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The parlour is quiet, the funeral just as empty.
There is not a single presence in the hall where the coffin lay--the deceased, even during his last moments before his soul truly left the world, did not see his family nor friends. Only Zhongli stayed behind, rearranging the offerings on the altar and lighting incense for him, brushing dirt off the photo frame that carried his face to give him a better view of the afterlife.
“Xiansheng, it’s getting late,” the director says, and Zhongli tenses, “You should go home and rest now.”
“It’s alright. This is my duty,” he says back.
It is not his duty as the consultant of the Funeral parlour to kneel at the altar for hours and hours on end, eyes tinged red, hands folded on his lap and aching back from impeccable posture. Zhongli doesn’t move from his spot even after having skipped two meals and a whole day’s worth of hydration. By dinnertime he should be rambling on about special rock formations or endangered species of birds, yet his lips remain pressed in the choking presence of printed, blue eyes.
The last time they met was at Liuli Pavillion. Zhongli remembers a fleeting touch, a promise of again. Then Childe leaves on a cold, wet Sunday evening, and dies without so much as leaving a word for the dear consultant he'd left behind.
Behind him, the ferrylady asks, “How are you feeling?"
“Like it’s all a joke,” Zhongli replies, eyes still glued to the open coffin. All he has to do is stand up and he’ll be able to peer into it, but he doesn’t because he knows how much (he'd cry) the harbinger would hate for his prank to be busted so early into the game. Zhongli doesn't want to look at the fakeness of the blood soaking his jacket, and he doesn't want to know how pale Childe had made himself seem.
But he looks anyway. Just in case. The harbinger doesn't move, and only after a long time does he speak.
“...Childe will be back soon, right?” He remembers the promise they made to meet up again for a meal.
The ferrylady bites her tongue, and standing in the doorway is Hu Tao with a simple tray of rice, fish and soup. Zhongli smiles at them, but neither of them say anything.
--
They are all strangely quiet, not just the loud silence during the funeral, but everyone around him starts to walk around eggshells, and they look at him as if he were such a pitiful thing. This includes the people outside his social circle; everyone stares at him like a widow who's lost her husband to war, or a child who's lost his mother, and every passing second the god dormant inside of him wants to command them to avert their eyes if they treasured their life.
It's the little things that change after that. Dinner is quieter; noctilucous blue jades no longer appear as striking, the merchants on the street no longer yell at him when he forgets his money, and there's less paperwork on his desk than the day before, replaced by a handful of letters mourning the death of the harbinger, more out of courtesy than anything. Zhongli is quiet when he reads it, even quieter with his distaste when he writes a cordial reply then crushes it, pushing the letters aside.
They treat him the same way someone would handle a piece of wet paper, careful not to tear. It's then Zhongli realises that no one really knows how to act around a grieving person. You'd test the waters, beat around the bush, and for the more cautious ones they go for what's generally acceptable. A few gifts, money, a soothing word or two, but no one knows how to touch them in a way that wouldn't make them break.
First the Tianquan sends a letter of condolences, then the second young master of the Feiyun Commerce Guild reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. Xinyan distances herself from her loud, vibrant rock for a day and just sits next to him, gently strumming away at her instrument. Zhongli finds it kind of ironic when the person they're comforting is a friend of the enemy of state who they'd hated for so long.
“Is something wrong?” he asks. “Your music is different.”
“I could ask the same of you,” Xinyan says, and nothing else.
--
The Northland bank is in shambles the day after their boss’ death, but they quickly pick themselves back up, and soon they are running like usual again. No one has lost a cent of their money, they assure the more anxious citizens, then Zhongli glances at them from across the street and they lapse into silence.
He goes to Liuli Pavilion, sits in the same seat they’d reserved for their next meeting and orders the same drinks. The gazes of several dozen patrons burn into his back but he keeps still and calmly appreciates his tea. Perhaps this would prick at the harbinger’s conscience, wherever he is now.
Xiangling drops by his table hesitantly, nervously placing a pot of slow-cooked bamboo shoot soup before him.
“This is on the house,” she tells him with a sad smile, “Don’t grieve too hard...okay?”
“Thank you for your generosity,” Zhongli smiles. “But I cannot accept it. Death is something we inevitably have to experience in our lives, especially for a funeral parlour consultant.”
“Oh,” Xiangling mumbles, eyes wide.
“There is no need to worry. Please put this on my tab, Childe will pay for it soon.”
Then her expression falls, and she frowns, unmoving for a long time.
--
"He's just sleeping," he says to the Yuheng in passing. "Childe is strong. He wouldn't fall to a mere poisoned arrow."
"Consultant, the harbinger...is dead." Keqing pauses. Her face twists and she looks somewhat pained.
Zhongli shakes his head. "Childe is sleeping," he insists.
--
Childe does not pay for it.
He does not come back, as a matter of fact, too busy playing dead in a hole and refusing to come see him. If this was petty revenge for his deceit, then it has gone on for far too long. He’d already apologised. Does Childe’s grudge run that deep?
One day stretches into one week, two, then Zhongli’s hurt slowly starts to turn bitter. Childe’s burial happens in private, his secretary there as a formal witness only, but Zhongli doesn’t go see him one last time. Childe’s teasing smile and warm eyes wedges itself in the recesses of his mind and he doesn’t want to ruin that memory with the sight of him being lowered into the ground.
They don’t love each other, but they don’t hate each other either; their relationship after the identity reveal had come to a kind of stand still, before slowly inching forward again, like a boat leaving the harbour. Perhaps it comes with the knowledge that Childe is, well and truly, gone from the world, that not long after his burial Zhongli starts to feel the harbinger’s absence in the form of violent waves crashing in his chest, loud and asphyxiating. Morax had never felt anything more than the necessary indifference in the six thousand years of his life, other than drowning grief in a field of dusty glaze lilies, but now he struggles, so human and so vulnerable, to keep himself from coughing the weight in his lungs out.
He’s confused, distressed. Zhongli's mad. Because they'd promised.
What he thinks is, how dare he just go like that? Then his rage simmers, in a way that burns inside his chest like flames licking a wall, and he doesn’t know what or why he’s feeling this way. Years and years of contracted restraint built up and the cage finally bursts. The next thing he knows, there are broken shelves and trinkets, all swept off their surface in a sudden, uncalled fit of confusion and pain. A shard of porcelain nicks at his finger, and it’s the expensive cor-lapis hair pin Childe had bought for him a few weeks ago. It had been his favourite.
“Xiansheng?” Hu Tao rushes in. She scans the mess of broken wares and miscellaneous items, then quietly, squats down and starts to pick it up.
“Director Hu,” Zhongli calls, voice rough and hard with pent-up irritation. “There’s hardly any need to be doing this.”
“Then you should help me clean up,” she replies, gesturing for the ferrylady to fetch a broom and a dustpan. She doesn’t look angry, not that she would be, but she doesn’t look puzzled either, simply sliding into a state of calm acceptance, and it irks Zhongli because he recognises that look.
“With all due respect, I do not need nor want your pity,” he chokes on the lump in his throat. “I am far from stupid. I’ve long passed the stage of denial and whatever ailment the people have pinned onto me.”
He’s not lying. Rex Lapis has seen his fair share of death, be it by his hand or watching the ones he held dear depart, leaving him to face the curse of endless days, alone. If the harbingers were monsters, then he would be something darker, looking down at the world from the peak of mountains made out of corpses struck down by his spear, buried underground to fertilise the lands for Liyue. Zhongli thinks that the Fatui can relate to the Archons in that sense, the way they could both snap the neck of a person without blinking an eye, and the way they could watch someone die without ever knowing their name.
In some morbid way, they were more alike than they think, being able to dirty their hands for some greater cause they believed in--perhaps that is what set them apart from the world. Humans couldn't understand them, categorised them as a group of misfits that belonged in their own circle, so Zhongli understood Tartaglia in a way that no one else could because they were two sides of a coin. Their idea of normalcy was equally skewed and that was the force gravitating them towards each other, just two people in a bubble and living a world not made for them. And losing the only other person in his space made the hurt after that ten times worse.
"Grieving is natural, consultant." Hu Tao sweeps the mess into her hand. "Don't you already know that, with your line of work?"
"I know. However, this can hardly be construed as grieving." Zhongli replies.
He's just angry, he thinks. Resentful. Childe knows, because he'd told him, of the weight of a god's heart. Before, he didn't care for the Snezhnayan. Then he did. He trusted him to be strong enough to stay unlike the rest, and now, he's-
("-dead. The arrow, it came out of nowhere- assassins, we-")
"After all his talk of challenging a god, I find it laughable that he couldn't even escape an arrow to the gut." Bitterness scrubs his nerves.
A glance, "You don't mean that," the director points out.
Lips press together. Zhongli kind of wants to scoff--because what would a little girl know to presume of an archon?
Then as if she could read his mind, Hu Tao says, "Those assassins, they were buried yesterday." She pauses, then quieter, "I think the consultant understands that, often, our actions do not reflect our words."
--
He'd gone to the place of death the moment the news reached his ear. There were bloody tracks all across the ground, in one straight line. The victim had tried to crawl away.
Zhongli showed the assassins a god's wrath after that. For every arrow they shot through him, Zhongli put his arm through their chest the same number of times, just to make them hurt as much as he is.
"I think," he starts, "I feel angry."
"Why?" The ferrylady asks, gently.
"I thought he would at least...try harder. To stay."
--
His mind wanders, not just in the middle of work or conversation, but more often now that the one thing keeping his attention is gone. Zoning out might’ve been “unproductive” and “unbecoming” a month prior but with Childe's death haunting him close behind, everyone just lets his behaviour slide. Hu Tao tactfully chooses not to mention his new habits to him. “Some space would do him good,” she says, as if empty silence was in his prescription for recovery.
Zhongli wonders if the Adepti know. They hardly come down to the harbour and refuse to mingle with mortals, but perhaps gossip reaches far? None of them really approved of letting Fatui linger around him, and how they'd react arouses curiosity in him.
He hasn’t paid a visit to Childe’s grave since then. It’s like he’s trying to deny it still, and that what he doesn’t see, doesn’t exist. Then Zhongli remembers the funeral, the silence, and in the morning he’s entering the cemetery with a stalk of Cecilia and a familiar hydro vision, cold in his hand.
Zhongli stares at the engravings on the stone for a long time, re-reads it, re-reads it again. It’s Tartaglia that lies six feet underground. For a moment, he wonders if by some miracle, the vision in his hand would light up again. But he out of all people should know better than to expect something so ridiculous from Celestia.
He brushes the spot beside the grave and takes a seat, careful not to crush a patch of weed growing behind the stone. There’s nothing other than the cecilia he’d placed on the grave, and the little buds on the weeds give Childe’s resting place a little more colour, he thinks.
He’s gained and lost so many things in his life, endured the pain of losing someone close, but the pain never greys over time--that’s the one thing he realises about immortal life. It never gets old, ironically, and the ache stays fresh for as long as it can be. Zhongli flips the vision in his hand, over and over, and no matter what he does, he sees Childe’s smile in his head.
One month ago, they exchanged a shy kiss, and the month before that, Zhongli had given him Dragon-and-phoenix-patterned chopsticks. On the evening of a Sunday, Childe left to unearth Cor Lapis for a comment he’d made in passing, and that was the second last time he saw the man. The last was the morning after, inside a coffin.
Maybe if he’d stopped him, Zhongli thinks, phantom blood on his hands, maybe if he hadn’t said such a stupid thing about wanting to make an earring that shined gold, if he hadn’t thought of giving it to him afterwards-
Maybe Childe wouldn't have walked to his death. And maybe it wouldn’t have been his fault.
--
Zhongli wears a tassel on one ear. On the surface it looks just like any other earring, but the jewel used is imbued with some kind of Adepti magic the Mountain Shaper had kindly helped him cast, and it blocks out the millions of prayers his people whisper under their breaths, keeps them from overlapping in his head with a dreadly echo.
Childe must’ve prayed, he thinks, if not to a god, then to his family, maybe even to himself; "pull through, stay strong." Perhaps he could’ve heard something that morning, if he’d just bothered to take it off for a second, maybe Childe would’ve lived.
“With the power to kill, comes the power to save as well,” Guizhong once said.
He hears her whisper in his sleep that night, every ‘what if’ circling in his head, every possible scenario broken down like a math equation and redone until he arrives at the correct results. In a world stored at the back of his mind, Childe lives, but that was only if he’d done something that day, if only he’d-
--
The Adepti do come eventually, when he leans his head on top of the headstone, eyes closed, dreaming of icy hands on his cheeks and the distant clacking of chopsticks. None of them would’ve thought of leaving their lord to drown in his sorrow alone.
"My lord," Xiao calls, and one by one, the Adepti slide to Zhongli's side from thin air. No one grumbles or speaks. The Cloud Retainer holds a glaze lily in her beak.
“This one has heard of the passing of the Fatui boy,” she says, placing the glaze lily on the grave. Zhongli notes how dull the blue on its petals looks. “The Adepti are sorry for your loss.”
Collectively, they lower their heads in respect. Zhongli gestures for them to be at ease, although he doesn’t move from his spot.
“You don’t look well, my lord.” Xiao frowns in concern. “How long has it been since you’ve last eaten?”
“A week ago,” Zhongli admits, perks of being an Adeptus. “I couldn’t stomach the food.”
“Which restaurant?”
“Wanmin.”
“How dare they serve such subpar meals to Rex Lapis, I-”
“Xiao,” The Moon Carver cuts in. “I don’t think it’s the food.”
“I,” the yaksha says, then softer, “Oh.”
--
August comes later. Fall descends on Liyue quietly. It washes over the landscape, burnishing the ground with a gold bronze and the trees are a familiar shade of orange. Zhongli wonders where his god-like composure had gone, when a maple leaf falls on his shoulder and he thinks of a head of ginger hair.
He makes up his mind then, goes back to work and tries not to see the image of Childe every other second. Zhongli rejects Hu Tao’s offer for a three month leave, straightens his tie and throws himself back into routine, silently plucking his boss’s stack of paperwork off her desk even without her whining. Every waking hour is spent at the funeral parlour. He eats in his office--Xiangling has taken it upon herself to deliver his meals every afternoon, under the guise of having him taste her new concoctions, and he talks to clients who dance around the subject of death. It’s their funeral, not his.
Hu Tao tries to convince him to get some sunlight. Eventually, she stops, and then says, “Just don’t beat yourself up too much, okay? I still need that bright mind of yours.”
Surprisingly, he thinks then that it wouldn’t hurt to step outside for a bit, and leaves Wangsheng for the first time in weeks. Zhongli is no stranger to unwanted attention but he hardly minds the looks after the burial, throwing the mantle of the Geo archon and accepting the role of the ‘heartbroken, grief-stricken man’--there's nothing that could really bother him now that he's lost something not even a gnosis could replace. But aside from that, he does admit that some fresh air feels good. All that work would’ve eventually driven him insane.
He leaves the harbour and loses himself in the woods in search of some sort of outlet, walking without aim or direction but still, somehow, circles around the part of the forest he knows still stains with the harbinger's blood and reeks of rust. Zhongli treads into every hilichurl camp he spots with careless abandon, spins his spear and skewers a mitachurl through its mask, blood spraying all over his cheeks but he fights and fights and fightfightfightfightfight-
--
"Zhongli-xiansheng, are you hurt? What did you do?" Hu Tao grabs his arm. Her expression falters at red-tipped hair and the brief mistaken thought of a murderer standing in her doorway, pulling him inside and quickly shutting the door.
"I think I've come to an understanding," Zhongli blinks slowly, playing with the stickiness of the blood on his gloves. "Of why Childe fancied battle so much."
The ferrylady returns with a wet towel. Hu Tao waits for his answer.
"It makes one forget." He says, closing his eyes.
--
Zhongli has lived a long life. After a while, the faces start to blur together--the thing about the brain discarding additional information to make space for new ones kicking into place, and no matter how good his memory is, Zhongli seems to never be able to remember Guizhong’s voice or face.
The only thing he remembers is the memory of dust he’s never been able to crack. It’d been her dying wish for him to forget about it, but even then, Zhongli couldn’t just let it go like that. After her death, he’d channeled all his attention into trying to solve that rock puzzle, in hopes of unlocking the last piece of wisdom Guizhong had meant to pass down. Then somewhere along the way, he hadn’t realised he’d forgotten what she looked like, so fixated on the spinning little thing.
He’d been around three thousand then, left alone with literally nothing but a memory in shards, the most important pieces missing. All her portraits had been burnt in the war, and so that memory of her benevolent smile quickly eroded.
The worst thing about forgetting was feeling it slip through his fingers. It’s similar to holding sand, he thinks, trying to grasp it fully but watching helplessly as it falls through like grains of satin, and then it’s gone and he’s left with a pathetic portion of the original.
--
“You look tired,” the Yuheng tells him. “You look horrible. What happened to you, consultant?”
“I don’t know,” he says, taking interest in the wall behind her head. He hasn’t felt so strongly in a long time, but now he’s here. Doing the things man does and feeling the things he couldn’t.
“Do you think the harbinger would’ve wanted to see you like this?” Keqing says, eyes narrowed.
“No,” Zhongli says. “But I want to see him.”
Right after that, he leans down on the table and lays his head in his hands.
--
Zhongli realises that he’s forgetting Childe six months after his death. It starts to go slowly, like a fog has settled over his mind; like memory foam gradually rising to leave the faintest of outlines on one smooth surface. The harbinger’s image doesn’t come as instantly or as vividly as it used to be, and what Zhongli is most afraid of is Tartaglia becoming a shadow in his life. It doesn’t help that the harbour has long tossed him into the back of their minds, no more whispers about the Fatui or their presence, and it’s like a mark of ink that is gradually being erased.
Then Xiao drops by, soaked in blood and covered in abrasions. His grip on the spear is tight when he bows and presents a familiar red fleece scarf, like a follower making an offering to god.
“I snatched this from the Fatui,” he says. “The Yuheng said she would handle any bumps in diplomatic relations, should it arise. Said she was tired of seeing you mope.”
Zhongli’s fingers run over its surface, and it’s soft like always, Childe’s scent still faintly clinging to the fabric. He almost cries out in relief, and he takes it without complaint and quickly drapes it around his neck.
“Thank you,” Zhongli breathes.
“My lord has been suffering the past few days. I...just wanted you to be at ease.” Xiao looks away.
--
The devil brings with him a bottle of Dandelion wine. “Yahoo, Morax!”
“Venti,” Zhongli says without fight.
The bard in green glides across the roof and lands lightly on his feet, looking around. “Huh, it’s kinda quiet here, for some reason?”
He doesn’t have the energy to deal with the wind spirit, so he hums in reply. Venti quickly catches up with him, blocking his way with his body, and the look in his eye is weary.
“So the rumors were true.” Venti says, and Zhongli’s silence is enough admission.
--
He looks at the scarf and it’s like he has a piece of Childe in his hands. It’s not until he tucks himself in bed, fleece hugging his neck that he understands how much he misses him. Zhongli has always wished one day to be able to freely embrace the harbinger, but not like this. There’s so much emptiness in between. And just the thought of what's missing makes his eyes burn with tears.
He dreams of Childe again, smiling handsomely at him as he stirs awake in his office, face inches away from his lips, yet-
--
“I, I don’t remember him,” Zhongli says, and he hates the way his voice trembles shamefully. Childe was just a blur. “As if he’s just a distant dream.”
Venti looks at him with strange softness in his eyes. “That’s natural, Zhongli. Maybe it's a sign to start letting go.”
“I love him,” Zhongli whispers, “But I never got to receive an answer.”
“Aw. You have a long life ahead of you, who knows, maybe you’ll find someone new!” The bard sings, then gently, “Sometimes, we just have to move on and keep going.”
“No,” Zhongli says, “Not yet.”
“That’s okay,” the Anemo archon says back.
He sits down beside the consultant and summons his lyre from his sleeve, giving it a few plucks, and it’s like Zhongli’s a child in need of a bedtime lullaby.
“How about we play a song of the old years?” The bard suggests pleasantly. “Wine tastes better, not over sorrow and tears.”
“Our past is not a pleasant one,” Zhongli reminds, but Venti smiles in reply. The face that looks at him is of a young boy that doesn't match the weight in his eyes.
A bittersweet tune pulls itself from the strings. “At least you’d know of an old friend who cares.”
--
The scarf is cold. Zhongli has always wondered why the Anemo god continues to practice the art of forgery, to play his pranks and to live a life dedicated to a dead man. The Adepti are no less skilled in their ability to shapeshift, but what good does living a false life do? At most, he can see his old friend again-
No. He’s not Barbatos.
--
Morax has taken several forms in his life. Theoretically, neither the adeptus nor human brain can create a face from scratch. Every made up face in their head would be someone they'd crossed paths with at some point, and the same goes Morax's alternate forms.
He’s different. Their faces were never used for some selfish desire. Barabatos lives through the eyes of his friend, while Zhongli just wants to see Childe again, even just for a moment. It’s not like he’s bringing a person back to life. The last time he had ancient books and scrolls on resurrection all sprawled out across his desk, the Cloud Retainer had painfully taken it all and burned it, before pressing her forehead onto his. It’s just a method of closure that he needs so desperately to be able to pick himself up again, and-
-it’s different, he thinks. Touches his face, fiddles with the grey fabric on his uniform, he looks so real like Childe is alive and breathing and then golden eyes blink back at him and he smashes the mirror, letting out a dry sob.
When Zhongli stares at the mirror, a dozen Snezhnayans look back, and everything looks so right yet so wrong.
--
He finally understands Barbatos, somewhat.
--
The traveller returns from Inazuma to pay his respects. Hu Tao and Xiao trail behind him, clearly expecting Zhongli to be there, and they choke on their shock when they see a dead man sitting by his own headstone.
Pause. “Zhongli,” Aether calls, but it’s the harbinger’s face that peers back. “Why-”
“How did you know?” he asks, and the heavy atmosphere settled upon them then takes a different kind of weight. Hu Tao’s eyes widen a fraction, connecting the dots, looking as if she wants to say something, and Xiao looks like he’s just been slapped by his mother.
“The eyes are wrong,” Aether says back. “No matter what form he takes, Rex Lapis’ eyes are always gold.”
--
Zhongli’s hands shake. Thrusting his blades through an abyss mage doesn’t bring the same comfort as before. The breeze tickles his navel, a red scarf flutters in the wind, and a garnet crystal dangles familiarly on his ear; briefly, Zhongli tries to feel alive again. He switches out his usual elegance for a raw, wild but skillful combat style, and a fleeting sort of contentment washes over him because it feels like Childe’s with him in spirit.
But there’s no hydro blades wetting his palms. Basalt pillars erupt from the ground and the Geo whale he summons in place of his meteor draws an arc in the air and slams onto the hilichurls, rolling across the ground in smithereens like the terrible, terrible, low-quality fake it is. Xiao watches his slaughter in the trees and opens his mouth to say something, but the ringing in his ears is so loud and deafening that he drives his blade into the mage over and over and over and over and over-
“My lord, enough!”
The beaded earring is ripped out of his lobe, thrown across the plain then quickly switched with a tasseled one, and it's like a switch has been flipped and the ear-piercing noise all comes to a stop. It’s calm again for a moment, before what Xiao has just done sinks in, and Zhongli uncharacteristically scrambles across the grass and plucks the earring out of the dirt, holding it in his hands like it’s the world he’s looking at.
“I,” Zhongli gasps. Ginger hair meld into chestnut brown and his features shift, turning back into the consultant’s face. “I’m, I-”
"The harbinger is gone.” Xiao’s voice is hard-set. “He won't be coming back,"
The Geo construct in his hand crumbles.
"I know," Zhongli says, quietly, in a pool of his own tears.
--
Childe is dead. This fact makes itself clear with every passing moment, with every pity-filled glance, with every regret. On the headstone, the dot on the i has faded a tad bit and the weeds have grown all around it now; Childe no longer looks like he was buried only a little under a year ago. A shrivelled cecilia and glaze lily sits on the grave silently, Zhongli picks them up and throws them away and slides a box containing a Cor Lapis earring in its place.
Breathing in the fading scent of his red scarf, “Did you have to go so soon?” he murmurs.
Perhaps if he’d been mortal, he would’ve prayed to the gods--but what use is divinity, what use is he when he could not even save one person?
--
“Rex Lapis,” Hu Tao catches him at the cemetery. A beat passes, Zhongli considers if he should acknowledge it, then he turns around.
“What is it, Director Hu?” he says.
A part of him wonders what is crossing her mind right now, having seen almost all sides of the Geo Archon, but he doesn’t make a move to find out.
“I want to show you something,” she says. “When you’re ready, that is. I think it’ll help you.”
“I’m alright,” he says, but the glare Hu Tao shoots at him makes him go quiet.
“Just take it as an errand,” she tells him. “Or your boss is going to dock your pay.”
That isn’t good, he thinks.
Wuwang hill is as eerie as he last remembers. The sky grays the deeper they tread into the forest, and the temperature takes a dive with the appearance of several thousand ghost lights. A blue wisp floats around him, as if trying to communicate, but Zhongli doesn’t think he wants to take off his tassel anymore.
They head down a path, the crying of crickets growing louder and louder, then a mist descends upon them and Hu Tao gestures for him to stop.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“Where to?”
“The border.”
Zhongli’s heart lurches.
--
Zhongli has heard of the border. It’s the line separating life and death, and he knows of Wangsheng Funeral Parlour’s connection to it, how Hu Tao has entered that sacred space many times in her life. He just hasn’t seen it in person, so it still comes as a surprise when she drags him through the thick fog, and steps into a domain of clouds--no one must ever want to pass if the place they lingered was so tranquil and soft. It’s like they’d just jumped through a portal cutting through space and dimension.
“I saw him here a while ago,” Hu Tao starts. Zhongli instantly recognizes the tone in her voice, and who she’s talking about. Her grip on his arm tightens when he flinches, hard, as if trying to trap him in place. “Don’t run. You need to be here.”
“Hu Tao, let me go.” Zhongli says without formality, biting his lips.
“As your boss, I order you to stay here.” She says. “Why are you so afraid?”
There are many things he is afraid of, Zhongli thinks, gods are not completely infallible. Losing the person you love...or wanting to follow them into death.
Zhongli swallows. “I fear that I won’t be able to let go, if I see him again,” he admits.
Hu Tao softens. “Tartaglia couldn’t pass on because he still had lingering regrets,” she says. “He told me that he wanted to speak to you again.”
“I,” Zhongli chokes on the lump in his throat.
“Aiya, don’t be such a slow grandpa! Go, go,” Hu Tao nudges him towards the perimeter. “I’ll wait for you over here.”
--
The place is quiet, all sounds coming to a stop the moment he pushes past the border, entering a space filled with peaceful chirping and the low rustle of his clothes in the wind. A flower drifts down from somewhere and nestles itself in his hair.
Spring has always been his favourite season. The glaze lilies would be in full bloom, and Zhongli has heard of how the border meets every guest with a different appearance--he just never expects it to replicate a season of freshness and warmth so intimately.
Nothing in here is real, Zhongli thinks, not even the birds nesting in the trees, or the breeze touching his cheeks. Apprehension threatens to jump out of his chest. Even when he descends deeper into the strange realm, picking up on the soft lapping of waves and the salty smell in the air, sees an achingly familiar figure standing at a fake shore turning a starconch in his hand-
It must be an illusion, right?
But the figure whirls around, drops the starconch, and seeing his face is like a refreshing breath of air. The beam that comes after his shock is too genuine to be a fake.
Childe’s voice tickles his ears like the wind rustling a forest full of trees. “Xiansheng!”
And Zhongli’s reply comes as reddened eyes and a weak whimper, “...Childe.”
--
“How have you been?”
Zhongli shoots him a wan grin. “Okay,” he lies. “Could’ve been better.”
“That’s good I guess,” Childe smiles, albeit sadly. “Sorry I didn’t show up for dinner.”
“That is hardly your fault. Don’t worry about it.” Zhongli shakes his head. “You could’ve stood me up as many times as you want. I wouldn’t have been mad.”
It was better than having him disappear, after all. Zhongli sharply takes in a breath and clenches his shaking fists. He struggles to keep his composure, now that Childe’s spirit is standing in front of him, radiating a faint, translucent blue glow. Once upon a time, he would’ve bitten down on his emotions and sent Childe on his way like he did in the sealing of his old friends-turned-foes. Not anymore. Perhaps Childe is reaching a phantom hand into his chest and wrenching his heart out like a gnosis.
Childe softly touches his cheek, but his hand passes through, and he silently lets it fall to his side.
“Did you miss me?” he asks.
Zhongli nods soundlessly, not trusting his voice to remain stable.
“Sorry.” The harbinger says, solemn and quiet. “For leaving you behind. For dying. For making you sad.”
“Please don’t apologise. It’s not your fault,” Zhongli croaks, all remaining anger and grudge quickly dissolving. His throat burns.
“As you can see, I’m stuck here because I passed with regrets,” Childe starts, looking down at his hands. “At first, I just wanted to go peacefully. I didn’t know what was still tethering me to this world. I thought of my family, whether they were doing okay, so I watched them through that lake over there--magic in the afterlife is cool, huh?”
He laughs, and his expression turns affectionate as he recalls.
“The house was lively. I saw Tonia, Anthon and Teucer running around, throwing literal boulders for snow at each other, my strong baby siblings! My parents were nagging at them to wear an extra scarf or two.” He glances at the fleece wrapped around his neck, and Zhongli’s breath hitches. “They were okay on their own, so I was happy with that--but I still couldn’t go.”
Childe takes a breath. “Then, I thought of you.”
“Me?” Zhongli whispers, and lets the implication sink in heavily.
“Before I died for real, I wanted to see how Xiansheng was doing. For a while, the border let me go down to the living world, so I followed you around for as long as I remember.” Childe says, “I saw you at my funeral. I saw you eating alone. I watched you walk around Liyue, looking at your favourite rocks, browsing your favourite books, but you never smiled even once.”
“You saw…” Zhongli’s face pales.
Childe nods weakly. “I saw you visit my grave. I saw you fall asleep with my scarf, and I saw you take my form.” The harbinger’s expression twists in pain, then. “When I saw you holding my earring, my heart ached so bad. I wanted to hold Xiansheng and tell you it’s alright, but then my hands went through and I couldn’t do anything as you cried.”
“I,” Zhongli says, and it’s like a dam has broken inside of him in light of Childe’s confession. The Geo Archon, reduced to an incoherent mess, “I’m sorry. I miss you. I love you.”
“I know,” Childe breathes, and he hovers his hand over Zhongli’s cheek. “Honestly, I think it’s true when they say you never realise how much you love someone until they’re gone. When I was in the grass and slipping away...I was thinking if Zhongli-xiansheng would be sad. Because I love you, you know?”
Zhongli’s face crumples, and his mind spins with more ‘what if’s and what they could’ve been, if only he’d stopped him that evening. He feels his erosion prodding at the back of his mind, taking away everyone he has ever loved, while he holds their bodies in his hand and listens to their dying breath. And Childe had fallen victim to his curse.
“I miss you.” his lips quiver.
“I know. But when you do, just keep that scarf tight around you, yeah?” Childe replies.
“When will you leave?” Zhongli asks.
“Probably anytime now.” Childe says, “I guess, what I really wanted was to see you once more.”
Zhongli shakes, eyes wet. “Don’t go.”
“It’s alright, Xiansheng,” Childe tells him, and he looks like a man seeing the world for the last time. He is. “I’ll come find you in my next life and challenge you to a fight!”
And then he leans in and presses a kiss on the archon--it doesn’t connect, a chill ghosting over Zhongli’s lips, but he laughs it off with a shrug and takes a step back, closer to the light. The false sun shines bright and casts a shadow on the harbinger’s face, but Zhongli doesn’t miss the tear that slips down his cheek.
“...Goodbye, Childe.” he says, for the last time. This time, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ will not follow.
Childe’s expression falters at that moment, blue eyes washing over with bittersweetness, and the grin he gives is strained and harrowed.
“Don’t miss me too much.”
Soon, the harbinger’s hand turns crystalline, and then he fades away into gold.
--
Hu Tao finds him back in the overworld, collapsed on his knees and trembling. After that he locks himself inside his room and doesn’t come out for a week, but when Zhongli opens the door, he finds a pot of slow-cooked bamboo shoot on his doorstep with a little note. The subsequent days see new dishes delivered to his doorstep.
“So, how did it go?” Hu Tao asks cheekily, though her tone still treads cautiously. “Did you cry a lot? Kiss? Have wild, hot, kinky se-”
“Spirits do not have a corporeal body,” Zhongli says, and he admits he takes a strange pleasure in watching the girl squirm. She winces, anticipating the tears, but Zhongli doesn’t feel like crying today. “A child should keep such obscenity out of her mouth,” he tells her instead, and Hu Tao quickly recovers and shoots him an impish grin.
He still grieves, it’s hard not to when the person you love is gone, permanently. But now it’s somewhat easier to breathe; perhaps confessions and last farewells took more weight off his shoulders than he thought. There’s a little less weight in his steps and it must be obvious to the people around him, with the way they crowd around him, offering him free food and discounts and patting him on the back like he’s a son to be proud of. For a moment it feels like he’s the Geo Archon again, surrounded by the love of his people--but this is a different kind of love, he thinks. It’s less distant.
Keqing seeks him out during her break. She sees the scarf on his neck and makes a face at it. “Huh. It looks kind of tacky on you.”
“I’m rather fond of it,” Zhongli replies. “Thank you for what you did.”
“No, it’s nothing.” The Yuheng waves her hand, bashful. “I just wanted to lift your spirits, or something.”
“You did,” Zhongli tells her.
--
In April, the liveliness of Liyue harbour seems to roll back into pace.
Venti appears in his window one day with osmanthus wine. “Courtesy of the young Ragnvindr,” he says, and they drink till sundown. The bard ends up with a raging headache, but he smiles and it looks happier than usual, almost relieved.
Xingqiu drops by to give him a book; comedy isn’t his cup of tea, but he reads it in quiet and ends up having to stifle a laugh or two. That afternoon Hu Tao’s prank gets foiled by him, and the next day he feigns ignorance to the basin of water above his office door.
One time during lunch break, Xinyan dedicates her next song to him. “FOR THE BEAUTIFUL CONSULTANT,” she yells into the mic, and surprisingly, several people outside the audience give a few "whoop!"s. Zhongli awkwardly sits at the back, then for the next hour he watches her blast out her liveliest performance yet, and promises to come see the rest.
Xiangling, as usual, still sends her new recipes to his doorstep, even after he’d promised to come try her dish personally.
“I’m not as sad as before,” Zhongli mentions to the ferrylady. “Why are they doing all of this?”
“Indeed, you look better.” The ferrylady smiles, kindly. “Perhaps they are celebrating that fact.”
--
In all honesty, he doesn’t think he can ever let Childe go. There are still traces of the man in Zhongli’s room--eye-catching jewels, fine calligraphy brushes, the scarf on his desk and the beaded earring kept away safely in a box; he’ll stay in his mind forever, popping up from time to time. But when that happens, he thinks he can look back on his memory with fondness.
Perhaps Zhongli will never quite let go of him, but he can still keep going. His hands will just be occupied for a bit.
In May, Zhongli buries Childe’s vision at his grave and hopes it’ll resonate with him again, some day.
--
It’s not the first time when they say something along the lines of, “The harbinger is gone”, but for now, Zhongli thinks he’ll be okay. Instead, for the first time in six thousand years, the mask of solitude comes off, and the consultant writes a strongly-worded note to leave on Hu Tao’s desk, thanking her. Later that evening he catches the director sniffling in her room and chooses not to comment on it.
--
“Childe’s dead,” Hu Tao says, “I miss when he gave me business.”
This time, Zhongli huffs, but there's no weight in it now. “You should act less callously, Director Hu. Maybe then the citizens of Liyue will entertain you.”
“I’m an honest figure. They just can’t handle it.”
“You own a Funeral parlour, Director. By inviting people to patronise us, they think you are cursing them to an early grave.”
“Aiya, stop nagging, old man.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, the ‘old man’ you’re addressing is Rex Lapis.”
“And Rex Lapis calls this child ‘boss’. Now shoo.”
“You-”
--
To Zhongli
Xiansheng!! It’s me, your favourite chef!
I hope you’ve been doing well these days. Recently, I came up with a new variation of your favourite bamboo shoot soup, and I think it turned out pretty good, so I’m leaving this pot here because I want you to be the first person to taste it. Is it good? Was the amount of salt used appropriate? I coated the pork belly in slime condensate before leaving it to boil--is it to your tastes?
I know you took the hardest hit from Childe’s death. But nowadays, colour is starting to return to your face--I hope I’m not wrong in thinking that you’re getting better. Lingering on the past only hurts you more.
What I’m trying to say is, chin up, Xiansheng! I still need your detailed opinion on my new dishes. Let’s aim for a new Wanmin speciality this month, okay?
From, Xiangling
P.S. I’m glad you smiled again! I haven’t seen that in a while so I was super happy when you smiled at my food!!! (*ﾉ∀`*)