Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Oh. It's the dream again.

Dark blue and watercolor blood. The rain pounds against his shoulderblades like an angry lover, knocking the breath out of his lungs. It soaks into his pants where he kneels, pressed against unforgiving cobblestone.

Diluc, his back to him, walks away, hair a blaze of flames through the cutting dark. His Vision lies discarded at his feet; a gift from the gods thrown away like leftover fishbones picked out between teeth.

Kaeya's had this dream before enough times; he knows his role.

He reaches out, rote, as though he could physically grab his br—Diluc's shoulder and stop him from leaving. He feels his mouth open and say, "Where are you going?"

Diluc throws a single glare over his shoulder, red eyes shining. "Away."

Kaeya latches on to this moment—it's the only time he gets to hear Diluc's voice anymore. He's so young, he thinks to himself. Gods, he was so young. They both were. He would have been an obvious target on the road, young and high-born and desperate.

He wonders if Diluc ever changed his hair. If he'd ever grown a beard, gotten any tattoos. Lived a life outside of this freeze-frame memory where he's eternally eighteen and leaving Kaeya behind in the rain.

Kaeya's voice snakes out shaking between his teeth, childish and desperate, reciting his lines. "When—Are you coming back?"

"There's nothing left for me here to come back for." The contempt in Diluc's eyes sears him like a physical thing. It's a terrible, alien expression on his face.

He turns away, and keeps walking.

The rainwater soaks further into Kaeya's pants, ice cold. In real life, he had knelt there for what had felt like hours—it might've actually been hours. But in the dream...

End scene, Kaeya thinks tiredly—

—And blinks awake to his ceiling. The predawn light renders his bedroom a pale, dusty grey. A lone sparrow flutters outside his window, before losing interest and darting away. It's cold.

Kaeya sighs.

Show time.

Favonius HQ is an orderly mess, as always. A rickety engine made of civic pride, middling combat prowess, inefficiency, and sometimes-decent detective work, all duct-taped together by the competency of one Jean Gunnhildr.

Kaeya breezes through his morning training, only half paying attention. Lunch whiles away alongside stacks of documents—routine mission reports, preliminary findings on the Larkspur robbery case, a few notes from various civilian informants, approvals for expense reports.

Booting out Eroch and his corruption had been necessary, grueling work that Kaeya was damn proud of, but he hadn't realized accountability would lead to so much paperwork.

Speaking of, the approval for next month's patrol schedule was decidedly not his responsibility; must've been misfiled. Ah, he'd been meaning to check in on Jean anyway. There's a draft running through his office that makes it uncomfortable at the best of times.

He stretches, and meanders out of his cramped office, schedule in hand.

He finds Jean at her desk, besieged on all sides by towers of white paper. She looks as tired as Kaeya feels, which is saying something.
Still, there's a strict professionalism even to her exhaustion. Not a single item on her desk dares stray out of place; even her cup of coffee seems to be at parade rest. Kaeya finds himself standing up straighter despite himself.

He knocks on the doorframe. "Hey there, Grand Master."

"Acting Grand Master," she corrects absentmindedly, pen still moving.

"Oh, we all know you're Grand Master with Varka gone." He grins. "And when he comes back you'd better be promoted. If not we can organize a coup—I have notes for it and everything."

"You and what army?"

"Why, the reinstated cavalry of course. I'll charm all the horses and finally be able to live up to my title."

Jean rolls her eyes, but in a fond sort of way.

Kaeya's glad that he can still pull these small moments of unprofessionalism out of her. It feels like the last grains of a fading childhood, all gold with nostalgia.

"Anyway," he considers tossing the schedule onto her desk, then thinks better of it (the towers of paperwork look ready to avalanche at any provocation), "the patrol schedule got mixed into my work."

"Thank you." She looks it over, holding it in one hand. Her other hand is still writing, making corrections to a letter. It's honestly quite impressive to watch. She frowns and puts down the pen, turning her full attention to the schedule. "This won't work. I thought I'd updated these already."

"Oh?" Kaeya raises an eyebrow.

Jean pauses, then motions him over, and rises to close her windows.

"Shut the door, please," she says in a tone that says and check for eavesdroppers. Kaeya does both, and seals the edges with cryo for good measure. They settle back at the table.

Jean picks up the schedule and starts marking off changes in red. "I'd like a tighter schedule with denser patrols. It's not really a huge concern, but I'd rather be safe than sorry." She rubs at her eyes. "This is confidential, though I'm sure the news will start making its way out imminently..."

Jean trusts him, Kaeya knows. Really trusts him. He wishes the thought of that didn't turn his stomach.

"Snezhnaya's currently in a bit of a political shake up. Word is that there's been a...minor disruption within the Harbingers. Details are scarce, but needless to say, there's a lot of jostling in power vacuums. Fatui aren't exactly popular with anyone, really, so quite a few interested parties have taken the chance to make their own plays."

She sighs. "The Fatui are very antsy, and they're getting into more altercations lately. I want people on hand if it turns ugly."

Kaeya tilts his head. "The Tsaritsa usually runs a pretty tight house. Are you expecting any specific trouble?"

"Honestly, not really. I think the Fatui are anxious. I think Mondstadtians love provoking them, and those two factors will make a fine mess for us, but not too much more."

He nods. "I'll keep an ear out for any information."

"Thanks." She sighs, and massages her temple. The whole building seems to weigh on her in this moment, all of Mondstadt's security and hopes and fears.

"Get some rest, Jean. You look—" Jean raises a single eyebrow at him "—impeccable as always, Grand Master. But sleep is important! He who refuses dreams dares fate to pass him over, don't you know?"

"Alright, alright." She shoos him out the door, but she's smiling, so he counts it as a win. "I'll rest if you do too, Kaeya. Heed your own words."

Her laughter when he nearly trips over his own cryo seal on the way out the door is embarrassing, but well worth it.

"It is conjectured that Visions are granted by the Archons themselves, though there are schools claiming them to be the hand of Celestia. But of course, the nature of Celestia is an entirely different field of study, and not one that this book would purport to cover; for our purposes, please consult the writings of Dr. Akhmetova—"

Kaeya shuts the library book with a sigh. Flips it onto the pile that he's mentally labeled 'Lost Causes.' For a subject that's been written upon so much, people sure know jack shit about Visions.

Most of these books start with at least three chapters fiddling with definitions, and then another three pontificating about how every definition is flawed, really, and clouded by current popular associations removed from the original cultural context. At least there's always the academic drama between rival authors.

There's even less literature on Delusions, and those tend to take on the tone of either cryptic warnings or rambling mad science. More entertaining to read, but also not terribly helpful.

He shuts his notebook too (he's taking notes! This is what he's been driven to! Notes!) and tucks it back into his pocket.

Kaeya carefully deposits his books back onto a cart to be reshelved, and heads out. He waves cheerily at Lisa manning the front desk.

Outside, Mondstadt winds down beneath a navy blue sky. The edges of a pale sunset are reaching up around the roofs of the buildings, and a brisk wind just this side of slightly-too-cold curls its way through the streets. People are laughing and buying dinner and getting into drunken fistfights with the Fatui.

(He nods at a patrol of Knights rushing over to deal with that last one.)

It's a short walk to his apartment, small and plain but serviceable enough.
(It's as different from the winery as a building in Mond could be.)

He goes through the motions. Changes out of his uniform, cooks dinner, sets out the paperwork he brought from HQ on his desk, to be dealt with later.

Looking at him, you could almost be fooled into thinking he's doing well.

The dream, again.

The world painted in dark, somber blue and searing red, blurring around the edges. The rain pounds against his shoulderblades like falling stars, knocking the breath out of his lungs. It soaks into his pants where he kneels, pressed against unforgiving cobblestone.

Diluc, his back to him, walking away. Always walking away. His hair as bright as a candle flame, loose for once and seeping like blood down his back. The Vision at his feet like a dying ember.

Kaeya reaches out, as always. It's an abstract gesture now, like reaching a hand out towards the sun.

"Where are you going?" It's cold enough for his breath to mist in front of him.

Diluc throws a single glare over his shoulder, red eyes smoldering. "Away."

You'd really think it'd stop hurting after so many repetitions, Kaeya muses. "When—Are you coming back?"

"There's nothing left for me here to come back for."

The expression on his face is thunderous, spitting, righteous. So young, and already so much hate.

His fault, that. All his fault. Couldn't just leave a good thing alone.

Diluc turns away, and keeps walking.

"You know, a little bird told me something interesting the other day," Vile murmurs over a plate of fisherman's toast at the Good Hunter. "I heard a rumor that Il Dottore is dead."

Kaeya's eyebrows shoot up around a mouthful of skewer. 'Minor disruptions,' huh. Jean sure has a knack for understatement. He swallows hurriedly.

"How in the world did that happen? Hell of a thing, to take down a Harbinger."

"Oh, the stories are completely out of control. One of the other Harbingers, finally done with him. An experiment gone wrong. An old rival, seeking revenge. Divine retribution for his crimes from Celestia above. Whatever happened, it took out more than just him; the Fatui are scrambling like a toppled anthill."

Vile shrugs, pops another bite of toast into her mouth. "If you ask me, well, he wasn't exactly a popular man, and he left destruction everywhere he went. Plenty of people have plenty of motive. It was really only a matter of time before one of his leftovers caught up to him."

"Huh." Kaeya takes another contemplative bite of his skewer. All these rumors floating in on the wind while the Fatui, astoundingly, trickle out. "Huh."

There's a Vision, on his bed stand. Diluc's Vision.

Next to it, letters. Letters to Diluc that he never sends, because who knows where he'd even send them to? Letters to Adelinde that he still hasn't sent, because he's a coward.

Accompanying those: a tall stack of notes from his library research, almost impressive if it weren't for the fact that all of it was useless.

He turns the Vision over in his hand, studying its surface. It still glows, but it's so dim it looks dead under sunlight.

A hairline crack runs through it, jagged as a lightning bolt. The fracture catches in the light like opal fire; fitting, for pyro, and beautiful.

Terrible for Kaeya's resting heart rate, mind you, but beautiful.

There's a pile of drafts for a letter to Adelinde that he's been chewing over for weeks. There really isn't a casual way to say Hey, long time no see since I ruined our family and ran away like a coward, by the way Diluc's Vision is cracked now and I have no idea what that means. Love you! Kaeya.

Archons. Why can't it ever be easy.

His own cryo Vision glows a steady frosty blue, bright and healthy, gently cold to the touch. It's probably not a good sign that Diluc's pyro Vision is about the same temperature. He clenches it in his hand, edges digging into his palm. Why the hell the gods would grant a Vision to someone like him, then and there...

He closes his eye and rubs at his temple. If only he hadn't confessed at that moment; waited til after, or before, or any other time. If only he wasn't so selfish to have spoken right there, in the rain, wielding a secret as deftly as a blade. If only Diluc hadn't—had just reacted the way he thought he would. If only Diluc hadn't left immediately, if only Kaeya had chased after him, if only Crepus hadn't died, if only Crepus could have just let go of his own dreams of glory instead of pressing them onto Diluc and getting that damned Delusion, if only if only if only...

...If only Diluc would come back. If only Kaeya could see him again, even if only for one last time, and they could both say to each other, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me that night. Of course you're my brother. You're family and I love you forever, no matter what. I'm so, so sorry and I forgive you for everything.

...Kaeya's a little too old for happily ever afters.

Kaeya rests his chin against his palm. The ink on the paper has long blurred into incomprehensibility beneath his tired eye.

It's a standard mission report for a Hilichurl camp raid; he's written hundreds of these by now. Thousands, maybe. And there's no point taking the reports home if he doesn't actually do them.

But by Barbatos's rusty lyre strings he just doesn't want to write right now.

Usually he likes the slightly cool temperature of his room, but the exhaustion just makes the chill seep deeper into his bones. The low light of the lamp in his room makes his vision burn. He closes his eye, just for a moment—

—Rain drops from the sky like knives. It soaks into his pants where he kneels, pressed against unforgiving cobblestone, as always.

This time though, something's different.

Diluc is looking at him.

Everything else in the scene is the same—they're still on the road outside the winery, drenched in their old uniforms—but Diluc is facing straight towards him.

For the first time, Kaeya can see that Diluc has blood dripping off his hands and soaking all the way up to his elbows. For a moment, he's taken aback—was that gruesome detail always there, this whole time?

Kaeya is so surprised he almost forgets his lines. Almost.

"Where are you going?"

Diluc stares at him, gaze held for an impossibly long beat. There's something off about his eyes, Kaeya thinks. He just can't quite put his finger on what.

"...Away." Diluc says it softly, like a regret. Quieter than he's ever said it before. His eyes are still burning, almost glowing in the feverish mist of the dream, but Kaeya can no longer read them.

"Wh—Are you—are you coming back?"

"...Do you want me to come back?"

And it's. It's just a dream. A stupid, impossible nightmare that's haunted him since the day he ruined his own life, but something tears in his chest at the question.

"Yes," skitters out of his throat, barely audible over the roaring rain, and far more honest than he would've liked.

Diluc watches him, silent. Impassive, almost. Nods.

And for the first time since the day it happened, he steps forward, towards Kaeya.

—And Kaeya blinks awake, paperwork plastered to his face.

Kaeya spends the next week in a completely normal and undistracted state, thank you very much.

"Of course," Albedo says dryly, attention on his sketchbook. "And I'm sure Jean sent you here to personally ask for my reports with no ulterior motives of getting you out of Mondstadt."

Kaeya's too cool to hiss at him like a stray cat in indignation, but it's a near thing. "Don't know why you have to hang out in Dragonspine, of all places," he grumbles, pulling his cape tighter around himself, "I can barely feel my fingers."

Albedo raises a single eyebrow of do you really want me to explain my research and why it needs observations from here again.

Kaeya rolls his eyes in shut up it's a joke you know I like Dragonspine.

Ahem.

"Anyway," he stresses, "I'm perfectly fine on my duties and Jean is over-worrying as always."

"Right. I'm sure." Albedo does look up now from his art, gaze level. "Kaeya. You know that you can talk to me, or Jean, or whoever you feel comfortable with if you needed to, right?"

Kaeya can feel himself shrinking away from the polite concern in Albedo's voice. Unfortunately, the person he felt comfortable talking to left four years ago and now apparently gets his kicks out of haunting his dreams. "I know, I know. I'm alright, really."

Albedo doesn't even dignify him with a response, only sliding him a cup of tea before turning to put down his sketchbook.

Bastard.

He hands Kaeya a folder of neat reports. "Please inform Jean that the Fatui appear to be clearing out of their Dragonspine base, possibly permanently. It may be worth scouting after they leave; the Adventurer's Guild might be interested in having another outpost here."

"I will," Kaeya nods absently, taking the folder.

It's just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. He's got better things to worry about then getting this rattled over a dream.

(He thinks this enough that he actually starts to believe it.)

Heat in Mondstadt is a golden, trickling thing, winding its way down grapevines and settling across roofs like a stretching cat.

Nothing like the shivering mirage-haze of Sumeru, or the cloying humidity of Liyue and Inazuma that feels like molten glass sticking to the back of your throat. (Nothing like Snezhnaya, sunlight cutting off the snow.)

The sun blazes down like it's angry.

There are more new faces here now, but a lot of people still startle as he passes by, faces turning shocked-confused-jubilant.

Diluc Ragnvindr ignores them all.

Kaeya knows he's a coward. Knows it in his bones, knows it in the way his hands shake, even now. He doesn't need anyone else to tell him, he already knows it. But he can't keep running forever.

So, a month after Diluc's return, Kaeya finds himself shuffling through the door of the Angel's Share just before closing, and slips into a shadowy corner for the evening.

The bar has settled down from the mayhem it was at when Diluc first returned, but it's still managing a respectable hubbub, even considering the lateness of the hour. There's a jovial air that hasn't quite been dispelled yet, and Six-Fingered José plucks a sleepily cheerful tune from some corner of the tavern. Time winds away like it'll never run out.

Diluc still looks so similar—in the broad strokes, at least. Traded his uniform for a heavy looking black coat closed snug against his throat, but still with the same hair tied back and bangs framing his face. From a distance, it almost looks like nothing's changed at all.

But it all falls apart in the details. Diluc's face is, for the first time, utterly indecipherable to Kaeya. He used to wear his heart on his sleeves, as openly as anything. Kaeya could read him with a single glance, every emotion sparking in his eyes, stamped into the lines of his face and body. Now Kaeya's not sure he's seen Diluc move any of the muscles in his face for the past hour. He's perfectly polite to the customers, but there's nothing behind it.

He feels like he's watching a porcelain mask play at being bartender.

(Is this my fault? Is this what I did?)

He thinks Diluc hasn't seen him—he's never been able to catch Kaeya when he didn't want to be caught when they were kids—right up until Diluc slides a drink onto his table, and settles into the seat across from him.

Oh, so we're doing this, Kaeya thinks a little hysterically. Outwardly he freezes his expression into a casual affability.

"...Diluc," he greets, as though they were only friends catching up together.

"Kaeya," Diluc nods back at him, face still perfectly blank.

Diluc has always—fiddled with his hair when he was nervous, clenched his hands when he was angry, beamed when he was happy. He would damn near vibrate when he got excited about something. Kaeya doesn't know what to do with this Diluc, utterly still, gloved hands held flat against the table between them.

"...It's been a while. How have you been?" he ventures, before contemplating the merits of tossing himself out the nearest window. But really, how does one broach the topic of, well, everything?

"I've been..." Diluc doesn't seem to know how to finish that thought either. "It's been a long journey. A lot of things happened."

This is absurd. He's sitting at the Angel's Share, across from his—across from Diluc, who tried to kill him, who left him in the rain, who holds the secret that could unmake everything Kaeya has ever had but kept it for four years, who didn't kill him when he was supposed to, who really was the best big brother in the whole wide world. And now they're both failing at making small talk.

Kaeya briefly wonders if this is another nightmare, but the wood of the table is woefully real beneath his fingers.

"I'm," Diluc interrupts suddenly, "I'm doing this all wrong."

He closes his eyes, red bangs falling lopsided and curling up beneath his chin. (Did he cut his own hair?) (...With a claymore? And perhaps with one hand clapped over his eyes?)

"Look," he sighs, and for a single second it's Diluc here again, all twisting hands and guilt in every frame of his face. "How about...would you mind waiting here until after my shift is done? And we can talk afterwards." In private, he doesn't say.

"...Of course," Kaeya answers. He takes a sip of the drink Diluc brought him to cover for the dread thrumming through his gut.

The heady taste hits his tongue and he glances at the cloudy glass in surprise. It's a Death After Noon.

Diluc blinks, then cracks a tiny, crooked smile at that. It's hesitant, and wary, weary, nothing like the way he used to smile, bright as staring straight into the sun. It's the first and only smile Kaeya's seen on his face in the whole month he's been back. "Charles said it was your favorite."

Kaeya's head is spinning and for once he can't even blame the alcohol. "Thank you?"

"Mhm."

Diluc goes back to the bar, leaving as quietly as he came. He moves with a silent poise, like the whisper of an owl's wings. That too, another difference: the Diluc that Kaeya knew couldn't pull off stealth to save his life.

He takes another sip of his drink, glass cool against his fingers. It burns exactly like fire going down.

Diluc closes up the bar, and shuts the door as the last stragglers shuffle out. He wipes down the tables, clears the glasses, sweeps the floor, and he's not stalling for time, he's not.

He sneaks a glance at where Kaeya (Alberich, he notes with a slight ache) lounges on a barstool, having now moved to the front. He looks at home there, leaning up against the warm wood of the bar, the very image of the master of the house.

It's obvious when you look at it like this, that it was supposed to be the other way round. Diluc with the Knights and Kaeya manning the winery. Gods, how did they fuck this up so badly? The sheer thought of it makes his breath stutter.

He wishes he had never come back to Mondstadt. He shouldn't have come back. Shouldn't have been able to come back.

The Angel's Share is spotless. Even the chairs are all pushed in. His hands ache beneath the gloves; they always do, now.

Nothing left for it, then. He breathes in. The air burns in his lungs. Whatever happens next, whatever Kaeya says...he'll deserve it. But he won't run from it this time. Diluc Ragnvindr has been called many things, has been many things (murderer, monster, father-killer), but he's yet to have been called a coward.

Diluc marches back over to the bar with the grim quiet of a man walking to his own execution. (Hah.)

Kaeya glances over as he approaches, all casual affability and cheer. He doesn't straighten, doesn't tense, gives no tells.

But see, Diluc's been doing this for far too long, and he can recognize how Kaeya's sitting at an angle where he'll be able to draw a blade without obstruction or run for the door if need be. And really, more to the point: Diluc isn't fucking stupid. He knows what he did. Something in the space where his heart used to be breaks just a little bit more knowing that Kaeya is afraid of him now.

He plants himself in front of Kaeya.
(Positions himself so that Kaeya has a straight shot to the door if he wants it.)
(Has a free shot with his sword if he wants it.)

He takes a breath,

And Diluc Ragnvindr bows.

Holds his spine at a 45 degree angle, the way father taught him, his hair slipping off his shoulder: the most formal level of apology in Mond etiquette. Kaeya makes a choking sort of sound, but he doesn't look up. He's rehearsed this in his head for years now.

"I'm sorry. For everything. I'm sorry for attacking you. I'm sorry for leaving. I'm sorry for saying you weren't my brother. I was wrong about all of it, and you didn't even remotely deserve any of it. I won't ask you to forgive me, after everything I've done. I understand if you don't want to have anything to do with me now."

"I'll leave again, if you want. I can't...I won't be staying for long anyway."

The bar is silent. Diluc straightens back up to face whatever disdain or anger Kaeya could rightfully direct at him.

Instead, Kaeya's face looks...well, stricken, actually. Like crushed glass.

He splutters wordlessly for a moment, silver tongue failing him for once. Kaeya's eye searches him like he's trying to figure out if Diluc was replaced by an imposter. "Genuine question: did you get amnesia at some point?"

"No?"

"Right. I—I'm a spy? From Khaenri'ah?"

Oh. "Look, that's not—I don't care about that. Anymore. It's not important."

Kaeya's face is quite eloquent in its disbelief.

Ah, that wasn't the right thing to say, was it? He was never the talker out of the two of them, can never make his words work, can never spin stories the way Kaeya does.

Focus. He has to get it right this time. He's already out of chances.

Breathe, murmurs a voice that sounds suspiciously like Baizhu. Fuck off, he thinks.
Okay. Deep breath.

"Even if you chose Khaenri'ah over Mondstadt in the end...it would—I won't lie. It would hurt. But even if you really did betray Mondstadt in the end..."

He closes his eyes.

"Even then. You would still be my brother. You still are my brother. Always."

"Mondstadt is a community of people. And you're a part of it. Where you came from—it's important, but what's even more important are the choices that you make now. I trust you—should have trusted you, from the very beginning, to protect the people here, because you're a good person." Unlike me. "And if you chose otherwise, I know you would have had a good reason."

Kaeya stares at him, silent. There's something Diluc can't quite place in his eye. It looks, somehow, a lot like devastation, but Diluc has never been able to read Kaeya's face when he didn't want to be read.

Quiet muffles through the Angel's Share.

Diluc swallows. This is probably the most sustained talking he's done in years, and a terrible idea to boot. "I can—I'll be leaving. Soon. And I can leave earlier, if you want, I just. Wanted to apologize before I go."

"—Stay," Kaeya blurts out before his brain can catch up with his mouth. "It's—" Fuck, how does he even—"I'm sorry too. About—everything. About my timing, about hurting you, the secrets, all of it. I'm sorry too." His heart pounds like a drumbeat, like rain.

"No, no, don't—you don't have to apologize. I was the one in the wrong—" Diluc stares at him, and Kaeya still can't read the look in his eyes but for the first time in four years it's something other than condemnation. Gods fucking dammit, it should be condemnation. This isn't—this isn't how it was supposed to go.

"I forgive you," Kaeya says, because even if he's too much of a coward for the truth he can at least give Diluc this.

Diluc stares at him, utterly lost.

"I don't understand. It was my fault, I—why would you—you shouldn't. You shouldn't."

"I forgive you," Kaeya repeats, softer. "It wasn't your fault at all." All mine, in the end.

"How can you say that?"

Because it's true. "Stay a while," Kaeya says instead. "Please? We all missed you while you were gone. I missed you."

Diluc stands in silence for a beat.

It's almost fascinating, the way his face slowly smooths back out to flatness, carefully tucking away his errant emotions as he collects himself.

"...You're sure this is what you want?"

"I'm sure," Kaeya says firmly. Sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end. "In fact—here."

He fishes the Vision out of his pocket and tosses it at Diluc. "Ah, I had this whole bit I was gonna do, with a vase..." he chuckles awkwardly. "But it didn't seem like the right time."

Diluc catches it reflexively. The Vision sparks in his hand, almost violently, embers sizzling hard against the leather of his gloves. It looks strangely angry.

"...Thank you," he says. For a moment he just stares at it in his hand, the metal of the casing already growing uncomfortably warm; Diluc didn't expect to ever see his Vision again in this life. (Almost out, cracked; makes sense.) He slips it into his pocket.

Kaeya watches him, eye bright and shining. He looks so young again, under the lights.

"...Okay," Diluc says, quiet as snow. "I'll stay. For as long as I can."

It feels like things should be easier, after that.

Diluc makes his way through the days as though he didn't just make a stupid, impossible promise. He hashes out his arrangements, makes sure that the winery will be left to the capable hands of Elzer and Adelinde. It'll be the first time in history that the Dawn Winery leaves the blood of the Ragnvindr clan, so he makes sure to have all the right documentation so no one can ever question their claim. (After some thought, he does the same for Kaeya. Just in case.)

Jean somehow makes the time out of her impossibly busy schedule (Diluc's seen the thing—minuscule handwriting squeezing every minute out of every day) to catch up with him over lunch.

She's taller now, has taken the prim solemnity of her childhood manner and refined it into a fine steel. There's a mettle in her eyes that wasn't there when he left as she tells him about her and Kaeya's hunt to flush out Eroch.

Diluc...still doesn't exactly like the Knights. But he'd rather not spend his last days in Mondstadt picking fights with old friends.

He wishes, stupidly, very stupidly, that he had been there to see her grow. Been there to track the lines wearing into Adelinde's face, been there to see Kaeya rise into the man he is now.

"We talked. I think we're...better now." Diluc looks to the side, self-conscious. "He asked me to stay, so, here I am."

It sounds so simple when he puts it like that.

"That's good. I'm glad—really glad, to hear it." Jean smiles, and it's sincere, but tired with the stress of years.

Diluc feels a pang of guilt in the hollow of his chest. Kaeya's not the only one he left behind. Abandoned. He wonders how much of the weight on her shoulders can be traced back to his fault.

"I won't be staying for very long, though," he clarifies. "I just want you to know, before I go: I'm glad you picked things up in my stead, after I left. You've done an incredible job, beyond what anyone could ever have asked of you. And I'm sorry that I left in the first place, without any warning like that."

Jean looks taken aback, thrown by his blunt honesty. "That's...it's alright. I don't blame you for leaving, not really. Especially after everything we found on Eroch. And...thank you."

Suddenly she grins, and for a moment it's fierce and joyous, the spitting image of the Dandelion Knight from a bard's tale. "It's good to have you back, Diluc. We missed you. And wherever you end up going, we'll miss you there too. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that you'll always have a home in Mondstadt if you want it."

Diluc takes a scalding gulp of coffee to cover for how I don't deserve this is searing itself into his mind with a fire poker.

"I'm going to miss this," he says quietly. Jean looks askance at him, but he doesn't explain himself.

He chugs his cup. It burns like thorns twirling across his tongue. Bitter, scalding, sour around the edges. The heat of the drink seeps through his gloves, painful, but he ignores it.

Jean looks at him curiously. "Didn't you used to take your coffee with milk and sugar?"

Diluc blinks at her. Realizes, remembers that that's true, he does prefer his coffee with two sugar cubes, used to take it with so much milk it barely even looked like coffee.

Swallows back I haven't thought about sugar in coffee for years and I haven't had the luxury of worrying about the taste of my coffee since I was eighteen and oh I've been gone so long I forgot what kind of coffee I liked.

"I'm...not in the habit anymore."

"...Right." She looks a little sad at that.

He doesn't know why.

Kaeya slips into the Angel's Share, and is greeted by a welcome blast of warm air. He's been coming around at the end of his shifts now; Diluc seems to have caught on, and adjusted his schedule to match. (It warms something in his heart as much as it hurts, that he noticed and changed his own routine.)

Most nights Kaeya just hangs at the bar, and occasionally plies some of the shadier clientele for information over drinks. On occasion though, the tavern will be calmer, and Diluc will leave the bar to Charles.

Tonight seems to be the latter, and sure enough, Diluc slips into the seat next to him with two glasses of Death After Noon (bless) and grape juice (well, at least some things never change) respectively. He nods his thanks.

They sit in silence, wrapped up in the gentle background bustle of the bar. Someone across the room laughs uproariously at a joke.

Diluc stares seriously down into his glass of grape juice, as blank-faced as he ever is now. Kaeya clinks his glass against Diluc's, "Mora for your thoughts?"

"It's nothing important."

Kaeya fishes a coin out of his pocket and pitches it at Diluc. It plinks off of his hair harmlessly, landing perfectly onto the table in front of him.

"..." Diluc gives him a look. Kaeya hides his smile behind another sip of his drink. He's out of practice; he used to be able to nail Diluc on the forehead.

Diluc sighs, and takes the coin. "I was thinking about father's painting in the study, the one of the forest clearing in Wolvendom. It reminded me of a place in Fontaine that I passed through once. It's been a while since I've been, is all."

"...You do know that you live next to Wolvendom, right? Like, right next to it. This is a solvable problem."

"I meant Fontaine, not—oh, shush, you." Diluc flicks the coin right back at him. It hits him directly on the forehead, the bastard.

Kaeya catches it before it falls into his drink. He walks it across his knuckles, metal flipping merrily beneath the lights. "Hey, Diluc..."

"Hm?"

Kaeya hesitates.
"Why did you come back now?" His own stupid dreams aside, there must be a reason for the timing...

Diluc pauses, still nursing his grape juice.

"I realized that...even though it's too late, I really did want to apologize to you."

"And you just decided that at random after four years of—wandering?" Where were you? What were you doing?

"Something like that."

Kaeya frowns. When the hell did his brother become taciturn? He flips the coin back at Diluc, but Diluc catches it out of the air before it can land. This close, Kaeya can see the dark circles smudged beneath his eyes.

"...Did you ever tell anyone else? About where you're from?"

"No. Never." What would be the point?

"I'm sorry." Diluc says it so quietly and miserably that Kaeya barely catches it at all. For a moment, the shadows of his face darken, almost unnaturally so.

"It wasn't your fault. I forgive you. And," well, it's not okay but, "it'll be okay. We'll get through all this together, and one day we'll look back on this from a future where it's okay."

And to his own surprise, Kaeya realizes that he means it. An impossible future that looks a lot like this one, where he and Diluc get drinks sometimes after work and talk about whatever they want while someone laughs in the background.

Diluc looks at him across the table, something unreadable in his eyes (as they ever are, now), and smiles a wan smile. "Of course."

Something about the look on his face unsettles Kaeya.

"...Ah, fuck it. Let's go to Wolvendom together sometime, make an outing of it. We can go, what, hiking? Do people still do that for fun around here? Swimming? Fish-blasting? Wait, no, if you and Klee team up then I'm just screwed—"

"Hiking's fine," Diluc interrupts, smile relaxing into something a bit more genuine. It heartens Kaeya to see it.

"Ooh, we can have a picnic. Do you think you could get Adelinde to pack us sandwiches? I'll make fruity skewers if you do, I've just tweaked the recipe."

"...Fine."

Kaeya takes a long sip of his Death After Noon. It tastes just a bit different when Diluc makes it instead of Charles, ever-so-slightly heavier on the dandelion wine.

"Thank you, for staying."

"Of course. You asked, after all."

"Just because I asked?"

"Yes."

Kaeya blinks. "I was teasing."

Diluc shrugs, noncommittal.

Somewhere in the tavern a bard starts up a jaunty tune; somewhere someone laughs...

A future that looks a lot like this one...

It's another long night at his drafty little office. Lately there's been an influx in reports of some masked vigilante running around. Kaeya loves Mondstadt and its commitment to freedom absolute; he really does. But boy are there some characters in this town.

He closes his eye. Just for a few minutes...

—And blinks awake to pouring rain.

Seriously, he grumps, shouldn't this have resolved itself by now? What's even the point of your estranged brother (brother!!) returning if it doesn't stop the trauma dreams?

He frowns as he glances around. Speaking of, where is dream-Diluc?

Great, even his nightmares are off script now.

Experimentally, he stands up. The shock of ice-cold rainwater sluicing directly onto fresh burns whites out his vision for a moment and he staggers. Breathe. It's not real (this time).

He steadies himself, and with a lack of other options, starts walking forward.

The world blurs around him like a half-remembered music box melody. A flurry of maple leaves scatter at his feet. Ahead, he hears voices—

"—It's too dangerous. I don't know what information you're looking for, but it's not worth dodging the Vision Hunt in its full swing," a woman with an eyepatch and dark auburn hair snaps. They appear to be in a cabin of some sort, all creaking wood and salt.

"Well, it's a good thing I don't have a Vision, isn't it?"

A man with pale blonde hair streaked red murmurs placatingly, "word on the street is that the people are thinking of revolt. You don't want to get caught up in that, Red."

The last figure bares a grin that's all wildness and teeth, short-cropped red hair falling across their face.

"I'm from Mondstadt," they say, with eyes like fire. "Revolution is our specialty."

—And Kaeya jerks awake to pounding at his office door. It's Noelle, slightly out of breath. "The vigilante has been spotted again; Huffman requested backup."

"Right." Kaeya hurriedly shakes off the last dredges of his impromptu nap. He muffles his yawn behind one hand as he unlatches the window with the other. "Where?"

"Heading towards the Cathedral, from the east."

"On it."

Kaeya vaults out his window, and lands in a running sprint along a rooftop. Who needs doors?

The brisk night air snaps him awake and he makes record time with his shortcut; just in time to spot Huffman chasing after a figure in dark clothing.

Kaeya drops down into a three-point landing in front of them to cut them off, only for the figure to dodge left and swing themself over a low wall without missing a beat. He curses, and uses a window box of flowers as a foothold (sorry!) to launch himself back onto the rooftops.

He grabs for the figure's coat—and see, the thing is, he should be able to reach it, just about. But there's something off about the distance between them; either something wrong with the person's movement, or something wrong with his vision, because his hand closes on air. Kaeya blinks, hard.

By the time he's reoriented himself onto the rooftop, the vigilante is gone. He scans the surrounding streets rapidly, ears tuned for any footsteps or breathing: nothing. It's as though they disappeared into thin air. (Mondstadtian, to have such intimate knowledge of the streets—or some form of movement enhancement?)

He frowns, and hops back down to Huffman. "Sitrep?"

Huffman pants for a moment, out of breath. Kaeya makes a mental note to add more running to the drills. "I spotted the vigilante while heading back from patrol with Miles, finishing a confrontation with—well, it looked like a Fatui member who was causing trouble, considering the broken window. We tried to question them, but they ran. I left Miles to bring the Fatui guy in to headquarters while I gave chase. And, well, you know the rest."

"Did you catch any identifying features? Get a look at their face?"

"No, I think they were—their face was. Covered?"

"With a mask, or cloth? Could you describe it?"

"No, they weren't wearing a..." Huffman hesitates, looking oddly unsettled. "I...I'm sorry, I must have been mistaken. They must have been wearing a mask. It looked like...an owl, maybe? I'm afraid I can't remember the details very well..."

Hmm. Kaeya frowns harder.

"Sorry, Captain Kaeya," Huffman apologizes sheepishly. "I wish I could have been better help."

Ah, well. "It's alright, you've done well. Go ahead and head back to HQ, and make sure to fill in a report before you leave."

"Yes sir!" Huffman jogs away at a more sedate pace.

Kaeya stares in the direction the vigilante ran off. Sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose.

Why can't Mondstadt just have normal vigilantes and normal crime?

Diluc frowns over strings of numbers and tries to dig up dusty memories of finance lessons from years ago. The one good thing about being a fugitive on the run was the absolute lack of paperwork.

The guilt of leaving this entire mess to Elzer with no warning for four years keeps him from giving up, but it's a near thing. He's used to the minute calculations of how to stretch a budget enough to eat till the end of the week, not the speculation of what next quarter's stock will be priced at.

Archons, today is an off day for him; he feels tired to his bones. People want wine. The Dawn Winery makes wine. How is something so simple so complicated. Capitalism is a sham, we should go back to barter.

"Master Diluc—" He startles, badly, and for a moment he is nothing but instinct; stepping out of his seat in one fluid motion as his claymore drops into his right hand, left hand lifting to aim the Delu—

—Diluc catches himself nearly chopping Adelinde's head off with a claymore. He arrests his momentum halfway through the swing, redirecting it into a wobbling crash through the desk. The desk promptly explodes into a mess of splintered wood and unfinished paperwork.

They stare at the collapsed desk together.

"...Apologies. You startled me."

Adelinde, to her credit, refrains from running screaming for the hills (as she well deserves to do by now, after putting up with his sorry self). She folds her hands primly in front of her apron and collects herself with admirable grace.

"Master Diluc, you have a visitor waiting in the front hall."

She glances surreptitiously at the desk, "....and I'll send for Elzer as well."

Diluc tries not to wilt too obviously. He tries to reach for the right words to say, an actual apology, summon up the face of Mond's perfect son.

"...Thank you." Dammit.

He trudges away in shame.

Gods. (I used to be good at this.)

Seeing Jean standing in the front hall sends a tremor of exhaustion through him. The fact that she's here in person means this is probably important but Diluc wishes, a bit despairingly, that she had come some other time. He's clearly not here in Mond today, not really.

Jean is the spitting image of well-worn professionalism. Somehow, she takes the same airs Kaeya puts on but turns it into authority, dressed with exhausted competence. Even the window curtains seem to hang a little neater in her vicinity. Diluc feels underdressed in his own home just standing across from her.

He rustles through the back of his memories for Mondstadt manners. Fontaine's terrible little hospitality rituals have been pounded into his head by necessity for so long that he's biting down the urge to start serving everyone a twelve-step course of tea cakes.

"...Hello." Great start, all of father's etiquette lessons really coming in clutch right there. "Why are you here?"

"Hello," Jean greets. "I came to ask if you'd be available to help with some Knight business?"

Briefly, part of Diluc considers turning around. Head out the back door and just keep walking. Take another four year mental-breakdown-turned-bildungsroman. Maybe this time they'll all wise up, and they'll stop waiting for him to come back.

"...I'm afraid I'm not particularly interested in working with the Knights at this time, Acting Grand Master," Diluc demurs.

"You haven't even heard the request."

"I find the Knights to be," the briefest spark of temper flares in his chest. Diluc bites back several words in the name of propriety and friendship, "inefficient, at times. And I have my personal reasons for not wishing to return. I'm sure you know them."

Diluc stalwartly ignores the ghost of his father standing between them, hair still dripping rain and chest still dripping blood. His eyes are terribly hollow.

Jean sighs. For a moment her shoulders lose a little bit of that absolute iron, and Diluc remembers the long hours in HQ, him and Jean and Kaeya, plotting out raids and discussing leads like it would never be any more complicated than the latest petty robbery case...

"We're planning to scope out the Fatui camp on Dragonspine now that they appear to have left. I wanted to organize a bit of training before it, and I thought it might be helpful to get your input—as someone who both knows the organization while still having an outside perspective."

She looks at him, eyes bright.

"I'm not asking you as a Knight, or as the Acting Grand Master; I'm just asking you as Jean. As your friend. And it's alright if you say no, for any reason. I just wanted to ask."

Well, fuck. Diluc really wishes he wasn't folding like a house of cards right now. He grumbles incoherently into his collar, and ignores the twisting dread in his stomach.

"...It's fine, I'll come."

Jean smiles. "Thanks, Diluc. And...get some rest, alright? You look tired."

Diluc heads to the kitchen after seeing Jean out. As expected, he finds Adelinde busy with dinner and preparations for his and Kaeya's little picnic.

"Master Diluc," she greets when she notices him, sleeves rolled up and flour dusting down her apron.

"It's—just Diluc is fine, you've known me more than long enough, Adelinde," he answers. "I don't know why father always insisted."

"I believe he considered it an important part of manners and respect."

"It's an outdated holdover from Mondstadt's aristocracy."

"You still haven't let go of that old argument with Master Crepus, have you?" she laughs, before turning somber. "You fought over many things, near the end."

"...Yes. That we did."

Adelinde hands him a cutting board. Diluc busies himself rustling through the pantry for potatoes and cheese. They settle into a stable orbit around each other in the kitchen, just like when he was a kid getting batter in his hair. He hesitates for a second before pulling his gloves off and tucking them into a pocket.

They work in measured silence for a moment, peaceably busy.

"I'm sorry for—earlier today," Diluc manages as he carefully splits cherry tomatoes.

"It's quite alright. No harm done, except to that old desk. It's hardly a bother to replace it."

The old desk that's part of an increasingly dwindling supply of reminders of father and life before?

"It's...really not, Adelinde."

She pauses her kneading, dough still in her hands. "M—Diluc?"

"Yes?"

"What was your time away like?"

Diluc freezes where he's about to start mincing the leaves of a stalk of lamp grass.

"...It was alright."

"Meet any interesting people?"

"Oh, many."

"Places? I've always wanted to see Sumeru."

"Yes. Sumeru was alright."

It really was, for the brief few months where he was Luke Reinhart the unassuming student, sequestering himself in libraries reading instead of Diluc Ragnvindr running for his life.

"Well, the stigma against the arts was hard to get used to, compared to Mond."

"Ah, yes. Can barely throw a stone without hitting three bards here. Did you have a plan? Itinerary?"

"No, not really. Just went where the wind took me."

"Spoken like a true Mondstadtian." Adelinde chuckles, as though he hasn't been blatantly dodging all of her questions.

She's visibly older now than from his memories, Diluc thinks with a pang. He's taller than her now, for one, and there are lines in her face. Streaks of grey beginning to creep into her hair. He of all people should know better than to take this time for granted. (She's the closest thing I have to a mother and I don't know how to talk to her anymore.)

"And what about for afterwards? After you came home?"

He stays silent for a moment too long. She looks at him with kind, sad eyes.

"...You were planning on coming home, right?"

Diluc rests his knife against the cutting board.
He stares into the middle distance, lost in memory.

"Leaving was...it was like dawn. Like waking up, slowly, and then all at once. I went out about the city, and I saw the world. I witnessed beauty, and horror; loveliness, and ugliness. I feel like I lived an entire lifetime out there. Fell in love, broke my heart. Almost died. Almost lived. And then I... I tried to come back home. I really did. I'm so sorry, I really did try to come back home."

Adelinde reaches for him with soft eyes and flour on her hands. "But you did, you came back to us—"

"No." There is a quiet certainty in his voice. "No, I don't think I did."

He looks at her, eyes flat and hollow. "I don't think I can ever come home again."

Adelinde steps forward to pull him into a careful hug and for a moment it's like childhood all over again; when he and Kae would come running back in after a hard day's work of mischief, and Adelinde would hand out snacks like favors and all was well.

Diluc tries to stay here, with her, but he knows his hands are too cold and he hasn't really felt safe since before he was eighteen years young and the flour dusts over them both.

"I'm sorry," Diluc mumbles into her shoulder. "I'm still doing this wrong, aren't I? Even before I left I was making things hell, fighting with father all the time—Kae even stopped coming home for a while. I never could be what either of them wanted, in the end."

"It's alright." Adelinde gives him a shaky smile, "Master Crepus always had high expectations for you, even—well, I'll not speak ill of the dead. But you did a fine job, Diluc. You did come back to us. You came back to me. That's the important part. The rest of it...it's alright. We'll be alright. And one day we'll look back on this, and we'll be glad we came through it together."

Diluc huffs a not-quite-laugh. "Kaeya said something similar."

"Did he now? Tell him to come around and visit already."

"I will, I will."

She steps out of their impromptu embrace and straightens herself out with characteristic poise. "Now, you're making pile 'em ups, right? I have the meat laid out here, and I see you've already gotten started on the potatoes. You need some more meat on your bones, if you don't mind me saying; you're far too thin..."

Diluc lets himself be steered back into cooking and being mothered.

Kaeya wonders idly if there's a god of dreams who he's somehow offended as he watches a man with green hair and slit gold eyes pour over a pile of painstakingly reassembled notes. A white snake rests against his collarbone. Is that normal? Is there a place on Teyvat where live-snake-scarves are just the latest fashion?

The sheets of writing he sifts through look like they've been attacked by at least three different elements, singed and waterlogged and torn.

"I'm afraid these appear to fall outside of my areas of expertise; they're only tangentially concerned with medical science. You may have better luck in Sumeru with a scholar who specializes in Visions, Miss Ravel."

The second person, a woman with long black hair slumped over a bowl of some sort of fruit soup, sighs. Red peeks through the roots of her hair.

"It's Délice nowadays," she says with a pitch-perfect Fontaine accent. "And I'm pretty sure I've already read everything the Akademiya has on Visions and Delusions the last time I was there, Baizhu."

The snake (?!) hisses a sibilant laugh. "You shed your names and faces faster than I shed my skin."

The woman frowns, red eyes shining. "Occupational hazard, I'm afraid."

"My apologies that I can't be of more help." The man (Baizhu?) collects the papers into a neat pile and moves to slide them towards her.

"Keep them. It's not the kind of immortality you're after, but it's more likely to be useful to you and Qiqi than to me at this point."

"Maybe avoid Hu Tao on your way out of the city," the snake advises dryly.

Baizhu takes the papers back, face sobering. The white snake bows its head. "I really am sorry I can't do more for you. Have my well wishes, and the best of luck."

"I think I rather definitively ran out of luck quite some time ago," she answers, wry.

"Diluc, it's me or the bird."

"Bird it is."

Kaeya squawks in outrage. Diluc doesn't even glance up from where he's crooning at Matu. She preens, perched on his forearm.

Kaeya swears: falcon or not, Matu just shot him a smug look.

"I'm eating the last skewer," he announces. These bastards don't deserve his fruity skewers. He reaches over from where he's sprawled on the grass and rifles through the bottom of the picnic basket, excavating past the leftover pile 'em ups and extra sandwiches Adelinde packed. Ah, jackpot. Kaeya shoves the last skewer into his mouth and munches petulantly.

Diluc cuts a dramatic silhouette as the dying light of sunset paints everything in Wolvendom a gloriously saturated orange. He flings his arm up and Matu leaps into flight, circling in lazy arcs above them. The edges of the horizon catch a dark, navy blue, and the beginnings of stars start to peek out of the haze. It's an evening as perfect as a rose.

Diluc says something, too low for him to catch and snatched away by the wind.

"Hmm?"

"It's nothing."

Kaeya jabs him with the skewer stick. Diluc bats it away half-heartedly. "It's—I was just saying. The sunset, it's...nice. Very lovely."

"Careful there, brother mine, you'll put Mondstadt's bards out of work with poetry like that."

Diluc throws a grape at him.

Kaeya catches it perfectly in his mouth.

He turns back to his skewer, victorious—

—Matu swoops down and snatches the last piece out of his hands. She lands away on a high branch and starts tearing into the last chunks on the stick with relish.

Kaeya gapes at the sheer insult of such a move. The audacity. Why do animals always take Diluc's side over his?!

Diluc bursts into laughter.

It's so sudden that even he looks surprised, a sound so unexpectedly carefree and young and Kaeya realizes that this is the first time he has heard his brother laugh in four years. Hell, maybe even longer: it was getting grim around the house even before the end.

Diluc looks up, eyes searching the sky for constellations, still smiling. "I'm going to miss this."

Kaeya opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say anything Diluc knocks his head against his shoulder, gently, the way he used to when they were kids. Is this a Mondstadt thing? Kaeya remembers asking. No, that's just Diluc, father had laughed. It means he likes you.

Kaeya swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. He hadn't realized the small idiosyncrasies he'd forgotten, such as affectionate headbutts that his brother had apparently never really grown out of.

Carefully, slow and telegraphed, Kaeya pulls him in for a one-armed side hug. To his mild surprise, Diluc lets him. His brother is oddly cold, especially since Diluc has always run warm with his pyro element, less solid than he expected under the coat.

They sit there together, curled up on the grass, watching the sky.

Kaeya breathes in the smell of smoke and dandelions, and tries to etch this moment into his memory forever.

Oh. It's a dream.

The Diluc in the dream hunches, snarling in the snow, over the—well, it's a corpse now. The Delusion's chains writhe around him like smoke, unfurling in a motion almost reminiscent of wings.

Diluc sighs a little. Sometimes he wonders if he didn't lose some part of his soul in cold Snezhnaya, forever buried under snow.

(He doesn't wonder. He knows. It wasn't just Snezhnaya in the end, anyway. Not really. It was lost on Mondstadt's own streets first—but no matter.)

A branch snaps in the distance, and flash of blue motion catches his eye through the frosted trees. Diluc instantly ducks back, out of sight.

Diluc-of-the-dream snaps towards the sound, chains cracking taunt as they whirl around him, blades framing his glare like talons. He barely looks like himself, drenched in blood and shadow. He barely looks human at all. He can almost feel the phantom pain of the Delusion burning against the back of his left hand.
There's the sound of a sharp inhale from where the motion came from.

The sunrise spills over the snow, in a shade so violently red that Diluc instinctively moves to blink the blood out of his eyes. The light pools in great wells, like wounds in the earth itself.

He doesn't care to look too closely at the detritus scattered around the clearing, at the things that are no longer bodies but might have once been the parts that comprised one.

Instead, he leans back against a tree and stares into daybreak scraped across the sky like a wound. It could be peaceful here, he thinks. Or something like that, if you didn't look at the rest of the scene.

He closes his eyes. A quiet, red peace.
If only.

It's his first time coming to father's grave.

It almost feels like there should be more protest, or something. Someone ought to be throwing mud at his head right now and calling him a rotten, heartless son.

Instead, the graveyard is solemn and silent, as graveyards should be.

The headstone is simple, grey and neat, laid out next to his mother's.
Hers reads, Whence the flow of daylight comes; his finishes, Forget not whence thou came.

Diluc lays down the flowers he brought. The cecilias are a stark, pale white against the dark earth.

...This was a stupid idea. He has nothing to say here, not anymore. Not yet. His chest aches, empty. The cold makes his entire body feel bruised, like an open wound.
Mist wreathes around the gravestones, listless in the colorless light ere morning. Stripped black tree trunks stand like sentinels midst the close-cropped grass, lightly frosted over by the night season's chill.

Diluc is so busy ignoring the ghosts here (two particular ghosts here, staring at him with hollowed eyes) that he almost misses the crunch of footsteps coming up the gravel path. He turns.

Kaeya looks oddly washed out in the fog. His characteristic blues are leeched away in the grey. It gives him a somber look, makes him seem older than he is. "Elzer said you'd be here."

Diluc doesn't reply. Speaking suddenly seems like an impossibly heavy task.

Kaeya watches him silently. He hesitates, then ventures, "Next year, on your birthday, maybe we can come together?"

(Next year.)

"No." The word tears itself out of Diluc's throat, harsher than he would like, nearly snarled.

Kaeya's countenance doesn't betray anything, casual as ever, but Diluc winces at himself anyway. He knows how deeply that probably hurt his brother because he's not an idiot; even the most emotionally well-adjusted person in all of Teyvat couldn't have taken that response well.
That's how it's always been: Kaeya reads Diluc's tells, Diluc intuits what Kaeya conspicuously doesn't say.

He rubs at his eyes, ignoring the way Kaeya's eye jumps to the back of his left hand for just a split-second. Ignores the murmuring behind him trying to resolve into a voice, and speaks over it.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—your company isn't the issue, not at all. I just—I don't plan on staying in Mondstadt for that long."

He shrugs off the spectral hand on his shoulder. Kaeya frowns at the motion, the picture-perfect image of gentle care. "How long are you planning to stay?"

"Not much longer now."

The first rays of sunrise begin fading in between the tree trunks. The mist slowly draws into a lovely pale gold, arcs of iridescence outlining the headstones, shadows deepening into a heavy blue.

Kaeya looks at him, really looks at him, one eye shining.
Something is narrowing, slowly, behind his expression.

"...Where exactly are you going, Diluc?"

Diluc bites down the impossible, mean urge to smile. Finally, someone asking the right questions. Ever-reliable Captain Kaeya.

Movement flickers at the corner of his eye. "Away."

The way Kaeya doesn't flinch is so emphatic that it's far more telling than if he had.
He waits to see if Kaeya will complete their little recitation.

When he doesn't, Diluc nods and brushes past him, heading back down the little gravel way.
He lets himself disappear into the dawn-flecked fog.

It's...oddly disorienting, seeing Diluc in Favonius HQ again. It's as though Kaeya was looking at three mirror images laid over each other: Diluc-at-fifteen all smiles and pride, striding down the hall with blithely confident steps; Diluc-at-seventeen looking increasingly hounded and clipped, frowning around corners; and now, his brother, a pale-faced ghost padding down corridors without even deigning to leave the sound of footfalls.

Maybe this was a bad idea. He's not sure how much Jean was privy to in those last days before the end, when the look in Diluc's eyes had turned from proud to trapped and Favonius Headquarters had gone from home to birdcage.

Well, too late to back out now. Kaeya fixes his most charming smile onto his face and hands Diluc a cup.
Diluc takes it and pauses when he sees what it is.

"I know you don't function without coffee, brother dearest, so do drink that before you start swinging a claymore around."

Diluc takes a sip, and some faint expression of surprise flickers across his face. "It's the same as before. With milk and sugar. You remembered."

"Entirely too much milk and sugar," Kaeya corrects. "And of course I remembered, you and Jean were practically addicted to the stuff. I could start a coffee shop with the barista skills I picked up chasing after you two."

"...Thank you." Diluc drinks his coffee with the focused gravitas of a surgeon about to make the first cut of an operation.

Kaeya blinks, nonplussed. He certainly has a very strange brother.

He frowns as he looks closer.

"Are you sure you should be here, by the way? No offense, but you look—sick." He looks kind of terrible, to be honest. Like someone who hasn't slept in three days.

Diluc brushes him off. "Jean asked me to come."

"Jean wouldn't want you to keel over in the middle of the training grounds."

"It's nothing so dramatic; I'll be fine."

The reassurance isn't particularly convincing to Kaeya, who grew up with Diluc "Terminal Workaholic Idiot" Ragnvindr. But his chance to press is cut off as Jean strides into the room and the knights snap to attention.

The survey team of knights borrowed from Eula's reconnaissance division are particularly eager to impress under the combined eyes of the Acting Grand Master, a captain, and the esteemed Master Ragnvindr. They put on quite the excellent showing, armor gleaming in the sun.
Jean divides them into rotating sparring partners, though thankfully she has the presence of mind not to pair Kaeya and Diluc at any point. The three of them call out corrections, demonstrate forms, offer encouragement—well, admittedly it's mostly Jean and Kaeya doing that; Diluc seems to have a very hands-on method of teaching that consists mostly of beating better situational awareness into his pupils.

Diluc's fighting style has changed, Kaeya notices. It's become ruthless, an economical viciousness. Where he would have once gone for disarmament, he now aims for the throat. It's also deviated heavily from the Favonius bladework style; Kaeya can spot the quick footwork characteristic of Fontainian dueling, and at one point he drops into a lunging sweep favored by Liyuen mercenaries. No one lasts long against him.

And...Kaeya frowns. Something's missing. He watches as Diluc slams the flat of his claymore into Leon's chest, sending him soundly to the ground.

(Watch your left, and don't overcommit on the thrust.)

(Agh...Yes, Master Ragnvindr...)

(...Can you get up?)

(...)

(...In a minute...)

—Oh.

He's not using his Vision.

Diluc used to fling fire around like it was going out of style. Now he holds it back, and only belatedly uses it in calculated flourishes. And never even remotely in Kaeya's vicinity.

It's this distraction that trips Kaeya up in the end, and Anna catches him off guard with a solid right hook that sends him careening sideways into Felix. That puts them both into the path of Mika's polearm, and Kaeya internally winces because that kid has a mean swing. He braces for the impact—

—and suddenly Diluc is there, hauling both of them back by the scruff of their necks as three black chains manifest ex nihilo to catch the shaft of the spear mid-swing.

The chains dissipate as Mika pulls back his polearm, and Anna hurries over to help them both up, apologizing profusely. Kaeya waves her off. His ears ring.

(Woah! How'd you do that, Master Diluc?)

(...Trick I picked up from a catalyst user in Natlan.)

The rest of training blurs by under Kaeya's notice.

Kaeya catches Diluc by the shoulder as the matches wind down. He ignores Jean's searching gaze as people finish off with stretches and start trickling back to their assorted duties.

He pulls them both into an empty office, out of sight.

"What the fuck was that?" he hisses.

"What do you mean?"

"The—that was a Delusion."

"...Yes?" He sounds uninterested. Bored, even.

Kaeya feels like he's losing his mind. "That's fa—Crepus's. That Delusion. The one you have right now?"
He stares at the back of Diluc's left hand. Under the glove? No, wearing two gloves would be too bulky, and also stupid.

"Yes," Diluc tilts his head dispassionately, "is there a problem with that?"

Kaeya stares at him.

There is a deep, dear part of him that wants to grab Diluc by the shoulders and shake.

Unfortunately, there is a larger part of him that recognizes that such an act would not be very helpful. (It's probably just a coincidence that that part sounds a lot like Jean.)

He closes his eye.

"Diluc," he says delicately, "my wonderful, very intelligent brother. I hope it is self-evident why I would find myself concerned in these circumstances."

"It's not a concern." Diluc pauses. "Not anymore."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

Diluc shifts. "I fail to see how this is any of your business, Kaeya."

"How this is—" your business used to be my business "—how the fuck is this not my business?" A bitter, helpless frustration claws up the back of his throat. He forces a chuckle. "Making bad decisions is my thing, Diluc, you can't just go stealing my turf like that."

"No, it's," Diluc huffs out a breath and frowns, just the slightest furrow of his eyebrows, but by the Archons if it isn't the most Kaeya's seen his face move this entire conversation. "I know this sounds reckless. Irresponsible. But it really is alright."

"Diluc." Kaeya looks at him, and in that moment he can feel the full distance between them, all four years and uncountable number of miles long. For the first time, Kaeya really, actually feels like he's talking to a stranger.

Diluc crosses his arms, the barest edges of—irritation?—creeping into his voice. "Look, I've used it for four years and I've been fine. I know what I'm doing. Would you please just trust me for once?"

"Oh, like you have any right to talk to me about—" Kaeya shuts his jaw with a click.

Diluc freezes.

The silence that descends upon them both is deafening.

"...I'm sorry."

"No, it's..." Diluc laughs, a caustic and humorless thing. "It's true. You're right."

Kaeya purses his lips. Fuck. He tries to soften his tone. "I'm just worried about you, Diluc. I don't understand how you can—you're using the same Delusion that killed father—"

"—The Delusion didn't kill him, I did." Diluc snaps.

For a single moment the mask cracks hard, and his voice is nothing but a raw, open wound of fury and grief, a forest fire uncontrolled. For a single moment—

—dark blue and watercolor blood. The rain pounds against his shoulderblades—

Diluc drops his head back and closes his eyes, face slowly sinking back into that unbreakable composure that Kaeya's really starting to hate.

His next words are measured. Slow. "If you absolutely must know."

He straightens back up and fixes his gaze into a death glare at the floor.

"As close as I can figure, according to my research in Sumeru and...elsewhere," he stares intently at the corner of the carpet, not meeting Kaeya's eye.

"I think the reason I can use the Delusion without backlash is because I—because I killed the previous holder. It recognizes my right to wield it, so to speak."

Diluc is glaring at the carpet so intently that Kaeya's surprised it doesn't spontaneously catch fire.

Actually, scratch that: pyro user. The carpet really is smoldering. Kaeya hurriedly ices it over.

"Is that answer satisfactory, Captain Kaeya?" Diluc asks, acidic. He straightens up.

"Diluc—" Kaeya tries, but his brother only brushes past him and out the door.

The door doesn't even do him the courtesy of slamming shut.

Kaeya's not sure how long he stands there for. He's still there when Jean finds him, worry obvious on her face. "Kaeya! There you are."

She glances around. "Where's Diluc?"

Kaeya sighs, and starts to reassemble himself. "He left already."

She frowns. "Really? How in the world did I miss him—Nevermind." Jean takes in his appearance. "Are you okay?"

"Perfectly fine, Grand Master," He shoots her his best Worry Not, Civilian! smile. "Just had a small disagreement with Diluc."

That was objectively the wrong thing to say, because the last time Kaeya told her he had a minor disagreement with Diluc he showed up with burns on her doorstep and Diluc dropped off the face of Teyvat for four years straight. Judging from the look on her face, she's remembering the same thing.

"No, wait, it really was a minor disagreement this time," he hurriedly reassures her, hoping that it's actually true.

Jean searches his face. Apparently finding whatever she sees there satisfactory, she pulls out a chair and shoots him her patented we are going to talk about this like mature adults or so help me Barbatos look.
After a beat, Kaeya accepts his fate and follows. "What happened?"

He sighs. "I was just worried about Diluc. He..."

Diluc has, despite everything, kept Kaeya's secret for four years and counting. Well, what's one more lie. "He's been looking a bit under the weather lately, and I was concerned. I may have...accidentally brought up some painful memories of Crepus, and, well..."

He motions at the door.

Jean pats him on the arm. It's a bit awkward, but it's sincere.

"I just. I wish we could go back to the way things were before. We both apologized, but somehow it doesn't feel like enough."

"You never did tell me what went down between you two," Jean says, carefully.

Kaeya winces. "Suffice to say...well, maybe apologies really aren't enough. Maybe nothing ever will be."

Jean hums consideringly.

"Are you sure you apologized for the right thing?"

"...No. No, I definitely didn't. Diluc did, but...I don't think. It would end well."

"Well, that would be a good place to start. It's only a good apology if you recognize what you actually did wrong to hurt the other. And I find that in many cases, the followup is just as important as the apology itself. A lot of times, the real pain is in the breaking of trust. And trust is far harder to rebuild than with just a few words."

Kaeya glances at Jean across the table. Her brow is slightly furrowed in concentration, a tell she still hasn't kicked from when they were kids.

"Archons, Jean. When did you get so wise?"

"Someone had to do it, and you certainly weren't going to."

He gasps in mock offense. "Hey, I resemble that remark!"

Jean cracks a smile at his antics. Her gaze drifts away.

"Diluc has been...different. Well, I suppose that's only to be expected, for someone to change after so long away."

Kaeya sobers quickly. "Yeah. He has."

"He used to be..." She looks rueful. "For lack of a better word, he used to be happy."

He splutters. "Dear gods Jean, you sure don't mince your words."

"Ah, I meant like—oh you know what I mean. He didn't used to be this...stoic. And he apologized to me, the other day. For leaving. I didn't expect him to swallow his pride so quickly." She shakes her head. "Though I wish it had sounded more like an apology, and less like a goodbye."

He hesitates. Something gnaws at the back of his mind. "Has Diluc mentioned to you that he's leaving soon?"

"Yes, actually. It's a shame. I'll miss him when he goes."

"Did he say anything about where he'll be going?"

"No? I assumed..." she frowns. "Well, I suppose I assumed he must have gotten up to some business in his time away that needed his attention."

"I see."

"Why do you ask?" She looks at him curiously.

"...Just wondering."

"You shouldn't have left at all! That's not what a big brother is supposed to do."

"No, I shouldn't have. But there's no way to undo the past."

Child-Diluc huffs, arms crossed and cheeks red with youthful fury. His hair bristles like a fluffed-up owl from the sheer force of his passion.

"Then you definitely can't leave Kae alone again! He'll be sad! He's going to do that—that thing, where he acts like he's okay, but you know he's really not and you have to give him lots of hugs until it's better!"

Diluc rubs at his temples. The sunlight slanting through the meadow of dandelions is very idyllic, but it's also making his head hurt. Why the hell did his dreams have self pvp mode enabled? "I don't think I get to choose whether or not I go, kid."

"Of course you do! You always have a choice." Child-Diluc stares at him with absolute conviction shining in his eyes. The wind ruffles his hair, as though taking his side.

Dear Barbatos he used to be a stubborn child.

"Where did you even come from?" he demands, exasperated. Be it that he could dream without any visitors for once.

Small-Diluc kicks his grass-stained feet against the dirt. "Kae gave me back to you, remember?"

Huh. That...makes sense, actually.

Diluc frowns. "In that case, you should understand. There's no way out of this for us, not anymore."

"You don't know that," Kid-Diluc pouts. "Wasn't there the...um..."

He pouts harder. "Remember for me?"

What? "What?"

"The girl that you can remember, the one with the green doctor."

Girl with the...? "Qiqi?"

"Yeah! She didn't leave."

"Qiqi's a jiangshi, that's different. I don't even know where our body is." And it's definitely not in one piece.

Child—or maybe, Diluc realizes, specifically ten-years-old Diluc waves his hands emphatically. "That's not the point! Ahh, you're such an adult now."

"Well, I can't argue with that one."

"The details aren't important! The point is that it's possible to stay, so you just have to do it anywayses!"

"Anywayses isn't a word. And that's...really not how the world works. We should already know that by now."

"No, you know that." Diluc-at-ten looks at him, gaze suddenly oddly piercing. "My job is to never know that, and to do it anyways—anyway."

Diluc finds himself looking away first, despite himself.

"Besides, you said you would stay. You promised."

"...That I did."

"Then that's that." Small-Diluc nods decisively, as though the matter is settled.

He hops to his feet, and starts spinning in little circles on the grass, humming to himself. The song is bone-achingly familiar, somehow.

Diluc sits down onto the grass, in lieu of anything else to do. Dandelion fluff swirls into the air like ash.

"What song is that?"

Small-Diluc looks at him, surprised. "You don't remember?"

"...Remember for me?"

"It's the one we would play together with Kaeya! The duet. I think my fingers still hurt from practicing it so much..."

Oh, that's right. Diluc blinks, momentarily dragged back to ivory keys and violin strings. Though eventually Kaeya had switched to playing trumpet, and that was an entirely different brand of noise.

"Ooh! You guys should play again."

"I highly doubt he would want to."

Mini-Diluc scrunches his face up, bulldozing ahead. "He still sounds kinda bad on trumpet, but he probably remembers piano, right?"

"How would you even know that?"

"I told you, I was there! And the piano is still upstairs in the winery. Oh yeah, we can totally make this work." He beams, practically vibrating with excitement.

"I don't know if Adelinde would have even kept my violin—"

"Of course she would! I think I saw the case in the storage closet the other day, actually..."

Diluc puts his head in his hands. "How the fuck can I be more observant than myself?"

Mini-Diluc gasps, outraged. "Language!"

Diluc sighs. He flops back. The sky is a dreamy blue; fitting.

"...I stormed out on Kaeya the other day. Well, I guess you probably saw it, right?"

"Mhm." Child-Diluc plops down next to him and picks at the grass. "He's just worried about us, you know? You know how Kae gets when he's worried."

"Yeah. I should apologize. Again," he adds, wry. "But either way, I don't think he'll want much to do with me for a while. I wouldn't even know how to begin asking him about music."

Vision-Diluc rolls his eyes. "Grown ups can be really dumb sometimes. Just ask him right now."

"...What?"

—And Kaeya flinches awake to his desk.

Someone, most likely Noelle, has tucked a throw blanket over his shoulders. Balmy afternoon light filters in through the cracks between his window curtains.

...My trumpet skills are not that bad, Kaeya thinks, slightly hysterically.

What a... Strange. Dream.

He scrubs a hand over his face. That was...what the fuck was that? Kaeya really needs to stop falling asleep at work. Or at all. Ever.

Diluc is fine. His brother is fine, and Kaeya's just getting stress dreams because he's worried and their last conversation ended on a sour note.

He came back. Despite everything, Diluc came back, and Kaeya hasn't lost him. Not again. Not already. Not yet.

Mind and worries firmly compartmentalized, Kaeya turns back to his work. He ignores the feeling in his gut and starts scanning through the report at the top of the pile.

...He grabs the report and tracks down Miles to the break room.

"Hey Miles," he greets, and waves the paper at him. "What the fuck?"

Miles looks confusedly at him for a second, before realization dawns on his face. "Oh, that's the questioning for the Fatui agent I brought in, isn't it? Yeah, that was a weird one."

"Why do I have three pages of a Fatui ghost story on my desk?"

"It's what the agent told us when we asked them about the incident," Miles shrugged.

"Miles, this report says the vigilante 'melted out of the shadows accompanied by the rattling of ghostly chains.'"

"I mean, they were probably drunk."

"'The Darkfall Hunter,' who attacks wayward encampments and lone operatives in the dark before morning?" Kaeya squints at the paper. "Great. Apparently Mondstadt is haunted by a Snezhnayan urban legend now."

"Well, a vengeful spirit who drives away Fatui isn't the worst thing for us to be haunted by..."

"And I'm sure that has nothing to do with why you've named the vigilante the 'Darknight Hero?'"

"Actually, that was Huffman's idea."

"Your willingness to throw your compatriots under the carriage has been noted."

"Thus is the price of doing business," Miles muses, nodding sagely.

"I should have Jean fire the lot of you," Kaeya grumbles.

His own instincts are whispering something to him, but just this once he ignores them. Just this once.

His walk home is interrupted when Matu swoops down majestically directly in front of his face. Thankfully, she lands on a nearby branch instead of on his arm; not everyone wears falconry-grade gloves all of the time, Diluc.

She drops a thin scroll of paper into his hand.

Somehow, he's not really surprised when he reads it.

Kaeya watches from where he's seated at the piano as Diluc picks up the violin.

He pulls off his gloves with obvious reluctance. His hands are startlingly pale, a shock of white against the neck of the violin. Kaeya catches a glimpse of a deep, winding scar across the back of his left hand, before Diluc turns it out of sight.

Kaeya rests his hands against the piano keys, the motion still achingly familiar after all this time. Experimentally, he plays a few notes as Diluc applies rosin to his bow.

"Tuning?"

"Right." Kaeya's honestly surprised he still knows where A is offhand. It's a testament to their tutors, and Mondstadt's borderline obsessive love of music. The sound of Diluc's violin wobbles rather violently against the piano, and he grumbles as he stops to fiddle with the pegs.

"Flat, brother dearest."

"I know. Again?"

Kaeya obliges. This time, Diluc settles into tune, and for a moment the note rings out perfectly.

They run through the twelve major scales together. Kaeya fumbles a few arpeggios, Diluc screeches slightly off a few high notes, but it's much better than Kaeya was expecting.
It really does feel like rehearsing together, the way they used to, back when they insisted everything they play be a duet.

Diluc twirls his wrist in a quick stretch. "Ready?"

Kaeya nods, "One, two, three..."

The soft piano chords pulse in a steady rhythm for a few measures. Three, four... Diluc breathes in, and starts playing. His tone isn't as bad as he'd feared, notes floating comfortably over the piano.

The melody sings comfortably beneath his fingers, strings humming, and something in him unravels just a bit. The violin winds through a lovely phrase, and it takes him a few bars to notice what's wrong.

Kaeya's playing very understatedly, carefully nestled beneath Diluc's line. Which could be fine for an accompaniment, but this is a duet. Diluc frowns and lowers his volume, but Kaeya just matches his dynamics. Even when the harmony passes to violin, Kaeya's piano barely murmurs its notes. Diluc tries to step out of the lead, but Kaeya only follows, a quiet shadow in Diluc's wake.

Well, if you're going to be like that...

Diluc shifts his weight, notes suddenly rising to forte—

—and flings them into a much faster allegro, clipping his notes into biting staccato chirps that are decidedly not in the score. Kaeya mangles his next few bars, fingers slipping as he struggles with the sudden tempo change.

"Diluc, the fuck?" he hisses.

Kaeya drops a measure to catch up, hands flying over the keyboard. Diluc ignores him, plucking merrily away at 8th notes that were definitely not pizzicato the last time Kaeya checked. The violin drags them into a dizzying series of 32nd note runs as Kaeya wings through his part at a faster tempo then he's ever taken it. His fingers slip, flickering against the wrong keys. Son of a—

Kaeya improvises a set of heavy piano chords and starts pounding them over the violin line. He drags them into a dramatic rallentando, slowing them until they practically slam to a stop in a fermata. Diluc follows him down and rolls into a fluttering trill on the last chord.

—For exactly four beats, and then he's back to sawing wildly at the strings in a furious accelerando. The violin wails madly as Kaeya chases after his brother.

Piano has the rhythm, and Kaeya takes advantage by skipping them into a swing beat. Diluc stumbles at that, caught flat-footed and off-beat. Kaeya has three bars of peace before Diluc suddenly takes them into a key change—and oh fuck you that's C major isn't it you bastard.

Violin rests for five measures, and Kaeya takes the opportunity to snatch the melody back onto piano with a vengeance. Diluc allows himself a self-satisfied grin and settles into the harmony, long humming tones sinking beneath the bright fluttering notes of the piano.

For a moment, he just listens to his brother playing piano again.

Kaeya passes the melody back to him with a palpable caution, and this time Diluc plays it as written. Their parts sing together, intertwined into a proper duet at last. There really isn't anything quite like the absolute synchronicity of being in tune and time with another musician. Kaeya dances through a particularly complicated phrase beneath the arcing voice of the violin, and Diluc lets himself slip into the music. I'm going to miss this.

Kaeya closes his eyes, relying on the muscle memory in his hands. The music soars beneath his fingers, but a quiet dread holds his heart as they round towards the end of the song.

He loops them back into a refrain, and Diluc indulges him, following on violin. Kaeya retreads the same measures with even more flourishes and tacked-on grace notes. He finds himself slowing the tempo as they approach the ending. Diluc tries to pull them into the final chord, but Kaeya walks them back into another repetition.

Diluc starts petulantly holding whole notes instead of playing his melody lines in the most melodramatic vibrato Kaeya's ever heard. But a paralyzing, cold fear that he tells himself is irrational grips Kaeya at the thought of the song ending.

Diluc lifts off of his note. He weaves into a simple harmony, and lets his brother take the lead. The song can't go on forever.

Not forever, Kaeya thinks, but it doesn't have to end right now.

He pushes them through a final rendition, this time simple and clean, as written. The way they used to play it the first time they learned it, all those years ago. When father was still alive, and Diluc was still happy, and Kaeya was still guiltless.

The last note rings out gently against the silence.

Kaeya lifts his hands off the piano keys. They sit in the quiet for a moment.

He turns to Diluc, but the words die in his throat.

"Your fingers are bleeding," Kaeya says, alarmed. "Let me see—"

He hurries over. Diluc's hands are ice cold, and his wrists are uncomfortably thin without the cover of his gloves. The scar on the back of his hand stretches, taunt. His skin is brittle; Kaeya wipes off the blood with a handkerchief, careful. "Ah, I must've gotten a cut. It's fine."

Kaeya makes a noise of disagreement. The brilliant red makes Diluc's fingers look skeletal. Something bothers him, in the back of his mind, about this scene...

Diluc pulls his hand away, and gently bumps his forehead against Kaeya's shoulder. "I'm fine, promise."

He sits down onto the piano bench. Kaeya sits next to him. It's a little squished, now that they're not kids anymore. Kaeya remembers when Diluc used to perch on the bench, all bony elbows and wide red eyes peeking over his knees, looking for all the world like some strange owl.

"Hey, Diluc?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think I'm bad at trumpet?"

"..............................No."

Kaeya shoots him a flat look. His brother might be a fantastic actor, but it seems he's still just as bad at direct lies as he's ever been.

"I can't believe you would turn on me like this."

"...Look, it's just a very loud instrument. And you kept blasting it in my face in the morning."

"Well, what else was going to wake you up? You slept like a rock. An extraordinarily tired rock."

"And the only thing you could think of was trumpet to the face?"

"Hey, I tried balancing chairs on you but you just kept sleeping!"

"That—wait, really?"

"Yes! Seven whole chairs, Diluc!"

Diluc snorts. "Alright, fine..."

Kaeya leans into his brother's side. He presses down the dread in his stomach, and stares at the piano keys.

Diluc lays his right hand on the keys, and Kaeya takes the left.

Kaeya starts them on another song, this one simple; one of the first beginner songs they had insisted on learning together.
Diluc on the melody, Kaeya on the harmony, thick as thieves and drunk off the simple joys of childhood, giggling over the piano until Adelinde chased them back to their lessons, singing as though summer would never end...

"Diluc, I..." Kaeya starts, unsure. Did you apologize for the right thing? murmurs Jean, in his mind.

Diluc gives him a questioning look, hand still moving, tracing out the melody.

And Kaeya...doesn't want to ruin this moment. Doesn't want to ruin this. Doesn't want to ruin picnics and sitting at the bar and the black and white keys of a piano. But something in his chest that he can't bear to look at won't let go of the feeling that he's running out of time.

"...Kaeya? Kae, what's wrong?"

Dimly, he realizes he's been repeating the same chord, fingers pressing rigidly against the keys.

"I'm sorry. For—for everything."

"Kae, what?" Diluc pauses, hand hovering, but Kaeya forges ahead in the song. He follows, uncertain.

"It's—all of it. It's my fault. That night. I provoked you into attacking me—"

Diluc's hand spasms into a mess of wrong notes, the piano echoing discordant noise as he stops playing and turns, true heat in his voice.

"No. No. Absolutely not. I am not going to let you blame yourself for being attacked, by me—"

"I didn't know you would leave. I never meant for you to leave. You weren't supposed to go. You were supposed to—" Kaeya cuts himself off, the words choking him.

Silence rings out in the practice room.

"...Supposed to what."

Kaeya tucks his trembling hand back against the bench.

"Kaeya," and isn't that funny, he hasn't heard Diluc's voice shake like that since the night he left, "what was I supposed to do."

The evening light slants against the brushed black wood of the fallboard.

"You were supposed to kill me."

His voice is shockingly level, even to his own ears.

"I told you that night on purpose. I'm not stupid, Diluc. I know there wasn't any worse time than that. An escape, quick and narrow. I just never imagined that even then, you would be too good to do it. I never imagined you would leave me alone instead."

"You thought I would—oh gods you really thought I would—" Diluc reels back, wild, hand scrabbling for purchase along the board.

He leans the full weight of his elbow against the keys, voice breaking with dawning realization beneath the cacophony of notes, "—and you were—and you were right—"

"But I wasn't," he says, serene. It feels as if he's borrowed all of Diluc's new calm, just for a moment. "Even then. Even on the worst night of your life. You were too good. Too good of a brother, of a person. I should have known."

"If it wasn't for your Vision—the light of fucking Celestia itself—"

"As if that could have really stopped you, if you had wanted to. Don't you know? Cryo's weak to fire."

Diluc flinches back, a full body motion, eyes wide with naked horror. His fingers, cuts newly reopened, smear red over the keys.

"That's why," Kaeya continues softly, "this is all my fault. It's my fault that you left. My fault that you had to meet the world so much sooner than you were ready for. Everything—everything: my fault."

"No," Diluc surges forward and grabs his hands with a sudden, open alarm, something like actual terror flashing like lightning over his face. "No no no. You can't—What happened to me after I left wasn't your fault. It's not your fault."

"But it is, it is," Kaeya laughs, slightly manic. Diluc has his hands in a white knuckled grip, blood seeping slowly onto his fingers. He realizes what was bothering him, earlier. Diluc's blood is cold. What a strange, strange detail, that absolutely cannot mean anything at all.

"But then you came back, and it's not too late." It can't be too late.

Diluc pulls him into a fierce hug. Kaeya shivers violently, his brother's blood on his hands.

"None of this is your fault. And even if it was, I would forgive you anyway." Kaeya feels tears running into his hair. Diluc's voice shakes. "Please, Kae. I love you. Please. It's not your fault."

Not forever, but not right now.

"Love you too, 'Luc."