Chapter Text
Death
There's something peculiar about knowing you're about to die.
Childe is familiar with death, overly so. He's watched hundreds of his targets perish, and knows exactly what it looks like when the last vestiges of life fade from the eyes. Some go quietly, quickly; others go sputtering, clinging uselessly onto their final view of the world: his face.
Only those he's killed under contract are allowed to see what lies under the mask of the fabled assassin, Foul Legacy.
As Foul Legacy, he's ended countless lives, ever aware that the next target could prove to be the one that ends it all. To be sure, he'd managed to complete even this mission successfully. It was his own carelessness to underestimate the skill of their hidden, trump card mage. Nevertheless, the corrupt councilman he'd been tasked with eliminating is lying in the dirt somewhere miles afield, cold, bleeding out the last of his life force.
Much like himself.
Childe feels death nearer, mere inches away.
Shuddering, he takes his last look above him at the vast, harsh sky of his beloved Snezhnaya. Let it be the only witness to the end of his wretched life.
But then he feels it--only just. A light, feathery touch on his cheek, and it calls to him. He uses what he knows are his final, feeble moments to look for its source.
Ahh.
So he's made it to heaven?
That can't be possible.
And yet, surely. This is what an angel must look like.
Rebirth
When Childe next wakes, the cold grips him, overwhelming, and he knows he must be alive.
Heaven was a trick, and hell is hot.
He's lying on a floor. Actually--he's lying on the saddest excuse of a mattress he's ever seen, so thin it's barely more than a cloth. It's so cold in this small, dirty room he swears the floor may just be ice, and not this grey, worn stone it's pretending to be. He's only warm enough to breathe thanks to his heavy cloak, wrapped tightly around him, and the crackle of a fire burning weakly in the hearth to his back.
Immediately, he reaches down, brushing against the spot in his gut where he'd been shot through with a blast of Electro energy. It's clean and bandaged, not a speck of blood in sight. And the pain, though still humming, is at a weaker intensity than it was before.
Before.
How long ago was that?
He'll have to seek his answers himself.
Within seconds, he claims his bearings. There's a window on the wall before him, and when he tests his weight on his feet, he finds that he's strong enough to hobble over to the glass, though it pains him to do so. Except, there is no glass on the window--it's a hole in the wall, and the frigid wind is blowing in with impunity.
At least he knows where he is. Without a doubt, this little hovel is in the Northern forests of Snezhnaya, exactly where he'd warped to after the last mission had gone awry. There's nowhere in Teyvat as glacial as this, even in the summer when the temperatures are at their "mildest". The landscape is white, white as far as the eye can see but for the grey of the sky and the black of withered tree trunks, like skeleton hands grasping for the moon.
He hadn't known of anyone living in these hostile forests, but if ever there'd be a land of eccentrics, surely it would be his homeland.
But who would bring him here? Save his life and heal him, but then store him here, where the frost might just kill him anyway?
He feels, more than hears, when someone enters the room.
His captor hasn't done their due diligence. Every weapon he's stored in his clothes is still on him. So stupid. It will be their last, fatal mistake.
With the speed of a snakebite, he whips around, dagger already in hand. But then, he stills.
Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe heaven is cold.
Because before him stands a woman so exquisite she cannot be of this earthly plane. Her hair is the colour of starlight on amber. Her eyes remind him of honey, of each treasured spoonful his dear mother had snuck into his milk when he'd been a child and wanted nothing more than sweets. She's wearing a white, woollen coat that looks threadbare even from afar.
"You're awake," she murmurs, surprised. The woman has a bundle of kindling in her arms, and when she moves towards the hearth, Childe doesn't stop her. "Standing, too."
She turns her back on him to feed the hearth with sticks and twigs, and Childe marvels at her lack of fear, of doubt. But even more, he marvels that he isn't taking advantage of it. Yet.
"Who are you?" he says quietly from his position by the window. His energy is quickly being sapped away by the cold and his injury, but if he has to, he'll jump out. It wouldn't be his first time, surviving in the frostlands with little more than the clothes off his back. But there's a tiny part of him, a crazy part of him, that's curious about this woman. This apparition. This temptation.
"You shouldn't be standing," she replies, ignoring his question. "Come, lie back down on the mattress."
"You call that a mattress?" he scoffs, despite the situation. It's not exactly the time to be complaining about his amenities.
"It is all I have." The woman shrugs and approaches him, hands reaching out.
Childe's first instinct should be to grab her arms, twist them behind her back and jab his knee into her spine. He should restrain her, force her to tell him who she is and what she's done to him. But instead, to his own disbelief, he lets her grasp the front of his cloak, using it to drag him back towards the "mattress" and hearth. He lets her take it off and push him down until he's laying prone. And when she uses it like a blanket, covering him and tucking the sides in so no cold air can enter, he still lets her.
But when she reaches for her own shoulders, removing her cloak to add to his warmth, he reaches his limits of permissibility. What is she doing? She'll freeze in seconds wearing only those thin, moth-eaten clothes underneath. He pushes it back to her.
"No, you need it more," he argues, still not sure why this is happening. Why he's talking to her, why she's caring for him, but most of all: why he's allowing it.
"You are cold, and you are injured," she says simply, rebuffing him. "I am only cold, and I have nothing else for you."
"I'm warm enough already," he says, lying through his chattering teeth. He sits back up, undoing all her careful work, and yanks the cloak away from her hands. He wraps it around her tightly and clasps it a bit too high on the neck, so only her face is visible above it. And when he lifts up the furry hood for good measure, she all but disappears under its fluff.
"This is a bit too much," she says mildly. "But if you are sure." She wriggles free from his hold and draws the hood back, though she keeps the cloak on. Good.
She turns a stern gaze onto him. "Rest more," she commands, and her voice is more compelling than the gentle shove on his shoulder. "You are not yet fully healed."
"Tell me who you are first." He tries, but his command sounds much less threatening than his usual. There's not much threatening he can convincingly do while on his back.
She takes a spot next to him, kneeling on the floor, and repeats her motions from earlier, tucking the edges of his cloak underneath him.
"I am Lumine," she answers, her voice quiet but steady. "I am a priestess of this temple. I found you, bleeding upon its threshold. And I took you in, and healed you."
Priestess? Temple? What religion would congregate here, in this frozen wasteland?
It's only when she replies to him that he realises he's said those words out loud.
"I worship the Seven," she says. "It is an old religion. Not many followers of these gods are left."
"Are you the only one here?"
She nods, solemnly, sadness like a weight on her shoulders. Then, she smiles and oh. How beautiful she looks when she smiles. "But now I have a visitor," she quips. And for some godforsaken reason, Childe finds himself smiling back.
"Now sleep," she orders, shifting from her knees to a more comfortable, cross-legged position. "Your questions can wait until later."
The fire in the hearth is blazing more brightly than before. Though he'd only said it in the heat of the moment, Childe realises that he is actually feeling warm. Warm enough, at least, so that his eyes start feeling heavy.
Despite himself, he yawns.
"Good. Let sleep take you. You will heal faster."
"Wait," he says, fighting with himself even as the words escape. "Will you--You won't…?"
"Yes, I will be here. No, I will not go." And when she combs an achingly cold hand through his hair, comforting him, he finds he can fend sleep off no longer.