As The Sun Gazes Upon The Moon [Zhongchili]

Chapter 10 - A Blade Reforged

"My deepest apologies for the damages. If there is a manner in which you would prefer to be compensated..."

"It matters not." The Tsaritsa sweeps through the palace like a blizzard across the mountaintops, Zhongli following behind. "Material matters are of little concern to me. I instructed the boy as I did so that he shall remember the discipline which has guided him thus far. My staff shall ensure renovations are handled swiftly."

"I am pleased to hear that our carelessness shall not cause you too severe an inconvenience, yet if Tartaglia is to be punished, I believe it right that I should also shoulder the burden."

"Punishment? That is where you are mistaken, Morax. For Tartaglia, discipline is no punishment. It is solace, for to instruct him is to bind him; in doing so, we might prevent more nefarious forces from doing the same."

This is all rather heavy handed for his taste, but Zhongli nods. The Cryo Archon has her own ways of running her nation, and to question her would be wasted words. They continue through the palace and she leads him to her office, double checking the door is locked behind them before they take their seats.

They sit positioned the same as the night before Zhongli and Childe's duel, when Zhongli had been so desperately searching for a way to bring Childe back to himself, alight with the foolish hope that the resolution of the physical would extend also to the mind.

Today the fireplace is dead and the Tsaritsa's chill aura engulfs the room, biting through skin to graze against bone. A puff of mist escapes Zhongli's lips as he tugs his coat tight around him. As much as he wishes to hunch over himself, to trap every morsel of warmth escaping him, he sits straight in the presence of the woman whose property he has contributed to the damage of.

"I am not angry," clarifies the Tsaritsa. "In fact, it might be said that I foresaw this day coming for some time now."

Zhongli stiffens.

While there is solace in knowing that she holds no ill will toward him, it confirms something far worse.

Zhongli has spent the past weeks keeping his and Childe's interactions under a tight lip, carefully sidestepping any topic which might give the Tsaritsa cause for concern, telling himself that if he just waits a little longer, is a little kinder, a little more patient, that the Childe he knows will come back to him.

However, the Tsaritsa coming clean with her own suspicions brings forth another witness to the stand, corroboration and confirmation that Childe's peculiar behaviour and the dark aura clinging to him are more than the overly fussy concerns of a man with millennia of loss behind him.

Something is deeply wrong with Childe, and he's not getting better.

"Then you see it too," says Zhongli. "Tartaglia's condition..."

"It is not unexpected." The Tsaritsa slides an envelope across the desk toward her, tugging at the ripped wax seal. "Yet the circumstances bring with them their own complications."

"You have seen him through this previously. Approximately what time frame might we expect for improvement to be seen?"

She folds the edge of the envelope down, watching it bounce back open as soon as she releases it. With another futile attempt she presses dry wax to parchment, but the seal is broken, and what has been opened cannot be resealed.

"I would hardly say he improved the previous time," says the Tsaritsa. "The correct term would perhaps be harnessed or guided, perhaps to some extent matured, but his drive has never subsided. I doubt it shall, until we are able to bear witness to other events this world is due to endure."