, faint and distant, as if the waves themselves are whispering it.
A name he does not recognize. A name that makes his chest ache. A name that does not belong to him anymore.
"Ajax."
He turns, but there is no one there. Only the sound of the ocean, and the slow, aching realization that something is missing.
Something he will never get back.
---
Zhongli should have left it at that. Should have sealed the past within himself, let it remain buried like the ruins of an empire long turned to dust.
But memory does not stay buried. It rises, clawing its way to the surface, whispering in the quiet moments between heartbeats.
And so, one evening, against his better judgment, he follows.
Liyue's streets are alive with lantern light, the scent of salt and spice thick in the air. Childe moves through the crowd with easy confidence, stopping here and there to bargain with a merchant, to laugh at some offhanded joke.
He does not see Zhongli watching.
He does not see the way Zhongli's fingers curl into his palm, as if holding onto something that is no longer there.
But then—
Then, he pauses. Turns.
And Zhongli sees it. The flicker of something behind his eyes, something distant, something aching.
For a moment, Zhongli thinks he will say it. That he will speak the words Zhongli has spent lifetimes waiting to hear.
Instead, Childe frowns.
"I had a dream last night," he says, almost absently, as if the words mean nothing. As if they are not everything. "It was weird. I was somewhere else, someone else. And there was… a voice."
Zhongli swallows. His voice is steady when he asks, "What did it say?"
Childe exhales sharply, shaking his head. "I don't know. But it felt—" He stops, as if the words have caught in his throat. His fingers twitch, curling unconsciously at his side. "It felt like something I lost."
You did.
Zhongli does not say it.
He only smiles, small and distant, as if Childe has not just pulled open the cracks in his carefully constructed world.
"We all dream of things we cannot remember," Zhongli says, as gently as he can.
Childe watches him for a moment. Something unreadable passes over his face, some quiet storm beneath the surface.
And then—
He laughs.
A short, breathless sound, nothing more than a shake of his head.
"Yeah," he says, turning away. "I guess so."
Zhongli watches him go.
And he wonders if the stars are laughing, too.
It is not enough.
It will never be enough.
But it is all they have.
And so, as the sun sets over Liyue Harbor, casting long shadows over the sea, Zhongli lets him walk away. Lets him turn away, lets him walk into the evening light, lets him vanish into the life that is no longer his but only Childe's.
He does not stop him.
Because love, true love, does not demand.
It only grieves.
And Zhongli has been grieving for a very, very long time.
---
Childe does not speak to Zhongli for a long time after that night. He does not avoid him, not entirely. They still cross paths—at the bustling markets of Liyue Harbor, at quiet tea shops, in fleeting moments where their eyes meet across a crowded street.
But something has shifted.
There is distance now, an empty space where something unspoken lingers, where grief and love exist in parallel, never quite touching.
Childe does not remember.
And yet, he mourns.
It is not fair.
They are both mourning something, Zhongli realizes. He mourns what was—the love he held and lost, the man who died in his arms. Childe mourns what he cannot name—a phantom ache, a void where something should be, the ghost of a love that his body remembers even if his mind does not.
Two souls, circling each other like binary stars, bound by gravity neither fully understands.
It would be poetic, Zhongli thinks bitterly, if it were not so cruel.
---
It does not stop.
The dreams come more frequently now.
Childe does not tell him, but Zhongli knows. He sees it in the shadows beneath his eyes, in the way he hesitates before speaking sometimes, as if searching for a word that has been stolen from his tongue.
And then, one night, he does not hesitate. One night, he comes to Zhongli's door, eyes dark with something that is not sleep, something that is not entirely his own.
And he says,
"I knew you before."
The world tilts. Zhongli does not move.
Childe exhales, running a hand through his hair, laughing softly—but there is no humor in it. "It's ridiculous, right? I thought I was going insane. But the more I dream, the more it hurts."
Zhongli closes his eyes. Of course it does.
It had hurt the first time, too.
Childe steps closer, searching his face. "Tell me," he says. A demand, not a plea. "Tell me what I've lost."
Zhongli breathes in. And, for the first time in a thousand years, he lets himself remember.
He could refuse. He could lie again, tell Childe it is nothing, that the dreams are merely phantoms born of stress and sleeplessness.
But he is tired.
Tired of carrying this alone. Tired of watching Childe suffer from shadows he cannot name. Tired of pretending that the past does not haunt them both.
If Childe is asking—if he is standing here, demanding the truth with something desperate in his eyes—then perhaps he deserves to know.
Perhaps they both deserve to stop running from what cannot be outrun.
---
Memories are fickle things, easily lost and impossible to reclaim. Even for the gods, time is a thief that steals without mercy. Mortals are not meant to recall past lives; their souls are meant to move forward, to shed the weight of their old selves like leaves in the wind.
And yet—
And yet, Childe stands before him now, shoulders tense, jaw clenched, eyes burning with something Zhongli cannot name.
"Tell me."
Zhongli exhales.
There is nothing left to lose.
The story is not long.
It is a tale of war and sacrifice. Of two souls who found each other in the midst of bloodshed and ruin, who carved out a love that should have never existed between them.
It is a tale of a god who did not fall in love easily—who had known eternity and loneliness in equal measure—but who had, in the end, fallen all the same.
It is a tale of how a mortal warrior, reckless and laughing, had once raced a god to the sea. He had been foolish and kind, fierce and unyielding. He had pressed his forehead against Zhongli's, murmured, 'I'll always come back to you.'
It was a tale about how love was not enough to stop death.
How Zhongli had held him, broken and bleeding, whispering his name like a prayer that would never be answered. How he had lived on, carrying the weight of a name that no longer belonged to anyone.
It was a tale about how his true love had died. No, not just died. He had bled out in Zhongli's arms, had clutched at his robes with trembling hands and whispered, 'Don't forget me.'
As if Zhongli could.
As if, centuries later, the mere sight of Childe's face would not still leave cracks in his carefully constructed walls.
As if love—true love, love that carves itself into the very marrow of one's being—could ever be forgotten.
Zhongli speaks slowly, carefully, each word measured and deliberate. He does not look at Childe as he speaks. He cannot bear to see the expressions that cross his face—confusion, disbelief, horror, grief. Instead, he looks out the window, at the sleeping city below, at the harbor that has witnessed a thousand years of his solitary vigil.
He tells Childe about Ajax's laugh—how it had been different from Childe's, softer, more private. About the way Ajax used to fall asleep with his head in Zhongli's lap, trusting in a way that had both terrified and honored him.
He tells him about the promises they made. The contracts written not in ink but in kisses, in intertwined fingers, in whispered words against skin.
He tells him about the war. About finding Ajax on that battlefield, already dying, already slipping away.
About the rain that fell like tears Zhongli could not shed.
About the thousand years since, walking through a world that had forgotten Ajax entirely, carrying his memory like a stone in his chest.
And finally, he tells Childe: "You are him. And yet, you are not. The soul is the same, but the life is different. You are Ajax, reborn into a world that no longer remembers him. And I—"
His voice cracks, just slightly.
"I have been watching you love a life that does not include me. And I am glad for it. Glad that you are free from the weight of what we were. Glad that you can smile without the shadow of death hanging over you."
A lie, perhaps. Or a partial truth.
He is glad Childe is alive. But glad he does not remember?
No. That is a grief that cuts both ways.
Childe listens. His breath comes too fast, too shallow. He does not interrupt, does not move. There is no flicker of memory in his eyes. No sudden revelation.
But there is grief.
Grief, sharp and hanging, as if his soul mourns something his mind cannot grasp.
When Zhongli finishes, the silence between them is smoldering, heavy as stone.
"That was me?" he asks at last, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Zhongli looks at him, at the way his hands shake, at the way his lips part as if grasping for something just beyond reach.
"You were Ajax," Zhongli says softly.
A shuddering exhale.
Childe laughs—quiet, bitter, a sound that does not belong to him. "I don't—I don't remember everything."
"I know."
"I should." His voice cracks. "Why don't I?"
Zhongli does not answer.
Because there is no answer. Because fate is cruel, and the stars are crueler still, and Zhongli had known, had known, that Childe would never be Ajax again.
But knowing does not make it hurt any less.
Childe paces. Three steps forward, turn, three steps back. His hands clench and unclench at his sides, as if he's trying to grasp something invisible.
"So I died," he says, voice hollow. "I died in your arms. And you just... what? Waited? For a thousand years?"
"Yes."
"That's—" Childe stops, struggles for words. "That's insane. That's—why would you do that?"
Because I loved you. Zhongli thinks, but what he says is: "Because I made a promise."
Childe shakes his head, laughs again—that same broken sound. "A promise to a dead man. Great. That's really—" His voice breaks entirely. "Fuck."
He sits down heavily, head in his hands.
Zhongli wants to go to him. Wants to offer comfort. But he does not know if his touch would be welcome, does not know if Childe sees him as the lover who waited or the stranger who has been lying through omission.
So he stands. And waits.
As he has always done.
Childe exhales. His voice is unsteady when he says again, as if to confirm it, "I was him."
It is not a question.
But Zhongli answers anyway.
"Yes."
Childe swallows. His hands tremble at his sides. "And you—" He stops. He does not need to finish.
Zhongli nods.
Childe exhales, sharp and unsteady. He steps forward, close enough that Zhongli can see the way his hands curl into fists, can feel the storm raging just beneath his skin.
And then, quieter than before—
"Did I love you?"
Zhongli's throat tightens.
"Yes," he says, softer than he means to. "You did."
Childe stares at him, searching his face for something—some sign that this is all a mistake, some reassurance that the love he has forgotten still belongs to him. Something deep inside his heart breaks.
"Then why—" His voice catches, raw and aching. "Why don't I feel it?"
Zhongli does not answer.
Because the truth is, love is not something that memory alone can resurrect.
The man before him is not the one he lost.
And maybe—maybe he never will be.
But even so—
Zhongli reaches out, gently, carefully, as if he is afraid that this, too, will be taken from him. He rests a hand over Childe's own, grounding him, grounding them.
Epilogue
It happens one day, months later, in a moment so fleeting that Zhongli almost misses it.
They are walking side by side through Liyue Harbor when Childe, unthinking, presses a kiss against their entwined hands.
Their eyes meet.
The touch lasts only a second before Childe pulls away, blinking as if startled by his own actions.
Zhongli does not react. He only watches as Childe flexes his fingers, frowning, as if something in him remembers.
As if muscle memory can recall what the mind has long forgotten.
But the moment passes, and Childe says nothing.
Neither does Zhongli.
Because love is not always about remembering. Sometimes, it is simply about being.
And so, they walk forward, step by step, towards a future where they are no longer Ajax and Morax.
Where grief lingers, but so does something quieter, softer—something that does not need a name.
Because in the end, love endures.
Even if the world forgets.
Even if they forget.
---
In the nights that follow, Zhongli still dreams.
But the dreams are different now.
There is still the battlefield, still the rain, still the dying light in Ajax's eyes.
But now, when he wakes, there is a warmth beside him. Childe, sleeping peacefully, copper hair spilled across the pillow.
Not Ajax. Not entirely.
But perhaps that is not what matters.
Perhaps what matters is the way Childe's hand finds his in sleep, the way he unconsciously moves closer, seeking warmth and safety from someone he does not remember but his soul recognizes. Perhaps what matters is that they are both here, both breathing, both trying.
The past is gone. Ajax is gone.
But Zhongli has learned, slowly, painfully, that grief and love are not mutually exclusive.
He can mourn what was lost while cherishing what remains.
He can love Childe—this new version—without expecting him to become Ajax again.
It is not the love he once had, but it is love nonetheless.
And perhaps, after a thousand years of mourning, that is enough.
Perhaps it is more than enough.
Zhongli reaches out in the darkness, brushes a strand of hair from Childe's face.
Childe stirs, murmurs something unintelligible, settles back into sleep.
And Zhongli allows himself to smile.
A real smile, small and fragile and genuine.
The first in a thousand years.