— caught in the witching hour. —
#chilumi. a historical fantasy threadfic concept, ft. immortal witch Lumine + soldier Childe

Under bright moonlight, in the eerie hours between midnight and dawn, a woman finds Childe dying in the remnants of war—and then takes him home with her.

Ajax is all of sixteen when he is told to prepare for the battlefield. All of sixteen when he is ordered to die. Well, nothing so harsh as that in the missive sent—but everyone knows how war is. There’s little chance of coming back from it unscathed, if not dead entirely.

One son, his father had read aloud.

“I’ll do it,” he says immediately, to the protest from the rest of his family. His elder siblings had immediately jumped on him for his rash decision, but Ajax shakes his head. “I’ll do it,” he repeats. “Let me go.”

The middle sibling of the family, Ajax neither had the innocence of his younger brothers nor the importance of his older ones. He was disposable enough that his absence won’t create too many ripples.

Ajax packs light. Only the most important things. A ribbon here, a toy there, little treasures pushed onto him from Tonia and Teucer and everyone else.

“Are you sure,” his father begs, steady, warm hand on his shoulder. “Are you /sure/.”

“Don’t worry, old man,” he says with a toothy grin—and feels his heart chill from the lie. “I’ll come back to you alive. To you all.”

His father lets his shoulder go, and Ajax knows without looking that it is because his father’s hand is trembling. Ajax is trembling too.

But neither of them mentions the other’s weakness.

One son, the Tsaritsa demanded, and Ajax did not want any of his brothers to die.

So /he/ chooses to die instead.

.

.

.

His father had sent him off without a word, because Ajax has always been a little too rowdy. Always a little too bloodthirsty. Perhaps his father knew that of all his children, Ajax had the highest chance of surviving.

.

.

.

Ajax is all of seventeen when he sees a man die for the first time. Ajax is also all of seventeen when he kills a man for the first time.

Somehow, he feels nothing.

Bloodshot eyes, open so wide you’d think the eyeballs were at risk of falling out of their sockets. Strangled groan as he reaches for Ajax’s shirt with bloodied fingers—what were left of them from the bite of Ajax’s dagger, at least.

“You…” the man gasps. “Remember me, warrior. Remember how I fought.”

Ajax looks at the man, dead in the eyes. Says nothing in return, because a man dying deserved dignity. He did not deserve lies.

.

.

.

“Are you okay, soldier?” his commander asks him later on, because a seventeen-year-old was not supposed to find himself at the frontlines, fighting for his life. They saved the tender-aged men for the back in logistical lines, to toughen them up before sending them out to die.

“Yes, sir,” he replies, voice even. Eyes dull.

The commander lets him go with a tired look in his eyes, as if through Ajax's answer, he’s caught glimpse of the man’s death himself.

It wasn’t even that hard, Ajax thinks later with a shrug of his shoulder. Washing out the blood from his shirt had been the most difficult part of the whole ordeal.

.

.

.

Ajax is all of nineteen when he becomes Tartaglia. All of nineteen when he becomes Childe. Whatever codename they chose to give him, in this tangled war of no beginning and no end, he takes it without question.

Ajax is Tartaglia is Childe is Ajax. At the end, Ajax is Ajax—but before the end, he is Her Majesty’s.

So Ajax discards Ajax. He thinks, he can regain it, after this war is over.

That is why Childe is all of nineteen when he becomes a Harbinger. He never looks back when a battle concludes. He never looks back at all—which is why he never caught glimpse of her.

.

.

.

Childe is all of twenty-one when he is left for dead on the battlefield. A surprise attack had decimated the rest of his men, but he hadn’t given up. Even in the face of defeat, he had fought. Because of it, even.

He hacks and slashes and fights; bathes himself in blood under the glaring moonlight, ten, twenty men going down until the world falls silent. He stumbles away from the men he had brought down, intent on leaving—only to find that he can move no longer.

With a strangled groan, Childe collapses into soft, muddy earth.

He finally lets himself look back. The eyes of corpses return his gaze. Some of them familiar. Some of them soldiers once under his command. He takes a shallow inhale and feels his ribs cracking in protest.

Childe is twenty-one and bleeding out on the forest ground. Twenty-ne and too tired to keep his eyes open. So he closes them instead—

But a sudden voice stops him from slipping into slumber. "Are you dead?"

A poke at his chest. It was annoying, when all he wanted to do was sleep. So Childe doesn’t so much as twitch. Then another insistent poke at his broken ribs, and Childe groans at the shifting of shattered bones.

“You’re still alive,” someone notes. A woman’s voice. Young. Sweet lilt to her words.

Childe cracks open an eye and stares into the starry night skies. A sudden flash as one of the stars fall. “In a few minutes,” he rasps, “I wouldn't be so sure about that.”

Someone leans over him and blocks the moonlight. Just as he thought, a young woman. Strands of gold framing her face, chalk-white flower in her hair. It shimmers as she hovers over him. Through the pungent odours of rotting flesh, he catches the scent of crackling electricity.

“Hello. I’m Lumine,” she greets softly, as if it were completely normal for a woman to speak to a soon-to-be dead man while surrounded by corpses. Maybe she was a vulture given human form, wandering the aftermath of brutal battles for carrion.

But it seems not, because she asks, “I’m looking for my brother. Have you seen him?”

Childe can’t help but laugh. What a stupid question. But that laughter turns into hacking coughs at the movement of his broken body, copper taste of blood pooling in his mouth.

“Have you seen him while fighting? He looks like me. Blond hair, golden eyes. We’re twins, you see,” she continues on, as if he hadn’t just mocked her to her face. As if he cared to know the inane reasoning behind her words. “His name is Aether.”

“Why are you looking here,” he says darkly. “The ones here are all dead.”

She gives him a wan smile. “There’s you, isn’t there?”

Childe returns a smile, full of teeth. “Never said I was alive, girlie.”

"I see." The woman tilts her head. “What’s your name?”

“You wanna know the name of a dead man?” he scoffs. “What’s the use in that?”

“I want to know /your/ name,” she corrects. “Dead or alive, I will hear it.”

He laughs again at that, the world swirling around him into a dark haze. But he relents. What use is the name of a soon-to-be gone man to a strange woman wandering the bloody remnants of a war?

So he relents.

“Childe,” he says, and it’s not his true name. Not really. But Ajax hits too close to home and Tartaglia too close to Her Majesty, so Childe will have to do.

"Childe," she tests. "Childe."

"Don't wear it out now, girlie," he rasps. "I rather like the sound of it on your lips."

Childe is all of twenty-one when he gives Lumine his name. And then Childe, all of twenty-one, passes out to die.

[to be continued.]

(Actually, I'll come back to this with a brief summary of this particular concept in a bit... I don't think it'll be actual writing, but just me rambling on about some plot that's paper thin if you look too close.)