You were laying wide awake and restless in your bed that night. On the way home from the meeting with your father, many medics, healers, and Millileth were still hustling around to do whatever they could for the wounded. It was from a conversation between a weeping mother and her husband that you learned their son and at least ten other people had perished in the lawachurl attacks at the opera house. You couldn't bear to look at the carnage on your walk home.
The image of the devastation would haunt you for a long while.
I'll see every one of them at the funeral parlor tomorrow morning, you realized.
The dread and despair that ached in your chest made it difficult to breathe, and your father's words played over and over again within your mind. The more you thought about it, the more his words made complete sense. Childe orchestrated the first attacks while he was away on business and out of Liyue, perhaps to keep a low profile and avoid suspicion. He invited you to keep you out of harm's way, but with your unexpected discovery of his identity, things went a bit haywire--you were in harm's way on the way back to Liyue.
But if the attacks were in the rural areas of Liyue, there'd be no reason for him to bring me to Mondstat to begin with, a part of you argued. Or maybe, he only brought you to solidify the trust you held in him? There was also the possibility that they released the monsters in a remote area as a test run...Whatever the case, it didn't matter. Childe was behind the first attack.
A heat began to burn at the tips of your fingers.
And this second attack...Father knew of the plans; when they'd act, where the Fatui would be, everything. He had to make the tough decision to put other people's lives in danger in order to protect the whole of Liyue. But I can't just accept that he would throw lives away so...so willingly for the sake of destroying the Fatui. And Childe, who conveniently left Liyue before this attack took place. It may have been for unrelated matters, but the timing adds up perfectly with what Father had said.
Childe is more than capable of taking innocent lives, you reminded yourself. Father was right. I was still lying to myself. Childe may have taken lives on the battlefield, but he chose to involve the innocent people of Liyue by reviving Osial and attempting to drown your city. The lawachurl attacks were certainly his idea. It didn't matter what his end goal was. All that did was his Fatui status. They're all going to pay.
......................
You had managed to make it to your job on time the next morning. You had managed to greet Zhongli with a half-hearted smile as you walked in. You had managed to keep your eyes off of the covered bodies on the tables. You had managed to pretend the smell of corpses wafting in the room was all in your head. You had even managed a fake laugh at one of Hu Tao's jokes. But the thing that broke you were the relatives of the deceased that came streaming into the parlor throughout the day.
You had managed the most of them pretty well until the mother and her husband came in with a small gift basket that they handed to Zhongli, as well as some of their son's favorite toys that they planned to place in his casket. That kid the woman was weeping over must've been below ten years of age, guessing by the stuffed animals and kites.
"Thank you for doing all of this for us," the mother choked back tears as she handed the basket to Zhongli. "It...It was really unexpected. You know, he was the only child we've been able to have. His siblings before him died in the womb. Our miracle baby boy...our..." Her husband silently rubbed her back while blinking away his own sorrow.
Zhongli gracefully accepted the basket and extended his sincerest condolences, but you didn't hear a word he said as you watched the interaction unfold. It was as if your ears were ringing so loud you've gone deaf.
