Chapter Text
There are no problems in this world that cannot be solved by a sword. Or at least, that was Ajax's personal philosophy, one he wholeheartedly endorsed, usually at the business end of said sword—at least before the war against Celestia ended and the world had settled into something resembling peace. The kind of peace that left former Harbingers with time to contemplate domestic troubles like tangled fishing lines and whether their wives would ever master the art of baiting a hook properly.
The icebergs had always been a hassle while fishing in the seas surrounding Morepesok, massive frozen sentinels that drifted through the waters like slow-moving monuments to Snezhnaya's eternal winter. But that had never stopped him from venturing out, especially now that his dear daughter, Nastya, at the spirited age of twelve, was so very eager to learn fishing from him. She was good at it too, hadn't she caught that massive cod only two days ago? The thing had been nearly as long as her arm, thrashing silver and defiant until she'd hauled it aboard with the kind of grim determination that reminded him exactly whose daughter she was.
Very much unlike her mother, who after eleven years of marriage still had not figured out how to catch a single fish without either falling into the water, tangling her line into impossible knots, or somehow managing to hook everything except the fish themselves. Ajax was very proud to know his daughter had definitely inherited this particular skill from him, though he was wise enough never to voice that observation aloud. Y/N had other talents, after all. Like the ability to silence an entire room with a single look, or the way she could still make his heart skip when she smiled at him across the breakfast table. The cold of Snezhnaya remained a constant, biting and familiar, though not much else did. It had been eleven years since he'd married Y/N, eleven years since they'd stood on that beach in Morepesok and promised each other a future neither of them had been entirely sure they'd live to see. The world had shifted around them in ways both subtle and profound, the Fatui had been restructured, the Harbinger system dismantled, and the endless cycle of missions and bloodshed had finally ground to a halt when Celestia's war machine had crumbled under its own weight.
"Father! Look! I caught another one!" Nastya grinned, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold as she pulled up a fish with her fishing rod, the line taut with the weight of her prize.
"Oh! A salmon?" Ajax leaned over to get a better look, his eyes lighting up with genuine pride. "Your mother would be happy with that one! She's been craving salmon for weeks now." He reached out and messed up Nastya's hair, which had escaped from beneath her woolen cap in windswept strands, a gesture that always made her scrunch up her nose and swat at his hand in mock irritation.
"Father, stop that!" she protested, though her laughter betrayed how much she secretly enjoyed the attention. "I'm not a little kid anymore!"
"You'll always be my little girl," Ajax replied with a soft chuckle, watching as she carefully unhooked the salmon and added it to their growing collection in the ice-filled bucket beside them.
After the war against Celestia was over, the infrastructure of the Harbingers had indeed completely changed, transformed so thoroughly that sometimes Ajax barely recognized the organization he'd once served. Many of the Harbingers had perished during the war, some in glorious battle, others in the quiet, unglamorous ways that death often claimed soldiers when the fighting dragged on too long. Even before the final confrontation, their ranks had been steadily thinning. Others who survived, or at least chose to continue being with the Fatui afterward, were few and far between. He had heard rumors that apparently there was once a Sixth Harbinger who had somehow changed the Irminsul itself to escape his responsibilities entirely, which sounded utterly ridiculous, but then again, which Harbinger wasn't ridiculous in their own particular way?
In truth, only four out of the original eleven remained in any official capacity, and even then, their roles had been completely reimagined. They were now more in charge of the civilian government of Snezhnaya as regular political figures, trading their battle-worn coats for the more mundane uniforms of bureaucrats and administrators. Snezhnaya still maintained a military-based government structure for any kind of contingencies; old habits died hard, and the Tsaritsa, despite everything, remained cautious but the Fatui no longer had any missions to collect Gnoses, nor any mandate to cause trouble in other nations. The age of shadows and subterfuge had given way to something far more ordinary: paperwork, trade negotiations, and the endless, grinding work of rebuilding a nation that had spent too many years focused on conquest rather than caring for its own people.
He was not very surprised about the colleagues that did survive, they were, after all, the ones pragmatic enough to value their own lives over abstract notions of glory and duty. The Regrator, of course, was the first to escape the battlefield, dramatically quoting that "the economy needs him" as he retreated with all the theatrical flair of a man who had never met a profit margin he didn't love more than his own reputation. Some called him a coward for a time, whispers following him through the halls of what remained of Fatui headquarters, but that notion was quickly abandoned when he managed to revitalize Snezhnaya's war-ravaged economy in record speed. Turns out, he had been right. He was, in fact, better alive than dead, especially when it came to keeping an entire nation from economic collapse. He was still in charge of Snezhnaya's finances as he had been before the war, so his position hadn't changed much beyond trading his battlefield anxiety for the more familiar stress of budget meetings and trade disputes.
Arlecchino, of course, had also entirely betrayed Her Majesty the moment it was commanded that the children of the House of the Hearth were to join the war effort. Ajax could still remember the cold fury in her voice when she'd received that particular order, the way her usually controlled expression had fractured just enough to reveal the protective instinct that lay beneath. She had escaped to Fontaine with the entirety of the orphanage in what could only be described as the most well-organized mass desertion in military history, where she had fought only in self-defense, keeping her children far from the front lines and the grinding machinery of war. She had later returned to the service of Her Majesty, though on her own terms, and had been handling the influx of war orphans ever since, a task that was both heartbreaking and necessary. It was understandable work, given she was still the ward of the House of the Hearth, though now her wards came to her already broken by loss rather than simply abandoned by circumstance.
The only other survivor who had remained part of the Fatui was Sandrone, which was genuinely surprising given that most people had assumed she would be among the first to perish. She was, after all, not exactly known for her combat prowess or battlefield awareness. But then again, given that Ajax himself had survived despite his tendency to charge headfirst into impossible situations, perhaps survival had less to do with logic and more to do with sheer, stubborn luck. She had apparently not gone to the front lines at all, instead hiding in her workshop while sending waves of her mechanical creations to fight in her place, a strategy that had proven both effective and characteristically detached. Her war efforts had been commendable, particularly her creation of an information network through the mechanical Katherynes she had placed throughout the Adventurers' Guild branches across the nations. Those artificial beings had served as an invaluable intelligence network, passing along crucial information that had helped turn the tide of several key battles. She had now taken over Dottore's former position as Snezhnaya's chief inventor, a role she had been quietly coveting for years, though she'd probably never admit that watching her former colleague's dramatic demise had given her a certain satisfaction along with the promotion.
As for Ajax, he had charged headfirst into the war in the beginning, just as everyone had expected him to. The Eleventh Harbinger, Tartaglia, the one who lived for the thrill of battle, who had never met a fight he wouldn't leap into with reckless abandon. For the first months of the conflict, he had been exactly what the Fatui needed—a weapon pointed at the enemy, sharp and eager and utterly without fear. And then he saw death right in front of his eyes. Not his own, he had stared down his own mortality countless times before and found it almost disappointingly familiar. No, this was different. This was watching Y/N fighting desperately for both of their lives, the sheer panic in her eyes as enemy forces closed in around them, how she had nearly died too, just because she was not about to abandon her husband and her commander even when the tactical situation had become hopeless. She could have retreated, should have retreated, but she had stayed, and in that moment Ajax had seen not just his own death but hers, and the image of Nastya growing up an orphan had hit him like a physical blow.
He had escaped mid-battle with her, something he would never have done before, grabbing her hand and pulling her away from the front lines even as she protested, even as his instincts screamed at him to stand and fight. The old Ajax would have died there, gladly, in a blaze of glory and violence that would have made for stirring eulogies. But Nastya had changed him in ways he was still discovering, carved out spaces in his heart where fear could take root. He could not fathom his daughter growing up without her mother and father, could not allow the life that Y/N had led; abandoned, alone, forged by cruelty, to happen to his own child. So he deserted like a coward, he told himself in the dark hours when sleep wouldn't come. He let his comrades die in his stead, left his post when they needed him most, chose his family over his duty in a way that would have been unthinkable just years before. When the war finally ended, he had petitioned to retire from the Fatui entirely, convinced that he was no longer worthy of the title of Harbinger, that his moment of weakness had stripped him of any right to command or lead.
Ajax was no war hero, despite what the history books might say about his earlier campaigns. He was now just a man earning a living through his own fishing business in Morepesok, running a small operation that supplied the local markets with fresh catch. It was a quiet life he never thought he would have, one measured in daily routines rather than glorious battles, in the simple satisfaction of a good day's work rather than the intoxicating rush of victory. That didn't mean he had severed all ties to the Fatui, of course. He was still an advisor for them, his experience too valuable to discard entirely, though he no longer worked with the military at full capacity. Instead, he consulted on matters of strategy and logistics from the comfortable distance of his kitchen table, offering counsel through carefully worded letters rather than bloody swords. It was, he had to admit, a much better arrangement for everyone involved.
He had always given Nastya shoulder rides when coming back home with the cart full of fish, their catch of the day rattling in ice-filled buckets as the wooden wheels bumped over the familiar cobblestone paths that led back to their house. And he did so now too, even when she claimed with all the dignity a twelve-year-old could muster that she was far too old for such childish things. "Old, my ass," he would say with a snort, hoisting her up anyway despite her half-hearted protests, her legs dangling on either side of his neck as she gripped his hair for balance. She would always laugh anyway when he did that, a bright, unguarded sound that made all the aches in his back from a long day on the water seem utterly insignificant. Perhaps he would think about retiring the shoulder rides when she turned fifteen, maybe. The hair-messing, though? That was staying forever, even when Nastya was an old fart complaining about her creaky joints and he was an even older, half-dead fart who needed help getting out of his fishing chair.
"You know I'm nearly as tall as Mother now," Nastya pointed out from her perch, though she made no real effort to climb down. Her voice carried that particular tone of pre-adolescent reasoning that suggested she was testing the waters of growing up while secretly hoping he'd ignore her logic entirely. "Nearly as tall as your mother isn't saying much," Ajax replied cheerfully, earning himself an indignant gasp from above. "She's still short enough that I have to bend down to kiss her good morning." "Father!" Nastya protested, though her laughter betrayed her outrage. "Don't say that about Mother! She'll make you sleep on the couch again!" The threat held real weight, Y/N had indeed banished him to the couch more than once over the years, usually for infractions far less serious than commenting on her height. But it was worth it to hear Nastya giggle like this, to feel her small hands tangled in his hair, to know that at least for now, she was still young enough to let him carry her home.
The house was not too far from the docks, a sturdy log cabin nestled a little further from the bustling dockyards and the heart of the small village, positioned closer to the treeline where the forest met the settlement in a comfortable embrace of civilization and wilderness. Nothing too grand or ostentatious, but solid and warm, entirely affordable with all the money he had earned during his years as a Harbinger, back when his salary had reflected the dangerous nature of his work rather than the modest income of a small-town fisherman. He still kept that house in the city though, a practical necessity given that Y/N traveled there quite often these days. The trips had become more frequent since she had been officially commended as a war hero, a recognition that still made Ajax swell with pride even though she always rolled her eyes when anyone brought it up. She had saved countless people while covering for him during that chaotic battle when he'd been injured and right before they'd made their desperate escape. The massive ice wall she had created, a barrier of crystalline frost that had risen from the battlefield like a frozen mountain, had apparently allowed many of the injured to retreat to safety. So while she had technically deserted mid-battle just as he had, she was still commended for her efforts in facilitating the evacuation, her moment of supposed cowardice reframed as tactical brilliance.
Besides, with the catastrophic loss of so many Harbingers during the war, and with Ajax stepping down to remain only as an advisor, the remaining command structure had been left with gaping holes. The only others still holding ranks were the Regrator, Arlecchino, and Sandrone, and none of them were particularly suitable for leading the main army, a responsibility that had once belonged to Pulcinella, who had also perished in battle despite his own attempts to escape when the tide had turned against them. So, naturally, Y/N had finally received that promotion she had been passed over for so many times before. She was now the Fifth Harbinger, though the numerical designations didn't mean much anymore given the huge gaps between the surviving members. It was a bittersweet victory, the rank she had always deserved, finally hers, but only because so many others had fallen to claim it. Still, Ajax couldn't help but feel a fierce satisfaction every time someone addressed her by her new title, even if she preferred to go by her name when she was home, sitting at their kitchen table with dirt under her fingernails from helping Nastya with her garden.
The moment they entered the house, you had shushed them frantically, pressing your finger to your lips with the kind of desperate urgency that only parents of difficult sleepers could truly understand. "Alexey just fell asleep. Don't you two dare wake him up," you whispered to them, your voice carrying the weight of someone who had spent the better part of three hours getting a stubborn toddler to finally surrender to his afternoon nap. Yes, despite both of you deciding years ago to not have a second child, a decision made after you were thoroughly traumatized by how difficult the birth had been with Nastya, complete with complications that had left you swearing off pregnancy entirely, your son Alexey had happened only two years ago. A complete accident despite all the precautions you'd taken, the result of one regrettable evening when you had actually listened to Ajax's suggestion to go drinking with him because, as he'd pointed out, even parents of a ten-year-old needed some adult time away from discussions of homework and whether fish had feelings. You were absolutely not doing that again, the drinking part of course. The sex you fully intended to continue, just with significantly more reliable precautions and perhaps a healthy dose of paranoia thrown in for good measure.
You had not been happy about the pregnancy when you'd discovered it, that was putting it mildly. You'd made Ajax sleep on the couch for an entire month after you'd found out, and even then had only allowed him back into the bedroom after he'd agreed to handle all midnight feedings for the first six months. At least this time the birth itself hadn't been difficult, Alexey had arrived with considerably less drama than his sister, almost as if he was saving up all his energy for what came after. Because everything else about him was exponentially more challenging. Alexey made Nastya seem like an absolute angel baby in comparison, and Nastya had been the kind of infant who screamed for three hours straight every evening like clockwork. Alexey, however, had somehow managed to perfect the art of being adorable and absolutely exhausting in equal measure, with a talent for waking up the moment you thought you might actually get some rest.
Unlike Nastya, Alexey had inherited your hair color, paired with his father's brilliant blue eyes, the complete opposite of his older sister who had been blessed with Ajax's distinctive bright orange hair and your own eyes. It was fascinating how genetics had decided to play mix-and-match with your children, creating two little people who looked like perfect combinations of both parents in entirely different ways. Nastya, of course, took being a good big sister very seriously, approaching the role with the same methodical determination she applied to everything else in her life. It was adorable really, how she would always carry Alexey around like a tiny, protective bodyguard whenever they visited Ajax's family home, because apparently Andrei's children were "too rowdy and will scare Alexey." She'd appointed herself as his personal guardian against the chaos of extended family gatherings, hovering nearby whenever the cousins got too enthusiastic in their play.
If anything, though, Alexey was the one doing the scaring. The boy had perfected the art of intimidation despite being barely two years old, particularly when it came to the older cousins. Andrei's fifteen-year-old boys, who could handle themselves in rough-and-tumble games and weren't afraid of much, would practically flee the room when Alexey started one of his legendary meltdowns. The child had a set of lungs that could probably be heard three houses away, and he wasn't shy about using them the moment anyone outside his very exclusive circle of favorite people tried to pick him up. His list of approved individuals was remarkably short: his parents, his sister, his aunt Anya, and his grandmother. That was it. Everyone else was treated as a potential threat to be warded off with the kind of ear-piercing screams that made grown adults reconsider their life choices. One time Teucer had tried picking him up during a family dinner, thinking his charm with children was universal. Alexey had bitten him despite not even having teeth yet. The incident had become family legend, with Teucer dramatically claiming he'd been "gummed to death by a toddler" while nursing his wounded pride more than his actually uninjured finger.
"Nastya caught a salmon again, milaya. You said you had been craving salmon, right?" Ajax smiled, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you close for a quick kiss on the lips. From across the room, Nastya made an exaggerated gagging sound, complete with dramatic retching noises that would have been impressive if they weren't so painfully theatrical. She had apparently reached that delightful phase of pre-adolescence where she hated public displays of affection with a burning passion, unless, of course, they involved shoulder rides, which somehow got a pass despite her scheduled complaints about being "too old" for such things. The logic of twelve-year-olds was a mystery you'd long since given up trying to understand. Ajax, naturally, found this newfound aversion absolutely delightful and had made it his personal mission to tease her about it. He had a habit of kissing you at completely random moments when she was in the room, just to watch her face scrunch up in disgust and listen to her mutter about how "gross" parents were. Not that he needed the excuse, he genuinely just liked kissing you, even after all these years, even when you tasted faintly of the tea you'd been drinking while trying to keep Alexey entertained. Unfortunately, Nastya's exaggerated gagging performance was loud enough to carry through the house, and you felt your heart sink as the unmistakable sound of stirring came from the direction of Alexey's room. A moment later, a querulous wail pierced the air, the kind that started soft but promised to escalate into full-blown hysteria within seconds.
"Nastya!" you hissed, shooting her a look that could have frozen the salmon she'd just caught. "I told you to be quiet!"
"It wasn't me!" she protested, pointing accusingly at her father. "He's the one who started the gross kissing!"
Ajax had the audacity to look completely unrepentant, even as Alexey's cries grew louder from the other room. "You are doing the cooking today. I am NOT taking care of both," you told Ajax firmly before disappearing toward Alexey's room to deal with the increasingly dramatic wails echoing through the house. Ajax just chuckled, shaking his head as he gestured for Nastya to follow him outside. "Come on, let's get these fish stored before your brother brings the whole roof down with his screaming." Nastya always did like helping him with these evening tasks, treating the ritual of unloading their catch and preparing it for tomorrow's market trip as seriously as she did everything else. Together, they wheeled the cart around to the back of the cabin where the bulus stood, a traditional ice storage shed that kept their fish fresh even in the fluctuating temperatures of Snezhnaya's unpredictable weather.
It had already gotten dark, the familiar bite of winter's cold hitting his face as they worked in comfortable companionship. He could still hear the sound of Alexey's crying from inside the house, though it was already beginning to quiet under your patient ministrations, mingling with the smell of smoke from their hearth that curled up into the evening air. Nastya chattered beside him about something she had learned at school, a story about ancient navigation techniques that had captured her imagination, her voice bright and animated in the gathering dusk. As Ajax looked up from securing the last of their catch, watching his daughter's animated gestures as she spoke, listening to the gentle sounds of his family settling into another peaceful evening, he couldn't help but think that these simple moments felt precious beyond measure—like stars in a frozen sky, beautiful and eternal, scattered across the darkness of a life he had never dared to dream he could have.