Chapter Text
In some small mercy, Tighnari didn't actually remember much of the strike.
One minute, he was fighting the Fatui back to back with Dehya, the next, he was crumpled in a twitching heap on the muddy ground with Electro energy crackling up and down his limbs, staring dazedly up into Dehya's incredulous blue eyes with no Fatui in sight.
Involuntary muscle contractions slammed into him over and over, Electro-charged reactions stacking because of the rain, and he sucked air in through his teeth, wide-eyed in agony.
"Stay still." Dehya's voice sounded weirdly muffled. She glanced up toward the sky anxiously as it flashed with the bolt that struck a few hundred feet away, rain water streaming down her face and clinging her dark hair to her cheeks. "You got struck by lightning. I think that big metal trinket pinned on your little, uh...cape thingy attracted it."
Tighnari's heart palpitated. Struck by lightning?
Well...that tracked, considering the fiery sensation of a thousand ants boiling up and down his right shoulder and arm all the way to his right hip. Plus the fact that his hoodie had a long tear in it that was singed and crispy on the edges. Every muscle in his body was screaming, having been abruptly seized up by high voltage, and there was a frighteningly high ringing in his ears. The rainwater felt like it sizzled on his burnt skin.
He turned his head, crunching his bottom lip between his teeth until his jaw quivered at the scalding pain he felt in his neck and shoulder. Dehya's hands jerked to follow him, almost as if reaching for his ears, but hesitating.
"Why are you..." Tighnari's tongue felt like it was made of rubber.
Dehya cringed. "Your ear drums...I think they might have been ruptured by the strike. There's a little bit of bloody...fluid coming out." She shook her head and rubbed her temples with the heels of her hands. "My ears are ringing, too, but I wasn't nearly as close as you were."
Oh, Sevens. Tighnari pulled his left glove off with his teeth and reached up to feel, finding that indeed, there was sticky fluid inside his ear canals that was most certainly not rainwater. With a reedy sigh, he watched the rain clean the pinkish fluid off his fingertips, then clenched his fist.
"Help me stand."
Dehya stared at him like he'd told her to lop his arm off with her claymore and eat it. "What?"
Tighnari tried to unclench his jaw, but it was nearly impossible. Every single inch of him was sore. "You and the traveler have an important mission, and if he sees me like this, he'll delay and worry."
A beat of silence, in which Dehya glowered at him incredulously.
Tighnari huffed. "At least let me keep a shred of my dignity."
It was clear that Dehya didn't agree with his reasoning, but she must not have felt like she knew him well enough to boss him around (correct), because she merely narrowed her eyes and slipped her arm behind his back, effortlessly lifting him to a sitting position. Standing was a battle Tighnari definitely would've lost without her help, and as he stumbled to his feet, accidentally moving his injured arm in the process, the world spun and a wave of nausea crashed over him. Dehya, bless her, helped him lean over to empty his stomach onto the ground, holding his hair back from his face as he retched and coughed. Thankfully, the torrential rain washed away the evidence.
"This is a stupid idea," Dehya hissed, looking over his shoulder. Probably checking for the traveler and Paimon.
"Just do as I say, please," Tighnari groaned, spitting to the side and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. He bit down a surprised yip at the sudden and intense throbbing deep in his lower abdomen. The ache lingered like a hole had been punched clean through his torso.
Chills that had nothing to do with the rain or his injury skittered down his back, but he resisted the urge to clutch his stomach and worry Dehya even further.
With his thoughts racing and his adrenaline spiked, it was a grueling masquerade to assure Aether and Paimon that he was alright. He could tell Aether was dubious; those honey gold eyes of his had always been older and wiser than his appearance belied, and they were fixed on Tighnari with a look of silent reproach that said, "I know you're not telling the whole truth."
Paimon was similarly concerned, but Tighnari was more worried about how quiet her voice sounded in his ears. She was normally so shrill that it grated on his every nerve.
Maybe, just maybe, he would get lucky and the hearing damage would be temporary.
Somehow, he managed to convince them to leave him with Haypasia. He could tell Dehya was highly displeased with the idea, but she relented. Thank the Archons.
Though it certainly felt better to sit down under cover, he was still injured and shivering, soaked to the bone and sore like he'd been beaten. With the others gone, he was free to dig his fingers into his aching stomach, desperate to take his mind off the pain of what he knew must be happening.
If it was already happening, there was no way to stop it, therefore, there was no sense in crawling towards Gandharva Ville and passing out in the rain on his own. Collei would come looking for him if he wasn't back soon; he'd had the foresight to tell her where he was going, and knowing that kid, she would round up a rescue squad and make a beeline for Pardis Dhyai the very second she thought he had been gone for too long. She was nothing if not reliable and caring.
Tighnari squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his forehead against the bench on which Haypasia lay, and silently fought his pain, praying that Collei would seek him out sooner rather than later.
The ache slowly morphed into burning, consistent cramps.
❀
"Master Tighnari!"
Through the haze of what was probably shaping up to be a fever, Tighnari lifted his head, forcing his blurry vision to focus on Collei, who was rushing pell-mell towards him with her eyes as huge as dinner plates. Several forest watchers as well as their medic, Shirin, flanked her as she threw herself to her knees in front of him.
"Master Tighnari, what happened?"
"Collei," Tighnari sighed in relief, limply reaching out to meet her hand halfway. Curiously, her no-doubt tight grip on his hand felt like nothing. His fingers were numb. That was...probably not a good sign...
His head was so heavy. He tried valiantly to lift it.
"Oh, Master, just hang on," Collei breathed. Too weak to hold his head up, Tighnari slumped forward against her shoulder, hearing her gasp sharply. "Miss Shirin! He's—!"
Her next words were too muffled to understand. Oh, Tighnari realized after a good minute of his body ignoring his brain's commands. I'm losing consciousness, aren't I? He relaxed into the hand on his forehead, deliciously cool. Good...maybe it won't...hurt so much...
Everything began to fade in stages. His vision went first. Then his hearing. He could feel that he was being hoisted into a strong pair of arms. Perhaps Iraj. His head whirled, his stomach clenched.
Heat seeped through the back of his pants.
A deadened cry of shock brushed his damaged ears.
Unable to cling to wakefulness any longer, Tighnari slipped quietly away, welcoming the unfeeling darkness with open arms.
❀
"...ma...Mama..."
Gentle light. Tiny hands on his cheeks. The voice of a small child. No...two children, silhouetted in white, standing before him. Children with fennec ears.
Tighnari's eyes stung.
"We just wanted to say goodbye."
An angry lump lodged in his throat.
Goodbye? Goodbye?! How could he say goodbye when he'd never had a chance to meet them in the first place?
"We would love to stay, but we have to go..."
Tighnari choked on an anguished sob. This wasn't fair!
The tiny hands began to fade. The children's figures turned to leave.
"No!" Tighnari screamed from deep in his chest, lunging through the darkness, desperate to touch, to hug, to keep them here, please, please, "please, don't go!"
But his hands met nothing but wisps of mist in thin air.
Collapsing to his knees in the emptiness, he wept bitterly.
I never got to hold you.
❀
When he awoke, there were tears staining the bridge of his nose and his left cheek.
Just a dream...just a dream. His heart was still racing. He could feel it pounding beneath his jaw.
Moving seemed like a very bad idea, so he kept still and looked around the room, taking stock of his surroundings. He was...in bed. In his own bed, in Gandharva Ville. So they had made it back safely, thanks to Collei.
Something felt wrong, though, and not just because of the all-over ache of his body.
Upon very careful further inspection, he found that he was naked under the sheets that covered him, with bandages covering his entire right arm, shoulder, most of his torso, and even part of his right thigh. Gods, the lightning had torn him up. He was lucky to be alive.
...alive...
Heedless of the pain, he reached to rub his hand across his belly, finding it to be much the same. Unusually firm, and a little too rounded.
But, he knew in his heart that they were gone. He was in too much pain for them to have survived; it felt like he'd been kicked in the gut by a mule. This echo of a baby bump was just his swollen uterus and the excess tissue that his uterus hadn't cleaned out yet. In fact, an experimental shift of his body proved that it was still very much in the process of...working on that. Thankfully, someone had been kind enough to tuck a rolled-up towel between his legs to soak up the blood, but he definitely needed to be careful how he moved, or he was going to ruin the sheets.
His ears twitched; someone was approaching. Moments later, the hanging fabric at his bedroom doorway shifted aside, and a grim-faced Shirin stepped into the room. She didn't say a word; only removed his bandages and applied ointment and crushed herb paste to the prominent, branching burns on his arm and side. Her expression told him everything he needed to know, so he simply chewed his cheek in silence through the stinging pain, staring at the wall. As Shirin re-dressed his wounds and fastened the gauze, she spoke up.
"Do you think the towel needs to be changed?"
So blunt, as always. Tighnari shook his head. It didn't feel too wet just yet.
Shirin's shoulders lowered in a sigh. "Good." She collected herself, her tone clinical. "Both of your eardrums were perforated, but there's no serious damage, as far as I can tell. Any permanent hearing loss should be minimal, though I would like for you to go see a specialist in Sumeru City to get checked out. Things just might sound muffled for a few weeks. The lightning strike left second degree burns all down your right arm and side, and a couple of spots on your shoulder were third degree. They'll definitely leave some scarring. You'll also have those branching scars on your skin for a while, since the lightning strike burst several of your blood vessels, but they should mostly fade over time." She gave a faint smile. "Had to do my research for that one." Her face sobered. "You lost a lot of blood, and you're still bleeding from your birth canal, but it's normal. You'll be bleeding and cramping anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days while your body purges the tissues. I have a basket of clean towels beside the bed here if you need a new one, and I can give you more pain medication in a couple of hours for the contractions if they get worse." Shirin looked down through long, dark lashes, her bedside manner cracking to reveal regret. "I did everything I could, but...they were both long gone by the time we got to you. I'm so sorry."
Tighnari closed his eyes, struggling to hold back tears.
Both. So his intuition had been correct.
"I know," he rasped, low and hollow. "It's not your fault. They were probably killed the moment the lightning struck me."
Shirin made a soft, sad noise of affirmation.
They sat still for a moment in the quiet with bell crickets chirping outside, absorbing the enormity of what had happened. It felt like a hot coal had lodged itself behind Tighnari's sternum, and he couldn't swallow it away.
"Cyno is on his way," Shirin finally murmured. "I heard that the Eremite woman and the blond traveler told him you were injured. Knowing him, he departed from Sumeru City as soon as his duties were fulfilled."
An even higher magnitude of pain squeezed Tighnari's ribs around his heart. Oh, Cyno.
He didn't even know.
For a couple of weeks now, Tighnari had been in a bit of a distracted fog, nervousness and anticipation fluttering his heart as he drummed up the courage to tell Cyno that they had a little surprise on the way. One didn't just blindside their mate with fatherhood, after all. He'd been taking great care to come up with a gentle, but direct way of breaking the news.
Getting pregnant had been an accident, to say the very least. Completely unplanned. Tighnari and Cyno both had been aware of the small possibility of conception, but the probability of pregnancy happening outside of an estrus cycle was so low that they had never really bothered to take precautions.
A tight, angry little piece of Tighnari's heart almost wished they had, if the kits were going to be cruelly snatched away from them like this. Snuffed out like tiny tea candles before they had ever come close to taking their first breaths.
Poor little beans.
His throat ached. No wonder he'd already started showing so early. Multiples were very common among his race, so when he had started feeling quite a bit thicker around the middle barely six weeks in, he had heavily suspected that there was more than one baby in there. His hand drifted to his stomach again out of pure habit, despising how it could still be round, yet void of new life, and yet he couldn't help but stroke the remnant of his children with trembling fingers that still felt numb at the tips.
Shirin had quietly stolen out of the room, closing the wooden door behind herself this time. Tighnari didn't notice at all.
Cyno would've been enamored with the bump their children made in Tighnari's abdomen, watching it gradually expand week by week. Tighnari could see Cyno clear as day, snuggled up to his pregnant belly with his head pillowed on Tighnari's leg, whispering secrets and terrible jokes to their unborn kits, kissing them with that oh so precious tenderness that he showed only to Tighnari. He would've pressed his hands over their wriggles and squirms with awe softening his face, gazing up at Tighnari with those captivating eyes of his, as if Tighnari had hung the moon and stars in the sky barehanded. Fresh tears sprang to Tighnari's eyes at the thought of Cyno carefully holding a newborn baby in each arm, studying their pale hair and tiny vulpine ears with reverence, marveling at their miniscule fingers, kissing their pink, wrinkled little foreheads, loving them so dearly.
All gone. Swept away like fallen leaves in a high gale.
For a long time, Tighnari lay on his side, mourning, but refusing to let his tears fall. He would not allow himself to break. Not yet. Not until Cyno was by his side.
Cyno, my dearest.
Forgive me.
You would've been a wonderful father.
❀
"......orry I wa......shoul......otect you......"
Patchy speech floated through Tighnari's consciousness, pulling him painfully from his restless sleep. His brow wrinkled. Ugh...he would have to ask Shirin for more medicine next time he saw her. He could feel the cramps again, and the towel between his legs was damp and sticky.
When he opened his burning, aching eyes, Cyno's face slowly came into focus. He was seated on the side of the bed, hovering over Tighnari, and as usual, Tighnari could see right through his seemingly impassive expression; there was a flicker of grief in those poppy red eyes as they roved over Tighnari's face, and his eyes were red-rimmed as if he'd been crying. He was clad in only the shorts he normally wore underneath his ornate shendyt, and his bone white hair was tousled and falling over his bare shoulders, his headpiece resting near Tighnari's hip on the bed.
It almost hurt to even look at him, knowing what they could've had.
Cyno's fingers traced across Tighnari's cheekbone, catching the tear that had escaped. Tighnari blinked, sending more hot tears tumbling down his cheek and over the bridge of his nose. He shakily lifted his injured hand, and Cyno held it in his own like it was made of blown glass, so fragile it could be destroyed with a simple squeeze.
"Cyno," Tighnari breathed. The words he had to say festered in his stomach, sickening him. He drew in a shuddering breath through his nose, ears fully pinned back in distress. "How much did Shirin tell you?"
Immediately, Cyno's eyes fell to his lap. He tried to hide it, but Tighnari saw the minute downward tremble of his mouth.
It felt like shards of glass had pierced Tighnari's lungs. Part of him was upset at Shirin for telling Cyno, and yet a tiny, ugly, selfish part of him was relieved, because he didn't know if he would've survived seeing Cyno's initial reaction to knowing that their unborn children had been killed.
He had to be just as broken-hearted as Tighnari.
Despite how it agitated his wounds, Tighnari turned onto his back, gritting his teeth all the while. Then, he looked up into Cyno's eyes, his shallow breathing doing nothing to hide the quiver in his own lips.
"I'm so sorry." The words left him in a wrecked, miserable whisper. He turned his head away, trying to swallow the thorns in his throat, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw crackled. The tears leaked out regardless, dampening his hair, his pillow. He could smell the salt on his face.
A cool, calloused hand cupped Tighnari's cheek again, gently turning his head back to face Cyno. The raw devastation on Cyno's handsome face was unbearable to see. Gods, Tighnari should've told him before now. He shouldn't have put it off. Cyno hadn't deserved that sort of secrecy from his own mate. He'd had to hear from a healer that his unborn children were dead. Children he hadn't even known existed.
"It's not your fault," Cyno whispered. Tighnari saw his Adam's apple bob. "Anyone would've lost the child after being struck by lightning. An unborn baby just can't survive something like that."
Child. Baby. Singular.
Oh, Archons above, Shirin hadn't told him everything.
Tighnari grasped Cyno's wrist, ripping the rest of the bandage off in one go.
"There were two," he whimpered, his throat so tight he could barely get the words out.
A fresh wave of disbelief, shock, and sorrow passed over Cyno's face, and Tighnari's guilt nearly ate him alive.
"Two." Cyno had never sounded smaller or more vulnerable. His gaze drifted to Tighnari's belly, clearly making an unusual bump in the sheet that covered it.
Tighnari's skin crawled at the scrutiny, but he pushed through it, vision blurred and eyes smarting, and moved the sheet down so Cyno could see. Even if the kits were already gone, Cyno deserved to see the evidence they'd left behind. The evidence that they had been here.
In all the years they had known each other, Tighnari had never seen Cyno make such an expression before, and he never wanted to see it ever again. It was like...a child observing a butterfly with a crushed wing, a mix of tearful and taken aback and absolutely gutted, having suddenly been made aware of just how fleeting and unfair life truly was.
Slowly, as if Cyno was afraid Tighnari was going to disappear, he reached.
Tighnari met his hand, pulling it to his belly. As he left Cyno's hand there with a soft brush over his knuckles, he broke down into breathless, desolate sobbing, unable to continue choking his tears back.
"Wh..." Cyno seemed stunned, like he had been decked in the face and was still seeing stars. With a light, almost frightened touch, he rubbed his fingertips up and down Tighnari's bump. "Why is it still...?"
"M-my uterus hasn't shrunk back down yet," Tighnari coughed out, smearing warm tears across his cheek with the heel of his hand. "There's still tissue in there...the placenta...it will take a few hours to...pass it." He sucked in a hiccupping breath. "I was showing early, since..." a choked noise whuffed out of him, not just because finishing that sentence was excruciating, but because it felt like a fist had seized him around the uterus, squeezing it downward. Cyno's hand hastily retreated as Tighnari wrapped his good arm around his stomach, turning onto his side and curling inward; his breath had been knocked out of him.
Cyno's hand fluttered across his shoulder. "Should I get Shirin?"
Tighnari shook his head, blinking hard, dizzy in the aftermath of the short but powerful contraction. Fresh heat seeped between his legs. Saliva pooled under his tongue from the strong scent of blood and dead tissue. He gulped, closing his eyes, his face burning with shame.
"No. I'm just still..."
He was still miscarrying. He would be for several hours. Maybe even days.
Cyno's fingers gingerly moved Tighnari's hair out of his face, then his arms wrapped around Tighnari so gently that he almost didn't feel it, obviously taking great pains not to hurt him. He pressed his cheek to Tighnari's temple.
The dam in Tighnari's heart burst, and heaving sobs caved his chest in. He weakly slipped his good arm around Cyno's neck, holding him close, muffling his heartbroken wailing into his shoulder, quivering with the force of his sorrow. Cyno's closed mouth pressed to his cheek, and Tighnari could feel tears that weren't his own plipping on his skin.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Tighnari gasped.
Cyno shook his head slowly. "It wasn't your fault," he stressed.
"I should've told you—!"
"...maybe, but it's alright. I'm not angry."
Tighnari's hand curled into a tight fist on Cyno's shoulder, desperate. Please, just be furious with me. I couldn't protect our babies. They're dead because I wasn't fast enough.
He knew in his head that he wasn't to blame, but in his heart, a heart that had already been warming to the idea of motherhood, he had failed his children in the worst way a mother possibly could. He had already been so attached to them, breathlessly excited to wake up every week or so and see that his bump was just a bit bigger, so nervous but confident that he and Cyno would be good parents.
What a waste. A senseless, tragic waste.
Tighnari heard a soft, wet sniffle from Cyno, then felt him pull back. Cyno wiped the tears from Tighnari's cheeks with his thumbs, even as they continued to fall. Just like Tighnari, Cyno's face was a mess of fresh tears and glistening tear tracks. His eyes were red and puffy. An uneven pink flush mottled his cheeks.
Tighnari honestly couldn't recall the last time he had seen Cyno cry. He was always so stoic, so unflappable.
"We'll make it," Cyno mumbled, pressing his forehead to Tighnari's. Tighnari closed his eyes, his chest shaking with his staccato breathing. "I'm here."
Tighnari trembled. "Lie with me for a while."
Cyno's brow creased with concern. "Will it hurt you?"
"I don't care if it does."
"...Nari..."
Tighnari clutched Cyno's hand. "Please."
With a deep sigh, Cyno stood up. As he climbed into the bed and turned on his side to face Tighnari, Tighnari dragged himself closer and buried his face in Cyno's warm, solid chest, squishing his cheek over Cyno's thudding heart. A strong arm draped over his bandaged shoulder, then seemed to think better of it and moved up so that it was cradling Tighnari's head, instead. Just that small gesture of care and consideration pooled fresh tears in Tighnari's eyes.
They wept softly in each other's arms for what felt like hours. It might have been hours, for all Tighnari knew. Just when he would think he was done crying, that surely his tear ducts couldn't possibly produce any more tears, a renewed surge of despair would crash over him like a monsoon, battering him over and over again, leaving him gasping for air, cracked from the inside, tiny and helpless in grief's powerful, inescapable maw.
Cyno never left his side. When his throat became raw and dry, Cyno pressed water into him with quiet, mournful determination. When he bled completely through the towel between his legs, Cyno discarded it and wiped him clean with a basin of water and a soft cloth, replacing the towel with a fresh one. When his stomach roiled and the water came back up, Cyno was there to hold a bowl under his chin. When the pains reached a nauseating peak and Tighnari lost the dark, bloody placenta, Cyno tenderly held his hand while Shirin continued to heal him. When Tighnari thought that he couldn't take any more of this heartbreak, that something inside him was about to irreparably break and take his life with it, Cyno was there to sprinkle kisses across his cheekbone and nose against his hair, to share in his sorrow, to mingle their tears.
"I don't deserve you," Tighnari whispered hoarsely sometime during the long, hellish night, curled up on Cyno's chest with his tail wrapped around them both to keep them warm. Moonlight spilled through the window, illuminating them just enough for Tighnari to make out the tattoo on Cyno's arm. He traced it over and over with his middle fingertip.
Cyno's fingers slowly stroked the pinna of Tighnari's ear, rubbing over it with his thumb, smoothing the fur down, playing with the earring. "You do," he whispered, simple and matter-of-fact, "and even if you somehow didn't, I would still love you. Love is a choice. I've made my choice."
Tighnari sniffled, congested, then let the air out in a quivering sigh. "I love you, too. More than I can ever properly put into words." His face scrunched up, and he pressed his hand to his belly. "I love them, too. Even if they're gone. I'm...I'm not ready to stop loving them yet."
"You don't have to." Cyno nestled a fierce kiss in Tighnari's hair. "Ever."
Tighnari went limp with gratitude.
Cyno's hand slowly went still. "...I...also love them. Is that...okay?"
Oh, stars. Even though Tighnari's heart was broken, hearing that scraped the pieces of it back into a pile and held them together.
"You...oh, Cyno, of course it is," Tighnari whispered. "They would've loved you, too. You're their father."
A soft exhale that trembled at the end ruffled Tighnari's hair, as if Cyno's heart had skipped a beat hard enough to hitch his breath. Cyno's mouth pressed to the top of Tighnari's head. He swore he felt it tremble.
For the first time in many hours, Tighnari felt something other than pure grief. Cyno was stony and strong-willed, the harsh desert heat to Tighnari's cool forest night, but he was far more gentle and sensitive than people knew. Tighnari loved his quietly kind heart, his simple, straight-faced deeds of goodwill. He loved the way Cyno held him, how he looked at Tighnari like he was the most wondrous thing in all the universe and beyond. He even loved his ridiculous jokes, even if some of them were questionable in quality.
Most of all, he loved how they completed each other.
They would get through this. It would be a long, bumpy road, but they had each other to cling to. Tighnari hugged Cyno a bit tighter. That, at least, he was thankful for.
"You should try to sleep," Cyno murmured, combing his fingers through Tighnari's hair. "Sleep helps your body heal."
Tighnari sighed, defeated and weary. "I don't know if I can."
"I'll be right here when you wake up."
He closed his eyes. "You're too good to me."
"I'll be the judge of that." Cyno's lips brushed Tighnari's forehead. "Sleep, Nari. I'll watch over you."
The faintest ghost of a smile passed over Tighnari's mouth.
With the light, rhythmic strokes of Cyno's fingers soothing him, he was eventually able to drift into much-needed slumber.
❀
As Cyno watched Tighnari lose his painful battle with wakefulness, something malicious and hot curled tightly enough around his heart to brand it. Something he'd been holding back for Tighnari's sake.
He held his sleeping husband close, staring off into space in the dark room, his eyes hooded crimson with silent, seething hatred. Smoldering like the embers of a bed of coals. Dangerous.
Balladeer...heed my words...
...I will hunt you down, wherever in Teyvat you may be...
...and deliver you your due judgment.