Chapter Text
He should’ve brought a lantern.
The gravestone at Diluc’s feet lists to one side, although the usual passerby wouldn’t notice. It swallows up the setting sun—a dark, crooked shadow. If not for the lack of his Vision, which he had left at the winery, Diluc could light a flame. If not for the lack of forethought, he could’ve brought a goddamned lantern.
Flowers, too, would be the appropriate thing to bring. Asters. Delicate ones, as the custom goes, for the wind to pick up and carry forth wherever the soul resides. Only his father’s soul is nowhere to be found, Diluc is sure—absorbed by ley lines and broken down into raw memory. He’s seen and done enough to believe that no mortal could wield the power he had without divine punishment. No man could keep a Delusion with the spirit unscathed.
No father could simply sleep as his child called out to him so.
Keep your eyes on me.
He hastily dispels the thought. He had mourned this way enough—the desperate way that draws blood and makes demands. It’s quite embarrassing to relive. Diluc likes to think he’s grown past it, even if no amends can be made, but tonight is already proving him wrong; proving that he’s nowhere near grown all the way up.
His fingers are stiff—the cold still ghosts over his skin from wiping the grave down with a wet rag. It looks barely any cleaner than before, so thin was the layer of dust. A well-kept tombstone for an empty coffin. A well-respected, well-loved paragon of a man whom no one indeed knew enough. Not even his eldest son.
Diluc picks on the dirt under his nails. It reminds him of blood.
He puts on his gloves.
“It feels like you’ve always been dead,” he breathes out, “and like I’m still killing you.”
He tries to find better words, but none come. Neither does any fond memory. Diluc can’t focus on anything but that day—the lower the sun, the less remains of Crepus Ragnvindr. As time passes, he further narrows, and with him Teyvat, to the gaping wound that years ago had disintegrated around the hilt of Diluc’s knife. It left behind no trace of a man—not even a speck of ash. Even the blood had lifted from the blade. Withdrawn. As if his father had never been there at all, except for his screaming, lingering death.
“Forgive me.”
The sun goes down.
Kaeya’s presence is so sudden that, for a beat, Diluc thinks he’s imagining it in the falling night. The Cavalry Captain materialises at his side as if from thin air—he’s always been light on his feet, but with how much incessant noise he’s immediately making, it’s surprising that Diluc hadn’t noticed him arrive. “I can’t sleep,” he proclaims. “And you wouldn’t believe the day I had, so that’s great.”
To the naked eye, Diluc doesn’t so much as budge. Kaeya’s swift arrival is far from unexpected. There’s been a sort of unspoken agreement between them lately, to… who knows, perhaps to check in with each other, although neither would ever say it.
He eyes the bottle in Kaeya’s hand. Ah. He’s brought alcohol—of course. Of course, he’s been drinking. He’s probably drunk right now, couldn’t do this sober. “And you think wine will help?”
“Well— You should see Angel’s Share tonight. If every week was as hectic as this, the Knights could probably keep it in business all on our own.”
A smile tugs at the corner of Diluc’s lips. “And in turn, Mondstadt would fall.”
They fall silent, and then it occurs to Diluc that he isn’t alone anymore. It also occurs to him that he’s less than presentable at the moment, but he doesn’t have it in him to care. He doesn’t spare Kaeya another glance. He hopes Kaeya can return the favour.
If Diluc were any less of a coward, he would’ve been the one to invite him along in the first place, not just tolerate or expect his presence. He would ask him to talk. Fill this silence with something petty and frivolous. Usually, Diluc doesn’t care for his idle chatter (let’s go with that), but tonight it would be alright; he should just speak. Just take up as much space as he wanted, and chase everything else away.
“I’m manning the bar tomorrow,” he says. The unspoken will you be there needs no asking.
“Well, then,” says Kaeya, “I might just stop by for a drink or two”—and it’s settled. He offers his wine but stumbles when Diluc’s fingers fumble around the bottle’s neck. “Holy shit, really?”
“Why would you offer if you don’t want to share?”
“Uh— No, please,” Kaeya stammers. “Forgive my surprise at the collapse of your values.”
Diluc rolls his eyes. A tremor runs through his body before he even brings the bottle to his lips, but he tips his head back and takes a swig anyway. It’s the first one in a long time. It helps a little, and he’s overcome with a strange itch to down it all—he wants to hurl the bottle at the cobblestones just to hear the glass shatter.
Keep your eyes on me.
He shudders at the fermented taste. The wine’s rare but awful. Awful, even putting Diluc’s personal tastes aside.
“Archons above, you see this and not raise thunder,” Kaeya laughs. “How is it?”
“Foul.” Diluc takes another sip before returning the abomination of a drink to its happy owner. Kaeya eyes him with a very Kaeya glint in his eye—he has eyes that seem to reach the bone, scanning every inch of every leaf in the wind. Sometimes even Diluc feels scrutinised under his gaze. It’s been this way since… well, always. Kaeya is always watching.
“Ah, if our very own wine master says so.”
He does as he’s told. He doesn’t dare blink.
Diluc doesn’t reply. Frankly, he can’t think of anything clever to say.
“No?” He stares as Kaeya pours one out between them for the earth to soak up. It, too, reminds him of blood. “What do you think, then, Master Crepus? Hm?”
Even Diluc’s heart seems to still. Kaeya makes up for it with all sorts of movement, shaking off the stupid joke. For someone who lies so much, he’s got a careless mouth on him. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s not funny.”
It’s fine; Diluc wants to reply. The dead don’t care, and neither does he. He parts his lips to say it, but he doesn’t have it in him, as if trying to speak on the verge of sleeping. It doesn’t matter. Kaeya says whatever he wants—which is not a lot, but what he does say is usually meant to pester Diluc into oblivion, anyway.
He’s so tired. If not for Kaeya, he’d close his eyes and drift.
He could simply sleep.
Sleep, and wake up on another day, and it would be so much better. He could leave Kaeya waiting and drag Adelinde to death with worry, as he does habitually, and he wouldn’t even care. That’s who Diluc is, after all. Would he dare?
“Look at me” was his last wish. Something he would never disobey.
Diluc can barely discern the gravestone’s silhouette in the night that’s fallen. His eyes widen in the search as if they could let in more light. He steals a glance at Kaeya—he stares as well. It’s difficult to tell what he’s thinking. Diluc used to think Kaeya was easy to read once you knew him well enough, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. His face harbours more secrets and lies than Diluc will ever know, and he never gives even an inch.
He gave only the one.
He gave only one inch, and Diluc almost killed him for it.
He grinds his teeth, blood rushing in his ears. He doesn’t know where to run from himself. Where to look—at his side, where his brother sits like a stranger? At his feet, where his patricide stands commemorated in stone?
Somebody’s playing music.
So, once the tip of Diluc’s blade touches the right spot on his father’s chest—he pinches it between two fingers for precision’s sake—he drags his gaze up to meet the man’s eyes.
A man is visiting one of the graves, swaying lightly as he idly plays a lyre. He’s humming—nothing grand or elaborate, it has the cadence of a nursery rhyme.
Diluc’s head pounds. Gods, why?
“What is he doing?”
“What?”
As Kaeya’s eyes follow, his face softens. He probably wasn’t even aware of the muscles jumping in his throat, or the way his knuckles had paled from the tight grip on his wine. “It’s his daughter,” he explains. “Little girl.”
Why, why, why, Barbatos?
Unbecoming as it is, Diluc can’t help but stare at the bard’s back. He reminds him of Hans Archibald, a frequent patron. He steals glances at that man as well, wondering how he’s doing like it’s any of his business. “Do you know what happened?”
Kaeya doesn’t. Or maybe he does, but he doesn’t say.
Come to think of it, Diluc neither wants nor deserves to know.
He wants to hold his father’s face in his hands, but he can’t. “Here,” rasps the dying man. “Only look at me.”
One could say that Crepus Ragnvindr died on his own terms. In the heart of a fight. Even asking for the end, for mercy, he would not lose his honour. Yes, an honourable death—eyes locked with his son.
Or maybe it wasn’t about honour at all, in the end. Maybe it truly was about mercy—for Diluc.
He stares back like an owl, and before he can falter or glance away, or look at the point of puncture which would surely stay his hand, Diluc drives the blade into his father’s heart.
If so, there is no mercy.
“My,” says Kaeya. “I never would’ve guessed that I’d be the one to lead the esteemed Master Diluc astray.”
Diluc scoffs. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Oh, but I’m not,” Kaeya replies, an annoying lilt in his voice. “It would be more accurate to say that I am disturbed. I fully expect you to disappear for three days after this.”
Diluc should probably scoff again. Be insulted. It’s an insult. Or if they were regular brothers, he should laugh at the memory. Instead—if only Kaeya would lend him this strength he has, he’d say something stupid as well—he keeps staring into the night, feeling like he could burn the whole world. His last conversation with Crepus echoes in his thoughts. His pride… there until the end. For all the respect Diluc had for him, even with all his secrets, his pride was misguided.
How very wrong he was. About the Knights, about the gods, about his children. He never knew how they would all, all of them, let him down.
“You’re everything he ever wanted in a son.”
“Wh– Huh?”
Perhaps he really should throw the damned wine into the lake. It would probably kill all aquatic life around the city and bring down Mondstadt’s entire fishing industry, though. Ha.
“Knight. Captain.” He feels hysterical, fraying at the edges.
Kaeya protests, but it’s true. Maybe he fancies himself the stranger Diluc had once carelessly called him, but he isn’t one. He had lived up to all of their father’s ambitions, while Diluc betrayed them one by one. What irony. Kaeya reflects those expectations more than he realises, perhaps more than he would like. Only it doesn’t matter nearly as much as Diluc had once believed. None of it mattered, in the end.
“Vision.”
It’s cruel. His mouth feels foreign as the words tumble out of it. A Vision. Pride and joy, truly, keeping Diluc’s death-dealing hands away. Kaeya would rather never get one, probably—not that way.
It should’ve been him. It should’ve been Diluc who died. It should’ve been Diluc who died. But he lived—how in the Abyss does one pay off such a debt? Diluc doesn’t know how to even begin to forgive himself for it.
He knows he should stop talking. He doesn’t.
A ridiculous thought occurs to him, and he jumps right on it: “An appreciation for wine, even—”
“For fuck’s sake, Diluc! What are you trying to do?” He flinches. Kaeya’s gone from his side as though he had burnt him. “If you want to be left alone, just say so! You don’t have to make everyone around you miserable!”
There’s real pain in Kaeya’s eyes. A rare sight.
A sight only reserved for Diluc.
His heart drops.
“Listen. I was rooted to the damn ground the day he died.” Kaeya’s voice is thick with emotion, and Diluc feels as though he’s been slapped awake from a nightmare. “Barely had the decency to even look at him one last time. Is that what you want to hear?”
No; he almost manages to croak.
“I wish I could say it hurt that he’d never get to know the real me, because, yeah, I’ve felt like an unwanted guest in my own life the moment I stepped foot in your home.”
Diluc’s home? A guest? Is that what he thinks?
“But you know what my very first thought was when he died? I felt liberated.”
He went too far. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“Liberated!” Kaeya snaps. “I stood there, and all I could think about was how that’s one less person to choose between when push comes to shove. At least I’d never have to face him as he realised the truth. I had no idea what else to feel—”
The protests die in Diluc’s throat, whatever they were going to be. Kaeya looks at him as if struck. His visible eye wells up with tears for the tiniest moment before they're blinked right away. But Diluc sees, and his heart pounds hard at that—a sort of panic grips him, of the same kind as when they were children. If he ever hurt Kaeya… if he ever made his brother cry, his heart would jump out of his chest with shame.
And here you are, he thinks to himself, doing it again, and again, and again.
“And you looked at me in the middle of the living room like I was any part of this,” says Kaeya. “Of your grief, and I couldn’t do it anymore. No matter what—”
Diluc is… stunned.
Does Kaeya not consider himself a part of this? Does he not share the grief?
On that thought, how is it that Diluc has been looking at Stanley and Alfred with more care for their mourning than he had for Kaeya? How can he sit here and act like he’s alone? They are brothers—even if they dance around the fact, Diluc thought it was agreed. An unspoken secret. I can’t forgive you, but I’ll fight for you still. Is it not?
He doesn’t know this man. But in many ways, he does. For a long while, it seemed like their fates were inseparable from each other… a long time ago. So, if he’s supposed to know better, to keep an eye out or lend a hand when either’s needed, to know when to pour another drink and when to stop pouring, and when a joke is a joke, and when a slight’s meant to cut deep—if he knows all this about Kaeya, why does he keep… what was it, making him… miserable?
Miserable.
Diluc doesn’t even notice when he does it.
Why can’t he? Stop. Why?
【“Sometimes I wonder— If I just shut the fuck up for a little longer and held you, then maybe you wouldn’t— Or if I just offed myself—”
Stop. Stop. Stop. “Shut up!”
He can’t do this. He can’t do this. “Stop!”
He barely registers Kaeya’s hands prying them away. “Diluc, I’m—”
“Don’t!” It tumbles out by itself, and it’s not fair. “Don’t say that—!”
“I’m sorry,” Kaeya mouths through the ringing in his ears. Diluc searches his face, frantic and feverish, not himself, feeling every bit as terrified as he had in the split second of deliberation whether to slit Crepus' throat or go for the heart. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t do that. I’m sorry—”
It’s a lie.
Of course, it’s a lie, of course, why would he ever tell him the truth, but the weight of this particular lie threatens to send Diluc over the very edge he’s been trying his hardest not to hurl himself from tonight. It’s awful. It shouldn't be Kaeya muttering reassurances as Diluc scrambles himself together. Never the fuck in his entire life, and yet. 】
Kaeya grew up in a world different from his. Diluc has long realised it. Little Kaeya saw everything for what it was before they ever met, and he had done what he thought he had to, just to survive. Father had probably tried—tried to shield him just as he had Diluc—but there was no protecting him from the truth of the world.
It hurts to be deceived. To realise one has been living in oblivious bliss while the real world plotted and kept dark secrets all the while. On the day he killed his father, everything Diluc had believed came undone, one after another, laid bare and bloody in a chain reaction. He thought he was on the precipice of some horrible truth. He thought that his eyes had only opened once his father’s had closed. He thought it was worth chasing after.
He was a fool.
Now he knows something about Kaeya, at least: that he had never, not once throughout their childhood, felt safe. Not truly. Not to his core, so safe that his mind can’t even conceive of any danger, ever. Not like the spoiled Diluc. So he stares into his brother’s eye, making sure it stares back before speaking. “No. That’s— Kaeya, you must know,” he says, “I haven’t forgotten that you’ve knelt at this grave for me. While I was… gone.”
He had destroyed a lot. Burnt a lot. He had severed his ties with Kaeya, and although Kaeya would oppose, he is still mostly glad for that distance. He had also regretted it. To death.
What has never crossed his mind before is that he’s been hoarding the grief for himself. It seems he had banished Kaeya from it too, as he had banished him from everything else.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that you… took something from me. I… I wish he’d lived long enough to know the truth… if only for you to see that you would still be his son.”
In many ways, Diluc is still furious—but he had never even thought of this. To forbid Kaeya from mourning, or remembering, or loving, their father.
Kaeya deserves to love at least one person who loved him back so completely.
“I wish it had been him rather than me because he would do better.” He falters there, and for a few beats of his pounding heart, they’re both silent. “I apologise… It isn’t my intention to make you… miserable.”
“You don’t,” says Kaeya.
Diluc doesn’t have the fuel to argue with his lies. “You hate me, Kaeya,” he says simply. “Can’t you see how you hate me?”
“Only sometimes…”
Finally, he releases his grip on Diluc’s wrists—Diluc had barely noticed its presence, but once it’s gone, so is the horrible tension between them. A new wave of exhaustion hits Diluc as the early morning’s grey washes over them. If he weren’t so tired, he’d likely be mortified by this development. Some things are easier whispered in the night—into the sun and onto death one shouldn’t look directly. Is that the saying?
Diluc truly hasn’t. He’s thought about it, of course, what it was like for Kaeya to grow up with such a burden… Diluc himself felt its weight. That’s why he had forgiven Kaeya for that burden a long time ago, struggling as he might to forgive the lie. He was rotten. A spoiled child. He never should’ve raised his blade against him.
As if I were any part of your grief… Of course, he was. He always will be. So often, he is Diluc’s entire grief.
But what had Kaeya of their family?
“Gods, Dad.” Kaeya’s voice startles him out of his thoughts. “Tell me what to do.”
He sounds so lost. Diluc doesn’t know how to ever help. “Are you alright?”
As Kaeya turns to look at him, Diluc catches his hesitation. He must be wary—after all, he had only tried this once, and Diluc had failed him. So Diluc parts his lips, ready to withdraw the question—honestly, he had no right to ask—when Kaeya replies, “Not really. But it is what it is.”
Diluc smothers himself in wine.
Saliva floods his mouth at the nauseating taste. It’s even worse at the bottom of the bottle. “Where have you gotten this?” Not to mention, “We haven’t used carignan in ages.”
Kaeya takes the opportunity, and the tension in the air dissipates, somewhat, with his laugh. “Ha, so you do recognise the taste—it’s a very old bottle.”
“It’s supremely bad.”
“Well, courtesy of your thirteen-year-old self.”
Diluc stares at the offending wine. His breath hitches as he realises—this is his blend. And, well, that explains a lot. He says so, and it makes Kaeya laugh again, to the Abyss with everything else.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Master Diluc.”
He drags his eyes up to meet Kaeya’s amused face. His ever-present smirk is already back. “I ought to ask the same of you,” Diluc replies. He means it.
They sit in silence for a while as the sky shifts colours above them. It hurts Diluc’s eyes, dry and irritated as he blinks the first rays of sunshine away. He doesn’t want the day to begin. Thankfully, there’s always work to throw himself into. Although Elzer knows not to bother him with Winery business, some matter or other always awaits. This might be the one day Diluc is happy to do the Knights’ work for them.
Kaeya, on the other hand, should get some sleep after that supposedly awful day he’s had before coming.
As if he heard Diluc’s thoughts, he stands. “Well, that would be my cue. Bell’s in an hour.”
He says something else, hesitant, but it slips past. It’s alright.
The name carved into the gravestone looks incomplete—a bit of mud or perhaps a leaf had gotten stuck in one of the indented letters. Diluc should brush it away. He lets it stay.
He is so drunk.
They all have to live somehow, day by day.
A minute passes before he notices he’s alone. That’s good. After all, he’d rather spend the day in peace before having to endure the inevitable hustle and bustle of Angel’s Share. Alone. Yes. That’s easier to deal with.
Right.
His head jerks up.
He scrambles to his feet.
“Kaeya.”
Kaeya’s already well on his way, but he turns around, and his face is gentle. “Yes?”