"You're an idiot." She found herself kneeling beside him anyway. There was so much blood—but still, he was grinning up at her like this was nothing, like she hadn't just gotten there in time. Lumine tried to remember what Barbara had taught her about healing.
"You came fast." Childe ignored her insult. "I'd say the two of us gave him a run for his mora, wouldn't you?"
Anger flared in her chest, crackling like the lightning's glow. She had half a mind to push him away.
Fine, if you're going to be so blithe about this, I might as well let you die anyway!
Instead she narrowed her golden eyes. "You almost died, stupid. And neither of us got the gnosis."
His lips quirked further upward as he attempted to prop himself up further, only to falter and slip. "Haven't you heard the saying about 'almost'?"
"Perhaps." Lumine pondered it. "What's the version from Snezhnaya?"
"Grenades and darts."
"Of course." It wasn't so far from the version Lumine first learned, many worlds ago.
"Then you understand—almost doesn't matter, as long as I'm not dying, I'm fine."
Despite the easygoing grin, the light tone, Lumine could see that there was more to it than that. It was in the dullness of his eyes, the shadows underneath, the fact that this was really bad.
It sounded like a mantra, like the one Lumine found herself repeating after the encounter with her brother.
We've always had enough time.
As long as I'm not dying, I'm fine.
"You're not fine and you know that." She could feel the strength of the earth, the power of lighting, the swiftness of the air coursing underneath her fingertips. She just had to draw upon it. "I can't believe you used your transformation again. Didn't you say last time that it was killing you?"
"I thought I'd healed more than that." He tilted his head and winced before his expression grew more contemplative. "I didn't know that you cared so much, Traveler."
There was a taunt to it. The daring that made her heart stop in her throat.
To put it to voice—it was impossible.
She was a traveler, first and foremost. No home, no connections, no bonds. Just herself and Aether.
That was the way it had always been, since their first world was destroyed.
After that tragedy and cataclysm, she'd sworn to keep her heart guarded. Aether was the one who had a bleeding heart, who made connections easily with others, who always had trouble saying goodbye.
At least, that was how it had been until they'd come to Teyvat.
But Lumine would rather die than admit that she had changed, that this had changed.
"Hold still a minute, I want to try something." She felt the air flow around her, the smell of the fields and the fresh winds of Mondstadt filling her lungs.
Barbara had once told her how it felt, to use the elements to heal.
"I like to think it's like drawing on the energy Lord Barbatos placed in this country." Barbara had held a finger to her chin. "You're just telling to flow together, to fix everything."
That was what Lumine had drawn upon. That and the wishes of a fallen star, a young god who had finally realized how lonely she'd been all this time. The emotion only an abandoned younger sibling could know.
If her brother couldn't come home, she wanted Teucer's to, at least.
And a secret part of her whispered in the healing wind that she wanted both Childe to come home with her, too.
It wasn't perfect, nothing like what Jean or Barbara or even Bennett could do. Childe still looked terrible, if Lumine was being blunt.
"Learning some new tricks, then?"
"Something like that." She grabbed his arm and slung it over her shoulders. "Come on, let's take you to a real healer."
"Hey, hey, don't worry about me." He tried to pull out of her grasp, but he couldn't escape so easily. "And we'll get the gnosis another day."
Lumine said nothing. Instead she guided him one step forward, then another.
"The Tsaritsa's will is inevitable, you know," Childe panted. "Even if you had gotten it today—she'll have it soon. She'll be sure of it."
That was the first time Lumine had ever heard Childe sound defeated.
"Nothing is inevitable." Lumine was surprised at how strong her voice was, considering the cirumstances, as they hobbled toward Inazuma City. "Not even the heavenly principles."
Thunder clapped overhead, despite it being a perfect picturesque sunset.
"Not everyone can defy the gods, Traveler." He sounded sad now. "As much as we might want to. All most of us can hope to do is stay a pawn on the board."
"But pawns can become queens."
"I think that was Scaramouche's idea." Childe winced again and Lumine stopped. She helped him sit down, beside a large rock on the side of the road. "You know, I wonder if he might have had it right."
"What part?" Lumine wrinkled his nose.
"To leave the Fatui." He was staring past her, now, at the ocean colored orange by the setting sun. "To no longer be an ally to the Tsaritsa."
He glanced back at her meaningfully.
It was treason, to even consider it.
"You don't have to serve her." Lumine sat beside her. "Teucer—he told me that you would have fought by my side, if I asked."
His eyes were watching her carefully, his expression uncharacteristically guarded.
She looked out to the horizon, to the distant continent of Teyvat. "Consider this me asking."
He was silent for long enough to make her look back, worried that he had slipped out of consciousness.
But instead he was regarding her the same way a student might carefully regard their books.
"I can't let the Tsaritsa hurt my family."
"And she won't." Lumine found herself reaching for his hand. "Because we're going to take her down. I think the two of us can manage that."
For the first time, she saw light in his eyes as he intertwined his fingers with hers. There was resolve, ambition, and something more as their eyes met.
"You accept my proposal, then?"
She'd forgotten that conversation, the result of teasing, of a late night drinking in Liyue. The two of them, against the world. She could now see that her own offer wasn't so different.
They weren't so different.
"I do."