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When one thinks of a deity of love, one would lean more towards the thought of passionate love, romantic love. Eros.
When one thinks of a deity of love, one would think of beauty. Maybe one would think of kindness and unconditional love. Maybe one would think of affection and unadulterated adoration.
One wouldn't be wrong, but one wouldn't be right either.
Childe knew this better than anyone. In the biting cold of Snezhnaya, it is the Tsaritsa who rules. The Tsaritsa, the Cryo Archon. The God of Love.
The Tsaritsa is far from one's initial idea of a deity of love. Her love is cold and cruel. The love of a general watching over their soldiers, ready to aid, ready to lose. It is cruel and cold and demanding, but it is love nonetheless.
(Their cause outweighs the individual. The greater good is worth the sacrifice, and they will not hesitate)
It is ruthless in its intensity, biting and snapping. Causing hurt rather than soothing it. Her love is more than the normal people could bear.
Ajax was not normal, at least not anymore. He could withstand his Archon's love, and Tartaglia loved them back just as fiercely.
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.
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He had been kind once, generous, selfless.
(Sometimes he wonders if the Tsaritsa was like him. Someone kind and soft, turned cruel and ruthless by a world that did not care for the weak)
The Abyss is not a place where kindness could flourish. It is a place where kindness dies, for one cannot be kind amongst the twisted creatures lurking within, with dark shadows reachingreachingreaching.
He had learned that the hard way. Ajax did not see the light of day, for it was Tartaglia who had clawed their way out of the Abyss.
(Some days he wonders if he really did find a way out, for the shadows still reach for him, grasping and screaming and he feels he's back in that unending dark, with the shrill cries of morbid beings ready to tear him to shreds. On days like that, he feels less like the Eleventh Harbinger and more like a child, small and helpless and so painfully weak in a world so wide and so willing to crush him)
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Childe was kind in a way Tartaglia could not allow himself to be, generous in the way Ajax had once been. He wonders if it was his way of trying to bring back someone long gone.
(He wonders if that person he had once been never really died despite it all. He cannot tell which possibility he hates more)
Still, no matter the reason, he was someone Tartaglia was not, laughing freely and smiling as though the blood staining his hands did not exist. As though he had that right to be something close to human.
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There had always been something about Mr. Zhongli's eyes that intrigued Childe. Something older than the foundation of Liyue itself, perhaps even older than the god he served. There was something wise and gentle there when his gaze fell on the world of Liyue Harbour, when his gaze fell on Childe. Something in the way Mr. Zhongli's eyes light up as he talks about the history of this and that, everyday things and trinkets that catch his eye, it never fails to make Childe feel this odd warmth within him. Childe wonders how Mr. Zhongli's love feels like, wonders if it's anything close to the love of his family (one he could barely remember now, but what he could recall of it was so full of warmth and joy that he could not help but wish).
Mr. Zhongli's eyes never failed to give Tartaglia this odd feeling of unease and comfort rolled into one. For it was as though the golden amber eyes of the man they could (reluctantly) call a friend saw through them, knew they were not the man he had befriended. Mr. Zhongli made Tartaglia itch with discomfort, for he knew, he knew, he knew, and if he somehow did not, then he would. Of that, Tartaglia had no doubt. And yet, the older man's eyes also held something comforting in them, and Tartaglia could see the darkness in his friend, not quite the same as the one that plagues them, but similar. Tartaglia thinks they wouldn't mind so much, if he did know.
Ajax thought that Mr. Zhongli was quite possibly one of, if not the, only people who could hope to understand. He wonders if the consultant was just as tainted as they were, just as scarred and bruised under porcelain skin. Watching shadows dance across amber eyes, flickers of pain and sorrow and something indescribably dark, he thinks that in this, they may just be equals.
Whether he was Ajax, or Tartaglia, or Childe, there was always something in Mr. Zhongli's eyes that never failed to make him feel as though he had the right to be human after all he's done and been through. Mr. Zhongli intimidated them sometimes, but there was no doubt that the Liyuean man made him feel.
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Ajax never meant to fall into the Abyss, but then again, who would? He remembers thinking about his family, his siblings as he plummets down into endless dark and cold, wind whistling and heart pounding as the light from above grows fainter and fainter still. His older siblings were going to be okay without him, he's sure, but what of Tonia? What of Anthon? What of Teucer?
What of his younger siblings, waiting for their brother to come home in vain? (He hadn't told them he meant to leave, an impulsive decision that would leave them waiting for a man who would likely never come back)
Guilt swirls in his heart as pain dances along his veins.
He never wanted to be the reason they hurt.
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Ajax wakes up alone, silence ringing in his ears. He flew into a state of panic before he registered the feel of grass under his body, the view of twisted trees reaching for a sky tainted in blacks and reds.
Panic fades to confusion, fades to a new kind of fear. Where he had first panicked over the silence, it was because it was never completely quiet at home. Teucer often mumbled in his sleep, Tonia would snore lightly, Anthon would move around, and no matter how early Ajax would wake up, their parents would be awake and busy. Someone was up to something at all times of the day, what with how many they were in one home.
This fear came with the realization that he was in the Abyss. The Abyss, filled with twisted creatures and morbid beings, torn and warped beyond recognition. Turned into things drunk on bloodlust and power and the urge to destroy.
Ajax prayed his meager experience in fighting would keep him alive long enough to find a way out. He prayed even more, that he would not have to encounter a creature of the Abyss.
But this was the Abyss, where only the fallen and tainted can reach.
There are no gods here.
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Of course, Ajax bumps into one of the very things he was looking to avoid like the plague.
He finds himself facing a beast; for surely that is what it is, towering above not just him but the trees around them, skin dark and cracked like rocks, a purple glow coming from the cracks, alight and rumbling with the power of Electro.
The beast had more limbs than necessary, looking something like a spider with its long spindly appendages, and its face resembled a skull more than anything, where its eyes should have been was nothing but empty sockets. Spikes and horns reach out of it, curling towards the sky as though it wished to take it for itself.
The air crackles with energy, the beast roars and the ground beneath him rumbles.
Fuck.
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"Fuck," Ajax hisses, the sting of lightning running up his arm, swiftly dismissing the Hydro sword in his hand to rid himself of that pesky Electro-Charged reaction.
He was panting for breath, bloody and bruised, but he was not the loser of the battle. Staring at the slumped figure of the beast, swifting turning into ash being blown away in the wind, he is filled with relief, and with something like vicious satisfaction.
He relishes in his victory and continued survival before promptly passing out.
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Ajax lives to fight a few other Abyss beings, but he finds one too strong for him to fight in his injured and sleep-deprived state. It was larger than the first one he had fought, holding the power of Cryo instead of Electro.
It releases a blast of Cryo energy towards him, body soaked and Hydro blades at the ready. He registers the attack too late, and he finds it too close to dodge. He's never been frozen before, and quite frankly, the experience might just be one of the most traumatic things he's gone through in the Abyss. Although that probably has more to do with being helpless and stuck in place as a beast the size of a small mountain barrels toward him with enough force to shatter the Ajax sized popsicle into millions of tiny pieces, should the hit connect.
Moments before the beast hits, he blacks out.
He just really wanted to go home, was that really too much to ask?
Faintly, he thinks he hears a blood-curling scream.
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Trudging towards the modest family home, is a figure covered in dirt and debris, wounded, bruised and battered. Orange hair matted red and brown with dried blood and mud, flecked black and gray with ash. Freckled skin littered with cuts and wounds, limping, clothes burnt and slashed until they were nothing more than scraps of cloth holding on to each other through sheer force of will.
An elderly woman looks out from the porch, looking for something, for someone, her eyes filled with worry. Spotting the battered shadow headed her way, she gasps and rushes forward.
Warm hands, calloused not from battle or weapons but from a life of work and chores, cup a bruised and bloodied face, brushes stringy and matted hair out of ocean blue eyes, and a soft voice rings out into the silence.
"Ajax, what happened to you?"
Ajax? The younger being (for surely, they cannot be a person, much less a man) wants to protest, wants to tell this worried woman before them, who is so painfully familiar but is someone they cannot recall, that their name is not Ajax, to take her kind hands and caring gaze off of them, for beings of the Abyss have no use for kindness.
Instead, they frown, unable to form the words, for one has no need to talk in the Abyss. Still, they can feel their muscles move, something they do not remember, but their body does, and when the words are about to come out, something in them refuses to speak.
Someone pulling on their arm brings them out of their thoughts, blue eyes framed by graying orange hair peer up at them. A pang of something goes through them at seeing the concern in those painfully familiar eyes, but they cannot tell what it is. The Abyss does not care for emotions.
Still, they let the woman drag them into the house, a warm reprieve from the biting cold and snow of the outside that had the immediate effect of making them feel rather drowsy, as though they could pass out right then and there, far too tired to even question the voice in their head, and the words it had whispered of mothers and Snezhnaya and home.
.
They did not fit in here, in the warmth of the small wooden house, filled with the laughter, smiles, soft touches and relieved eyes of people who knew them, who they could not remember.
Ajax, they call, in the cheery voice of a five year old boy, hair the same copper as theirs, eyes the blue of a clear sky, freckles and dimples and crooked teeth (one missing from the front when did that happen-).
Ajax, they laugh, soft as the touches of a girl older than they are, orange hair glowing in firelight, a crooked smile and a scar on her hand (a melodic voice and a hand in their hair as they drift to sleep).
Ajax, as a girl of seven years hangs onto their shoulders, dresses and skirts that reach her knees, muddied feet and shrieking laughter, children calling out "Brother! Brother!"
Ajax, in the warmth of a hug, in the sickeningly sweet taste of their smiles, in the blinding light of their joy.
Ajax, in the home that is being offered so freely to one who did not deserve it.
Ajax, a home given to a monster pretending to be someone else.
Ajax, love for a man that was not them.
They are of the Abyss, borne and shaped by darkness, depravity. The Abyss has no use for emotions.
So why do they feel a weight upon their shoulders when these people smile, when this family laughs and calls out a name that is not theirs?
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Blood boils under their skin, a cruel hungry monster rearing its ugly head, turning towards the sky and roaring for a fight. It itches, further than skin deep, a restlessness that makes this damned domesticity more torturous than it already was.
The warmth made them sick, the laughter made them fume, the carefree joy made them want to tear these humans to the ground. They've been here a month at most, and already they long for the Abyss, for the familiar carnage and slaughter, for the danger waiting at every corner.
They leave (they've done this before).
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A white haired man shows up at the door, pale and lean, wrapped in fine furs of dark blues and violets. A bruise amidst the pristine white of the snow around them.
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Fatui.
The Tsaritsa's weapon to wield, the Tsaritsa's to control. They did not like being controlled.
But.
They were allowed to fight here. Allowed to claw and rage until they were bruised and bloody and victorious. For this, they decide to stay, to sate the hunger that hounded their every step, they will be this Tsaritsa's weapon.
(And maybe if that man, with silvery white hair and skin the colour of the snow falling around them, that man who had come and who had wanted him, whose eyes foretold a story similar to the one they had, who had the same swirling darkness and bloodlust that they do, if that man made them feel like they had some place they belonged, then it was no one’s business but theirs)
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They become a Harbinger, an elite amongst the Fatui, people who answer to none but the Tsaritsa and Harbingers above them. They become the eleventh, the youngest to join their ranks, and they kneel before the Tsaritsa as she bestows upon them a Delusion, as she takes them as one of her own, and gives them a name that is theirs and theirs alone.
Tartaglia.
They grin, bloody and deadly, and they are greeted by a similar look on Her Highness’ face, and they think they could just belong here.