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This is it, Childe thinks.
This is how he is going to die.
What a stupid way to go.
He’d chased Scaramouche in circles around the world. Inazuma, Sumeru, Fontaine, Mondstadt- and now back in snezhnaya.
Him and a few troops had gotten so close- and then night had fallen, and with it came snow.
Childe knew, knew, that if they waited for the snowstorm to pass- they’d never track Scaramouche down.
So in the dead of night, he went chasing. Alone.
What a pathetic way to die.
Everything was so cold.
His body felt so warm- like he was on fire. It was a lesson he’d learned in the abyss.
(Your body, when it’s given up, stops trying to save you- and stops trying to keep your organs warm with your blood. It seeps back into you, and with it comes a false fire.
Childe is dying. He is dying, and he hasn’t even earned it.)
He can’t quite see right, white coating his vision- both his eyes and his power. He tries to summon his hydro blades, trying to give himself something to focus on, but they freeze over and burn his hand with the chill in seconds, and the half-formed hilt shatters when it hits the ground.
…
He was really hoping he’d die doing something memorable. Like permanently injuring an archon, or trying to absorb a God’s power. Fighting the traveler, or-
Or Scaramouche.
Some part of him had really, really hoped it would be Scaramouche.
He tries to laugh, maybe to cry, but his body wasn’t letting him move.
…When had he stopped walking? He needed to catch up, needed to find-
…
Footsteps.
Childe snapped to the sound, the most movement he’d been able to muster in… God knows how long.
He tries to step forward.
His legs don’t work, and he falls into the snow - he barely manages to stop himself from falling head-first into a large snowdrift, merely falling to his knees.
Scaramouche emerges from the blizzard. Or whatever’s left of him.
Childe stares up at him with a certain reverence.
(He’s not human anymore. He wasn’t ever, really, but Childe never minded- because he kissed well enough and he looked at him like he almost meant it. Not that he was incapable of love, no. He loved saying that. “Incapable.”
But because now Childe was staring up at him, and he was a god as much as he used to be a harbinger, and he is a god as much as he is now an enemy.)
“Kuni,” you’re beautiful.His voice came out strangled. The way Scaramouche tilted his head, he knew he heard.
Because now, Scaramouche had wings sprouting from his back, covered in eyes, a glorious, beautiful mockery of a god that Childe now thinks was actually just a mockery of Scaramouche, because his thousand eyes stare down at him with a sort of false… Fuck, he didn’t know. All he knew is that he was dying and there was no way he was going to celestia, so he must be going to hell, but he is staring at an angel, and he is drinking it all in.
He reaches out- but he is so weak that he cannot rip into his chest and pull out Ei’s heart, nor can he even get close before Scaramouche has a grip on his arm. It is not kind or sweet, but it is the softest grip Scaramouche has ever- will ever- afford him.
“No.“ It comes out firm but not harsh, and it echoes in a thousand voices- but none are as beautiful as the one Childe picks out in his mind, quieter then the others - the voice of what Scaramouche used to be.
Good,Childe thinks. Good. Kill me, so I may die to you and not the snow. So I may feel the warmth of you and the warmth of heat even as I fade away.
It hurts.
It hurts so much.
But it is so warm, the electricity flowing through him- it warms his insides and makes his heart beat in a horrible rhythm, but he grins like it is paradise.
His delusion gives him more control, more used to the rhythm, so he is able to force himself up off his knees, and Scaramouche flinches, ready to defend himself-
And Childe steals a kiss from Scaramouche’s beauty.
It is nothing, really. He can barely feel anything, and he doesn’t have much time to think before he is dead, but he has marked the archon with his sin- left a mark upon the world- and that is enough.
All of Scaramouche’s eyes open at once.
…
When Childe wakes up, it is by a horrified recruit on the border of their camp.
He is horribly electrified, but the frost has left him sane. His hair is charged, and he will be lucky if he regains the sight the electricity took from his right eye, but he is alive, with beautiful scars marking it’s way down its back.
They all arc towards the center of his back, forming a pattern- horrible eyes marked in the inbetweens. The center of his back is a nightmare, with a lightning scar eye that glows a deep blue.
But he is alive.
He is alive.
And he will continue this hunt to steal an Archon’s heart.