The Old Lie

by HAL_berd

Summary:

Teyvat emerges triumphant in the war against Celestia. The Sustainer takes revenge with her dying gasp, and it's only through Kaeya's sacrifice that the people of Mondstadt outlive her fury.

However, his heroism leaves him a petrified husk in the center of Mondstadt's main square. Mondstadt is eager to enshrine him in legend – how could they not, with the statue right there? Diluc abhors the sentiment.

After all, commemorating Kaeya's heroism is tantamount to accepting his death.

Notes:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" - It is sweet and good to die for the sake of one's country.

This was my piece for the wonderful Rain Anthology! Please go check it out -- we all worked really hard on it.

And if you wanna see Dango's gooooooorgeous gorgeous accompanying art in fullll detail, go check out her posts on Instagram and Twitter!

The Old Lie

 

By the time the wind settles, it’s clear that circumstances warrant Diluc’s every fear.

Though their victory was decisive, the Sustainer would not fall without a fight. She delivered her final decree as the Travelers’ incandescent blades pierced her heart, and every fighter present watched her Nails of Retribution rain down upon the nations of Teyvat.

Barbatos’s winds carried them back, yet where are those who made these lands home? Where are those who breathed fire into their warriors’ every strike? Crystalline shards of the Nails lie strewn about the rubble, the great Archon statue’s wings remain shattered from the impact — even Mondstadt’s cobble streets, its beloved tiered infrastructure, is ruined. Only the cathedral, their tribute to the very system which sought to destroy them, stands intact.

Jean is the first to walk. Varka follows shortly after. Diluc takes a deep breath before shifting weight onto his gored leg, gritting his teeth through the pain as he imitates a steady gait. He spies neither person nor corpse, only the broken, doll-like bodies of Celestia’s mechanical warriors, but he holds firm. Mondstadt’s soldiers need strength from their leaders to carry them through this uncertainty.

So where is his damn brother?

Kaeya swore on his life to protect their people, swore that no danger would infiltrate the underground caverns which served as their refuge. Surely, he must know they won; nothing but the destruction of Celestia could cause the darkening of all Visions across Teyvat. There’s nothing to hide from anymore, so again, where is he?

He’s a cockroach, Diluc reasons to himself, a touch caustic from the pain. He’ll be fine.

It’s nearly impossible to identify locations in a city so defaced. With Nail fragments piled high in every direction and the cavern entrance thoroughly obscured, digging would be a shot at a Cicin in the dark.

The first glimmer of hope comes with a single piece of rubble, tumbling down a pile. Any break in the dead silence is a relief, but Diluc knows better than to think too much of it.

Then a slab of stone shifts up. And back down.

Diluc rubs his eyes.

It happens again.

Diluc breaks form and limps over to the slab, ignoring any semblance of self-preservation as he kneels on his bleeding leg. There’s a gap between the slab and the ground. A quick peek reveals the whites of two pairs of eyes.

“Hold strong, we’ll free you soon,” he calls out. He signals to catch Jean’s attention, and she rallies their warriors to clear the rubble.

“. . . Diluc?”

Gruff, young . . . decidedly not Kaeya, but Diluc finds himself loosening the fist he never noticed making. “Yes, Razor. Are you unharmed? Are there any injured or dead among you?”

“I am okay. There are injured. Dead . . . Don’t know.” The wolf boy’s voice grows soft and dejected with those last words. “Diluc. I . . . am sorry.”

“Apologies are unnecessary, Razor. You’ve done a fine job,” Diluc asserts, hoping to keep the boy calm as Jean delegates her soldiers. Language is especially difficult for the boy to grasp in these stressful situations, but that last statement might mean a cave in. “Grand Master Varka is on his way. He would say the same. Who’s there with you?” 

“Bennett.”

“Bennett, are the caverns still intact?” No response. Diluc feels his brow crease. “Bennett?”

He hears the faint murmurings of something unintelligible. A flare of pain shoots up his spine as he adjusts his position lower.

“The caverns are fine, but . . .” Bennett mumbles. It’s too dark to see, but Diluc can hear the boy’s tears well enough in his voice. “I’m sorry, Master Diluc. I’m sorry. We were too weak, so Sir Kaeya . . .”

The cold hand of dread grips his heart.

“What’s happened to him?” he questions immediately. No, no, he has to crush the impulse to interrogate a frightened child. He evens his tone before continuing. “Is he alive?”

“I don’t know.”

Dammit.

Archons damn it all. He doesn’t notice how hard he’s clenching his jaw until the lightheadedness hits him full force.

“Can we do anything to aid him right now?”

“I don’t think so, Master Diluc . . .”

“Then hold strong, Bennett,” he commands. His composure is being tested, but he needs to prioritize, and leave this to a more . . . comforting presence. “Focus now. We’re removing the rubble from the entrance. Grand Master Varka is here; coordinate with him to make sure we don’t trigger another landslide.”

He steps away then, Varka hauling him back onto his leaden legs. He needs to get his head on straight, get to work, lift some rocks, something of the sort.

“Respectfully,” Jean says, stopping him before he even starts, “you can barely hold your own weight, Diluc. Stand down.”

“Respectfully,” Diluc echoes softly, “I would find a way to serve my country even if I never stood again.” Jean’s response is a look, pitying and unimpressed in equal measure, and he wonders how she does that without dying of pure hypocrisy. “. . . That is to say, thank you for your concern. I’ll clean and redress my leg.” 

No matter the situation, he must see reason. They all know the state of medicine has changed. Without Celestia’s harvested power, healing is neither as effective nor as simple as a Vision-driven Elemental Burst. He can either watch his leg or lose it.

If Kaeya’s alive, then he’s alive. If he isn’t  — a possibility Diluc acknowledges only in his darkest ideations  — then he simply isn’t.

“I’ll send a medic your way,” Jean says.

“Please keep an eye out for Sir Kaeya. He’s yet to pay his tab,” he says. Even the jab feels numb with shock.

“We’ll find him, Diluc,” she says. The steel in her eyes speaks volumes: That’s my brother too. “Rest assured. We will find him.”

 

 

 

 

 

In the middle of the chaos, they find Klee.

Klee, who wriggles her way out of the rubble the moment she can fit, who jerks out of Jean’s grip with tears in her eyes, and screams, “No! Don’t stop me! Why is everyone stopping me?!” She’s hyperventilating. Her long, pointed ears droop under the weight of her upset, and she lost her hat somewhere in the escape. She points a stubby finger up another pile of rubble. “Why doesn’t anyone wanna save big brother Kaeya?!”

Mondstadt’s finest warriors, all of its Knights and Adventurers, are struck silent. The Spark Knight is mischievous, yes. Prone to explosions of all types: gunpowder, energy, laughter, passion. Rarely is she this kind of upset.

“Now, Klee,” Jean starts, already falling into damage control. The implications of Kaeya being under an unfathomable mass of Nail fragments are grim, and as broken as she and Diluc might be from the loss, Klee’s grief would be so much larger than her young mind can handle. “Come here for a moment — “

“No!” Klee squeals. “If nobody’s gonna save him, then Klee will save him herself!”

Before anyone can react, she pulls a Jumpty Dumpty out of her backpack and plants it at the foot of the rubble. Time hangs frozen in the air as Diluc dives for her, knowing that without a Vision regulating her pyro energy, this effort could very well kill her, but the kid’s a fighter beyond her years and she has the bomb readied and waiting to ignite in record speed.

A scream. The bomb tumbles to the ground, inert. Klee stands there holding her own hand, an angry red mark peeking from under her singed gloves — the sparks formed in the wrong place. Diluc reaches her in that moment, when he can hear her whimpers and recognize the pain and fear and shame in them. “No! No! Why won’t you work, Jumpty Dumpty? This is important, the most important thing ever! So why?!”

Klee falls to her knee, banging her little fist against the hull of the bomb. Diluc catches her before she sends her sparks into the gunpowder, holds her awkwardly against his side as tears stream down her face. It’s foreign, the way she wears her despair on her sleeve. It’s much too large for her to contain in the ways that he has to.

“You’ll hurt him if you use that,” he says. “We’ll save him. You’ve done well already, Klee. Let us help.”

It doesn’t stem her tears, but it leaves her clutching at his side instead, fists balled tight in his shirt as she cries into it. By the time he passes her off to Lisa, she’s grown despondent.

“Diluc,” Jean says, now that she’s set everyone back to work. “A word.”

“You won’t stop me from searching,” he says matter-of-factly. He sizes up the pile, trying to find a good place to start without sending debris raining down on his troops. Archons be properly damned; he’ll have to start from the top.

“Nobody wants to stop you, Diluc. It’s a matter of priorities. You must mind your leg.” He’ll probably reopen more of his wounds, but that’s just a necessary sacrifice. When he shows no signs of backing down, Jean’s tone grows bolder. “My apologies, Diluc, I just don’t think Kaeya would’ve wanted you to bleed out searching for his corpse.”

It’s a holdover from when he was younger, or perhaps just a part of who he is, but the charge behind that statement and the circumstances combined are enough to get a rise out of him. His ears ring with the speed at which he turns around. Blood loss. He just manages to avert his eyes before he turns his glare on Jean — well-meaning Jean who thinks more rationally than he does in the face of tragedy. He can’t decide which part of her statement he can reasonably protest.

“Well, he can’t very well do anything about it,” he says instead.

“I won’t lose a friend in service of mourning another,” she responds, because Jean is hurting too and also always correct. “But . . . I feel the same way about this, Diluc. You know I do. Just let me do my part in keeping you alive.”

She pours healing Anemo energy into his leg. It takes so much longer than it did with a Vision, and she looks exhausted by the end of it just knitting blood vessels closed, but that’s the price they paid to overthrow their false gods.

“I’ll join you once we fully reopen the caverns,” she says afterwards. There’s a noticeable unsteadiness in her step. “Perhaps we can . . . Perhaps we can use one of the Knights’ dogs to help find his scent. I’ll send one over the moment we recover them from below.”

The raw edge to her voice sticks with him as he’s left alone with his work. How characteristic of him and Kaeya to put undue stress on Jean. He picks his way up the pile, wound straining as he struggles to hold his balance. No small fortune that the Nail fragments are light enough for a single man to lift, even injured as he is. He finds a good grip on the crowning piece and lifts from the legs.

It’s mind-numbing work. Exactly what he needs at the moment. Piece by piece, he disassembles the body of debris burying his brother, until he hears stones raining down from behind him and finds Razor scrambling up the pile, and then Bennett, the boys joining him wordlessly in a search for the mentor figure they lost in battle.

Things speed up from there. Varka eventually joins their ranks, looking haggard from his efforts clearing out the cavern entrance, but he goes on lifting regardless. Jean drops in with the dog, who can’t seem to smell anything, living or dead, from within the rubble.

Diluc pulls off his glove, revealing the thin braided bracelet underneath. It’s coarse, fibrous — woven of dried plant matter most likely — and it’s dyed red. Some kind of Khaenri’ahn war tradition. Jean catches on quickly, pulling off her own green bracelet to give the dog a better scent.

The dog tilts his head in confusion.

Even when they gather Rosaria and Lisa’s bracelets, he has no positive reaction, and when tiny little Klee shuffles up and tugs on his sleeve, handing over the final navy blue bracelet, the dog only whimpers.

Now bewildered, they carry on.

The cause for the dog phenomenon surfaces shortly. Diluc feels a sudden breeze over the back of his hand after hauling a shard, and when he looks, he finds his glove neatly sliced. Of course his gloves saw wear during the labor, but no regular rubble should cut that cleanly.

He clambers back to his previous position and finds . . .

“A sword,” he whispers hoarsely. Then, louder, “Jean, his sword! It’s shattered.”

Nothing unexpected, but the confirmation is a blow to his composure. Nonetheless, they’ve found the first item to bury him with. That is certainly something.

Or at least they think. Even when they free the guard, the sword refuses to come loose.

Diluc continues to dig. Razor and Bennett clear the debris he haphazardly shifts to the side. An inexplicable instinct tells him there’s some sort of chance, no matter how small. For what, he does not know.

When he finally clears the grip, his fingers reach automatically for the shadowed space around it, feeling for a hand, but . . . there’s something else here. What? He rips his glove off with his teeth and feels again, but it’s real. The same curves and lines of a palm, the slightly raised texture of a glove, the smooth ridges of the star on the back — but unlike flesh, this object is hard as rock.

Petrification, he thinks faintly. The only chance. A thin layer of stone over the living body may be enough. Depending on how thick the Petrification was, it might have stood up against the rain of Nail fragments from above if somehow, Kaeya managed to destroy the things before they made contact, and considering how intact this hand is, he may have succeeded.

Relief nearly knocks Diluc off his legs. In that one moment, the dam of despair holding his exhaustion at bay finally gives out, and he’s taken by the woozy elation of possibility.

“He’s here,” he says to Jean. He feels her grip tighten on his shoulder. He’s alive.

Oh, but Kaeya’s hands are cold. Poor fool always had bad circulation. Diluc grasps for the latent Pyro energy from the air, pushing it into the Petrified hand in his grip, trying to keep the warmth steady and comforting.

They keep going. They uncover the entire right hand, and then the spiked bottoms to his gloves, then his upper arm, encased in a thin layer of stone. It’s all still cold, but that’s acceptable. The sun has set; they’re all getting a bit cold.

By the time they unearth the top of his head, the crescent moon is high in the true sky, and black spots swim through Diluc’s field of vision. He tries to hold in his shivering, but it’s getting chilly out here.

He fumbles his hand over the crown of Kaeya’s head, unkempt blue locks now made rough and jagged under Petrification. Still cold.

Can’t take my eye off you for one second, he thinks. He means to say it aloud, to color it with mock exasperation, but his lips don’t move. Strange, that. Regardless, he makes to draw warmth into his brother as his vision narrows to just his hand atop Kaeya’s head, but then he hears muffled shouting from behind.

What? is probably his last thought before he blacks out entirely.

 

 

 

 

 

He hasn’t stopped running since he left Home. 

An eternity spent in suspended rain. That is all he knows of this strange new place. He collides with petrified water in their mad dash across the surface, breathing in droplets with every step. They burn like acid in his lungs. 

“The demon gods love the rain,” said Father after Home crumbled. “It sweeps away the ruins of what is old, defiant, and undesirable and feeds all that is new and subordinate. But one mustn’t water the weeds. The demon gods abhor us weeds.”

The demon gods abhor the weeds, and they love the rain, so Home does not — did not have rain.

It’s cold up here, he thinks. Home was always warm, blanketed in so many layers of rock and soil, and closer to the heart than the surface. Here, the only warmth is Father sprinting ahead of him, but too soon, with a scant few words, that is gone too.

The moment Father walks away, the rain falls upon his neck in thick, cutting sheets. The wind whips the hem of his cloak around his scraggly legs. The ground rips from beneath him, and he slams into the frigid mud below.

Exhaustion pins him to the ground. Hunger gnaws on his bruised ribs. He knows the rain will sweep him away and feed him to the demon gods’ beloved spring green roots. He knows, this is what happens when sinners come to surface. 

He struggles to turn his gaze upwards, to look his killers in the eye before he passes, but his arms buckle beneath his scrawny weight. He can barely see above the ground.

A smear of red appears in the rain.

A wave of warmth washes over him.

Ah, he wonders numbly. Voices murmur through his waterlogged ears, soft and concerned like Mother was, and a light flickers to life in the distance. Is this what dying feels like?

He smiles. It’s much kinder than the rain.

 

 

 

 

 

Diluc bolts up and leaves his brain somewhere on the pillow. His vision swarms with black specters before twin images of the Cathedral infirmary drift into focus before him, and then the dizziness threatens to push him back to bed.

“Master Diluc, please lay down!” That voice. Barbara. “You can’t behave like this when you’ve overexerted yourself so much!”

“What . . . ?” He means to press a hand to his eyes because it’s much too bright here, but his hand is heavier than expected. Memories come back to him piecemeal — the passive knowledge they won the day, the general state of ruin in the city, handing the bracelet Kaeya foisted upon him to a dog . . . ?

Oh gods. Kaeya.

“Master Diluc!” Barbara foils his now desperate attempts to stand. “Please! You’re suffering from severe blood loss and elemental exhaustion. If Ms. Minci didn’t have those Flaming Essential Oils on hand, you might’ve passed right then and there. It was that bad!” The fact he almost died registers as a minor annoyance to him — What’s one brush with mortality in a life of many? — but he tries not to struggle. If he’s to sneak out later he has to cooperate. “I know you’re worried for Sir Kaeya, but you have to place more value in your own life!”

“. . . You’re right,” he rasps. Barbara hands him a glass of water that he gratefully drains. “I’m sorry, Ms. Pegg. It was folly to push myself to that extreme.”

“It sure was!” she huffs. The Deaconess is feeling honest today.

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “Thank you for treating me.” As they all feared, even Barbara’s healing is a ghost of what it used to be. The aches and exhaustion from his near-death experience remain, magnitudes of order more severe than they would’ve been before their Visions died. And yet, he might just take advantage of this. “May I . . . have some more water?”

“Of course,” the young Deaconess says. She waves her hand over the top of the glass out of instinct, and they both sit there for a moment watching nothing happen. “Oh, um. Sorry about that.” Her stress-frayed smile becomes yet more frayed. “I’ll go get some more, but it’ll be a while. Meanwhile, you mustn’t move a muscle!”

She leaves then, but not before calling in help. Luckily for Diluc, that help is the illustrious Sister Rosaria.

She’s seen better days. Her wine red hair is in disarray, the splint around her left ankle looks heavy and awkward, and her eyes droop low with bags, but perhaps most pressingly, the full pack of cigarettes she scrounged up last night is down to its last measly stick. She rolls it between her fingers contemplatively.

“I’m helping you out of here,” she says, eyes focused nowhere. Her voice is ashen and dispassionate. “You’ll want to see this.”

She’s a woman of her word. She hauls him up by his shoulders and carries both their weights out the Cathedral, into the ruins of Mondstadt. Through the mass of aimless citizens, she manages to slip past Barbara hauling a bucket back up the stairs.

Even at this distance, Diluc catches the rare sound of Jean’s anger, distinct and understated. There’s a crowd around where Kaeya was — a scene. Rosaria shoulders a path through it for them, just close enough for Diluc to examine the conflict.

It’s Sir Albedo that Jean is infuriated with. He stands across from her, Razor and Bennett positioned uncomfortably behind him in the face of the Acting Grand Master’s coldly polite criticism. Klee sits nearby, humming quietly to herself as she doodles with salvaged pastels.

And right next to Klee, in its fully unearthed glory, stands the Petrified form of Kaeya.

Diluc stumbles at the sight. Faint memories of the stone arm and head come to mind, but the image of the whole statue strikes an entirely different impression. Stance wide and balanced on the top tier of Mondstadt’s market fountain, right arm pointed heavenward with shattered sword in hand, left arm lowered to his side with fist clenched around his loose eyepatch, shoulders squared and confident . . . Every detail, down to the folds of his shirt and the fraying on his cape, down to individual locks of hair, is perfectly preserved. 

Kaeya looks poised. Statuesque. The image of the glorious hero. 

And as heroes ought to do, Kaeya has his face turned ever so slightly upward, just enough to fix his eyes upon Celestia in his final moments before Petrification.

Kaeya is smiling.

“Diluc, what are you doing out of the infirmary?” Jean’s ire has found a new target, and it’s enough to pull him out of his shock. “Rosaria, did you sneak him past Barbara?”

Rosaria sticks her final cig in her mouth and makes a gesture like a shrug.

“Jean, what happened since I passed out last night?” Diluc asks. Albedo turns to look then. His put together mannerisms belie his utter exhaustion. Bags hang on his tired blue eyes, and the homunculus’s normally youthful countenance is marred by the odd crease.

“Albedo. He’s . . . been working on Kaeya’s condition,” Jean answers. “I just can’t agree with how he’s handled it.”

“I told Klee and her friends that I would revive Kaeya,” Albedo says.

Revive? Now with a clearer mind, Diluc remembers when he touched Kaeya’s hand, his arm, his head, they were cold. With as thin as that layer of stone must be to preserve so much detail, that simply could not be.

“This isn’t ordinary Petrification, Diluc,” Jean says, confirming his fears. “There is no living tissue underneath. Kaeya’s flesh was completely replaced with stone, and no matter our methods, nobody can find signs of life on him. Not the dogs, not Lisa.” She levels a conflicted look at her colleague. “And not Albedo.”

“That is the nature of academic advancement: to meet needs that present limitations cannot satisfy. The boundaries of our worlds’ systems have been blown wide open. Somewhere within our new bounds lies a cure for Kaeya’s condition,” Albedo counters.

“I want so desperately to believe like you do, Albedo. Kaeya was one of my most trusted and cherished friends; I would explore every possible avenue before ever — even considering proclaiming him dead,” Jean says. “But you’ve given these children a promise you can’t guarantee. Razor and Bennett, and —,” she gestures at Klee, “ — until Alice finds some way to return, we’re the only ones here to support Klee. What happens years down the line, when Klee doesn’t have her big brother back and realizes her other brother has lied to her?”

“Acting Grand Master, all signs point to considerable exhaustion on your end,” Albedo says. “You have exerted yourself far beyond what any Mondstadter could expect from a leader, and I understand your mind must be in turmoil. However.” Albedo’s grip tightens on the journal at his side. The pages are smeared with scribbled ink, dark and frantic. The scholar’s own doubt doesn’t escape Diluc’s notice. “You must forgive my rare indulgence in optimism. I didn’t promise because I thought I could work a miracle. I promised because I wished to save a friend. I will revive Kaeya.”

“Do you have any possible lines of investigation?” Diluc interrupts. There’s frustration in Jean’s eyes, but they all know arguing leads nowhere. “My family’s resources are at your disposal.”

“Mora,” Albedo requests simply. “Any amount of it you might have.”

Diluc feels his brow crease at the answer. A year ago, he would’ve snapped his fingers and had it done, but the runaway deflation, consequent replacement, and then complete alchemical consumption of Mora leading up to the war now has him stumped.

“It’s a necessary catalyst for every Alchemical process. I hoped you might’ve saved some for yourself,” says Albedo.

“If only I lacked the integrity,” Diluc replies. He can’t say he didn’t consider it. He knew even then that Mora would become the highest demanded commodity in Teyvat. As more and more advanced war transportation systems needed synthesizing, the ex-currency simultaneously skyrocketed in demand and plummeted in supply. The rest was simple economics. “Every Mora in the Ragnvindr coffers went into the construction of Barbatos’s Portal. However, I will pull every string available to procure some. There will always be those who hoard what is desperately needed. In the meantime, state anything else you might require, and I’ll have it delivered.”

Albedo nods gratefully, and discussions continue. Razor and Bennett wander off to find places to be helpful, and Rosaria lingers attentively as Diluc’s crutch. It’s a sight. Great warriors of Mondstadt that they are, and they’re all in shambles at the stone feet of a half dead friend. Suffice it to say not one of them has voluntarily slept since returning.

When all’s said and done, Diluc whispers for Rosaria to bring him closer, where Klee sits on the fountain tier just below Kaeya’s foothold. The child looks up from her doodles of horses and great pirate heroes who ride them.

“You’re tall. Can you help me?” she asks shily. The light has returned to her eyes. Eager to preserve it, Diluc nods. “Up?”

Rosaria shoots him a look. “Nuh uh, kiddo,” she says, “Let me put him down for a second and I’ll lift you up as high as you want.”

The Sister helps him half-lean, half-collapse against the fountain before grabbing Klee under the armpits. The girl directs Rosaria where and how high, and to stop holding her there, please, she needs to move her arms.

Then, Diluc watches Klee untie the blue braided bracelet from around her own wrist, and retie it around the statue’s.

“You said this is supposed to bring people back home safe from the scary fighting,” she whispers loudly. “And that big sparkly shield you put up made sure they had a place to come back to! Now everyone’s home except you! So, come home safe, okay? Klee is very worried.” She gives the statue’s hand two gentle pats before sliding down Sister Rosaria’s arms.

Oh. Diluc has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. 

Oh. A jagged edge of grief grates from his gut up to the crown of his head, evolving a painful heat in his eyes. He’ll throw everything he has into the effort to save Kaeya, but his ideology and Klee’s are fundamentally different, in that she dares to think they’ll actually succeed. In this, children are brave where men are cowards.

Klee is everything he once was. Every hope he wants wholeheartedly to believe in. Every person will have their best friend, every child will have a family, and every brother will without question return. Her world is so full and good and beautiful, and suddenly, he understands why Albedo wagered a promise against his own doubt. He wants to protect that. Diluc wants to protect that too. Perhaps that’s the one part of him that never changed.

And while there is still hope, he might live in that world himself, at least for this one thing.

Yes. Kaeya is alive, he thinks. It doesn’t feel half bad, so he tries again. Yes, Kaeya will return. 

Yes, I’ll have my ass of a brother back. He smirks slightly to himself. It’s a wave of relief pouring back down his spine. I’ll make it so, and then I’ll have his head for daring to smile in the face of death.

He slumps slightly down the side of the fountain and finds his bare foot catching on delicate stone detailing. He looks down. Petrified flowers? Five petaled, long-stemmed and leafless, it doesn't look like anything that grows around Mondstadt. When he pushes against it, it holds fast.

“Was that there before?” he asks Rosaria. She chews on her unlit cigarette, looking just as shaken from young Klee’s actions.

“No.“

He kicks a petal. It doesn’t budge.

“Are you certain?”

“I have this damn place burned into my eyelids. You can take my word or leave it.”

“Strange,” Diluc mutters. Strange indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

It takes a few days to recover his strength. Though it seems his leg may never heal completely, he proclaims himself done with bedrest the moment he can limp out of the room with a simple wooden cane. That same day, Jean invites him to accompany her, Varka, and Albedo in descending the stairs into the caverns to inspect them for stability, where their original purpose is quickly distracted by a sight as bizarre as it is beautiful.

Great Irminsul roots run a canopy over the body of the caverns. They are cold to the touch — white, solid, and, as Albedo suspected, marble throughout. 

“Hertha reported as much, but it’s altogether different seeing it in person,” Jean says with wonder.

Paint decorates the smooth surface. Upon close inspection, the markings resemble the art of the Hilichurls, swirls and diamonds aligned in various repeating patterns. Could Hilichurls have come to this place? Shouldn’t someone have noticed?

“What do you think?” Varka questions. “Stable?”

“Remarkably, with the material properties, placement, and structure of these petrified Irminsul . . . yes,” Albedo says, scrawling over his notebook. “I’ll continue checking my calculations, but it seems that even after the observed damage from the Nails, with a reasonable assumption of maximum load being the foundation of a full apartment complex at the point of smallest cross-sectional area, we have a factor of safety of at least two.”

Varka still looks a touch confused, but it doesn’t seem to bother him all that much.

“Alright, let’s talk about the Hilichurl problem then,” Varka says. “Should we concern ourselves with a possible second entrance? No way these guys slipped through our patrols these past few days.”

“. . . I don’t think so,” Diluc says. Something returns to him from long conversations with his brother. “As you know, Hilichurls are cursed refugees of Khaenri’ah. These markings may not be indicative of Hilichurl activity, but rather . . . “

They all look up at the ceiling. There’s a point at which all roots meet, and according to Bennet, these roots erupted from the ground at the moment the Nails dropped.

Albedo has Diluc stand beneath the intersection point before rolling out a length of cord between that point and the entrance. He marks the length and compass direction before they head back up.

Sure enough, when Jean walks the same length of cord from the entrance, in the exact same direction — she ends up right at Kaeya’s feet.

Grand marble roots shooting through the earth as if to herald Kaeya’s sacrifice. The image follows him on his solitary sojourn to the winery, whereupon the sight of Windrise, that great tree which flourished at the site of Vennessa’s deadly “ascension,” soon joins it. What once struck purest admiration in his heart now only serves to bitter his tongue.

And when he arrives home, he finds the manor pristine. Not a single sunbaked shingle out of place.

He stables his own horse and lets himself into the foyer. It’s quiet without Hillie or Moco spreading wild rumors in the living room, without Adelinde to welcome him back with a cup of tea and a smile, without Tunner cursing his aches just outside the window. His people are currently stationed in Mond to help defend the refugees, a decision he hardly regrets making.

Still, left to spend the night alone, he can’t help but resent the specter of silence which now haunts his home.

 

 

 

 

 

Six months pass in an exhausted shamble. In the place of Mond’s great stone walls sit a jerry-rigged replacement, sections of mortared rubble providing some meager protection for their wounded city. Dawn Winery’s guest bedrooms find use as quarters for the sick and injured. Its fields have been repurposed for a season, food crops lining the old rows of grapevine. Diluc could trade his monopoly on wine for a monopoly on the very food they need to survive, but . . .

“Master Diluc!” He turns to look back from atop his horse. A woman barges past his workers, waving a bag over her head. From the looks of it, the contents are quite weighty. He tries to quash the immediate interest in the metallic rattling sound. “Master Diluc, please hold for a moment!”

Diluc dismounts, wincing as he lands on his lame left leg. By the time the woman – Donna, he recognizes finally – reaches him, she’s out of breath. She shoves the bag into his chest before immediately snatching her hand away, leaving him to catch the bag before it drops to the ground.

It lands in his hand with a promising clink.

“I know you said no payment, Master Diluc, but,” Donna pushes out between gasps, “I can’t accept all of this – this aid for free. Ellin and I picked through some of the old residential district rubble for stashed Mora and we came up with around eighty! I know it’s not a lot, but I hope it still helps.”

A gentle tug on the bag’s drawstring sends battered golden disks spilling over his gloved hand. If she notices his eyes widen at the sight, she doesn’t mention it. All of Mondstadt knows their tale: the rich Master of Dawn Winery scraping together Mora to save his Petrified brother.

What she doesn’t know is that his reaction is a lingering, now ill-fitting instinct. The Head Alchemist has researched himself into a dead end. Not even Mora can catalyze a way out of this one.

Still, he appreciates the gesture. His gaze fixes the white dust sandwiched between the pieces, and then he looks up and finds the dirt caking the woman’s clothes and side braid isn’t just travel grime.

“Thank you, Donna. Truly,” he says. Few words, but that tends to be how he operates when he’s being honest. However, this warrants additional comment: “I ask that in the future, you avoid searching the rubble without proper protective equipment. The older complexes were painted with toxic pigments, and I don’t want you or Ellin harmed just to repay me.”

“Y-yes! I’m sorry for worrying you Master Diluc!”

He tries putting on a comforting smile for her sake, but the flare-up in his leg makes it that much harder. “Please don’t trouble yourself with the thought. Why don’t you take what you need since you’re already here? Let the upper deck tent city know that the grain shipments have arrived.”

Donna nods furiously and does just that. Meanwhile, Fritz tosses Diluc his cane so he doesn’t have to lean on his horse just to hobble through the front gates.

The leather-wrapped silver grip hits his palm with a comforting thunk. The face of a great horned owl peers out from the front end of the handle, engraved into the exposed metal surface. Of course he hadn’t the time nor the desire to have something like this custom crafted, what with Mondstadt’s general dearth of resources, but it’s a hand-me-down. His father’s old accessory found practical use in Diluc’s hands.

He pats the neck of his old destrier, easing weight off of the creature’s solid midriff and onto the cane. “One day your arthritis will set in. Then you’ll understand how I feel, Sarge,” he whispers. He grins as the black Friesian tosses his head in response. “I know, I know. Thank you for the support.”

He drops by the provisional barracks to personally drop off the Mora. Even from the back, Albedo looks like he hasn’t caught more than five consecutive hours of sleep in the past month.

Diluc jingles the bag of Mora to rouse him from his stress-induced haze.

“I have something for you, Head Alchemist.”

“I wish I could say the same,” he mumbles. “How much do you have on you this time?”

“About eighty. Do you still require Mora?”

Albedo wearily runs his hand through his unkempt locks. “Leave it with the rest. I’m sure I’ll have a use for it once I find the right method . . .”

The certainty is cold comfort in the face of their daunting task. How, after all, does an alchemist synthesize life energy? Before the war, basic life force was nigh inconceivable as a tappable resource, much less as a valid substitute for elemental energy. And then there was Kaeya, who faced the Gods with his signature confident smile and paid his life down to the last drop, bled it out as a forward for the icy shield which saved the heart of Mondstadt. 

“I suppose this puts a definitive Mora value on a life,” he muses drily to himself.

In response, Albedo rambles: “If only it were that simple. The conversion efficiency up the purity scale from Mora to primitive life energy is . . . abysmal. With our current knowledge, there might not be enough of it left . . . ”

He stops before saying it, but only because they both know they’re playing against an unimpeachable limit. Diluc turned Teyvat upside down (technically right side up) searching for large collections of Mora. He was a man possessed, and a disgustingly influential one at that – few could stand against his post-war valuation and iron fist diplomacy. When he was done with the place, the only Mora left were those that slipped through the cracks, buried in debris and lost under mountains and oceans. 

However, the fact remains, he can extort and barter all he wants, but without Celestia’s cyclical energy harvesting, the amount of resources, the amount of Mora, at his disposal is woefully finite.

The rest of the day proceeds as scheduled. Diluc rendezvous with Hertha to go over the logistics of distribution, and then he rolls up his sleeves and gets to distributing. With the Angel’s Share destroyed, he finds other means of keeping his fingers on the pulse of the city, and he finds it abuzz with anxiety.

It’s the morning after the new moon; only the sixth one Mond has experienced since the shattering of the False Sky. With that comes the muted yet still present fear that the sliver of white will not return this time, and Mondstadt will be bereft of her namesake forevermore.

Also present are the whispers of the old, perpetually full moon of Celestia. Though Diluc heard the legends in his youth, it was still macabre to confirm that Celestia dangled a corpse in their False Sky. Was it Aria? Was it Canon? So callous was the Sustainer that she failed to document which Sister she strung up to parade about the night sky.

And where the Sustainer had her Moon Sister, Mondstadt has its Cavalry Captain.

Diluc wipes his hands on his apron, watching yet another girl scale the fountain tiers to lay a kiss on the Captain’s cheek. She runs away, nearly tripping over the suspiciously growing pile of stone flowers as a gaggle of her friends giggle on.

“What’s that one for?” he asks, voice tight. Mondstadt suffered very few casualties from the war – surprisingly few, between the Twins’ frightening competence and the successful defense of the City. This also served to highlight the few they actually lost, however temporary. Hence, the lionization.

He’s seen Knights (notably none from Kaeya’s own unit) clap the statue on the shoulder – that makes sense. He’s seen children tap the tip of his boots before running off to play tag – that one also makes sense in its own way. The children of Mondstadt knew his brother as a fast runner first and the Quartermaster of the Knights second, as often go the priorities of young children. He’s seen flowers, brightly colored living ones, lain at the statue’s feet, and the occasional note written and pasted to the stone, and all of this is fine by his estimates.

But the blatant disrespect of this ritual has him bristling in a different way. Kaeya was – is a charmer, known for his quicksilver tongue and wit of gold, but that’s always been a means to an end. Some part of Diluc doubts he’d appreciate this . . . this constant . . . nonconsensual . . . whatever this is. The thought leaves him balefully fiddling with the red woven bracelet at his wrist, long since returned to him.

Lisa tuts from beside him, waving off the weary family she just finished supplying. “I know. So distasteful. At least have the class to do it when he can remember, hmm? Word’s gone around that the slumbering spirit of the Cavalry Captain has an eye for beauty, so any lad or lady who pays him that due will be blessed with his protection.” Lisa shakes her head. She’s smiling, but her wide-brim hat casts a forlorn shadow over her eyes. “I think the little ones have a bit too much free time on their hands, coming up with something so fanciful.”

“Indeed. We’ll have to find some way to put them to work,” he says drily. A long silence stretches between the two as they measure out portions of grain, smile, and shake people’s hands, but the thought refuses to leave him. Eventually, he just decides to voice what’s occupying both of their minds: “It’s like they’ve already stopped thinking of him as a person.”

“Well, they need something to keep their minds occupied in these trying times. I try not to get too angry. You know him. He might’ve gotten annoyed, but nothing much more than that.” Lisa chuckles helplessly. “Oh, look! A sweet little girl. This one should be amusing.”

Diluc pauses to watch the girl – no older than eight by the looks of it – carry a puppy with a splint over its paw up to the foot of the statue. Her father lifts her up.

A little spot of peanut butter, and the puppy laps at the Cavalry Captain’s petrified cheek.

Maybe it’s the warm sunlight of noon, but the frozen smile on Kaeya’s face seems to shift with the image. Before, with his blade pointed heavenward and his chin tilted defiantly towards Celestia, he looked nothing more than his usual cocky self. Now, with his feet wreathed with a growing pile of stone flowers, wrist ringed with the blue woven bracelet Klee put there, he looks nearly . . .

Content.

Knowing what he was prepared to do at that moment, the thought is chilling.

“Thoughts, Master Diluc?”

Diluc shakes his head. “He’d never say no to that. Unrepentant dog person.”

 

 

 

 

 

Peacetime is an unfamiliar flavor. Diluc finds himself restless from it, overly anxious from long days of tranquil reconstruction, and he spends the remaining afternoon trying to put himself to work. His efforts shift from grain distribution to supply acquisition to city reorganization to debris clearing. Damaged though he may be, he can still bench the combined weight of five adult warriors, so finding ways to serve his country is far from impossible.

It stands to reason that the man who most craves usefulness is one who perceives himself as obsolete, and what use is an injured veteran in peacetime?

He’s on edge by the time night falls. The moon hangs as a sliver in the dark sky. They say a rash of Hilichurls has been haunting the walls lately, so he might see some reprieve after all.

Not much point to the cowl nowadays, since his being the Darknight Hero is something of an open secret, but he doesn’t need a disguise to hide from the Knights; the two young guards are dead to the world. A herd of boars could stampede past and they would never know.

He sighs from atop his slipshod perch. If they weren’t so diligent with reconstruction earlier, he’d have some choice words for the both of them.

A flash of motion catches his eye in the distance. Torches. He shifts weight from one side of his body to the other, testing how much he can push his lame leg without losing it.

He lifts his cane from the ground. It looks like the pain has eased for the night.

Good, good. He flicks the tip of his cane up to the approaching Hilichurls, peering down one eye for a quick aim adjustment. Pyro energy surges in from the air, channeling through his hand down the length of the cane to concentrate at the end, the scarlet glow throwing warmth over his rapidly cooling skin. Unlike before, when he had the aid of his Vision, the use of Pyro nowadays requires the capture of massive amounts of heat from his surroundings, instantly freezing any vapor within a short distance. 

It’s tiring, time-consuming, and far too impractical for his old style of Claymore application, but to break their ranks? It’ll do.

Diluc breathes in.

He holds.

He lets the energy go.

He breathes out a white cloud of condensation, just as – BOOM! – his shot decimates their frontline.

“Sngrphm – bwuh? What in the – ? Master Diluc, what’re you doing up there?”

Diluc slides down the wall, catching himself with an impressive grace given his injury. “Watching over the city. Hold onto this for me, won’t you?” He tosses his cane over to the still sleep-dumb Knight and draws his longsword. The weight feels insufficient. He misses his claymore, but the Sisters might have his head if he strains his leg too much.

The first Hilichurl flees from the explosion of pyro right into Diluc’s sword. He tries to restrain his movements as much as possible, both to conserve his energy and minimize pain, but even his worst will suffice. A swift flick of the blade is enough to run his opponent through.

He watches the creature fall to the ground in two pieces. These are the cursed citizens of Khaenri’ah, robbed of their sentience, exiled, and driven mad. His brother’s countrymen. 

But they’re also rushing the gates. Diluc’s people, those for which both he and his brother sacrificed so much, lie exposed inside, scraping their home back together from within thin-canvassed tent cities. He doesn’t have time to risk it.

One of the guards joins the fight only to get immediately overrun. Diluc dispatches his current opponent before pausing, focusing for the barest of moments. 

With a deep breath in, he raises his arm and feels the air run cold around him. Moments later, concentrated Pyro energy explodes from the tips of his fingers, staggering the Hilichurls who have the hapless Mondstadter in their grasps. He hauls the young man out of the pileup.

“Can you walk?” he asks. He gets little more than a bewildered nod in response, and surprisingly, the Knight looks nearly uninjured. Blunt impacts here and there, but nothing that’ll leave a permanent mark. Diluc shakes his head. “Get inside. I can handle this.”

And he does so – easily. One methodical strike after another, with the occasional shot of Pyro energy if he spots an opponent sneaking around out of range. He’s stiff, victim to hardened, half-healed tissue spasming around his calf with every swing, but he pulls through with the barest of aches.

When the final body falls, he’s left standing alone in frigid air.

Ice crystals cling to his hair and clothes. A bruising reminder of the man he fought alongside so often in his youth, and then again when they recently patched things up in adulthood. A tether once formed, then severed, then fixed, and finally severed again.

The thought slices through his composure like a hot blade through scar tissue. It isn’t until he breathes out, and he sees it come in shaky, uneven puffs, that he realizes he’s shivering.

Later, as they clean up the carnage of the battlefield, Diluc searches for weapons and finds none. Instead, the singed remains of white and blue, five-petaled flowers litter Mondstadt’s cobble bridge.

And when he stumbles his way back through the city gates, as dawn just barely touches the horizon, his feet bring him to the foot of the statue. He drags his gaze up to his brother’s face. There, on the Captain’s right side, is the eye that few outside of Diluc have ever seen, its golden luster lost to the stone. There, over the eyelid, is the scar that Diluc himself inflicted all those years ago. And below that? 

There’s that damnable smile again.

What am I doing here? The urge to avert his eyes is overpowering. His other hand flies instinctually to the red woven bracelet looped around his wrist. He isn’t superstitious enough to engage in the little rituals the youth of Mondstadt seem fond of. He refuses to pay his respects, and he hasn’t the shame to talk to stone. He saves those for the graves.

Instead, he nods once at Kaeya’s smiling face and thinks, Hurry up, you bastard, before walking away. His fingers feel a bit numb from the cold.

 

 

 

 

 

His palms burn. His blade is chipped to high hells, and across from him, the doll he just cut down twitches back to life, its broken limbs snapping into place with a sickening crack. It scoops its smiling, decapitated head off the ground and twists it back onto its neck, one, two, three turns down.

He curses. Closing his hand around his two-winged Cryo Vision, he beckons the energy towards his opponent, calling forth a great maw of ice to trap it and some of its many copies inside.

“Sir Kaeya! Support incoming!” Bennett yells. He turns around and dashes towards the voice, just in time to watch the boy slam his fist into the ground. The impact throws the invading frontline back, and he feels warmth suffuse through his body, rapidly easing the ache in his wounds.

“You’re a lifesaver, Benny,” he huffs out. The boy perks at his praise, looking ready to fight another few waves at least. “Keep up the good timing. Look out for Razor and Fischl for now; I should be able to handle myself well enough.”

“But you’ve used up so much elemental energy!” Bennett protests, gesturing wildly at the ice traps littering the battlefield. The eyes of the dolls trapped inside swivel to watch them. “Retreat with us behind the walls! Please!”

Oh, boy. If he doesn’t thin out the dolls’ ranks before they hit his makeshift ice walls, then the defending fighters will rapidly lose morale. They’ll be overrun.

He makes a big show of chuckling, like that’s the silliest thing he’s ever heard – and even that motion aggravates his elemental exhaustion induced headache. The gesture eases some of the tension in the young Adventurer’s shoulders, so it’s worth it.

“Listen, Benny,” he drawls, ruffling the kid’s sandy hair. “I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve. Have you ever seen me lose a hand of poker?”

“No, Sir! You beat me every single time, Sir!”

“That’s right!” he says. “So bet on me, alright? I’ll be fine. Your friends need you more than I do. Mondstadt needs you. Fall back to the walls and defend them with all you’ve got, Master Adventurer!”

Bennett looks torn, but he makes up his mind after a none-too-gentle shove towards the walls. With the boy back in relative safety, Kaeya can focus on dealing as much damage as possible.

It’s the day of Teyvat’s final stand against Celestia. They are the last line of defense between the Sustainer’s mechanized troops and the civilians of Mondstadt, hidden away in the City’s ancient underground caverns. He considered the possibility of such an attack, one targeted at the main force’s morale more than their bodies, but he and Jean agreed their automated despots wouldn’t make such an illogical move. It turns out they were both wrong.

Well, he won’t let Celestia have the last laugh. Diluc, Varka, and Jean all know that Mondstadt won’t fall as long as he still stands, so a little invasion won’t touch their good judgment.

He jams his blade into the gap in a doll’s elbow, severing the lines holding its arm together before it can swing its Nail-shaped weapon at his head. The enemy’s exterior is hard and smooth. It refuses to rend as flesh does, and what was never alive cannot die, so he’s gotten creative in the ways he disables them.

Cryo energy pulses through his weapon and into the doll’s solid carapace. He watches with sick satisfaction as frost erupts from the thing’s gaping smile, ice forming within its hollow body and locking it in place. He has the good grace to kick it to the ground before moving on.

His next opponent sprouts a flaming arrow from its face. Kaeya ducks in time for an electro-wreathed arrow to join it, triggering an explosive Overload that sends the doll’s head to the ground in fragments. The body continues its assault, winding a full three-sixty for its swing, but Kaeya blasts it with Cryo to freeze its attack in place.

If it were Diluc, he thinks absently, encasing another wave of dolls in ice, that whole thing would’ve been in pieces. He can trust the young ones to hold the line well enough, but nothing can replace the absolute, unshakeable faith of having his brother at his back.

He sighs internally. Amber and Fischl are trying their best. A bit rude of him to compare, no?

Suddenly, the doll under his blade goes entirely limp. He jumps away from it, expecting some sort of self destruction sequence, but nothing comes of it. Strange.

Stranger still, when he glances up, he watches the entire army of dolls collapse in a ripple. Their hollow hulls clatter lifelessly against Mondstadt’s cobble streets, arms and legs splayed in awkward, broken angles. It takes minutes for silence to reign again, and by then, not a single doll stands against them.

He adjusts his grip apprehensively on his sword. The only sound that remains is the icy crackling of his Cryo traps and the labored breathing of himself and the other young defenders.

Until:

“Big Brother Razor, my Vision went dark!”

A clamor erupts from behind him. He looks down at his own Vision and finds its icy blue luster completely dead. Sure enough, when he snaps his fingers, calling upon the weapon for its flood of Cryo energy, nothing responds. He snaps his fingers again, scraping his surroundings for any amount of Cryo at all, but even that yields only a single, pitiful snowflake.

“I – Oh no, my healing isn’t working anymore!” Barbara cries.

“Oz? Oz?” calls Fischl. “Reveal yourself this instant! Your – Your Prinzessin commands it!”

He whirls around, only to find his fellow Allogenes in a state of disarray. Razor stares bewildered at his hands, Klee tries and fails to summon her signature pyrotechnics, and Amber frantically shakes Baron Bunny, trying to force him to animate as he did before. All of it to no avail.

It’s a pain the Visionless cannot understand. So occupied are the Allogenes with the loss of their channels, it’s Hertha’s husband, here to defend their daughter as his wife goes off to war, who finally notices the guillotine left to fall upon their necks.

“Captain! Look up!”

He hears it before he sees it: the roar of something massive, approaching at terrifying speeds. When his eye finally fix on the source, his heart stops beating for a solid second.

Marble, decorated in luminescent blue detailing, and larger than their tallest Cathedral spire, a storm of Nails hurtles towards their city. He’s seen the peak of Dragonspine. He’s seen what only one of these things did to Sal Vindagnyr, and he personally witnessed the destruction they wrought upon Khaenri’ah. Celestia’s great Civilization Enders, their enforcers, their Cycle Harvesters – unleashed upon the innocents of Mondstadt.

 Ashes to ashes. Celestia ensures all of its tales end in destruction.

“Get down! Get down into the caverns! Everyone!” he booms. When the kids refuse to move, he once again prods at the energy of the land, channeling heat energy away from his palms until an emaciated little wisp of ice rises from his palm. 

It won’t do.

He feels a smile take his lips. A little bitter-tasting, this one. Is it that time already? He searches for that coil of energy around his heart. It’s a deeply-ingrained procedure, hammered into his mind since youth and honed regularly in adulthood. Even as his loyalties shifted, his knowledge that he’d one day use the Rheingold to fulfill his purpose remained constant.

The practice pays off; he finds it in short order. When he tugs at the end of it, he feels his stomach swoop, his heart dropping like he’s dangling over the edge of Teyvat, and, most importantly, he feels the anticipation of great potential.

He gives a final warning shout before yanking it loose.

Pure, unsullied energy floods his body. He wrestles it under control, holding it back from spilling out from his extremities, and weaves it carefully – just a little push, just enough to get them back to safety, don’t hurt them. They are my Legacy.

Then he releases it in Klee’s direction.

She squeals. The chilling blast of air sweeps the girl off her feet, shoving her and any stragglers back towards the cavern entrance. He guides the blizzard with his finger, conducting it to funnel the refugees downwards. They might fall down the stairs, but a few broken bones are leagues better than any unnecessary loss of life.

“Sir Kaeya!” The last one aboveground. Amber. She just barely braces herself up against the storm. “Kaeya, don’t you dare – Grrr, you’re doing it again!” Her foot slips back, but she catches herself against the cavern opening, and she takes the opportunity to glare in his direction. He paces towards her wordlessly. “Stop doing this all by yourself! Tell me how you got your elemental energy back, I’ll learn it really quick, I’ll show you! Give me the order! Let me help!”

He glances up. They don’t have much time left.

“Don’t ignore me! Hey! You can’t do this!”

A heaving cough racks his body, so sudden he barely manages to catch it with his hand. His glove comes away warm and dripping red.

He doesn’t have much time left.

When he looks, Amber’s eyes are wide with realization, fixed on his bloodied hand. Well, shucks. Looks like he’s given himself away.

“You can’t do this,” she whispers into the storm.

He flashes her a cocky grin, kneeling before her braced form. He places a hand on her shoulder, taking care to use his non-bloodied hand. No need to traumatize her further.

“You have a bright future in front of you, Outrider,” he says. “Just treat this like . . . a passing of the torch. Look forward. Try your best.” His grin softens. “Don’t think too hard about it, alright?”

“What – do you mean?” she chokes out. “Don’t talk like that, Sir Kaeya, I –”

“Would you look at the time? I have to make tracks now. Bye-bye!”

He stomps lightly on her fingers, releasing her grip on the cavern entryway, and then shoves her down the stairs.

A quick wave of his hand slams the entryway shut. He freezes it in place for good measure. He hears Amber pounding at the stone slab beneath him, but . . .  he can’t waste more time easing her grief. It feels like his chest is being sucked in, like he’s running out of breath. The wick of his life burns bright but short now that he’s lit his Rheingold – time is far scarcer than energy.

He rips his eyepatch off, allowing his implanted eye to peer into the future. Can he shatter the Nails? Ah, no, that ends . . . gorily. Fragments still do damage, enough to collapse the caverns – duly noted. His eye darts to and fro. He’ll have to halt their momentum and shatter them in one fell swoop.

A shield will do. He’ll need to use his Rheingold to call upon the magic of the land, and he’ll need a little bit of luck on top of that, but it’ll do.

He approaches the market square’s fountain, fragmented and spraying water everywhere after the dolls’ attack. He freezes the tiers into a set of jagged stairs.

He ascends the fountain and thinks, Finally.

It’s that time, finally.

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out that the Head Alchemist and his people are in high demand in a post-Celestia world. The near complete destruction of Mondstadt gave way for a unique opportunity to city plan from the ground up, and that, by consequence, called Albedo, Sucrose, and even Lisa away from . . . less pressing matters.

Diluc takes the opportunity to rebuild the Angel’s Share, having dug out his forefathers’ blueprints. He manages to create a perfect duplicate of the place, down to the lighting and decor, and this time, he places it in the central market square. It’s a perfectly logical business decision – next to a high traffic road, and it’s a very short distance from the recently rebuilt general store and Good Hunter. Efficient restocking.

It also has a view.

He peers up from taking inventory (calculating how to best distribute the winery’s relief supplies, very exciting) and finds a group of kids standing around the statue. A few of them scratch their heads as Klee patiently pelts them with explanations. Diluc doesn’t have to hear her to know she’s claiming to have tagged Kaeya. Many games of tag live and die around the statue.

Some boy leans over to inspect something Klee pointed out, but then he stumbles over a stray petrified flower. After those first few months, the size of the flower pile stagnated for some unknown reason – something that quickly befuddled Albedo before he was pulled away for some urgent matter or other. Now they remain as Mondstadt’s most mysterious tripping hazard, with many victims, this boy included, forced to catch themselves on the petrified Captain’s legs.

“See, now he’s tagged you! No tag backs, hehe!”

Normally, he’d be amused by these antics. He can’t quite bring himself to feel it today.

He drags his gaze back down to the inventory sheet. The letters swim before his eyes. He feels duller nowadays. The crisp line of thought he took for granted in his youth has blurred, the ink running cloudy all over the page. He doesn’t remember ever losing focus as often as he does now.

His leg chooses then to spasm. It’s a bad day. Another fabulous reminder that his body is quite literally falling apart.

The bell above the door chimes – a customer. Diluc glances up, his gaze magnetizing towards the statue for just a moment before finally sliding over to what he should be focusing on.

“Ms. Amber. Eula,” he greets. Both women seem shadowed below their eyes. The rest of his lines rattle out mechanically. “Welcome to the Angel’s Share. The special today is a hearty cocktail of carbonated Valberry juice and Dandelion Wine, spritzed with lime and garnished with a sprig of mint – the Very Berry Delight.”

“Get her one of those,” Eula says, nodding towards her companion. “What’s on the menu for wine? I heard you recently cracked open one of your family’s oldest caskets.”

He blinks. “Pardon?”

She mutters something under her breath, no doubt something about vengeance. “I said, ‘I heard you recently cracked open one of your family’s oldest casks.’ I would like a glass of the contents.”

“Of course.” Diluc internally berates himself. Focus. “We have with us today a freshly bottled Dawn Winery reserve red, aged six years in a Fontaineau oak cask.” He uncorks a bottle from the top shelf and pours a glass for the testy Captain. “For the flavor profile . . . words are cheap. I’ll leave you to experience it for yourself.” 

A close save. He tasted this batch just a few days ago, and he can’t summon even the faintest memory of its profile.

He moves on to Amber’s cocktail, only aware of his actions through the physical sensation of the metal jigger tilting between his fingers. An insurmountable fog settles between himself and his work, obscuring labels and tools alike. Where before, he could pick out gossip through juggling three separate mix drinks, now he can barely scrape by with one on pure muscle memory. 

He gives the cocktail a final stir with his bar spoon before setting it in front of the Outrider. From the looks of it, she might be the only one in this bar full of drunks more absent than he is. So absent that she doesn’t notice when he serves her drink.

Eula raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that supposed to have Valberry juice in it?”

“Yes.” Diluc finally takes a moment to look at the drink he made and – it’s not supposed to be that color. He notes with mild interest the milky gold gradient of the dandelion wine subtly fading into the clear, sparkling white, and the carbonation clinging to the sides of the glass. Death After Noon.  “. . . Ah. My mistake. Let me remake this.”

“Wait.” They both turn to see Amber staring at the glass. “Wait, it’s fine. I’ll drink it.”

“Amber, you will not have something that strong,” Eula insists. “And especially not that drink. Not today. Not when you’re still – still broken up about it. I won’t allow it.”

The Outrider hasn’t been her usual vibrant self lately. Diluc is achingly aware, it’s been a year to the day, and she was the one who last saw Kaeya in the flesh. As antagonistic as their work relationship once seemed, he saw it for the familiar, affectionate ribbing it really was.

He struggles to find the words, but when he finally does, he slides the drink out of her reach.

“Don’t emulate him,” he says. “He was a reckless, self-destructive thrill seeker. Celebrate what parts of him you must, but not this.” He nods her way. “Apologies. My carelessness resulted in a considerable amount of distress. Your drink will be on the house.”

The rest of his shift passes without further incident. The fog lingers, but the mistaken order sits on the counter still, a stark reminder of how omnipresent he is in Diluc’s habits. By the time he passes the bar off to Charles, he has half a mind to limp upstairs and collapse into bed. Not that he’s especially tired. He just wants this day to end.

But no, he has things to do. He quickly decides that he’d rather not face the old Sumeran doctor Adelinde called in for him. Dr. Ghimire will just reiterate the same points about acknowledging his own vulnerabilities, confronting how the aftershocks of the war have impacted him, accepting that he isn’t impervious to well-documented, crisis-induced conditions (Melancholia, the good doctor called it), etc. etc. Not a conversation he wants to have today.

No, he’ll skip that. Night has fallen, so he can begin his nightly duty of guarding the gates of Mondstadt.

The walls are close to fully rebuilt, the stone freshly quarried from Brightcrown. Diluc’s constant accompaniment this past half year has whipped the entire gate guard into shape; gone are the days of sentries asleep on the job. The unintended consequence: every guard expects his presence, and so he spends every night trying to avoid them while keeping an eye on the entrance.

Tonight, he finds himself a nice section of scaffolding to hide on, which his leg doesn’t quite appreciate. He fidgets from atop his perch. He can’t go without his cane during this flare-up.

Like yesterday, and the night before, and the night before that, they see torches light in the distance. It’s routine by now, the way the guards shout the report vaguely in his direction, knowing in their heart of hearts that he’ll swoop in should the situation get too dicey.

But tonight his legs feel leaden. Months of holding the gate, and he’s yet to find a single weapon on his opponent. How much damage can a Hilichurl do with flowers? Really, what’s the point, when he’s always had to strike first?

And he can’t keep denying his own suspicions. There are only so many times he can see the same flower before he recognizes it.

He glides down from his spot as the front-line  approaches, gingerly landing in front of the aggravated guards. It’s a group he sees often on his nightly stakeouts. Though he’s yet to catch their names, he recognizes them through their sheer over eagerness to prove themselves.

“Master Diluc, there’s a Mitachurl up front now!” one of them hisses. “What’s your plan of attack?”

The guard edges forward nervously, and Diluc swings his cane up to bar him from advancing any further. The figure lumbering towards them is a Mitachurl, yes, but even in this low light, it’s clear to see – it lacks the silhouette of any kind of weapon. 

Maintaining this folly has been a massive waste of energy.

“Step back. Don’t attack,” he commands calmly. “If you must, defend yourselves. Otherwise . . . do not interfere.”

The young men obey, though uneasily, and their retreat leaves him confronting the Mitachurl one on one. He plants his cane back on the ground, much to his own relief. It’s not that he can’t take this opponent down, even on a bad day. It’s just a matter of efficiency.

Color bleeds onto the beast as it steps into the torchlight, spots of white illuminating in its arms one by one. Any search for a concealed weapon would be pointless. The Mitachurl’s hands are full with loose, white and blue, five-petaled flowers. 

Its gaunt Hilichurl brethren mill about behind it, swaying rhythmically back and forth to the beat of a non-existent drum. The swaying slows when their leader stands right before Mondstadt’s staunchest defender.

“What have you come for?” he asks.

The Mitachurl’s wooden mask tilts sideways amidst its ruff. It seems language remains an unbreachable barrier between them.

Fine. Diluc closes his eyes for a moment, pulling heat from his surroundings. Then, with a light tap of the tip, flames spiral up the silver patterning of his cane before swirling into the air. Of the many universal languages, he is most fluent in violence.

Confident his message has been received, Diluc shoots his younger companions a stern look before stepping to the side.

The Mitachurl proceeds calmly, and the Hilichurls remain swaying outside. Both good signs, Diluc judges as he shadows the larger creature inside Mondstadt’s recovering walls. He signals the guards to keep watch at the gate.

And the Mitachurl leads him up Mondstadt’s recently rebuilt cobble stairs, up past Angel’s Share, up to the old site of the fountain, where it places its armful of flowers at the foot of Kaeya’s statue. There, with the white blossoms resting atop their petrified brethren, the mystery of the petrified flowers is laid to rest.

“Unuuu dada.” A warbling hum, a deep, chest rumbling tenor, rises from the kneeling Mitachurl. Diluc watches the creature raise its arms to the sky before his brother, its masked face swaying rhythmically to the same silent drumbeat as its kin. “Unuuu gusha a-dada, a-dada. Va-alo. Va-alo. Va-alooo!”

The solemn, hymnic melody – what is this if not worship? Is this not the same as the choruses the Sisters sang weekly from the Cathedral?

“Unuuu dada, dada. Unuuu gusha a-dada, a-dada.”

Yet the Sisters sing the old Celestial Hymns no longer. Their Gods proved as false as their sky, despotism made law by code.

“Va-alo.”

Their Archon was an indulgent game piece, undesiring of their praise. An overburdened, miserable little drunkard, lacking the power to protect his people from Celestia’s inevitable tyranny.

“Va-alo.”

Diluc wonders how that Drunken Bard must have felt, dwarfed in the hands of a statue carved from undesired worship.

“Va-alooo . . .”

The Mitachurl raises its arms in one final praise, tilting its head back to face the true sky. Piece by piece, petal by petal, the freshly lain flowers bleed their colors out into the air, their blue-edged embers crawling up the statue’s leg and finally sinking into its chest.

And when the final flower is bled dry, the Mitachurl lays itself across the ground until piece by piece, hair by hair, it too dissolves. By the time the last ember joins with the statue, nothing remains but the flowers’ lifeless stone husks.

A low hum permeates the air, the sound of a chant taken up by tens of Hilichurls outside the gates. Another day and Diluc might’ve slaughtered the lot of them. Does it matter if they come here to die to begin with? Is it wrong to consider that maybe, over time, with enough Hilichurls and enough life energy . . . ?

“Master Diluc, what do we do?” He turns to find one of the young guards dashing towards him. “They’re . . . they’re just – “

“Have they pulled any weapons?”

“Well, no, sir.”

“Then you leave them be,” Diluc says. He loosens and tightens his grip on his cane in intervals. His gaze remains distant, turned vaguely towards the face of his brother’s statue. “If they lay down their arms, you leave them be. Perpetuating this bloodshed was folly.”

“Sir?”

He waves the young man off. “I’ll speak with the Grand Masters. It’s about time for the changing of the guard, isn’t it? For tonight, report in and rest.”

When he’s finally left alone with his own thoughts, he appraises the petrified flowers at the statue’s feet. It’s not a flower he recognizes, and certainly not the first he’d consider as a gift to the Cavalry Captain. 

In his mind’s eye, he sees himself knelt before the old fountain, cane laid perpendicular to his knees, offering a bouquet of five-petaled flowers to the great mass at his brother’s feet. The bouquet is bound in the red woven bracelet Kaeya granted him, a sacrifice given, now returned. In the image, Diluc smiles serenely up at the sky as the flowers — and soon his own hands — turn slowly to stone. Kaeya spent his life to the last Mora for Mondstadt’s future. Surely he deserves some measure of compensation.

Diluc shakes his head. If Adelinde could peer into his mind, she’d call in a whole fleet of specialists to prod his mental state, just for that thought alone. 

What time is it? The math on how much sleep he’ll catch doesn’t look promising. With flowers on his mind, he slowly hobbles back to the Angel’s Share and makes plans to order a bouquet for the bartop.

 

 

 

 

 

Calla Lilies – not necessarily a favorite. It begins with a passing resemblance to his name and then quickly develops into something that is his by association, even if it’s just in their small friend group where Cecilias are Jean’s, and Small Lamp Grass is Diluc’s. For an abandoned child in a foreign land, this means something.

It is good to own something. It is good to know he has the capacity for it, when before, all he knew was how his eye belonged to Odin, his flesh belonged to Blood, and his life belonged to Hope. It is good to have someone see a Calla Lily and think of him, much the same way Father saw him and thought of Salvation.

So, he plays into it. He says he likes them very much – they’re his favorite. He remembers them so fondly from his children’s books (he did not own children’s books; he was “allowed access” to “treatises on administration”), and he’s so happy to see them in person. 

And because the people at Dawn Winery are good people, they take this to heart.

His first colognes are Calla Lily. Every year on his “birthday,” a fresh bouquet of Calla Lilies appears on his dresser. One of his happiest experiences involves wading after Master Crepus in the special flower bed he fenced off just for him, right next to the lake, and harvesting Calla Lily after Calla Lily: This one is mine. This one is also mine. And this one. And this one. And this one . . .

And another: his induction into the Knights. Amidst the ceremony, the rising star of the Ordo, one bright-eyed Diluc Ragnvindr, steps out of line to hand him a bouquet of Calla Lilies, just as Jean has her Cecilias, and Diluc himself had his glowing bouquet of Lamp Grass years before.

And another: when, for three years, he is the only son around to keep Master Crepus’s grave company, he chooses Calla Lilies to lay across the etched stone. Even after Diluc returns, even after they make that visit a journey for two, it is always Calla Lilies that occupy the space beside the Lamp Grass.

It’s a night when he’s just a little tipsy on the job – not a rare occurrence, which is expected given how good at drunk fighting he’s become – and he stands over a camp of slain Hilichurls. Behind the Hilichurls sits the whole of Cider Lake, its placid surface reflecting the dead moon back towards the false sky. Behind him stands his brother, Diluc, surprisingly composed given how he’s no doubt running on grit and fumes this close to the destined day.

Because it is convenient, he brushes past Diluc and picks one of the wild Calla Lilies nearby. He lays it over the folded hands of one of his ex-countrymen.

And because it seems his brother isn’t paying attention, but Kaeya knows that he is, he says: “Is it not your one, ultimate goal to find a peaceful place to die?”

Diluc and the night both still.

“May this be that peaceful place. Be free of your curse tonight, my brother.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Say, Master Diluc, what was he really like, y’know?”

Diluc silently wipes a glass.

“Oh, come on, pleeeeease?” begs Six-Fingered Jose, drunkenly. It’s important to realize here that the bard found his bravado at the bottom of a keg; normally, he’s too afraid of Diluc up and kicking him out. “I’m writing a new series of ballads about the, the – y’know, all the shit that went down two years ago, and after the Twins, this is the part that everyone’s really interested in, yeah? Inazuma’s publishing houses are already on top of it with the romance and glory and the sacrifice, all that light novel stuff. And, y’know, he was a Mondstadter in the end, so we ought to put our own spin on things, right? Can’t let the Inazumans do our stories better than we do, haha!”

Diluc pauses in wiping his glass to collect himself. He sets it down with the others and picks up another.

“It’ll be –” Jose hiccups, “ – good for your business. And for me to get my audience back. And morale! Don’t forget morale. The old Angel’s evening crowd will eat a good old fashioned heroic ballad right up! And, well I had a couple drinks with the guy tops. I liked him plenty, but that’s not – a lot to go off of. You knew him best!”

Diluc doesn’t have the energy to deal with this right now. It’s funny how many aches a body can develop once it fights a couple wars and starts pushing thirty.

“You did know him best, right?” He’s unfortunate enough to have the bard in his field of vision to catch the eyebrow waggle. Goodness forbid he try to unpack what that means. “I mean, just think about it. If you don’t get your word in now all the ballads are gonna end up like those Inazuman light novels: alllllll guesswork. Or the word of other people. You wanna have some kind of input, don’t you?”

He sighs. A side-eye reveals Jose’s wide, shit-eating grin. The man’s a bit too deep into his pint to be taken seriously, but out of a morbid sense of curiosity, Diluc tosses out the bait:

“Sir Kaeya – is – an asshole,” he states. “A sadistic one at that. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Jose scoffs. “Bah! You want me to put that in a ballad? Nobody wants to hear that kind of shit in a tavern ballad, Amigo! You can – ” cue hiccup, “ – you can put that stuff in for like, a villain, I guess, but not the brave, dashing, self-sacrificing hero! Say, do you have any anecdotes of Sir Kaeya’s romantic conquests as a lad? Or any of him saving cats from trees? C’mon you gotta give me something to work with here!”

Jose isn’t the first, and he definitely won’t be the last. Diluc has scholars, aspiring novelists, and historians alike knocking at his door, eager to sift through the tangled mess of his history with Kaeya for their golden nuggets of glory. They wish to make a legend of his brother. They wish to make him one of the first few in this post-Celestia era, to jumpstart some sort of literary Renaissance in the wake of it all.

Diluc turns them all away.

He has no need for legends. Yes, he knows, a legend is sometimes more than the man. A legend can’t indulge in raging alcoholism or puke last night’s dinner all over Mondstadt’s otherwise pleasant alleyways. It can’t spout pretty lies or waste hours in a day harassing him. That just comes with the territory of lingering long after the body.

But he also knows, ballads can’t protect their home. A footnote in a historical text can’t lift the weight off his shoulders, and an epic can’t fill the voids in his life that grew in his brother’s absence. They can’t ground him in the way that Kaeya once did.

As far as he’s concerned, the only thing legends are good for is living forever. And, barring some miracle, that might just mean this is all he gets.

Diluc hobbles over to a corner of the bar and extricates a small sketchbook from under a vase of Calla Lilies. This corner of the bar has a completely different coat of paint: red, white, and cream under a homey wooden sign reading “No Alcohol Zone.” Crayons litter that section of bartop.

“This might better suit your needs,” he states diplomatically, laying the sketchbook before the bard. A cursory flip through reveals rough (impressive, but still rough) depictions of a brown-skinned man with blue hair. Occasionally, this figure will wrestle entire whales in the drawings, or slay great, fanged dragons. Every page is marked with a crudely written artist signature: K-L-E-E.

Diluc walks away satisfied as Jose splutters.

He does collect the sketchbook before the man tosses it or something else undesirable, but all things considered, he isn’t terribly irritated. The scholars, historians, and bards cannot compare to that other type of person when it comes to pissing him off.

That other type. The kind who waits for the dead of night to drunkenly stumble out of the tavern and piss all over the statue, right in Diluc’s line of sight.

The first and only time it happened, he dropped the glass he was polishing and marched out of Angel’s Share. Every drunk in the tavern sobered up awful quick at the sound of shattering glass.

“What,” he bit out, “do you think you’re doing?”

The drunkard turned sluggishly at his voice, his stream still piddling over the stone. Diluc didn’t recognize his face, so evidently, he was nobody of importance.

“Fuckin’ guard dog – YOU’RE ALL BLIND!” the man roared. “Y’know what this – this arrogant little mutt did to me?! You think a severance package or some pathetic shit for a pension is gonna make up for THIS?!”

And the drunkard, in full view of the Angel’s Share, brandished the stump he had instead of an arm.

“He ruined my life just to – what – show off in front of the Treasure Hoarders? What kind of trap loses your own allies an arm? What kind of – what kind of sociopath sics a Ruin Guardian on his own men?!”

There are parts of Kaeya that Diluc will never understand. His tendency to toy with his friends and subordinates is one of them. There is no favorable explanation for how he endangers his people on the job, especially when the situation spirals out of his icy grasp and somebody gets irreversibly hurt. By all means, the Captain deserves to answer for his men’s injuries, but . . . 

“Fine,” said Diluc. “You’re right.”

“How dare you – how – how –” The man blinked like there was molasses in his eyes. “Huh?”

Diluc’s hand closed around his shoulder like a vice.

“But you will not disrespect his body when he cannot defend himself,” he said with forced calm. “Say it to his face next time.”

He banned that man from the Angel’s Share and turned him over to the Knights. Nothing less. And, by the catharsis of his fist in a tree trunk, nothing more.

“You gotta pity the man,” someone whispers in the corner, snapping him out of his hazy reflections. “Still thinks Sir Kaeya’s comin’ back after all this time . . .”

“Hiiiis golden com-plex-ion thus ta-a-aken,” Jose drunkenly croons. “By the most gallant of smiiiiiiles! O-oh, in the face of death! O-oh, in the face of certain death . . . “

Diluc rustles through a nearby notepad, a sound his patrons have come to associate with him checking their tabs. They soundly shut up.

After he ushers out the final customer, he collects his cane from beneath the counter and leans against the bartop.

What does he do now?

He has no reason to guard the gates any longer. There are no Fatui to contend with, no Abyss to eliminate, and the Treasure Hoarders have tamped down on their post-war looting for the fear of his restless ire. What is there left to do? Ride back to the Winery and count his paper bills? Accrue more wealth? What’s he going to do with that – swim in it? He would never wish for war again, but he realized some time ago that he always expected to die young and in battle, like Father, and Father’s father before him.

He slumps over the wooden bartop. After two years he’s grown used to the silence following the workday. The warm colors of the dimly lit tavern no longer put him on edge like they did those first few months, when he had to close up without a lilting voice talking his ear off. 

He sinks into a restful fog that feels like it lasts for minutes but might’ve been hours for all he knows. It’s happened before. When he finally musters up the energy, he limps about, stacking chairs, mopping the floors, and systematically extinguishing the tavern’s earthy lighting until he has only the one lantern to bring with him. He just about locks up when he spots something much too tall to be a Hilichurl standing before his brother’s petrified form.

He frowns. If he sees a stream, he might castrate someone just to set an example.

But no – in the low moonlight, it’s clear to see the silhouette stands straight-backed and respectful before the statue. Diluc ambles forward until the light of his lantern throws the guest’s features into sharp relief.

He nods in recognition. Even with the lack of curse marks lacing around his body, any veteran of the war knows this man well enough. 

“Bough Keeper.”

“Master Ragnvindr,” the man greets, holding a tightly bound bouquet of Lamp Grass in his arms. “I arrived just recently. Otherwise, I might’ve enjoyed your fair establishment’s product before engaging in something so . . . sobering.” Diluc hums. Before he knew him as Dainsleif the Bough Keeper, former knight captain of Khaenri’ah’s royal guard, Dain was just an eccentric patron at the Angel. A true connoisseur, unlike Diluc himself.

“The tavern is closed, but bottles can still be opened. As long as you don’t mean to join the Hilichurls in hymn singing and sacrifice,” he says.

“I think you know by now that I haven’t the right flowers for the occasion.” Dainsleif gestures towards the mix of flowers that populate the fountain, living and stone alike. The volume overflows the site, with only one species adopting the petrified, marble appearance. “You must be familiar with the Inteyvat by now.”

“Flora native to Khaenri’ah, I presume.” Dainsleif, Kaeya, and Hilichurls intersect at exactly one point. “They seem to serve a morbid purpose.” The Bough Keeper chuckles. Freedom from curse, duty, and immortality alike has made him a much more jovial man. 

“Not normally, no,” he muses. “It seems their life cycle has shifted since the fall of Celestia. I have never seen Inteyvats petrify in quite this pattern before.” He pauses to kneel before the flowers, placing the Lamp Grass on top. “They were the national flower of Khaenri’ah. When taken out of country, the petals become frozen in time, cold and stone-like in texture, but from the arrangement, these Inteyvats did not petrify until long after they hit the surface, correct?”

“The flowers were still alive when they entered Mondstadt,” Diluc confirms. “Upon being placed, they quickly turned to stone, and the Hilichurls and Mitachurls who laid them here perished soon after, leaving some form of energy to absorb into the statue. Is there any possibility of . . . ?”

Dain shakes his head. “The Homunculus wrote me soon after you brought it to his attention. As I told him, the ritual, the Rheingold, calls upon the fabric of the user’s existence to act as supplemental energy. A limiting factor is sentience, something my cursed countrymen have mostly lost. It would take thousands. Perhaps hundreds of thousands.”

“I understand.” A horrifying prospect, and yet also one he might have considered a few scant years ago.

“You are dissatisfied.”

Diluc shakes his head. “Is there any other way?”

“Perhaps. The Rheingold was a closely guarded secret of the royal family, and then after the death of King Irmin, the regent Alberich Clan. I was privy to more information than most, but even I don’t know enough to say. Your possibilities are as limitless as your willingness to search.”

Diluc opens his mouth, ready to declare he has an abundance of that, but what has he really done these past two years? Tethered to his home by his lame leg, he hasn’t done much outside of funding the Head Alchemist’s research and deriding Mondstadt’s treatment of his brother’s incapacitated body. What is that in comparison to the Twins’ five year long quest for reunion? Dainsleif’s 500-year obsession? He can claim his attention was split by the rebuilding of the city, but that’s not all it is, is it?

Searching would bare him to possibility, and that would hurt most of all. He can say what he must to appease himself, but when it comes to internalizing the possibility of Kaeya returning, he is the same coward who limped out of the Cathedral and thought his brother dead.

But until what point should he have to carry the hope?

Water stains streak the statue’s surface. Some of its finest details – individual flyaways, the very edges of the clothing – have weathered away, and the blue woven bracelet that Klee fastened on his wrist has long since sun-bleached to a pale beige.

Dainsleif runs his fingers over the delicately petrified blossoms. The dark affliction which once encircled his arm has since faded, leaving his hand battle-scarred and aging, but otherwise unfettered. Last Diluc heard, the man has spent his retirement traveling, this time for pleasure rather than pursuit. Two years of moving forward. The former warrior’s tracks must now span the whole of Teyvat.

“May you all find the rest you so desired,” says the traveler.

Be free of your curse tonight, my Brother.

After bidding goodnight to Dainsleif, Diluc returns to the tavern for one small thing. He’ll search. He’ll turn Teyvat inside out if he has to this time, but in the midst of that, there has to be some space for him to grieve.

Vase in hand, he searches for a good spot for a solid half an hour before placing a bundle of Calla Lilies at his brother’s feet, right next to the Lamp Grass.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a paradigm shift. He blinks, or rather, he goes to sleep that night, and then the next day feels just a little bit clearer. He realizes he’s lost touch with many facets of his own home, like how Razor has graduated to writing short letters on his own, or how Bennett’s Adventure Team now has more than one permanent member – how that permanent member is a girl named Amy, who carries her pet crow with her always, or how she learned to tame that crow with the help of a now firmly preteen Timmy, who helps keep Mondstadt’s fleet of courier pigeons.

Time passes. There comes a moment for Klee, who bounces off the walls because her mother finally manages to transmit a message across the rift in space-time. Teyvat’s very first interdimensional communication ends with a hearty, “Mommy loves you very much, Klee! I’m gonna come get you very soon, I pinky promise!” It takes two and a half years, but it’s well worth the wait for the relief it grants every one of the girl’s guardians.

Albedo steps away from the recovery effort once things fully stabilize, leaving a newly promoted Sucrose to fill his position. Grand Master Varka finally steps down, vacating his seat for the woman who practically filled it these past eight years, and Jean, in turn, is intent on training Amber into one day succeeding the title of Cavalry Captain, and then Quartermaster, and finally Grand Master. Diluc himself makes plans to search for a successor. Perhaps he should recommend Elzer look into Razor’s education.

He and Jean meet over lunch one sunny spring noon, and end up talking about, of all things, therapy.

“It’s amazing how letting a professional do his job actually yields results, isn’t it, Diluc?” Jean asks, face inscrutably pleasant.

“You’re one to talk,” he retorts. “Besides, he hasn’t helped with everything. I’m still gaining weight, for instance.”

“I’ve been dealing with a little bit of that myself. It comes with age. We can’t wolf down three stacked steaks in a meal and expect to take it as well as we would three years ago.”

“I can very well try,” he says, cutting defiantly into his steaks. “Here’s a solution: spar with me.”

Jean probably tries to suppress it, but Diluc watches her gaze cut immediately to his cane. The owl engraved on the handle stares accusingly back.

“My leg was only injured, Jean. It still functions.”

“I don’t mean to imply it doesn’t, but you admit it’s still weak and painful. We would not be on even ground.” Diluc’s competitive streak balks at the notion.

“Don’t think me invalid on the battlefield. I’ve trained diligently, and I managed to cover my entire blade in flames just yesterday.”

“Haha! Congratulations! I admire how dedicated you, Barbara, and all the others have been to learning the new laws of power. Just this past week, Barbara managed to pull ten barrels of water out of the moisture in the air.” Jean sighs wistfully. “I wish I had the time to explore and progress with everyone. . .”

“You will, if you spar with me,” he insists. “We can match our elemental prowess. Then we’ll see how uneven the ground truly is.”

Jean chuckles with him. They tentatively block out days and time they could both spare for these spars, but eventually, they wander towards more serious business.

“That chamber you use to store the war’s confiscated loot – I have something I’d like to search for there. Would you let me in?” he asks.

“I appreciate you asking first, Diluc,” Jean says. Although Diluc knows his asking permission is just a roundabout way of saying, Either you help me get this done or it gets done anyways, except this time with plausible deniability. “There are some papers you need to sign, and you’ll need to consult Sister – I mean, Dame Rosaria, for whatever you’re looking for. She’s the one who hunted down the bulk of it.”

“I’ll get in contact with her.”

“Is this for Kaeya?”

“Yes.”

“Then she might let you in without the paperwork. If anyone asks, I don’t fully support the notion, but I won’t interfere.”

“Thank you, Jean.”

“Did the expedition you sent out to Sumeru . . . ?”

“Yes. They collaborated with the Neo Akademiya and found some promising leads in the previous regime’s banned media cellar. I have them sharing their findings with Albedo currently. As for searching through Kaeya’s old journals, I’ve gotten back to when he was about thirteen.” He’s never wanted to know less about his brother’s thought processes. Teenage hormones, crippling paranoia, and heavy emotional damage do not make the most pleasant reading experience. “Nothing so far.”

“And the rest of his personal effects?”

“We’re going through them again tonight. With all the hidden compartments we’ve found so far, I’m certain we’re still missing something.”

“We’ll keep looking as well. Please keep me updated if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

Later that same day, he finds Rosaria smoking a cigarette outside a bar, her Knights of Favonius standard armor hanging haphazardly off her shoulder.

“You’re trying to keep that?” she questions drily, waving a clawed finger towards her own chin. Diluc runs a hand over what looks like his five o’ clock shadow, except Rosaria knows him well enough to recognize his facial hair only gets this long if he’s doing it on purpose.

“Yes,” he says.

“That’s certainly . . . a decision you made.” She extinguishes her cigarette on the cobble floor. “So, the Grand master might have mentioned you want to dig through the confiscated loot. If anyone asks, you say I wouldn’t let you in, and you snuck in on your own.” She shrugs. “Or don’t. I don’t really care if they slap me on the wrist. Come on.”

Rosaria forgot her keys at home, so she starts finagling the lock open with her claw accessories instead.

“What’re you looking for exactly?” she asks, just as the door clicks. “If it’s in here, I probably remember where it is.”

“A black mask, meant to cover the right side of a man’s face. It’ll have gold detailing in the shape of a snake and, if unwashed, blood stains on most of its surface.”

“I remember seeing something like that. I’ll check. You take a good look around for anything else useful. I don’t want to have to sneak you in again.”

He wanders up and down the shelves of miscellanea. Most of the stuff here is gold-lined debris from the Celestian front. He remembers watching fighters break away from the line just to go looting. Strewn amidst the gold-painted marble lies the occasional doll, its slender, needle-shaped weapon still in its grasp, and then even rarer than that is the odd cursed artifact or dead Vision.

It’s strange to see these items stored away and gathering dust. The dolls’ complexions seem faded, so far removed from the vivid malice engraved into his memories.

Rosaria’s voice rings out from the back: “Hey, get over here. This looks like it.”

Diluc manages to navigate himself through the maze of shelves, and he finds Rosaria leaning over an open chest. The contents glow with the luster of pilfered gold, but right at the top sits a matte black half mask marked with the golden threaded maw of a serpent.

“Is that the deadbeat’s?” she asks.

“Yes, it’s what’s left of Kaeya’s biological father. Jean and I found him in the dungeons.”

“Did you give him a good knock on the head?”

Diluc shakes his head. “He was tortured to madness. He must’ve felt something on us, because he immediately attacked. We had to put him out of his misery.”

“Damn. Can’t even say he deserved that one.”

“Few would,” Diluc says. “Thank you for your help, Dame Rosaria. Kaeya will know of this if things go to plan.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll make sure to tell him myself. You both owe me a couple drinks for it.”

“Of course. I’ll keep you updated as the search goes on.”

 

 

 

 

 

Diluc rides back to the winery to support Adelinde as they pick through Kaeya’s belongings. She gains another gray hair every time they restart the search; not because it’s particularly strenuous work – the belongings fit in two boxes – but rather because . . . the belongings fit in only two boxes. Jean rode them out to the Winery on her own.

Even laid out, Kaeya’s personal effects barely cover the whole of the dinner table, and once they remove the “personal effects” that actually just disguise hidden compartments, they barely cover a third. Things gifted to him: crayon drawings from Klee, three line portraits from Albedo, a collection of shot glasses Diluc personally saw Rosaria force upon him, broken knick-knacks that Bennett no doubt found lying about . . . After more than seven years of living there, Kaeya’s apartment held the touch of his friends and loved ones, but little to nothing of the man himself.

“He liked . . . reading, though,” Adelinde lamented, the first time they dug through the things and reached the bottom far too quickly. “Surely, he must have books beyond his personal journals? Recipe books? Novels? He loved romances, so surely . . . “

Jean shook her head. “Everything he read, he borrowed from the library. Lisa allowed him indefinite time, but he never used it.”

Which strikes to the core of the issue. What’s the point in buying books, when you won’t be around to own them much longer? What’s the point in personalizing your home, when you might be forced to leave it at any given moment?

There’s a difference between Kaeya sacrificing himself for Mondstadt’s future, and sacrificing himself for a future he could never see himself participating in. Perhaps he thought he didn’t deserve it. Perhaps he just took dying young as a given, when he was groomed from childhood to be a vehicle for the salvation of an entire nation.

This time, again, Adelinde frowns as they lay out the belongings. After she places the last truly personal item, Diluc watches her face disappear behind a handkerchief, and then she quickly excuses herself from the room.

He doesn’t comment on her lapse in composure. She eventually returns. They comb through every hollow object they’ve yet to crack open. Elzer joins halfway through to employ his experience with puzzles, and this time, like the last three times, they find new little compartments, new sheafs of paper that hold nothing more incriminating than a child’s haziest recollections. Sometimes, they shimmy open an especially well-hidden cranny and find a pair of worn, home-knitted mittens, and Adelinde handles them like they’re spun silk. Sometimes it’s a roughly carved wooden cat, and Diluc feels his fingers ache all over again, the little childhood scar from the carving knife looking especially prominent today.

Kaeya, at sixteen: I feel alone here. Not because I am alienated, but because the people of Mondstadt think I belong when I know I do not. I know their opinions will shift once they find out the truth.

Each discovery intensifies something in Diluc’s chest. 

Kaeya, at fourteen: Father said: ‘A regent holds no right to rule. A regent’s glory lies in his ability to serve, and then his grace to abdicate when those of rightful blood are once more fit to ascend the throne. A regent holds no right to rule. A regent’s glory . . . ‘

There is only so much weight a boy can handle before he throws his entire body into holding it. And then once the weight is lifted, what does the boy have left to hold him self together with? Exhausted, feeble legs? Strained arms? String? The elder Alberich left his son with a multitude of ways to serve his country, and not a single way to serve himself. A father’s expectations are heavy and so easily internalized. Diluc knows firsthand how restless it feels to outlive them, and how easily one neglects to see the “after.” 

And when the “after” feels so far unfeasible, it’s no wonder Kaeya could smile in the face of death.

 

 

 

 

 

Cold does not heed his call. Cold slithers up the root of the Irminsul and devours his body. The next cough is feeble, and it spills his blood right over his chin and onto his shirt collar.

He can’t determine the progress of the Nails’ descent through the thick casing of ice he’s built around Mondstadt, so he chooses instead to take one selfish peek far, far into the future. It’s hazy, not yet settled, but sometimes the colors resolve into something recognizable enough to appease him. There is Klee, nestled in bed next to her Mama. There is Rosaria, divested of her Sister’s robes and patrolling the night in armor. There is Jean, smiling over tea with Lisa and two others, and there is Diluc, holding someone tight against his chest. Wow, Diluc hugging? In this day and age? What a miracle. After what he did to Diluc’s sense of trust and affection, the thought that his elder brother would one day find it in himself to be vulnerable again makes the cold just that much more bearable.

Yeah, he thinks, a smile blooming beatifically across his bloodstained lips. That looks good. It couldn’t really get any better.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s around the third time Adelinde has to step out for a moment that something cracks in Diluc. The workspace she leaves behind holds four unfastened lock mechanisms, one opened wooden container, and four small sheets: a thumbnail sample of a family portrait, with the brothers standing smilingly behind a seated Crepus, a shaky childhood painting of Crepus, Elzer, Kaeya, and Adelinde – Diluc excluded only because he was sitting on the other side of the canvas – a crayon doodle of Kaeya and Jean standing beside an exuberant red child, and finally, Albedo’s sketch from that summer spent in the Archipelago. In every depiction, Kaeya smiles so widely, the force of it pushing crinkles onto the corners of his eyes. All of them capture the slight dimple that appears when the man can’t seem to hold back his joy.

The image appears unbidden – the slight indents on the statue’s cheeks as it smiles up at the sky. Perhaps that moment before death was the happiest he’d ever been.

Dr. Ghimire warned him to never act in fits of strong negative emotion, but the doctor isn’t here right now. Diluc swipes up the white satin bag from his own desk, a scrap of paper from one of Kaeya’s earliest journals, and a knife. He could never limp to the stable quickly enough for his own liking, but he saddles Sarge before Elzer catches up to stop him.

He squeezes his legs on either side of Sarge’s torso, urging him into a gallop. The booming hoofbeats of the warhorse pierce the quiet night. This time, the battlefield is unstable and foreign. Diluc, though ill prepared in comparison to any battle he fought in his youth, is fueled by a determination that makes previous adrenaline rushes pale in comparison.

He circles his horse into a stop at the front gates, waving down the startled night guard as he gingerly dismounts. “Hold him for me, please,” he says, handing the reins to a hapless young Knight. Sarge snorts, thoroughly displeased with the new company, but Diluc doesn’t have the patience to properly introduce the two.

He marches up the streets of Mondstadt, kneels at the foot of the statue, and then slices his palm open.

With the wound stinging sharply in the background, Diluc digs the satin pouch out from his breast pocket and lays it over the petrified flowers. The contents clack against the stone. Originally, he planned to do this later, with more research and certainty, but Albedo confirmed something like this shouldn’t kill, and he has words to trade tonight.

He holds his clenched fist over the bag and squeezes. As he lets the pressure go, blood gushes to the site of the cut and runs down his palm, snaking to his wrist and down the woven red bracelet that’s lived there for the past three years. At the tip, it falls in a sluggish stream onto the satin bag, where it quickly soaks through. 

Red blooms over the thin material. It runs over the surface of the matte black half mask within and then sinks between petals, into the long dormant energy veins of an entity called Irminsul. That sleepy deity, born of human memory and called to aid at this very spot just a few short years ago, deigns to respond.

A golden light penetrates from within: the maw of a great serpent.

And then it disappears.

Diluc is left alone under the full moon with the ghost of an absentee father.

He’s little more than an outline – a silvery, gossamer thread tracing the lines of his gaunt face, the scruff of his graying navy hair, and the curve of his hunched back, eclipsed by the folds of a worn, fur-lined cape. Within that outline, ribs, spine, and viscera sculpt a faint form behind glass skin, and stone Inteyvat peek through his translucent flesh. 

He sits at the foot of his son’s petrified body, staring absently at the ground with his pale, bagged left eye. His right eye sits still, a blackened void behind a bruised, sunken socket.

Diluc doesn’t allow his gaze to slip off the specter as he wraps his palm in a handkerchief. If he gives him time, he might speak of his own volition. Diluc knows he himself might never stop if he gets the first word.

Eventually, after several long beats of silence, the specter’s pale violet eye drifts balefully upwards.

Why have you brought me here? The man’s lips remain in a stiff, unmoving line. Come to punish me again, Ragnvindr?

Diluc refuses to rise to the bait, instead walking forward to drop a sheet of paper through the specter's incorporeal form. From memory, he recites:

“‘The people here are kind. I am afraid. I am afraid that soon I will begin to fear death again, and Father said that I must never fear death if I am to avenge Home,’” Diluc says. “Your son wrote this at age twelve.”

That four-pointed iris flicks down to the sheet, following its meandering journey to the ground. Eventually, the paper comes to rest at a silvery, translucent boot, phasing through the individual bone segments of a skeletal foot. When the eye returns to fixing on Diluc’s expression, the air remains bereft of response.

“Do you know what else he wrote?” Diluc asks. “‘I had no biological father. I had a man who saddled me with an insurmountable debt and then fled to lands unknown in pursuit of some goal. I always wondered at his utter callousness. I always assured myself that his reasoning must have obeyed the ineffable rulings of adulthood, but as I approach the age that he was when he abandoned me, I become more and more certain that man simply failed to love me more than the sweet poison of vengeance.’” He fixes his company with a glare. “Your son, at age twenty-four.”

The specter’s gaze slides off of Diluc’s furious face. Do not fault me, boy. You do not know the depths of my suffering.

“Do not call me boy. I am not much younger than the age at which you went mad, and your lack of accountability betrays your adolescent sense of duty.”

Do not fault me, the specter clips out. The sins you accuse me of are sins of which you yourself are guilty.

“I acknowledge the weight of my errors, but you would equate the sins of a mourning teenager with those of an adult father.” He scoffs. “Have you no shame, Jörmungandr Alberich? Do you feel no remorse over handing your son the noose and watching him kick the chair out?”

The specter’s entire form stiffens. Slowly, slowly, like fluid flowing backwards, the elder regent king of Khaenri’ah draws himself up to his full height, his emaciated shoulders broadened by his cape, his gored eye glowing red, glaring murderously down his nose. Here, even with his back hunched, the specter stands a half head taller than Diluc’s uncowed form.

I am not at fault, he hisses. He disobeyed my directives when he used that damnable thing for his purposes. It was for your accursed city that the boy harnessed the Rheingold. If you must assign fault, let it lie there!

Diluc holds his uneven gaze, letting his words speak for themselves. The right and the wrong, the unsaid – His directive was to die for the vengeance Khaenri’ah – and the unacknowledged – Kaeya chose to die for Mondstadt instead of the nation which offered him nothing but the dead weight of legacy.

Slowly, slowly, the old, decrepit regent king deflates, drifting back down to his petrified throne of Inteyvats. Diluc stands over him, the wizened eyes of a great horned owl staring down at the disgraced ruler of a dead land.

Do not fault me, boy, the specter mumbles. Do not fault me. Do not fault your poor, desperate father, my boy. Do not fault me . . .

“Why linger here?” Diluc questions calmly. “What ties you here, when you are already so long gone?”

The specter pauses his wretched mantra to peer upwards between his hands. Debt, Ragnvindr. It is a great debt. I know what you want. You would drive me to its payment.

“I will do only what is asked of me.”

The four-pointed pupil disappears, hidden behind scarred finger bones. Slumped over like this, the elder Alberich’s glassy flesh is lost within the folds of his dirtied, royal cape.

Turning his face away from Diluc, the specter takes one glance at the petrified form of his son.

Then I must ask you a favor, Ragnvindr, he says, softly. His voice rings as clear as the Cathedral bells now. You must be here to catch him and bring him . . . home.

With this, the elder regent king sheds his cape, pushing the devouring mantle off his shoulders, peeling it off fold by fold. As he emerges from it, thin and sickly as the day he died, the dirtied king’s cape dissolves into a bouquet of white and blue, five-petaled flowers in his hand.

Do not fault me, boy, the elder Alberich pleads to the smiling statue. Forgive your cowardly, infirm father. He has returned at last to repay his debt. You needn’t . . . you must live on. I know you are still here.

A father places one skeletal hand on his son’s shoulder, and then drops the bouquet of Inteyvats.

 

 

 

 

 

Kaeya bleeds from his mouth and his ears. The Nails scraping against his icy barrier give off such an unholy screeching sound, and that is one point of gratitude: being so close to death that he can barely hear it.

He thinks back to the vision of his friends happy. His legacy, the only children he can ever see himself having, warm and grown and well taken care of. His brother, once again allowing himself the vulnerability of a hug. He holds it in his mind as he feels the last vestige of warmth drain out of his body through his shattered blade, up into the barrier.

Well, it’s been good, he thinks to himself. More than I could have ever hoped for. He feels, within the cold, just a bloom of gratitude, that he could live among such a trusting, naive people, and that they could come to care for him so. Thank you for the good memories. I hope this is enough to repay you your kindness, plus change! 

He chuckles at his own delirium.

Cold.

Cold.

For a moment, he feels rain against his upturned face, a looming, weary figure disappearing into the darkened distance. Father? Father!

And then warmth.

Kaeya opens his eyes. He sees the sun above him, bright and warm, falling like the glow of firelight onto his cool, breeze-chilled skin. He hears laughter. He turns towards it, barely prepared for the bony body of his adolescent brother pushing his own, small body into the ocean, where they fall and tumble together.

And then cold. Cold, the pelting rain, his blood dripping from the wound over his right eye, and frost clinging to his hands as his brother’s bedraggled form falls despondent. The murder in his eyes gives way to utter despair, and Kaeya’s disappointment is immeasurable.

And then warmth:

Noons spent discussing the latest romance novel with Jean and Lisa over tea. Expeditions spent nursing a cup of hot chocolate in Dragonspine, bundling Klee into his coat next to a fire at Albedo’s camp. And finally, slow nights at the Angel’s Share, a pleasant haze under the low lantern light, Rosaria sits rolling her eyes beside him, and his brother smiles – Smiles! – at some pointless quip he just cracked.

Then he feels arms wrapped around his chest and shoulders. His weight ragdolls into the grip.

Warmth.

Where is he? Is this the after? He drags his leaden arms up those gripping him in a vice and, after a couple of fumbles, comes in contact with stubble.

“Father?” he slurs. “Old Man Crepus?” Either one of those would be a, haha, dead giveaway for where he is. “Am I . . . Am I finally done?”

The hands dug into his back dig in even tighter. Ow.

“No,” says the voice, slightly trembling. “This is Diluc, you bastard.” Diluc? Kaeya thinks, flush with disappointment. Diluc passed already? “You’re alive, and you better be happy about it.”

 

 

 

 

Later that night, in the Gunnhildr Manor, with three grown adults stuffed into the same one-person bedroom, Kaeya can’t sleep. He’s apparently been sleeping for three years, so that might explain things.

Jean lays passed out on the floor after a valiant effort to stay awake. Diluc, on the other hand . . .

“We should talk,” the older man says. Their physical age gap has widened from a manageable seven months to a staggering, three, almost four years. Kaeya might be a bit butthurt, but the atrocious stubble is some consolation.

“Can’t we just dance around our problems like before?” he jests. “It was working so well!”

The raised eyebrow feels so much more judgmental now that Diluc’s old. It looks a bit too much like, well, Old Man Crepus.

“I’ve been going to therapy . . . “

“Good for you.”

“I’m serious, Kaeya. It’s helpful,” Diluc insists. “Grant me the peace of mind. I never want . . . this to happen again.”

Kaeya wants to assure him, fake-honestly, that he’d never consider it, but if the situation were right, if the opportunity called for it . . . he shakes his head.

“I’ll be open to talk about it. Tomorrow.” He smirks slightly in the wan moonlight. “Rest for now. It looks like I’ve been getting all the sleep between the two of us!”

“. . . I’ll hold you to it.”

“Mhm. But hey, Diluc?”

“Yes?”

Kaeya’s smirk dims to a small, contented smile. It’s so warm here for such a cold night.

“I really am happy to be around. Believe me on this.”

Notes:

Legitimately, Dango had to remind me that I could (and should) post this here o<-<
I've been so busy struggling to engineer that I forgot I write.

But yes, pleeeeease take a peek at Rain Anthology . There's a really cool corner flip note animation that I totally haven't worn out playing and replaying on my copy.