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m1d-45 · 1 year

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i’ve reread duality of man so many times, it’s completely captured my brain and i’m literally obsessed with it….. i’m going insane (/pos) imagining how it would feel for childe to learn that he was wrong, he was wrong and if it weren’t for foul legacy, his god would be dead at his hands!! how horrible it would be to learn that the creator trusts foul legacy over him because of his own actions!! FUCK!!!

inversion of fate

a/n: you are so right. target audience. anon is referencing this post.

word count: 1.8k

-> warnings: childe, major spoilers for his lore, imposter au things, it/its pronouns for foul legacy because it’s childe’s perspective

-> gn reader (you/yours)

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yum1x || @esthelily

< masterlist >

childe doesn’t really see foul legacy as much more than an extension of himself, an extra tool he utilizes in the heat of battle, so to be shown that this ‘tool’ was correct? that his bloodlust had blinded him to the one thing that matters??? OUGH

foul legacy’s emotions sort of bleed into his due to the nature of their bond, so he can feel the genuine love that legacy feels for you and it drives him mad. he can tell it’s being genuine, that the claws swiping a strand of hair from your face are only moved by care, and it’s so irritating to him. he has to just sit there and simmer in the adoration from legacy, and he can’t do anything while you’re being so lovingly cared for by a creature of the abyss, only sit in a body he no longer has control over.

when foul legacy finally urges you to stand, he thinks it’s over. he tracks your direction and hears through abyssal ears, following your movement. he’s ready to go the moment that legacy gives up control.

maybe that’s why the moment never comes.

foul legacy closes its eye, spinning quickly to a seemingly random direction. it navigates solely by its own invisible senses, one’s childe’s brain isn’t wired to receive and decode, and he’s stunned into silence.

why is it going through so much trouble to protect you? surely it knows that even if childe isn’t the one, you’ll be caught eventually, right? it has to know that it can’t control his body forever (can it?) and that eventually he’ll get his revenge. it has to.

childe tries to keep himself oriented as best he can, if only to point others in the right direction, but legacy kept stopping to spin and confuse him. it only opened its eye once the sounds of the harbor reached its ears, and even then, childe found himself near the southern end of the harbor, near where the path split to lead up to the golden house.

he’d found you somewhere near luhua pool. he couldn’t tell whether to be impressed or annoyed that legacy managed to get him here so quickly.

standing on shaking legs, childe stumbled into the harbor. maybe it would be wise to get an agent to walk with him: he was always exhausted after a transformation, and this one was more mentally taxing than most.

in the back of his mind, he swears he can hear a satisfied rumble from the devouring deep.

it was rare that childe received a letter.

folders were common, crossing his desk to report on missions he didn’t order and announce things he didn’t ask about. orders themselves were common enough, ‘letters’ of notice in neat packages, a small box with a map and a card denoting what was to be done. he was familiar with both, as all harbingers were, but an actual letter?

childe spotted the bright blue paper from the moment he stepped into his office, slowly closing the door behind him. as he rounded his desk, he saw the bright gold wax seal shimmered under the light, taunting him from the center of his desk. the room was eerily quiet, the creak from his chair bouncing off the walls and back at him. as he picked up the envelope, the textured paper sparking a memory, the seal suddenly felt a lot more daunting.

the seal of the fatui was also a familiar thing. it was stamped on papers and issued on uniforms, badges and reports embossed with the dark four-pointed star. he had a stamp of it himself, in one of his drawers, though he’d admittedly swapped the usual black ink for a blood red. all the harbingers tended to put their own spin onto their paperwork, usually for ease of filing or to show off. signora had the corners of the seal spiked into flames, licking across orange ink. dottore had his in a variety of shades of blue, wire forming the outer ring.

pantalone had the circles in the star changed to mora.

he flipped it over just to be sure, reading the shining golden scrawl, but the writing in the corner confirmed it was from pantalone, the characteristic cursive ‘regrator’ justifying the weight of the paper. he doubted there was much more than a single page inside; pantalone was always rather concise, even if a touch flowery in the way he did it.

with a sigh, childe turned the envelope back over and fit a nail under the wax, neatly separating it from the textured paper. he pulled the letter out and turned it to the side: only one page, though it felt like three.

a laugh slipped from him. it felt forced. in the back of his mind, foul legacy chittered.

‘shut up,’ he muttered, tossing the empty envelope on his desk.

‘you will not wish for my silence much longer.’

childe paused, a finger under the flap of the folded paper. ‘what does that mean?’

‘what do you think it does?’

he shook off the cryptic response—though it’s been months since he ran into you, it’s been in a mood ever since—and unfolded the letter, beginning to read.

he almost wished he didn’t.

there’s only two paragraphs on the page—succinct as always, he thought numbly—but the paper weighed as much as a mountain in his hands.

it was a letter updating him on the hunt for the imposter. a common source of news for him, who couldn’t personally take part in it due to his foul legacy, but this…

no matter how many times he rereads the cursive scrawl, it refuses to register. the expensive paper wrinkles around where his thumb is pressing into it, his grip tightening with every passing moment in an attempt to combat the shake beginning to set in. the same words glare at him, unchanging, shimmering off the page like an oasis of poison.

he feels legacy crawl out of the cave in his head that it has sealed itself in, finally coming forward into the light of reality that childe is washed in. the abyss stares, inspecting the harsh gleam of truth, the shine that pierces into childe’s eyes and makes them water, the one that doesn’t go away even if he closes them. legacy chitters, almost like a laugh, and the paper finally falls from childe’s hands.

‘we were wrong,’ the paper says.

you were wrong, his mind repeats.

legacy reads the paper, cooing sadly at the news that you’ve been missing ever since zhongli cornered you. you’d slipped away in his shock, and he could feel the way it wanted to chase after you. the barrier between their minds was always rather thin, and he can feel it press against it, the sadness and concern bleeding into him.

legacy pawed at his mind, urging him to let it take over and find you, and childe couldn’t even find humor in the fact that a creature of the abyss was whining at him.

it was his fault. his fault, his, if he had just listened to legacy and to the call in his own heart, if he had stopped and thought like he was told, if he had recognized the fact that legacy would never turn down a fight-

something like pride washed into his mind from legacy but it didn’t register, the overwhelming realization that he’d tried to kill his god driving all thoughts from his mind.

and he would have succeeded were if not for the abyss.

the abyss itself, the liquid poison that clung to his skin and made him dream of stars fallen from the sky, the small part of it that he had to permanently take on to survive, that had been more right than his own mind. the very place known for being bloodthirsty and ruthless, that never turned down a fight and was the first to draw blood, had been kind to you. he should have noticed.

he was wrong. how could he be?

his foul legacy chittered, an equal mix of taunting him and asking to find you.

‘give up,’ it cooed, a bitter edge of false affection around its words. ‘you’ve already done enough.’

he hated that it was right.

he hated that were it not for legacy he would have hurt you further. he hated that he had the gall to try and taunt you, you, the one he’d sworn to devote his life to after he escaped the abyss. you who gave him a form strong enough to handle the devouring deep, you who gave him the strength to stand up and keep on, and he repaid you by hunting you down, claws bared.

and he hated that he would never be able to find you on his own.

‘let me find my god.’

‘my god,’ he weakly replied, but bile quickly rose in his throat. were you? did he even have the privilege of calling himself your follower if the only words he spoke to you were threats? could he call himself faithful when he pressed on after the abyss itself cried for mercy?

‘are you the one they held close?’

childe was going to be sick.

he wasn’t, he wasn’t, he was so awful that you had to turn to the abyss for comfort, his hands were so stained that even the highest of the high recoiled, weapon drawn. you, his light, the one thing that he could always rely on, the sole constant in his life, and he turned his back on you when you needed it most. he had willingly thrown it all away, blindly following a fake that took advantage of his faith. even when all the signs asked him to stop—to think—he had pressed onward, so blinded that a creature of sea and stars could see what he could not.

‘let me find them.’

he stared at his desk, at the work he still had to do, at the letter proclaiming his failure, at the wide window to his left that spanned nearly the entire wall, more than large enough for even his foul legacy, and made a decision.

ajax gave up his body, bitter in the knowledge that the only time he could only see you would be through another’s eyes, and sick in the understanding that it was all his fault.