Look Me in the Eyes (and tell me that it's me) [Zhongchili]

Chapter 34 - Words of Advice

"What have you f— What is it that you have done?" Zhongli asks, and despite the situation, Ajax can't help taking some amusement at Zhongli's near slip-up. But then Volkov's face flashes through his mind once again, then Nikolai, then Tonia's friend's brother. All those people. All his fault.

"I dunno," Ajax replies. "How about everything?"

On the other end of the line, Zhongli sighs. Here it comes, the "I told you so" lecture where he has to sit through and listen to Zhongli telling him all the times he tried to warn him, all the times Ajax ignored those warnings, and for him to then feel even more shit than he currently does.

But Zhongli doesn't lecture him. Instead he asks quietly, "What happened?"

So Ajax tells him about his first mission, how he'd followed his orders, how he saw the life fade from a man's eyes for the first time. He tells Zhongli about Nikolai, about how he came within moments of killing his own brother, how any of those agents who died that day could have been his brother. Then he tells Zhongli about Volkov, how an innocent man died in his arms, how his heart was stopped by Ajax's own hand and he took his final breath with only Ajax as his witness.

"And then his phone rang and I... It went to voicemail. It was... He has a daughter—a family. She said that she... Fuck." His words catch in the back of his throat. "They were supposed to meet later and I..." He groans, pressing his head against his knees. Killer. Murderer. Monster. That's what he is.

"They could not." Zhongli finishes the thought for him, and it sounds so much worse said out loud. There's a finality to the event, transforming it from a murky nightmare into a sordid massacre etched into the lines of history, himself as the commander behind the tragedy.

"Yeah," he murmurs. "I'm the worst, huh? You can say it."

"I shan't say such a thing."

"I let an innocent man die. I killed an innocent man, I—"

"You did not intend to inflict lethal injury."

"Intents are a nice sentiment, but it's actions that matter. I was careless and got someone killed. If I wasn't acting on Fatui orders, I'd be punished for what I did." Ajax huffs out a broken laugh. "Maybe I should be."

"Now what good would that do?"

"I dunno. I might feel better about it." Ajax pokes at the ground. That's what he deserves for all he's done, to be locked away where he can't ruin anyone else's life, including his own. The storage unit isn't cold, but he's shivering anyway, the weight of the past months' events crashing down upon him, and he trembles under the weight of his wrongs. "There must be something I could've..."

Ajax sighs. Explaining it all feels wrong, like rolling over and exposing his belly to the executioner's axe, especially to the man who, the last time they spoke, he was shouting at to get out of his life and never return. But now it's that same man to whom he turns to for advice, who might understand his actions without condoning them as the Fatui would. "How did you move on through all this stuff? During the Archon War, I mean. There must have been some gods you didn't want to face on the battlefield, that you didn't want to...you know?"

There's a light sigh then a long silence on the other end of the line. Ajax pictures Zhongli getting up to pace his long, lonely apartment, coming to a stop at the window to cast a wistful look towards the sky.

"Indeed," Zhongli replies quietly. "There were a number of gods, some stronger, some weaker, who fought with no hope of emerging victorious. I would always attempt to negotiate a peaceful surrender, but some could not be dissuaded from the perceived glory of casting their lives aside, and when the time came that even these such gods bore threat to my people, I was left no choice but to act.