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They had something of an arrangement.
Rosaria didn’t pretend to understand it. She would have liked to understand: it seemed like the kind of thing that could become dangerous if left to fester. But it didn’t feel dangerous, and the illusion of safety was nearly as terrifying as real danger.
This part of her would always be a knife that cut both ways. It had kept her alive so far. She couldn’t complain.
The first time, she’d hunted a pervert all the way to Dragonspine. And then Fatui had caught sight of her, and it had ended up being more trouble than even she could handle. Cryo was worse than useless in the snow and they were bigger than her, a fear she’d thought she’d outgrown until she was outnumbered and freezing. She didn’t feel twenty-three, one of the most dangerous women in Mondstadt—she felt like a little girl, starving and only barely scraping by.
One second she was staring down a Geo bullet that would tear through her stomach, the next there was a wall of flame between her and the Fatui, throwing her back. She scrambled to her feet at once, but she didn’t need to.
He was fast. She had to give him credit for that. A claymore should have slowed him down, but he melted through their shields and ended them as though it was easy.
She was rather too grateful to feel embarrassed. He turned to the brazier in the tent and lit it with a wave of his hand and she stumbled towards it on a twisted ankle, cheeks burning.
“Are you alright?” he asked gruffly.
“I’ve been better.” It was easier to think when she was standing next to the fire. Easier to be far away from the girl she had been. “Your arrival was…timely.”
“I had other business here,” he said. She examined him closely. His clothes were designed for secrecy, but under them it was clear that he was large and tall and probably had red hair. His words reminded her that he’d helped her without any reason to, which meant she now owed him something in return. The debt would nag at her until she paid it. She had to be able to find him again. “I’ll be on my way, then.”
“Wait,” she said. “I can help with—with whatever your other business is.”
He hesitated. “It’s deeper inside,” he said, gesturing at the slope. “Stick close.”
Sound advice. It was warmer close to him. She wondered if she was slowing him down, as they waited by every brazier so she could warm up. But he didn’t seem irritated, didn’t complain.
“Rosaria, right?” he asked.
She’d never had to tell anyone her name while out on duty. How did he know her, anyway? She nodded, and they kept moving, Rosaria trailing half a step behind. He had to be the one Mondstadt couldn’t shut up about—the Duckmight Hero or whatever he was called. Probably him. It wouldn’t do to ask.
His business wasn’t Fatui, as she’d assumed. It was a trio of ruin mechanisms that flew and shot streams of ice. Easy to melt through if they worked together. She got the hang of it quickly, avoiding his fire and sword while darting into the openings he made for her.
Afterwards he searched through the wreckage and came up with a bundle of papers. “Thank you for the help,” he said, apparently sincere.
She felt awkwardly off-guard. She hadn’t done him any kind of favour. They walked to the edge of Dragonspine together.
“Are you heading to Mondstadt?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “Safe travel to you, though.”
She didn’t wait to see where he went. It was nearly dawn as she broke into a trot, stomach heavy.
“The Darknight Hero,” Kaeya said, when she told him. They were leaning against the wall of the Cathedral, smoking—she was smoking, he was flipping a coin and stealing the cigarette out of her hand once in a while. “He’s ranging further out, I see.”
He spoke familiarly, even fondly.
“Do you know him?” She relinquished the cigarette and lit another.
“It’s Diluc Ragnvindr, of course. Who else would dare?” Less fond now, more bitter. She’d never tried to pry into whatever that mess was. She’d seen the scars on Kaeya’s shoulder. It was hard to reconcile the person she’d met with the person who’d do that.
“I do,” she pointed out neutrally.
He tilted his head at her, smiled. “Him and you.”
Later she thought that was tantamount to a declaration of intent. At the time she snorted and stamped on his foot, making him jump back and swear.
She met Diluc in the city after dark. He was not inconspicuous. He did not meddle in her affairs and she didn’t meddle in his, but when their paths crossed it was easy and expedient to work together, to lighten the load. Rosaria tried not to think of what she owed him after each encounter. She tried to tell herself she was already doing enough. But she tracked him across the city like a firefly so she could pay him back, and he always ended up unbalancing the scales again.
Then he tore a tendon in his wrist weaving fire around some two-bit criminal with a bit of potion to give him elemental power, and submitted grudgingly to her bandaging. She tended to carry them around for herself—she twisted her ankle a lot more than she liked to admit.
He took off his gloves. His hands were scarred with fire, eloquent rivers of melted flesh. She swiped her thumb across one and he shivered. Maybe her skin was just cold.
“Thank you,” he said, voice low. “For the, ah, bandages.”
She looked up. It was easy to forget that she stood a head shorter than him when they were fighting together. His eyes were wide and red, and he was very warm.
Then she looked down again and stepped back. She wished he’d stop thanking her. Sometimes people managed to get that out when she saved them, but more often she was gone before she had to hear it. She didn’t like being thanked, not when she had so many debts to pay that the very thought kept her up at night, panicking. “Don’t mention it,” she said sharply. Then, more softly, “You won’t be able to hold a sword for a few days. Call me if you need help.”
He did call her. Usually when she was close anyway, like he was keeping an eye out for her too. They fought well together. It wasn’t seamless but it worked, her sharp ice and his sweeping fire.
Two weeks later he gave her a device like a flattened egg, with numbers printed on one side and a translucent piece of glass laid across the top. Held up an identical piece and showed her how to press the numbers so they could communicate.
She was grudgingly impressed. “Where did you even get something like this?”
“Fontaine,” he said. “Consider it a gift.”
And there went the scales again.
Rosaria never got around to telling Kaeya about any of this. Somewhere she felt deeply, deeply guilty about keeping this from him—though there was nothing to keep. The device Diluc had given her lay heavy in her pocket. They weren’t even partners; they only worked together when the opportunity struck. He had a dark kindness that lay hidden when he tended the bar, a strange sense of humour, and he helped her relentlessly. He never turned down her aid, and she rarely felt redundant, but in the back of her mind every hissed conversation about tactics was leading her farther into the red, and she didn’t know how to stop.
Kaeya had never scared her like this. He’d never scared her at all.
No, that wasn’t true. But it had been a different kind of terror. When she’d met him, most of what she’d felt towards people had been longing and distance and bitterness. He’d been the first to decide they were friends, damn what she thought of it. The first to tolerate her no matter her mood. Whether she was miserable or angry or bright for once he didn’t force her to be otherwise for him, and he took no more than she wanted to give no matter what she owed him.
She could live with interest that could be paid back in wine and cigarettes and conversation and sex, the currencies Kaeya traded in. She couldn’t live with whatever this was, but the months flickered by and she kept living and it started feeling natural, and she couldn’t tell Kaeya I like him. I know how much he hurts you and I still like him.
The worst part wasn’t that Kaeya would be angry. It was that he wouldn’t. She couldn’t face being understood in this desire; of course everyone liked Diluc, no matter how brisk and awkward he could be. Of course everyone wanted him. But Rosaria had never gotten to feel like she was part of everyone else, and she resented the way this made her no different from the rest like they’d seen him heave dry with pain because fire and Delusion had broken his body and he couldn’t let it slow him down. Like they’d leaned against his side and felt him laugh harshly in the aftermath of a brutal fight, their fingers trembling with bloodlust. Like any of them would have stared him down when he was so angry he didn’t recognize them and forced him to come back to himself.
Rosaria wasn’t under the impression that she was special, but she craved the illusion nonetheless.
In the tavern they pretended not to know each other and Kaeya felt charitable enough to let them get away with it. Summarily a better liar than either of them would ever be, he turned as blind an eye to their newfound synergy as they could have wanted.
She wondered if he was jealous. She watched him throw barbs at Diluc like it was a game, like he was skipping pebbles over a lake, and searched herself for envy. But there was no breaking into whatever they had; it was theirs. She was only a witness, for all that Kaeya spun in his chair to demand she break the tie on whatever argument they were having, for all that Diluc’s gaze slid towards her when Kaeya laughed at whatever he’d said like he needed to know if she thought him funny too. She didn’t understand it. She desperately wanted to.
Late one night, when Kaeya was dozing over the counter and Diluc was too tired to mask his fondness, she asked, “What do you want with him?”
To anyone else it would have sounded like a threat. That was just the flatness of her voice. All he said was, “I don’t know.”
They stared at him for a moment. Diluc sighed and shrugged off his coat, draping it over Kaeya’s shoulders. He tucked his head into the crook of his elbow like a cat and did not otherwise stir.
She’d first known Diluc through Kaeya’s eyes. Sometimes she still saw him like that, as the boy who could love so hard it turned into destruction. But Kaeya would choke on what he felt before breathing a word of it, and Diluc wasn’t good at reading between the lines. Most of the time Rosaria saw him through her own eyes: the invisible strands of dues owed and unpaid winding between them like a tapestry.
Rosaria was starting to realize he’d never collect. He didn’t see the world that way.
Then Diluc looked at her with the same expansive gentleness he directed towards Kaeya, and she thought about Kaeya saying him and you, and the way both of them held knives in exactly the same way. Between them, Rosaria often felt like she was part of something. Like they’d move aside to make room for her, and wait for her if she asked. She would never ask. The feeling terrified her. It couldn’t be real.
“I’ll walk him home,” Rosaria offered.
“Thank you,” Diluc said. The strings around her heart tightened.