Chapter Text
His master was right.
When he had first emerged from the Abyss, three inches taller than when he had fallen and bandaged with gangrene and the remains of his coat, only an hour had passed since he had been driven into the old well. The wolves were still howling for their dinner outside the village. Maybe the men had driven them off, or maybe they were waiting just outside the gates, waiting for their next young meal.
With mittened hands, he held the strange, spiny red mask the blond-haired boy—Aether—had given him. The biting, familiar wind of his hometown made the last three months feel like only a nightmare. His wounds were nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that could not have been done by the wolves who had chased him here, but the mask was evidence of where he had been, what he had become. The Abyss. He didn’t even remember if he knew that word back then. Still, he knew he couldn’t be caught with the remnants of that place. He tucked the mask into his coat, praying he wouldn’t need to wear it. Vowing never to wear it again. As far as his family knew, nothing had happened. Their boy had only been gone for an hour. Their little Ajax was fetching water at the well. How could anything have changed, in such a short time?
But he wasn’t their little Ajax anymore. You belong to the depths, his master had told him in her rasping, hollow voice. You belong to me. She wouldn’t let him go. That place wouldn’t let him go. The shape of the ruins was burned into his eyelids. The Foul Legacy’s claws were burned into his hands. Scars—no, they weren’t scars yet, though Childe could hardly remember the pain of the wounds whose shadows still scored his body. A defense mechanism, he hoped. But they were burned into him, marks that heralded his curse. And, tied with hard-won Rifthound sinew around his waist, glowed the Hydro Vision that had kept him alive those long months, even when he’d wished it hadn’t.
So many of his memories were as visceral as the day they’d happened, playing over and over again like a broken spincrystal every day since, but the one thing he wanted to remember had vanished that night: who was Ajax before the fall? The one that emerged from the well wanted only to kill, to hurt someone before they could hurt him. He had the power now. Those wolves that had forced him to fall, the dragon that had torn him apart and left him for dead…he could hurt them all now. Let them dig their claws into him—the pain made him feel alive.
He could hurt his family. He could summon knives of water and cut out his father’s heart, drown his mother in her bed, drive a spear through the baby and pin her to the wall. It would be so easy. The power was throbbing at his fingertips. He couldn’t contain it. Just reaching out his hand could call down a massive whale to flood an Abyssal cavern and take out a Hilichurl encampment. And if he did that, he would be punished. Maybe his Vision would be taken away. He couldn’t survive without it. And if the Abyss came to take him back, there would be nothing he could do.
All Ajax had wanted was to run up the hill to his family’s farm, collapse in front of the fire and feel warmth for the first time in three months. He wanted to see his mother and father, his older siblings Ruby, Petya, and Brioc, to tell them how much he had missed them, how much he loved them, and he wanted to hear them say the same things. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t have missed him, he was only gone an hour. And they couldn’t have loved him.
He was a monster.
He turned his back on Morepesok, and walked into the forest, dragging his rusty sword behind him in the snow. One trail of rust followed him, and one of blood. He walked into the forest, and in a rock shelter that reminded him of the Abyss, he collapsed from exhaustion. It was two days before he woke up, and another day before hunters from the village found his footprints. What they found was an emaciated boy, delirious from the cold, but determined not to tell anyone what had happened to him.
Ajax never told his family about the Abyss. After their questioning went nowhere, the men concluded that he must have been attacked by wolves, that night at the well. He had run away and gotten trapped in the snow. Sure, he was taller, and his hair was longer, but it would only reopen old wounds if they pressed him.
It was obvious to everyone, though, that the boy they had found in the cave wasn’t the one who had gone to fetch water three days earlier. Those first few months after his escape were the hardest. When the doctor set his broken bones, disinfected his wound with lye, when his mother cut his hair, it hurt. Between moments of clarity, all he could do was defend himself from their punishments. He locked himself in bubbles of water, kicked and scratched at anyone who came near. If they didn’t hurt him, he wouldn’t hurt them, but…they just kept coming back. His father had a bruise on his chin for months, but every night, he would come to his room with fresh borscht, and sit patiently outside the door until he had finished the meal and returned the empty bowl. It took months for him to speak again, but the first word he was able to stammer out was a quiet ‘thank you,’ as his mother cut him a slice of fresh-baked bread.
The truth was, he hadn’t hurt them. He had been terrified that he would kill someone, that he would have to kill someone, if the Foul Legacy came back, if they had tried to punish him for the monster that he was. But no matter how he had fought to keep well-meaning people away, he had never lost control. He had never used his power to hurt someone he loved, and they hadn’t hurt him either. All they wanted was to help him. Such unselfish motivations were foreign to him after what he had seen in the Abyss, but he had learned to remember, at least, what that kind of love felt like.
Childe knew he was a monster. He had killed countless people, countless monsters, but his family loved him. Even when they fought back then, even when he was conscripted to the Fatui, they had always loved him. And he loved them. He couldn’t love himself. But his family was everything to him. He couldn’t protect himself, but he could protect them. He had to protect them. No matter the cost, as long as they were safe, so was he.
Now all his fears were coming true. He had brought the Abyss to them. Worse, he had brought them to the Abyss. He wasn't sure when he realized he'd left the portal, when the nothingness of the void became a familiar something. He wasn't even sure whether he was awake or unconscious. All he knew was that he was home. If the others were here with him, they would have to depend on him. They weren’t warriors. They had no Visions. They were farmers. And his siblings were so young. Even Tonia, the oldest, was younger than he was when he had fallen here the first time.
He didn’t know if he could protect them, but he had to try.