Collusion

Chapter 14: Tall, Ginger, Pretty Face

SUMMARY

Lumine smiles, amused at the idea of an assassin described as very kind and a great cook. The idea of him actually being a good person is simply laughable.

Lumine steps into Tartaglia’s apartment building, striding her way directly towards the stairwell. She makes her way up and stops on the second floor. The hallway stretches out, empty. Numbered doors are lined along the corridor on both sides, and none to indicate which one is his apartment.

She strolls along the hallway, doing her best not to look inconspicuous, though her lack of direction can easily give her away. The door to her immediate right opens, and Lumine almost jumps in fright, only to see an old woman at the door.

The woman says something foreign, to which Lumine shakes her head. “Sorry, I don’t speak Liyuen.”

“Ah,” the woman says. “Are you lost?”

Lumine pauses, quickly weighing her options. “Yes, actually. I’m visiting my friend, but he forgot to tell me where his apartment is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tartaglia.”

“Uh…” her voice trails off.

Of course. He may be operating under an alias. There’s no point in guessing.

“Okay, maybe you’ve seen him? He’s this tall, red hair…” Lumine gestures, and the woman scrunches her nose, thinking. She continues, tentative, “…he has a pretty face?”

The woman’s eyes light up. “Ah, yes! Pretty boy! Yes, yes, I know him. Very kind, cooks delicious food. He lives right there, last door to the right.”

“Thank you so much,” she says, smiling.

Lumine steps toward the door, amused at the idea of an assassin described as very kind and a great cook. The idea of him actually being a good person is simply laughable.

She stands before the door, assessing her next move. She’s no lock pick, and there’s no other point of entry. Her fingers wrap around the doorknob, slowly turning, testing the lock. There’s no resistance. Lumine takes a deep breath and turns the knob, swinging the door open.

Inside, a man is throwing his weight on a luggage, struggling to zip it closed. His long blond hair is pulled back in a braid, falling over his shoulder as he pulls on the zipper. This man is decidedly not Tartaglia, and for a second Lumine wonders if she has entered the wrong apartment somehow. If he’s an assassin or a spy or some other dangerous person, he would have noticed the door creaking open. She would already be dead.

Lumine clears her throat, making her presence known.

The man turns to her, quickly standing up. He makes his way to her, almost stumbling over the luggage on the way. Lumine gets a good look at him as he gets close. He’s as tall as her, if not taller by an inch. Messy blond hair makes for a scattered fringe over his forehead. His eyes disappear behind his smile.

“Can I help you?” he says.

“Sorry to barge in like this, but I’m here to visit… my boyfriend…?,” Lumine says, hoping not to give herself away.

“Uh…”

“Tall, ginger, pretty face?”

“Oh, Childe? He didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend! Uh…” he corrects himself, “Sorry, he’s a good guy, I swear, he’s just very secretive. Never tells me anything. I’m his roommate, by the way. Well, ex-roommate.”

There’s so much to unpack here, Lumine thinks. It does not surprise her that Tartaglia goes by so many names. It also does not surprise her that he is apparently secretive, but this is the second time someone has described him as ‘good’. He even got his roommate fooled.

“Ex-roommate?” she asks.

He gestures toward his luggage. “I’m moving out. Work stuff.”

“Is he here? Childe?”

“He left hours ago. Work stuff, probably. That man is a raging workaholic,” he says with a grimace. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No. Do you mind if I wait for him inside?”

He hesitates.

“Sorry, it’s just… I came all the way from Mondstadt and I didn’t get a hotel, because, you know…” she says, avoiding his eyes.

“Oh. Oh! Oh… Right. Of course,” he says, laughing. “I gotta go, though. Don’t wanna be late for my flight.”

“Yes, of course.”

He pulls his luggage and makes his way out the door. Before he steps over the threshold, he turns around and says, “I’m Abel, by the way.”

“Lumine,” she says.

“You seem really familiar. Have we met?”

“I…” She hesitates, meeting his gaze, and the resemblance strikes her. It’s like looking into a mirror. Could it be…? For a moment, she lets her hope soar. “Do you… have a sister?”

He chuckles. “I wish. But I’m an only child.”

“Are you sure?”

An uneasy smile forms at his lips. “Um… I’m pretty sure I’d know if I had a sister.”

“But… don’t you think we look quite alike?” she says, gesturing to her face, desperate for him to see.

“A little, yeah,” he shrugs. “But I grew up with my parents, and as far as I know, it was just me.”

“Oh,” she says. “I thought… Sorry. I thought you were my brother.”

“Your brother?”

She nods and closes her eyes, stifling her tears. “He went missing when we were young. He looked just like you.”

“I’m sorry, Lumine. I hope you can find peace with it.”

I can’t, she thinks. She’s given up far too much to just find peace. She will never find peace until she learns the truth.

Instead, Lumine says, “Me, too.”

“I’d love to sit and chat, but I gotta go. See you around, Lumine.”

“You, too, Abel,” she says, her voice nothing but a whisper.

His rapid footsteps echo down the hallway. Back in the apartment, daylight streams through the window, brightening up the place, but a haunting emptiness settles within Lumine. She allows herself a fleeting indulgence—an apartment shared with her brother, the chaos of daily life and bickering over chore duties, the aroma of delicious Sweet Madame roasting in the oven. All the normal, family things that were cruelly snatched away from them the moment he went missing.

Lumine sighs, steeling herself. She is in the apartment of an assassin, she reminds herself. This is no time or place for idyllic daydreams. She is here to find answers. Her eyes scan the room, taking in every detail. Tentatively, she steps in, crossing the threshold.

The apartment has no telltale signs of an assassin inhabiting it. It’s impeccably clean, with pops of colour from the furniture (a striking cerulean sofa, of all things), potted plants adorning tall shelves. Yet Lumine’s intuition tells her she’s bound to find something if she keeps searching. She ventures into the kitchen, inspecting cupboards and the refrigerator, but everything seems normal.

A cookie jar sits on the kitchen counter. Her stomach grumbles, and she opens it to take one cookie. Just one. He won’t notice. She reaches in, and instead of cookies, her hand finds the cold, hard edges of a pistol. Finally. Lumine sighs in relief at the confirmation that she is, in fact, in the right apartment.

She moves to the living area, frisking every furniture and drawer for any useful information. Instead, she keeps finding weapons: daggers hidden in the crevices of the sofa and pistols taped underneath tables and drawers. Lumine makes mental note of these. Just in case.

In the bedroom, there’s a queen-sized bed, neat and made, not a pillow out of place. One bed, Lumine notes, which is weird considering he had a roommate. Unless…? She shakes off the thought, not wanting to speculate any further.

There’s a tall wooden closet in the corner, as well as a vanity standing across the bed. There are pots of makeup on the vanity with brushes scattered on it. Marks of powders in different colours are smeared across it, as if it was a canvas.

Lumine stares at the drawers of the vanity, her hands trembling as she pulls one open. A thick pile of postcards rest inside, loosely tied together with twine. Her heart pounds louder as she picks it up, unravelling the knot. Kaeya’s face stares at her through the postcard. She recognises it from his work ID, one that he always hid because of how unflattering it was. Lumine reads the card, and it describes a vacation to Mondstadt, with a tour around the Knights of Favonius HQ, and Kaeya as the tour guide. Her stomach drops. She sits on the chair, her knees feeling weak.

She flips through the second postcard, and it’s Mr. Zhongli. The details are different, but Lumine knows it’s all a cover for the assassinations. She thumbs through the pile, scanning the faces for anyone she might recognise. There are a lot of them—men and women, young and old, though luckily none are too young, but honestly, is that where she’s drawing the line? It’s not like she hadn’t known he’s an assassin. It’s literally how they met: Tartaglia assassinating a head of state, and Lumine forever haunted by it.

Not exactly meet-cute, but…

Lumine flips to the last postcard in the pile, and then she sees it—her brother’s face, smiling back at her from the postcard. He’s the youngest in the pile, looking exactly the way he looked when they were fourteen. Short blond hair barely reaching his chin, just like Lumine’s now. Her finger absently twirls through strands of her hair, reminded of why she had always kept it short. She looks straight at the vanity mirror, holding up Aether’s photo beside her mirror image. They look strikingly similar, despite being fraternal twins.

She stares at the postcard again. Her heartbeat remains calm and steady, refusing to acknowledge the truth, the hard evidence right in her hands. She reads the description but finds it difficult when her sight blurs with tears. Her shoulders slump, clutching Aether’s postcard close to her chest.

After all that, after a decade of her efforts searching for him, this is what she finds? After all that, only to find that Aether has been gone all along. No, not gone. Killed. Murdered by the very man who lives in this apartment.

Rage bubbles in her throat. No, it’s bile. Lumine hurries to the bathroom and keels over the toilet to vomit. She flushes it when she realises… I didn’t have to do that. She could have puked wherever she wanted, because this is not her home, and more importantly, because it is his home.

Lumine stomps back to the bedroom and opens the closet. An array of knives, long and short, decorate the interior panel of the closet door. There’s a row of mannequin heads below the clothes, all wearing different styles and colours of wigs. And the clothes… Lumine skims through them, feeling the soft and expensive fabric on her fingers. The closet is divided in half: on the left side, his personal collection of luxurious designer wear; on the right, various uniforms like a waiter’s outfit or a janitor’s jumpsuit.

She takes a deep breath and starts pulling the designer clothing off the closet, littering the bedroom floor. Her heart pounds in her chest with fury as she makes a chaos out of the spotless apartment.

Lumine takes a bottle of vodka from the fridge and twists off the cap. She sips straight from the bottle, a subtle heat gliding down her throat. Then, she pours it along the floor, walking back to the bedroom and spilling the contents on his clothes. She takes the next bottle, taking another sip before she smashes it on the ground. She does it, again and again, until there are no more bottles left.

The place is a mess, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough to quell the tempest raging within her. It won’t bring her brother back. But she’ll be damned if she won’t at least make him suffer and destroy everything precious to him. She pushes the sofa and tables askew, drags the sharp edge of the knife across the cushions before stabbing it deep on the wooden table. In the bedroom, she pulls the vanity drawers out completely, flinging the contents everywhere.

Among the scattered litter, Lumine spots a stack of envelopes. Her curiosity piqued, she picks up the envelope on top of the pile. The weight of the paper feels heavy in her trembling fingers as she opens it, revealing the words written in an almost-chicken scratch handwriting.

Dearest Mama, it says, and she grips the edges of the letter in fury and sadness. She reads on as he writes to his family, and a twisted urge to tear the letters apart bursts within her, because he deserves it. Tartaglia. Ajax. Childe. He deserves it, for choosing the path of an assassin, for taking his victims away from their families. For taking her brother away from her. He, more than anyone, deserves to have his family taken away from him.

Instead, she crumples the letter in her hand, frustration and anguish and alcohol flooding her senses.

“It’s my fault,” she says, her voice quivering. Lumine stares at her reflection in the mirror, and sees young Aether looking back at her. “I should have known,” she continues. “You were always so stubborn, Aether. I should have known you would go anyway, even when—even when you promised you wouldn’t. I told you. I told you it wasn’t safe, for fuck’s sake! Why didn’t you listen to me? Why… Why couldn’t I have made you stay?”

But the mirror image doesn’t answer.

Lumine crawls into the bed, mussing up the sheets. She takes a pillow and smothers it with her embrace, sobbing into the silk fabric.

There’s no other sound, except for her, and the apartment door flying open. She abruptly stifles her cries, wiping her face with the sheets. Panic courses through Lumine, the adrenaline driving her to action. With caution, she slithers away from the bed and picks up a knife from the opened closet, hiding it behind her back. She peers through the bedroom’s doorway, and sees him, Tartaglia, limping into the kitchen, a hand on his abdomen, before promptly dropping to the ground.

If you liked this work, consider leaving kudos or a comment on AO3↗.