Chapter Text
The pain woke him up, and Kaeya opened one eye slowly to a dark room. His mouth was bitter with the medicine Crepus had fed him to numb the worst of the agony and force him to sleep; his throat was still raw from where he had screamed for them not to do it again, please, he'd do anything. But that had been the roots talking for him. Kaeya had grown accustomed to this ritual with the mute resignation of an animal to the slaughter.
It did not matter how many times Crepus tried to remove the roots from Kaeya’s right eye. They would always grow back.
This time, however, he was not alone. Diluc was sitting on the bed next to him. His little shoulders were tense, clearly upset about something, and as more of Kaeya’s senses returned to him he felt the smooth catch of his wooden sword in one hand.
The door to the bedroom opened. The roots were too damaged and seething to close Kaeya’s eye for them so he closed it himself, feigning sleep. The mattress shifted as Diluc got up, and for the first time since Kaeya had started living there Diluc raised his voice.
“Stop!”
“Diluc,” said Crepus slowly, gently. “What's wrong?”
“I won't let you hurt Kaeya anymore!”
The man’s breath hitched. “We’re-- we’re not trying to hurt him, sweetheart. There’s something wrong with his eye that we’re trying to fix.”
“I don't care what's wrong with him!” Diluc sniffed, a sob breaking through. “He’s my best friend! And I heard him screaming before you took him away. A good Knight doesn't let that happen.”
“Oh, my son.” The muffled sound of tears smothered into a father’s coat, a hand rubbing a small back. “My dear, kind son.”
Tears welled up under the lids of Kaeya’s own eye, and he let them slide silently off his cheek into the pillow.
“I can't promise we’ll never have to try this again, but-- unless it looks like his eye is hurting him, I’ll leave it alone. You have to promise me, okay, Diluc? Watch over him for me.”
“I will, Dad.”
“That's my boy. Come here,” a huffed sigh, and labored steps back out the door as Crepus carried his son away. “Bedtime for you.”
Kaeya’s hands wrapped around the hilt of the wooden sword and he wondered, briefly, if plunging it into his chest would hurt less than this.
But then he thinks about Diluc seeing him in the morning, a smile splitting those freckled cheeks, a firm hug wrapped around Kaeya’s shoulders, what it would be like to never see him again; and decided that would be the worst fate of all.
◅ PRESENT ▻
The pain wakes him up. Kaeya tries to open his left eye, the right one packed with bandages, and sees--
Nothing.
He blinks slowly, trying again. The same thing happens. He’s laying on his back on a thin cot and redressed in simple clothes, his eyelashes feel heavy and crusted over, but there’s nothing but blackness when he tries to see. No roots. No voice. He's alone in the dark. Kaeya shifts his weight and realizes his hands are tied in front of him, and his Cryo vision is gone.
Dread hits his stomach like a rock dropped into a still pool.
“You’re awake,” says a familiar voice. He twists his head to stare at the source, single eye seeing nothing.
“Diluc--” he starts, then cuts himself off. He doesn't have the right to ask if Diluc is okay, not with what he's done. Kaeya lets his blood run cold, stilling his expression into that all-too-familiar mask. He swallows. He waits.
“Who won?” he asks, dreading the answer.
A rustle of clothing to his side, slightly above him. Diluc is standing a short distance away, he guesses. “Does it matter?” he fires back, and that last bit of hope drains from Kaeya's body.
“No,” he laughs, letting his head loll back into place. “No, I guess it doesn't. Humor me?”
Diluc pauses, then continues like the words are being dragged out of him. “Mondstadt won. Stormterror wrestled the statue into Cider Lake. It crumbled shortly after Venti killed the Herald and you… you almost died with it. Something-- burst in your head, Kaeya, it was--”
Kaeya can't tell what emotion is breaking up Diluc’s words; rage, he assumes, that Kaeya didn’t tell anyone about what lived in his eye for so many years. That he brought such a nightmare down on all his friends. That he kissed Diluc just to use him again.
“Now, now,” Kaeya scolds him, letting his head roll to the side. “Save it for the trial and execution, big boy. I’ve only the energy to explain myself once, you know.”
“The-- the what?”
“I confessed to being a traitor in front of half the city and several dozen foreign representatives. Jean will have to do something public about me.” He tsks, tilting his lips up in a smile. “Don't know why Barbara bothered to heal me, really, unless it's to make an example in front of the Fatui later. Rosaria will probably be the one to do it, I'd guess. Hopefully she makes it--”
“Stop. Talking,” snarls Diluc, closer than he’d been before. “You-- Your whole life, you lived with that thing in your head, you set everything up with bard and the dragon and the Abyss Herald, and now you’re just going to die?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” He doesn't have the strength to smile again so he doesn't, letting the corners of his mouth slowly go slack.
“Why would you bother playing both sides if you always planned to lose?”
It's hard to guess where Diluc is in the dark. Kaeya tries his best anyway, tilting his head up to face where he guesses his beloved is standing and says, softly;
“To make sure the Abyss lost. And humanity won.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath, then a few staggered steps; a door shuts and the room falls silent.
“Diluc?” Kaeya asks the darkness. No response. The last of his bravado crumbles, and he bites his tongue against the wave of grief that washes over him. He should have said goodbye. He had the chance to do it, now, but what does he always do? Dig himself a deeper grave with his words.
To distract himself, he mentally probes the wound in his mind, searching for any trace of the roots. Nothing. It’s like being submerged underwater on a loud summer day, cool and insulating and cutting you off from all the background noises you no longer noticed. All Kaeya can hear is the beating of his own heart, the rasp of his own breathing, and the faint sounds of activity beyond the door.
Alone for the first time in twenty odd years, he rolls onto his side, facing the wall, and awaits his trial.
He drifts. He dreams. He thinks he wakes up a couple times to find himself in a prison deep beneath the earth, surrounded by cackling mages, but those must be the nightmares. In that wretched darkness, he still has his sight.
In between these episodes, when the sweat is cooling on his body and his breath is sour in his mouth, footsteps ring out again in the corridor. Kaeya rolls over in time for the door to open and hear Jean’s short inhale of surprise.
“Where’s Diluc?” she asks. “He said he'd guard you.”
“Stormed off,” Kaeya replies, laconic. “Time to go?”
“If you can stand by yourself.”
Kaeya sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and nearly face plants into the floor. Someone grabs his arm, more gentle than he expected, and helps him up. They smell like solvents, ink and stone. “Albedo?”
“Present. Dragged down from the mountains by all the commotion,” says the man holding him up. “Good guess. Based on… my height? Scent?”
“Scent.”
“Fascinating. So the loss of one sense does indeed appear to heighten the others--”
“We’re moving,” Jean cuts in, wearily, and Kaeya is guided along.
They walk along a hallway, flanked by three? Four other people? It's hard to tell, heightened senses or not. He definitely has a concussion. “Knights Headquarters, right?”
Albedo hums in confirmation. “The sound this time?”
“Yep. Doesn't echo as much as the Church. How’s the damage to the city?”
“Could have been worse. Noelle’s already started hauling rubble out to the boats--”
“Shut up,” hisses Jean. Another door swings open, and Kaeya is escorted inside as conversation abruptly stops. He’s dropped into a chair in awkward silence, with rope looped around his shoulders to keep him seated.
Jean sighs again, heavy and slow. He can picture the slump of her shoulders from the weight he’s placed on her with his plans. Guilt stings his chest, tightens his throat, but Kaeya waits to speak.
“So,” the Acting Grand Master - not his friend, but the woman bearing the title - starts. “Based on what I’ve heard from other sources, you’re an Abyssal spy who knew the attack on the city was going to happen and coordinated in secret with some member of your spy network to… coax Stormterror out of its lair, hoping it would see the fighting and investigate? All while also incapacitating half our Knights with a drugged drink from Angel’s Share?”
“That about sums it up, yeah.” Missing a few key details, but who is he to share Venti’s secrets?
“And there’s nothing else you have to say for yourself? No other motives? No reasons behind what you did?”
Kaeya smirks, echoing Diluc’s question from hours ago. “Does it matter?”
Someone slams a weapon into the floor; Rosaria, maybe, based on the whispered conversation between her and Barbara that follows.
“People could have died, Captain Alberich,” Jean reminds him with fury in her voice. “It's a miracle there weren’t more casualties than there were. And it’ll take months if not years to repair the damage done to the city, longer to fix other nation's trust in us--”
“So execute me.”
The silence is sudden and complete. He can’t even hear anyone breathing. Kaeya shifts his weight in his chair, attempting to slouch casually but unable to do so with his bindings.
“I’m a blind Khaenri’an traitor,” he elaborates, like he’s training a batch of new recruits. “No one in the city will want anything to do with me, and the moment I leave the Abyss will cut me down anyway. Just make a big day of it, and everything goes back to the way it was.”
“You don’t care?” demands Rosaria, disbelief in her tone.
“It’s my life,” he replies. “And it's a luxury to get to pick one's own death.”
The moment stretches out, his words sinking in. Kaeya leaves his expression blank and wonders if Diluc is in here, too, watching Kaeya argue for his destruction. If he’ll bother to show up for the execution itself. If it’ll be his blade coming down the back of Kaeya’s neck. The last one would be awfully fitting; he always did want to be on his knees in front of the Darknight Hero.
Klee’s voice pipes up in the quiet room. “You’d die?”
Kaeya goes very still.
“I… I don't want you to die,” she says, very softly. Then hiccups. Sniffles. “Do-- do you really want to?”
He blinks. “I… I hurt you, Klee,” he replies. “I deserve--”
“But you helped me, too! You’ve always helped me! Albedo,” and he can hear the tears in her voice now. “Tell him he’s not allowed to die!”
A huff of air, and Klee’s next sob is buried in fabric; Kaeya pictures Albedo holding her and letting the little girl cry into his shoulder. His hands flex in their bindings, and Kaeya sits up.
“It’ll fix things,” he insists, blinking again. Something wet slides down his cheek, sour like iron and sharp like salt. “Klee--”
The door behind him slams open.
Someone gasps for air like they’ve been running for hours, staggering forward on heavy booted feet. “Wait,” chokes Diluc, grabbing the back of Kaeya’s chair for balance. “Don’t do it.”
Questions erupt from all corners of the room, more voices than Kaeya expected to hear, but his awareness has shrunk down to the narrow space between his body and that of the man beside him. He can smell the wind and the trees and the sweat radiating off of him, and the heat of his two knuckles brushing Kaeya’s shoulder burns like a candle.
“Crepus knew,” Diluc continues, a slap of leather against the surface of a desk. “He knew who Kaeya was. He-- used to write about it in his old journals.” A deep inhale so close to Kaeya’s ear his skin tingles. “He-- knew and he trusted Kaeya anyway in-- in his own house and in the Knights. And I knew too.”
The hand at the back of his chair moves to clutch his shoulder. It trembles with the effort. Kaeya shivers in response.
A pause as the journal is presumably examined. Kaeya’s heart won't stop pounding at the thought of Diluc hurrying to Dawn Winery and tearing through all the boxes of his father’s belongings, searching for some sliver of proof that would save Kaeya’s life. He must have ran the whole way to make it back in time.
Why--
“I…” Jean starts, then stops herself. “Lisa? Can we work with this?”
“Probably. It might take a bit of bribery in a couple places, but everyone who heard Kaeya’s little speech also saw him fighting for our lives. Painting him as a double agent for Mondstadt instead of for the Abyss shouldn't be that much of a stretch.”
“Hmm. Can you take charge of that?”
A laugh from the far corner of the room. “Why, Miss Grand Master,” says Venti, “telling tales of heroism is my speciality.”
“Great. Kaeya Alberich, I pronounce you officially pardoned.” Something is stamped onto paper, whisked away. “Get him back to the medical bay so Barbara can treat him again tonight. I’ve got a long list of things to handle, and not enough voice to yell at him about it now.”
Diluc withdraws from Kaeya’s personal space, the void left behind cold.
His fate reversed, just like that. Upending decades of resignation for an early grave. “Jean,” Kaeya says, his head spinning.
She cuts him off. “I'm still mad. But-- if these notes are true, it doesn't sound like you had a lot of options. You were a kid when it started.”
“I hurt people,” he replies, forming his hands into fists because if he doesn't dig his nails into his palms he thinks he's going to lose his mind.
“We all do, sometimes. Just try not to do it again. And… don't throw your own life away that quickly, okay?” He can hear the sad smile in her voice. “I already lost one good Cavalry Captain. Don’t take another one from me.”
He's not good. That thought buzzes through his mind as he’s untied, helped up, his Cryo Vision eased into one pants pocket. He’s not good. He’s done horrible things, been unkind and careless and destructive and obnoxious and--
“Hey, now. That's not a good look on you,” scolds Venti as they walk. “There’s blood in your tears, Captain. You’re gonna scare the kids.”
“Diluc,” he chokes out, stopping dead in the hallways. “Where-- where is he?”
“Turned tail and headed outside already. C’mon,” and the hand that takes his is small but so sure. “We can still catch up.”
They walk, then jog; by the time Venti shoves open the doors Kaeya is breaking into a sprint and leaving his guide behind. “Diluc!”
Fifteen staggered steps later, someone catches his arm.
He knows this man by the first touch of a gloved hand on his skin; even in the darkness of his ruined sight he can picture red hair, red eyes, and freckles on pale skin. What expression he wears Kaeya doesn't know, but he hopes it’s a kind one.
I’m sorry. Thank you. I’ve loved you most of my life and now I can finally tell you. All these are things that Kaeya could say.
“You didn't have to do that,” is what comes out. “Speak up for me, I mean.”
“I did. It was the truth.”
Stupid, lovely, justice-obsessed asshole. “Thank you, then,” Kaeya says, wiping off his face with his sleeve, taking deep breaths as he pulls himself together. He must look a sight, with streaky red tears on his face and borrowed clothing hanging off his body. Which, now that he's using it again, kindly reminds him of all the abuse he’s put it through and throbs with pain in time with his racing heart.
“Well,” he clears his throat, stepping backwards. “I’ll-- let you get back to-- things, then. I think Albedo wanted to ask me questions about my loss of sight, so take care, Master Ragvindr. I’d say I’ll see you around, but I don't know if my eyes will heal or not.”
Kaeya steps back, nods farewell, and holds out his elbow.
“Venti, would you be so kind?”
A pause. A charged one at that, one that implies unseen conversations are being had, and if Kaeya isn't a part of them he absolutely does not want to be there for them. With a grim smile, he picks a direction and starts to walk.
Diluc growls somewhere behind him, grabs Kaeya’s shoulder and--
And locks Kaeya in an embrace.
The arms that wrap around him are strong from years of wielding claymores with stupid names and throwing patrons out of bars. But they’re shaking as they hold onto Kaeya now, pressing his face into Diluc’s shoulder as he buries his nose in Kaeya’s neck.
“I had to speak for you,” Diluc repeats. “No matter who or what you are, I… don’t want to lose you again.”
Kaeya sucks in a breath, heavy with the scent of oak barrels and fire, wine and sweat. The grief he’d fought back moments ago lunges in his throat, choking him, and he clings to Diluc as though it would drown him otherwise.
“I'm sorry,” he smothers in Diluc’s coat collar, then again against the skin of Diluc’s neck. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
The man in his arms shudders, eases gloved fingers into his hair to pull him back and press their foreheads together.
“Is--” Kaeya hears Diluc swallow, the wet slide of his tongue against his lips. “Is it later, yet?”
Years of exhaustion and pining are starting to catch up with him, making him dizzy and weak at the knees. “What?”
“You said I could ask you later.” Hot breath fans over Kaeya’s still-damp cheeks, cooling the drying tear tracks. “If you meant that kiss. Is it later?”
Oh. After everything he’s done, by choice or by coercion, Diluc still wants--
He wants--
“Yes,” he breathes, “yes it's later, yes I meant it, kiss me already because I can’t see your stupid mouth and do it myself.”
Kaeya thought kissing Diluc was the best thing he’d ever felt. He was wrong. Being kissed by Diluc is the best. All of the passion and heat he keeps locked behind an impassive glare at the bar is unleashed in his kisses, devouring Kaeya’s mouth like every sordid romance book he swapped with Lisa ever promised. He's shaking, and his lips are a little chapped, and there’s a knot in his hair when Kaeya works his hand up to cup Diluc’s head but that's what makes it so good. It’s real. He’s real.
For a long moment they just stand there, surrounded by the sound of Mondstadt pulling itself back together; metal on stone, good-natured arguments, the rasp of rubble being dragged away. Holding onto each other until the trembling stops, panting hard in the space between them.
“Let’s get you back to bed,” Diluc murmurs against Kaeya’s skin, pressing a kiss against his temple. Together, they walk slowly back to the Knight’s headquarters.
At the sound of a third person behind them, Kaeya turns his head. “Venti?”
“Yeah?” answers the bard, sounding pleased.
“Sorry about your statue.”
A huffed laugh of poorly concealed surprise. “Don't worry about it. A worthy sacrifice to draw out the Abyss Order’s newest weapon. I’m sure we can rebuild."
Kaeya offers a smile anyway, weary and only the twist of one side of his mouth.
Diluc helps him back into bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress like he had when they were children. Kaeya rolls onto his side and rests his hand on the tails of Diluc’s coat, feeling the rise and fall of each stitch under his fingertips.
“No more secrets,” Diluc murmurs.
“That's a little much, assuming you'll still have your own nighttime rooftop hobbies.”
A snort. “No more invasions of the city, then,” he clarifies, in a tone that warns against further flippancy.
“Agreed.” Kaeya scoots a little closer, unsettled by feeling so alone in the dark. “It’ll be… a hard habit to break but I’ll try.”
Diluc’s hand covers his own. Kaeya flips his wrist so their fingers can entwine and holds them together, palm to palm.
“Sleep, Kaeya. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
It’s strange. He'd expected this day to be an ending. And it was, in a way, but it's also a beginning; one without a clear destination but one that promises a long and winding road there. One broad enough that others can join him along it, too.
Kaeya closes his sightless eye and finally, finally, lets himself rest.