Collusion

Chapter 15: Survival

SUMMARY

Dread grows in the pit of his stomach. There’s something wrong, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Again, he scans the room and finds nothing but a total mess. It’s worse than he thought: drawers pulled out, his weapons scattered about along with the broken glass on the floor. It’s as if a tornado had ripped through the apartment, one that started from the bedroom, to the living area, and then the kitchen.

Lumine was looking for something.

The question is, what has she found?

Childe stumbles into his apartment, his hand tightly gripping his side as he tries to control the bleeding. The wound is deep and the makeshift bandage he has wrapped around it is already soaked through with blood. Failure is never something he is accustomed to, and the fact that he has failed yet again has left him feeling defeated. And now he is paying the price with his own blood.

The fight has taken everything out of him. His vision is blurred and his mind is foggy; he can barely recall the journey home. Maybe it is all a distant nightmare—and he’s been having his fair share of those lately. The world around him shifts and twists in a surreal haze, as if agreeing with him: it is all a dream.

He nods, yes, it is a dream, and he closes his eyes in an attempt to wake up from his slumber. When he flutters his eyes open again, he sees a shadow hovering over him. A golden halo encircles her head, and he realises, this is an angel.

“Am I dead?” he croaks.

The angel scoffs, “I wish.”

The absurd remark jars him awake. He attempts to sit up and is immediately met with a searing pain in his abdomen, in his arms, everywhere. In front of him is not an angel, but instead Lumine, cleaning his wound. The last rays of the setting sun cast a glow on her blonde hair.

A gentle breeze passes across his chest and he realises his shirt had been taken off.

“You know,” he says, “if you wanted to undress me, you could have at least taken me out to dinner first.”

“That line would have been charming if you didn’t sound like a dying frog right now.”

He chuckles, and pain stabs from his abdomen. “So, you’re saying the line would have worked.”

“Keep talking and you’ll see how fast your wounds will open up.”

Childe smiles but decides to keep his mouth shut. He lays his head back on the floor, feeling Lumine’s slender fingers as she works to disinfect his wound. The alcohol stings, but it is a welcome pain, one that keeps him awake.

“How’d you get in here, girlie?” he asks.

“Is that really what you’re concerned about right now?”

“Humour me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Your roommate let me in.”

Ekaterina, he thinks, but no, no, she wouldn’t let a stranger in and leave her here, let alone this stranger.

Something’s wrong.

“And to what do I owe the visit?” he says. From his peripherals, he can see the absolute mess in the apartment. Broken glass on the floor, a knife stabbed on the table, furnitures askew. “Did you have a party or something?”

She holds up a curved needle. “Who’s the one lying half-dead on the floor right now?”

“Me?”

“And who’s patching you up out of the goodness of her heart?”

“You?”

“So, are you going to shut up, or what?” she sighs in exasperation, hunching over the wound.

“Hold on,” says Childe. “Do you know what you’re doing with that?”

Lumine stares at him. He snatches the needle and aims it at the wound, but his fingers are trembling far too much that he might accidentally tear his stomach open. He curses under his breath.

“Give me that,” she says, taking the needle from his hand. She takes a deep breath and looks up at him. “Walk me through it.”

Tartaglia lies back down, muttering instructions as best he can remember. The needle punctures through the skin, sending a jolt of searing pain as Lumine sews the skin together over the wound.

“Fuck,” he says, groaning.

“Keep it together,” she says, still working. “Just a bit more, and it’ll be done.”

He closes his eyes, exhaling the pain through his nose. With eyes closed, his sensations are heightened as he feels Lumine’s hands, gentle yet firm, stitching him up. It’s not his first time having his wounds stitched, it’s practically a household chore at this point. But this, having someone else do it for him—not a doctor or a nurse or Ekaterina—but her, of all people. It’s an unfamiliar experience, allowing someone else—a stranger, but is she even that at this point?—to take care of him, but he cannot deny the relief that he feels at her touch.

“Done,” she says.

He points to his nose, his eyes still closed. “This, too, pretty please.”

Her fingers tentatively touch his nose, examining the broken cartilage. “They really got you, huh?”

“If you mean by ‘they’, Diluc and Kaeya, then yes, they really got me,” he replies. “How’d you even know I was there, anyway? Not that I’m ungrateful, of course.”

“Hmm, it doesn’t look that bad. You’ll be fine.”

“You’ve been dodging questions left and right, girlie.”

“At least I know how to dodge,” she says, chuckling.

“Oh, you think you’re funny, huh?” he says, but he finds himself grinning.

Childe’s eyes flutter open and finds Lumine’s shadowed face hovering over his, inspecting the bruises on his face. Her fingers squeeze his cheeks together so that his mouth forms a round ‘O’ shape.

“That hurts,” he says, or as much as he can say with her fingers pressing on his cheeks.

She presses, the bruises on his cheek pulsing in dull pain. He groans. She presses again, the pain sharpening with the pressure. His heart pounds.

“Careful,” she says. “You don’t want your wounds to open back up.”

Lumine lets go of his face. Childe exhales. He sits up, propping himself up with his palms. A dull pain throbs in his abdomen. She moves behind him, a hand laid on his back to gently pull off the bandage he had haphazardly applied beforehand.

“The entry wound isn’t as bad, but I still need to clean it,” she says, taking the cotton and dabbing it with alcohol. Before pressing it on the wound, Lumine takes a towel and hands it to him. “Bite down.”

He chuckles. “That’s cute. I don’t need—Agh!”

She had pressed the cotton on the wound without warning. He grabs whatever is within reach—one leg of the dining table—for purchase, breathing deeply as she cleans the wound, her touch more gentle now.

“Why did you do it?” he says, his voice soft. “Why did you tell them to stop? I was as good as dead in their hands.”

Lumine wraps the bandage around his abdomen, sending a jolt down his spine as he feels her arms reach around, her hot breath on his shoulder.

“I wish I hadn’t,” she says. “I wish I hadn’t called. I should’ve let them…” her voice falters with an exhale.

He swallows the lump in his throat. Lumine steps back into his view, sitting on the chair next to the table.

“Why do all this, then?” he says, gesturing to his bandaged wounds.

She looks away. “Because I’m a good person. I’m not a killer. Not like you.”

Dread grows in the pit of his stomach. There’s something wrong, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Again, he scans the room and finds nothing but a total mess. It’s worse than he thought: drawers pulled out, his weapons scattered about along with the broken glass on the floor. It’s as if a tornado had ripped through the apartment, one that started from the bedroom, to the living area, and then the kitchen.

Lumine was looking for something.

The question is, what has she found?

She watches him with scrutinising eyes. He studies her face. There’s something different about it, somehow. Her eyes… are they… puffy?

Something is terribly, terribly wrong.

“Why are you here?” he asks. “Have you found what you were looking for?”

Lumine gives a humourless laugh. “That’s funny.”

“What did you find, Lumine?” he says with a stern voice.

He attempts to stand, but she pushes him down on a chair next to the dining table. A knife rests in the middle, buried deep in the wood.

What did she find?

He looks around at the documents strewn all over the floor, but there shouldn’t be anything at all. He’s been careful to burn it all away. It was their standard procedure, for god’s sake.

Which means…

“Who let you in, Lumine?”

She smiles bitterly. “What does it matter? I already know.”

“Haven’t you always known?”

She has known, right from the start. He’s a killer. It shouldn’t be a question, let alone an answer.

“You’re right. I should have known. I just… I just didn’t want to see it.”

She knew, so what could have changed? Why would she suddenly care? Why… Why would she cry about it?

Oh. Oh, no.

As if reading his mind, she slides a postcard across the table in his direction. There’s a young boy in the photo, one he almost mistakes for Lumine with the beautiful round golden eyes, short blonde hair, soft puffy cheeks.

“Do you remember him?” she says, her voice softer. “Do you remember any of them?”

“Lumine, I—”

“Do you remember their names? Did you remember they were human, too? That they had families?” Lumine scatters the postcards on the table, spreading them like cards predicting his fortune. Misfortune, more like.

He pores over them all, one by one, recognising each and every one of them. Except the last.

“Aether,” he reads the name from the last postcard. “Is he…?”

He looks back up at her. The resemblance is unmistakable.

And in a flash, he realises the truth. The puzzle pieces fit together too perfectly. The messy apartment. The postcards. Her puffy eyes.

But there’s still that piece of whoever let her in…

“I see,” he says.

Childe thinks about his own family, and the lengths he would go to protect them. It’s far safer that they think he was dead than for them to find him still alive. And he would do anything to let them believe that lie.

He looks at the postcard, then back at her.

He understands.

He’d do the same.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, “but I’m not sure why you’re surprised.”

Lumine’s scowl deepens.

He continues, “You knew I was a killer, Lumine. I do this for a living.”

Her jaw clenches visibly.

“Did you think I had any humanity left in me? A sense of morality? A fucking heart of gold? Don’t make me laugh.”

“You’re lying,” she says, her voice shaky.

“You’ve always been gullible, Lumine.”

With a snarl, she reaches for the knife on the table. Childe’s reflexes kick in, but his injury has slowed him. He misses Lumine’s hands as she yanks the knife out of the wood; the pain in his abdomen throbs with the sudden movement. She clutches the knife with both her hands, holding it close.

“What are you going to do with that, Lumine?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“No, you’re not,” he says. “If you wanted to, you would have done it already.”

The words only served to anger her more. She advances towards him. He backs away, the solid wall on his back. His eyes dart around the room: all his weapons are too far away, and his backup knife taped under the table is gone. Lumine’s grip on the knife’s haft remains tight, her knuckles pale and strained. He can attempt to disarm her, but judging with his slowed reflexes, that may not be the best idea.

But it’s not his only idea.

“There’s no going back from this, Lumine,” he says, hoping to appeal to her conscience, if there’s even any left.

She steps closer, her face contorted with seething fury.

“You said it yourself, you’re not a killer,” he says.

She takes another step, and oh, Lumine, you never stood a chance. Her arm is within reach and in one swift motion, Childe seizes her wrist holding the knife. Lumine expects the move, her hands holding fast, pressing towards the right side of his chest. He pushes back, but the force of both her hands against his one is stronger. The tip of the knife makes contact with skin, digging in.

“Lumine,” Childe says between gritted teeth. “Don’t.”

With both hands, Lumine pushes the knife in. He gasps in pain. “Fuck, it hurts!”

His breathing shortens, trying to keep his composure. He tries to maintain eye contact, and Lumine does, too, her eyes wild with fury.

“You can’t—” he says, panting. “You can’t do this.”

“I already have.” Lumine twists the knife, earning a scream from Childe.

His survival instincts kick in, finally, and Childe kicks her away from him, making her fall backwards on the floor. With what’s left of his strength, he limps toward the kitchen, holding the knife in place.

Lumine stands up. She steps back, a hand clasping her mouth. “Oh, god. Oh, shit, Ajax, I’m sorry—”

“You’re sorry? You stabbed me!”

“You killed my brother!”

Childe reaches for the cookie jar and the pistol inside it. When he turns back around, Lumine is gone, but he sees her shadow behind a bookshelf. With one hand, he points the gun at her, correcting his aim to the left to compensate for how much he’s trembling in pain.

Bang!

The bullet goes through the wall and completely misses his target. Lumine yelps and runs out the door unscathed. He follows her out and sees her by the elevator doors, frantically pressing the buttons. Childe aims again, but he’s shaking too much, and he’d rather not waste a bullet, no matter how much he wants to shoot her on sight.

He brings the gun down and yells, despite his better judgement, “You better believe I’m going to kill you the next time I see you!”

Lumine turns around. The elevator opens and she slowly steps back into it. “You killed my brother, asshole!”

She stands still, looking straight at him as the elevator doors close.

She’s crazy. She’s going positively crazy.

What the hell did she just do?

Lumine looks at her hands, bloody and shaky. The placid elevator music is stretching on for too long and if she doesn’t get as far away as she can as soon as possible, she is going to lose it. She remembers the knife, her fingers wrapped around it, the soft flesh as she thrust the knife in—

Ding!

The elevator doors slide open and in front of him is a man in a comically wide hat. They lock eyes for a moment as they cross each other in opposite directions, quickly scanning the other. Lumine crosses her arms in an attempt to hide her bloody hands. As he passes her by, she sees the steel flash of a pistol hilted on his waist.

That is no coincidence. Tartaglia is going to die, and that man is going to kill him.

The elevator doors close. Lumine’s heart pounds faster, the rhythm drowning her ears. He is going to die. She strides toward the exit. He is going to die and she left him for dead. She killed him. She killed a person, another human being.

The chill breeze of the evening hits her face as she steps outside of the building. For a moment, what’s left of her conscience thinks about going back for him, but she has nothing: no fight, no weapon, no element of surprise, even.

He is going to die.

Lumine walks down the street, contorting her face in what she thinks looks ‘calm’ but is more likely ‘terrified out of her own mind’. Her trembling, bloody hands and pale, sweaty face do not help.

Not even a minute passes when she hears not one, but two—no, three gunshots ringing from inside the building. Lumine mutters a curse and ducks into an alley behind the building to find temporary solitude.

He’s dead. He’s fucking dead and she killed him. She’s a killer.

There’s a nagging thought at the back of her mind that says, He deserved it.

Lumine does not want to entertain it, no, but she feels so weak. Her mind grapples with it, the justification and the condemnation of killing.

You did the right thing.

You took another person’s life.

You killed an assassin, someone who’s killed hundreds and probably would have killed more.

You killed him. You’re no better than he was.

He deserved it. He killed your brother.

Did he, really? You saw him, that blonde man. He looked so much like Aether. What if it was him? What if—

The thought jumps out at her, shaking her out of her spiral. Lumine has seen and discovered too much, and yet, only more and more questions pile on. There’s too much, all of it conflicting and contradicting each other, and she can’t think straight. Who is the killer? Who killed the killer? Who lives and who dies?

Lumine leans against the wall, sinking to her knees and wrapping her arms around them. She rocks back and forth, trying to silence her thoughts.

Survival.

Survival is all that matters.

It’s what got her through life as an orphan, and again when her brother went missing. And now, again.

Lumine takes a deep breath, calming herself. Her mind clears; she can let the horror of it all sink in later, but for now, she needs to survive. What does she need to do to survive? She needs to go somewhere safe. But where?

Yelan and her office is a no-go; Lumine has effectively gone rogue and Yelan would be out to hunt her. Mondstadt is her immediate next choice, but that is a long way ahead of her, with no money and nothing on her name except her swapped phone.

An icy hand lays on her shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. “Girlie?”

Lumine stands up with a jolt, instinctively biting her tongue to avoid screaming. She stares at him, the bloody ghost of Tartaglia haunting her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I—I’m so, so sorry.”

She really is going insane, apologising to a ghost for killing him.

“Keep quiet, unless you want to get us both killed,” he says, then he takes her arm and drags her along as he limps further down the alley. His other hand clutches his abdomen. “Come on, we have to keep moving.”

“What?” says Lumine. “What the hell? You’re real? I’m not hallucinating? Hold on—” she stops in her tracks and tries to get a good look at him. God, he’s real. He looks worse, so much worse than earlier, and he’s still bleeding, both from the knife wound and the gunshot, but he’s real. He’s really real. She’s not going crazy.

Most importantly, she’s not a killer.

Not yet, anyway.

“Are you done? Can we keep going?” he says.

“Go where? And what do you mean ‘we’?”

“Just trust me.”

“Well, actually, I don’t,” says Lumine, taking a step back from him. “I don’t trust you. You killed my brother, remember?”

“Please, Lumine, we don’t have time for this,” Tartaglia says, his voice getting increasingly exasperated. He looks pale, and if he doesn’t get patched up soon, he is definitely going to die this time.

“What happened to the other guy?” Lumine asks.

He groans, rolling his eyes. “What do you think? I was lucky enough to make it out alive, but I can’t—I can’t be sure if he—” Tartaglia clutches his shoulder and doubles over in pain.

Lumine’s heart pounds hard and fast. Her options are increasingly limited, and if she hesitates, she’d be dead. They’d both be dead.

“Where are we going? And why… why do you need me?” she asks.

“Somewhere safe. And you—you patched me up. I need you to—he shot me. Please.”

Lumine studies him, still doubled over, grasping both his stomach and shoulder.

“As crazy as it sounds, you’re the only one I can trust right now, Lumine,” he says, looking up at her. “If you don’t trust me, fine, but can we put that aside for now until I’m finished dying? Please.”

Survival. It’s all that matters. May Aether forgive her, but if Tartaglia has somewhere safe where she can take temporary refuge, she’s taking it. She can kill him again later.

God, she really must be going crazy.

With a sigh, Lumine takes his hand and drapes it around her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

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