Chapter Text
Garam chose a mirror as a catalyst weapon for one reason. She never told her father about it, never told anyone for that matter. She knows better than to tell her father about it.
Sometimes, on lonely nights, nights when she was left to stare after the backs of her father and his protegee – the Yaksha whom she once called her brother – she pulls up her weapon to look at the familiar woman staring right back at her.
“You look just like your mother.” Cloud Retainer oftens tells her, voice wistful. She always makes sure to say this when Rex Lapis wasn’t around to hear it. “Aside from your eyes that you got from your father, you are the exact copy of Lady Guizhong.”
Garam doesn’t remember her mother anymore.
But the mirror helps. The glowing amber eyes were obviously father’s but the face, the lips and the silver streaks on her brown hair(also from her father) were all mother’s.
The mirror helps her remember a soft voice singing her to sleep. The gentle caress of loving hands cupping her face, wiping her tears. The words “You are our hope. Our promised new beginning, my xīngān .” Sometimes she could even hear father’s deep chuckle in the background, back when he still used to laugh or even smile in Garam’s presence.
Rex Lapis stopped smiling at her ever since his wife died in the Archon War. She knows he sees Guizhong in her too. While Garam craved to see her mother, Morax himself refuses to revisit painful memories and chooses to drown himself with his duty as Liyue’s Archon.
This has not changed even after thousands of years.
In spite of chasing after the coattails of her father for millennia and seeking approval and affection, Garam realized after Khaenri'ah, that nothing was ever going to change.
For Morax was not just the God of Contracts. He was the embodiment of stone. Stone that almost never changes at all.
Garam thinks she never had a chance from the beginning. That he was never going to stop looking at her like she was a ghost. That they might be a family again and he would love her once more like before.
So Garam just… stops.
____
Earlier…
“What is there to be found in the ashes,” he says, voice devoid of any emotion. “if not the devastation of what was once something beautiful? Is it not the aftermath of chaos? Of destruction?”
“Morax…” Makoto says, nearly pleading. She was stopped from walking over to the God of Geo by a hand on her shoulder.
Barbatos shook his head at her. Behind him, Ei pursed her lips, silent as ever.
At the center of the destruction was someone they did not expect to meet in the country of Khaenri’ah. With soot at her feet, she was surrounded by human remains. They were inside of what was once a beautiful castle. A home of a royal family. The ceiling had been blown off, making way for thunderous clouds in the already dark sky to hover over them menacingly.
Similar amber eyes–nearly golden– looked up at her father in confusion, the bright smile slipping off her face.
“F-father? I thought…” she stammered. The floating catalyst hovering over her left hand pulsed with destructive Geo energy. Barely containable. Like father, like daughter. “I destroyed the royal family like you intended! Isn’t that why all of you came here? It was the humans who were being arrogant that angered you, right? I got rid of them for you!”
Her smile was honest, blood and ash painting a picture of someone mad with power, desperate for love. Morax’s clenched fists trembled.
“I never asked you to do this.” he tells her, eyes cold. Furious. “I have told all of the adepti to stay in Liyue. You have disobeyed my orders, Garam. ”
She flinched back, complexion paling. The mirror vanished into starlight. “But father–”
“Do not call me that.” he hissed, stepping forward. She quickly backtracked, eyes wide with fear. “We are not here to declare war against the Khaenri’ahns. You were meant to stay in Liyue with the rest while we negotiated with the humans. What you did here, Garam, has ruined the future.”
“Morax, please.” Makoto protested, seeing the look on Garam’s face. “She is your daughter. ”
“Precisely the reason why she must hear what needs to be said. She has made a grave mistake, one that severely cripples any hope of restoring peace throughout all of Teyvat in the future. The Cryo Archon is still sobbing in the ruins of an orphanage. Celestia will become furious with us and–” he broke himself off, eyes closing as he tried to reign in his anger.
Garam shook, unable to say anything.
“My own daughter…” he says, voice finally showing an emotion that wasn’t rage. He sounded… disappointed. “And yet I can only blame myself for this.”
He turned around, missing the utter heartache this simple action caused in those eyes similar to his. “Perhaps the others were right. You, as the God of Ash, are only an omen of death.”
“Ashes represent a new beginning, xīngān. ” Morax tells her, eyes filled with love and pride. “ You represent our new beginning. Our hope.”
With the wind howling above, thunder threatening to strike, the smell of blood and ash ash ash ash , and the sight of her own father turning his back on her after calling her an omen, Garam finally gets it.
Fighting for her father’s love was a losing battle.
Something in her breaks.
“Morax!” Makoto yells, outraged. She shoots Ei a look and her shadow nods before going after their colleague with a grim Barbatos following after. She hurries over to Garam’s side. “Little one, don’t listen to him. He doesn’t mean it. He’s just upset. Please, please look at me.”
The sound of the Electro Archon’s worry caused her to finally take her eyes away from Morax. Makoto looked at her with tears nearly spilling from her eyes. She looked at her instead of through her like how Barbatos does sometimes and how Morax does all the time.
“Auntie.” she murmurs, feeling raw and… tired. “I’m sorry.”
“No, please.” the older god sobs, pulling her into a crushing hug. She smelled like foreign flowers– Sakura, she once told her – amidst the blood and dust that permeated the castle. The entire country. The country Garam herself destroyed in hopes it would make her father love her. “Please don’t apologize. Please don’t… don’t…”
“Auntie.” she says again, eyes blank. “I think I’m going to stop now.”
She doesn’t elaborate and Makoto cries into her hair.
____
500 years later…
While everyone in Liyue was panicking, Garam watched from a distance and quietly scoffed.
Rex Lapis is dead? Ha, how laughable. The old man is probably puppeteering something in the background again. Garam doesn’t claim to know the god all too well but even she knows the oldest and strongest of the Archons wasn’t going to be murdered by mortals .
This is not my problem. She turns her back on Liyue, facing Sumeru. What he does in his nation is not my business.
With that, Garam leaps over Cinnabar Cliff and enters Sumeru territory once more.
___
It was during one of his walks, while incognito, that made Morax realize how incredibly tired he was of his duties. It was while he was strolling by the harbor, that he heard a local fisherman say good job, take a break to his colleague, that he finally felt the bone-deep ache of godhood.
Morax, Rex Lapis, God of Geo was exhausted .
He might argue with himself that this moment was when he started to ruminate on his role as Liyue’s ever-present god. Even when those words weren’t aimed at him, his gnosis still pulsed without his consent, disagreeing with his sentiments about retiring.
Morax can damn Celestia until his throat was raw but he knew retiring was not going to be as easy as how mortals do it. But that momentous stroll wasn’t what triggered it.
No, that moment wasn’t what truly set his mind in motion.
On a windy day in Spring, gallivanting as the mortal Zhongli, he was in Wanmin partaking in a splendid lunch made by Chef Mao’s brilliant daughter when he witnessed it.
“Aiya, you stubborn girl.” the god looked up at Mao’s admonishing voice. The chef had his hands on his waist in exasperation, looking down at his pouting daughter. “I thought I told you to leave it alone?”
Xiangling let out a whine. “But Baba, you’ve been complaining about the pain for weeks now. No matter how many times I tell you to go see Dr. Baizhu about it, you just wave it aside and say ‘ It’s not going to kill me’. But then last night you were hunched over the table in pain!”
Zhongli raised his eyebrows, concern etched into his features. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is your health compromised, Chef Mao?”
Chef Mao was about to open his mouth but Xiangling beat him to it. “He’s been having muscle pains on his hands and shoulders! It’s been going on for weeks but he still doesn’t want to get it checked! Mr. Zhongli, do something about it!”
“Don’t bother Mr. Zhongli with this, you insufferable girl.” Mao chided, no heat in his voice. He turned to the taller man. “Don’t mind it much, Mr. Zhongli. I’m just getting old, s’all.”
Xiangling grumbled while Zhongli blinked in confusion.
Mao let out a hearty chuckle. “My Xiangling has been trying to convince me to get checked but I know Dr. Baizhu is just going to keep me chained to a bed so I can ‘recuperate’.” he rolled his eyes. “I trust the man, I do. But in all honesty, I’d rather be here suffering through the pain than be stuck in bed until the gods claim me.”
“ Baba ! Don’t say that!”
Zhongli watches both father and daughter with a quiet sort of softness in him. “Wouldn’t it be best to ease her worry, my friend?”
“There. See? I knew Mr. Zhongli was going to be on my side.” the girl huffed.
“She will still worry even if I’m always in bed.” with a fond look in his eyes, Chef Mao rubbed Xiangling’s head to which the girl grumbled at. “I’m not getting any younger. To the best of my abilities, I will make sure that each of my days will be spent with my little girl here in our restaurant despite the pain my body will succumb to. After all, she’s all I have left. It must get lonely for her if she’s the only one here manning our family business.”
“I can handle it.” the girl mutters, a blush on her face.
“I’m sure you can, darling.”
This strikes a chord in Zhongli as realization takes root. There’s mild horror springing up as he suddenly remembers a girl… that has his hair and eyes.
His excellent memory was nothing if he himself refuses to acknowledge certain moments in his past. And in this moment, watching Chef Mao and Xiangling banter, a longing urge rises from within him. An ancient and archaic want, something that he’s been pushing down into the deep recesses of his memories for 2000 years.
In that moment, Morax remembers the daughter that he has purposely forgotten. A daughter that he can’t remember he’s last seen.
“Ah.” he says dully. “I see. Please take care of your health, Chef Mao. Don’t make Xiangling worry too much.”
“Of cour– Ah? Where are you going, Mr. Zhongli? What about your order?”
“I’ll have someone from the parlor pick it up for me. Kindly put it on my tab.”
He leaves the city quickly, his footsteps leading him to a familiar ruin up north. He hears nothing but the frantic beating of his own heart and the blood rushing in his ears. He can only imagine how bright and burning his eyes were at the moment, the Cor Lapis within him so intune to his emotions. But he couldn’t help it this time.
His thousands of years of discipline were naught in the face of the earth-shattering fact ringing in his skull.
I am a terrible father.
___
There was no god in Sumeru that confronted her when she arrived. The Greater Lord Rhukkhadevata perished 500 years ago . Deshret died during the Archon War. And the Goddess of Flowers before that.
She knows Lesser Lord Kusanali cannot confront her either, unless she sleeps. But it’s not like Garam was here to cause harm to this striving nation. Even if she somehow did harbor ill intent, she wouldn’t make the same mistake she did 500 years ago for no good reason.
But foreign divinity was still somewhat of a concern to other species. As such, when she pushed the last leaf out of the way, she was met with an arrow aimed at her face.
“State your business.” the leader of the Forest Rangers demanded coldly, aim steady and true, the tip of his arrow charged with condensed Dendro.
Garam freezes, body still heavy with sleep. She thankfully has no instincts to speak of or else she might have attacked this man from the moment she heard him talk.
Raising her hands up in defense, she says “I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“Then what is a foreign god doing here on Sumerian soil?” the arrow was nocked back a bit more. “We received no news of an adepti from Liyue visiting. I will not hesitate to shoot you if you don’t announce the reason for your visit.”
Deciding being honest was the better option in this situation, Garam lets out a wry smile and says, “I’m here to avoid family drama.”