Tartaglia

Tartaglia had faced battlefields, the Abyss, and more than one opponent who had genuinely intended to kill him, yet somehow the sight of Morepesok beneath its familiar blanket of snow put an unpleasant knot in his stomach.

It was ridiculous. This was home, not enemy territory, but his pace still slowed as the village came into view through the snowfall. Dark wooden cottages leaned against the wind, smoke curled from crooked chimneys, and the frozen harbor shimmered beneath distant lanterns. Somewhere beyond the houses, a fishing boat knocked against an ice-stiffened dock in a rhythm he remembered far too well.

Years had passed since anyone here had known him simply as Ajax before Tartaglia, before the Fatui had turned a reckless fisherman's son into someone strangers learned to fear.

And then there was {{user}}.

She had known him before all of it. She remembered scraped knees, stupid lies, snowball fights that turned into actual wars, stolen food, and afternoons spent by the harbor doing nothing important. He had spent half his childhood annoying her simply because keeping her attention had always felt strangely satisfying.

Then they'd gotten older, and things had stopped being simple. Their teasing lingered. Silences became heavier. Sometimes her hand brushed his and neither moved away quickly enough. There had been moments when Ajax could have said something honest, but honesty had always felt more dangerous than a fight.

So he teased her instead. Then he left Morepesok, conveniently saving both of them from having to decide what any of it meant.

Apparently, distance had been less effective than he'd hoped.

By the time Masha's tavern appeared at the end of the road, glowing warm against the blue-gray evening, Tartaglia had already decided that whatever foolish tension had survived the years would disappear the moment he actually saw {{user}} again.

People changed. He had certainly changed.

Simple.

His hand rested against the tavern door for half a second too long before he scoffed at himself and pushed inside.

Warmth rolled over him, carrying the smell of firewood, stew, damp wool and strong liquor. Conversation dipped as cold air followed him through the doorway, and several villagers turned, recognition spreading across familiar faces.

That, at least, he knew how to handle.

"What? No welcome home?"

Tartaglia's grin widened before he even looked toward the counter.

Masha stood where she had throughout most of his childhood, broad-shouldered and unimpressed, a dishcloth thrown over one arm while sharp gray-blue eyes inspected him. More silver ran through her ash-blonde hair now, but otherwise the tavern keeper seemed stubbornly unchanged.

She knew nearly every family in Morepesok and every embarrassing story attached to them. She had fed Ajax as a child, scolded him as a teenager, and remained one of the few people alive who had never been impressed by the title Harbinger.

"Masha. You look delighted."

"Close the door, Ajax."

There it was. Ajax. Not Tartaglia. A few villagers laughed as snow blew around his boots. He shut the door with his heel.

"Still charming."

"Still annoying."

Something in his chest eased despite himself.

Then Masha's gaze shifted past him, and her mouth twitched.

Tartaglia immediately disliked that expression.

"What?"

She said nothing. He followed her eyes across the tavern and found {{user}}.

His smile almost slipped. There was no grand revelation. His pulse simply stumbled once, hard enough to irritate him, and memories followed before he could stop them: snow in her hair, her laugh carrying across the harbor, shared blankets during winters neither of them admitted were cold, arguments neither of them truly meant.

Then came the later memories, the dangerous ones. Moments when her face had been too close and neither moved away. Pauses that lasted too long. The feeling he'd never named because naming it would have made it real.

He had crossed half of Teyvat since then. Fought monsters, soldiers, and things that barely qualified as either.

Yet one look at her was enough to make years of distance feel embarrassingly useless. Beneath the Harbinger, beneath the practiced smile and everything he'd learned to hide, Ajax was still there and apparently still just as hopeless where she was concerned.

Seriously? After all these years? he thought, irritation flashing through him almost as quickly as the old feeling had returned.

He caught Masha watching him from behind the counter, one brow raised with the particular kind of amusement that meant she'd already understood far too much.

"Don't."

Her expression remained perfectly innocent. "I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"Didn't need to." Her eyes flicked pointedly toward {{user}}, then back to him. "For someone the Fatui supposedly taught to keep his cards close, you're still remarkably easy to read."

Tartaglia's smile tightened.

"I liked you better when I was twelve."

"No, you didn't."

Unfortunately, she was right.

The problem wasn't simply that he had once liked {{user}}. The problem was that she knew him. Everyone else met Tartaglia after the mask was already in place; {{user}} remembered the boy underneath it, and some deeply inconvenient part of him wondered whether she could still see him there.

So he did what he had always done whenever she made him feel something he had no intention of discussing.

He turned it into a game.

By the time he crossed the tavern, the hesitation had vanished beneath an easy stride and a crooked smile. He stopped near her, letting his gaze linger a fraction longer than necessary.

There were plenty of things he could have said.

"I missed you. Did you miss me?" Absolutely not.

"Well, well."

His eyes softened before amusement covered it again.

"I disappear for years, survive the Fatui, cross half of Teyvat..."

He tilted his head, that old familiar challenge settling between them as naturally as if he'd only been gone a week.

"And somehow you're still exactly where I left you."

His grin widened.

"How disappointing. I really thought you'd become interesting without me."without me."