Work Text:
Everyone in the traveler’s team always knew who the favorite among favorites were.
But whenever asked the traveler would simply reply with “I love all of my treasures equally!” they would say as if they were a parent lying to their child when the child would ask such a question.
But the child would further see that what their parent said was a fib, a lie among lies.
Because everyone knew who the favorite child was...
"Haitham,” the traveler scrolled through the large and seemingly never-ending pocket of unknown origin. “Do you really need Light Of Foliar Incision?”
Alhaitham’s eyes paused on a sentence, closing the book he sat up from the shelf he was leaning on and gave the traveler a strange look. “What? That weapon works best on me, the stats are made for me also?” he paused “And I carry you through the second half of the abyss floor 12. Why would you want to take away my weapon.”
The traveler stopped and stared at him like he was the insane one; the pixie next to the star-born world hopper sighed almost as if HE signed a death certificate. “What do you mean?” that question came out almost cold.
“What I'm saying is-” but then a cold hand lands on his right shoulder, he looks over to see that it is Shenhe.
“You haven’t been here long, have you?” she says coolly.
The scribe raised a brow “What do you mean?”
Shenhe shook her head, her white hair flowing slowly “When I first met the traveler, they came to me and asked me to join their team. For some reason, they already had my weapon, so I naturally came along too.”
Alhaitham failed to see the point of this story but listened anyway. “When they went farming and brought me along to ‘get used to the domains’. Y’know why truly carried us through that domain without breaking some much of sweat?”
“Qiqi”
Alhaitham was silent, then he thought-
Then it clicked like a well-rounded puzzle. A horrible puzzle
Every time they delved into the deepest parts of the abyss; the traveler always made sure to pair him with the small zombie child. At first, he thought she was with him because she was a great healer.
But no, every time he would deal a good amount of Dendro damage Klee would throw her Jumpty Dumpty and Qiqi would deal the killing blow.
“So you’ll take the Festering Desire, it’s not as good as Qiqi’s new sword, but Qiqi can’t live without that 80+ % Crit Dmg!” The traveler's voice splits through his thoughts. “Benny will just take the Aqua Favonia” they shrug
“But traveler-!” Shenhe’s grip tightened
“There’s no use fighting.”