An Encounter in the Abyss: Tartaglia/Ajax X Reader

Chapter 3: Your Name

****Your POV****

It was pure darkness; the rage inside me boiled before bursting, My mind repeating 'How could she? Why...why me, It's not fair. Just die, DIE!". Before I knew all the monsters were dead, I don't even remember killing them. I felt a warm presence against my back calming me down the words "Thanks... Girl..ie", bringing me back to my senses. His blue eyes seemed to me looking me over up and down before he asks me "What's your name?".

 "Hey, I'm Y/N, Y/N L/N." I reply and smiled, reaching out my hand to greet him. His posture relaxed as he responded; "Nice to meet you Y/N, my name is Ajax". Suddenly he started to look around "Shu... I hear something, we have to be quick". He quickly went to the bodies of the Hilichurls and started carving them up, he seemed to know what he was doing, which triggered a question in my mind. 

"How long have you been down here?" I ask him as I bend down to help him, making a huge mess of the bodies as I did not know how to carve out the meat.

"Around 3 days, but it's hard to tell the time as there is no sun down here..." He mumbles looking up at the sky. He quickly gathers all the meat he could get off the Hilichurl and stands up "There's no time to waste, we need to go back to camp" he states as he starts to walk off in a northern direction. I follow him, He seems to be holding on to the food for dear life. Looking around I see no life forms except for the odd branch here and there,  so it must be hard to get food around here. 

After a while of walking, I see a light coming from a cave in the distance "Over here!" Ajax's eyes lit up and grabbed my hand, pulling me to the light. I look around, there seemed to be a fire and a pile of leaves on the floor. The pile of leaves reminded me of the piles of dust/dirt that I used to have to sweep up around the cathedral in Mondstadt, someone with anemo vision could make the leaves disappear with one gust. Ajax grabbed two sticks from a pile in the corner and stuck multiple rashes of hilichurl meat on them, holding them over the fire to cook. 

The fire warmed my skin, I started to be able to feel my limbs again as they were numb with cold before. I shiver as I rubbed my hands together "So, Ajax, is this where you have been living for the past few days?".

He nodded his head as he passes me a cooked piece of hilichurl meat. I sniffed it and nearly throw up, I didn't want to seem ungrateful as I hadn't eaten since this morning but this was horrendous. The smell was enough to put you off wanting food for life.

"It's not very nice, I know, but there nothing else to eat around here. You need to eat to survive and you will get used to it" the boy says as he ravenously bites down. I guess he must have been really hungry. 

He finished a lot quicker than I did. I shiver again, still cold. I see him stand up and take off his coat, he had a white shirt on underneath, "You will get sick if you remain wet and cold, there no medicine or doctors down here" he states and he puts his cost over my shoulders. 

I blushed "Thanks...". It was so warm and cosy, knowing that there was someone here who was helping me made me feel a little bit more safe. "No, thank you. You really helped me out earlier with those monsters, I don't know what would have happened if you were not there." He seemed to open up a bit, compared to the timid shy boy I first saw fighting the hilichurl.

We talked over the food, I got to know a bit more about him, He was from Snezhnaya, a country rules by cryo archon Tsaritsa. He had been down here for around 3 days, at first he couldn't find any food but managed to kill a hilichurl and gut it to get meat rations. He stated that does a lot of ice finishing  with his father and is used to cutting up different fish, making him skilled in that area. He found this cave and had managed to gather a few branches to create a fire to cook and stay warm. For him it wasn't particular cold down here compared to where he was from but it was freezing for me, I had never left Mondstadt and wasn't used to this weather, or lack of.