Archive of Our Own

“If it’s as he says, I’m afraid I can’t let you come with me,” Kaeya declares, folding up the letter Adelinde had sent by falcon just that morning and pressing it back into her hands – Diluc’s letter to her, that is, to which she’d attached a desperate little note of her own before passing it on. “Not until I ascertain the reality of the situation for myself.”

She stares down at the papers, a little short of breath, and crumples them seemingly without thinking as she looks up at him with widening eyes and a voice full of unrestrained hope. “But you will bring him back.”

Ah, he hadn’t missed this. These orders that never quite sound like orders, but carry all the same weight regardless. It’s a wonder he ever had any semblance of free will here under her regime. Must be why Diluc took the coward’s way out and tried to keep her at a distance with his nonsensical letter.

But he had to have known it wouldn’t work. He had to have known it would only make Adelinde try to bring him back all the more desperately. And desperate she must be, to have solicited Kaeya’s help. As if the last three years of silence and separation were merely a short-lived, distant memory.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kaeya says with a smile and a lazy salute. “Though I doubt he’ll listen to me any more than you.”

“He will.” With the letter still crumpled in her trembling hand, she takes hold of his shoulder and nods. “He has always listened to you when it mattered most.”

That was the old Diluc.

The old Diluc and the old Kaeya, before Kaeya went and unilaterally fucked it all up and made it so Diluc would never want to hear another word from him ever again.

“You’re right,” Kaeya says, forcing some of the tension to bleed out of his expression to give her the impression that her reassuring words actually did something. “Thanks, Addie.”

It’s almost too easy. That nickname could be a magic spell all on its own with the way it melts her apprehension and causes her to throw her arms around his neck in a fierce hug, the fiercest he’s felt in years.

“Please be careful,” she whispers, cradling the back of his head, before she presses her lips against his cheek in a movement too fleeting to really be called a kiss. “Take care of yourselves.”

He pulls away the second her arms start to slacken and holds her at a respectable distance. “I’ll be in touch within three days. Don’t try anything before then.” Don’t try anything after that either, he wants to add, but such a request would fall on deaf ears. Adelinde’s stubbornness is really only second to Diluc’s – if she makes up her mind to go after him, it’d take the world quite literally falling apart to stop her in her tracks.

Which is why he has to go ahead and figure out what the hell that idiot brother of his is thinking before that happens.

As he turns and heads back down the stairs without another word, the Pyro Vision hanging from a necklace under his shirt starts to burn a little hotter than usual.

During the long trek towards Dragonspine, he almost talks himself out of believing Diluc’s nonsense.

Really, it’s quite ludicrous, especially for someone as unflinchingly honest as Diluc. A curse that kills anything he touches? Really? It’s so absurd it could easily be interpreted as a made-up excuse to keep away anyone who cares about him. That unflinching honesty of his is the only reason any of those people have set aside their reasonable doubts and chosen to believe it in the first place. No one else, not even Kaeya, could have gotten away with such a poorly constructed pretence. Hell, Kaeya would’ve been too embarrassed to even try – he may be an unrepentant liar, but he still has standards.

But it’s right as his anger towards Diluc for lying so blatantly to them all starts to simmer, that he stumbles upon proof to the contrary.

Surrounding the base of Dragonspine, in that space between the pleasant green cliffs of Mondstadt proper and the relentless cold of the icy mountain, are sweeping fields of tall grass that go on for miles all around and sway in perfect time with the ever-blessed winds. It’s always felt somewhat like a warning from Mother Nature: even grass that grows this tall and proud can and will be buried beneath my eternal snow.

Now there’s another warning there that Kaeya’s sure Mother Nature played no part in.

In the distance, just close enough for Kaeya to see, there’s an unnaturally straight, unnaturally dark line cutting right through the grass. Like a scar left by the slash of a searing blade. A scar that hasn’t had time to fade yet.

Kaeya’s feet take him on a detour towards that ominous line before he can remind them that they have other priorities – a long-lost brother deep in the trenches of delusion, for one – but then they bring him to an abrupt halt, and it only takes a cursory glance to realise it might not have been such a detour after all.

The grass is dead. Not burned, not crushed, not cut – just… dead.

Dead, decaying, withered to blackened and shrunken husks of their former glory. Kaeya bends down a little and tentatively stretches out his hand, just to feel the roughness of their dried remains on his skin, but they disintegrate at the slightest touch into ash that slips between his fingers.

Death in its purest form.

There’s blood, too, reddish-brown and dappling the dark line formed by the shrivelled-up remains of the grass – blood, and, as much as Kaeya would love to ignore the conspicuous impressions in the dirt, boot prints.

He sighs and shuts his eyes. The wind scatters more of the ash onto his skin. Some of it is probably stained with blood too.

You never could let me just lie to myself in peace, could you, Luc?

He opens his eyes again, but he can’t see the sweeping fields, the pleasant cliffs, the icy mountain. All he can see is the afterimages of the damned letter that had brought him out here in the first place. He’d only read it once, but that was more than enough for it to brand itself upon his memory forever.

He sees the hastily-formed loops and curves of Diluc’s once-elegant handwriting as he informed Adelinde that the winery was in her and Elzer’s hands now, permanently, and they were free to do with it as they wished. That he was sure Father would be pleased with them no matter what they did because he always trusted them more than anyone else.

He sees how Diluc’s hand must have trembled like the grass all around him as he wrote out a stiff and awkward apology for asking so much of them, for not being able to do more. That he never planned for things to turn out this way, but the curse has left him with no other choice. That he’s staying away for good and living in Dragonspine, at least for now, and that he’s only telling them this so they don’t send a falcon to its death in a pointless search for him.

And Kaeya sees the worst part – without which he might not have bothered with any of this at all, not even at Adelinde’s behest – the part where Diluc wrote, in the shakiest, smallest handwriting Kaeya’s ever seen: Please make sure that Kaeya is taken care of, and, if it’s not too much trouble, if he asks about me, apologise to him on my behalf–

A sudden cold in his legs slices through the spectres of the letter. He looks down. There’s ice blooming out in spindly fractals around his feet, burying all the blood and dust beneath their pure and stainless white.

He crushes the ice in a single stamp of his boots and stalks forward along the line of death.

Kaeya received one – one! – letter from Diluc in three fucking years, despite endless attempts to reach the man with letters of his own because at some point simply staring at a steadily-glowing Vision had lost its edge and he’d needed something more, like an addict, and he’d managed to ride the high of that one fucking letter for about a month or so before he’d realised that was as far as Diluc was willing to go and then he’d plummeted right back to rock bottom, right where he’s always belonged–

And now Diluc wants to get away with never speaking to him again? With letting third parties handle his apologies for him?

It would have been better if this whole situation really had been an excuse, a lie. At least then he could have chalked up Diluc’s cowardice to just that: cowardice. But no. This is real, apparently. This is actually happening. And this is actually what his absolute fucking idiot of a brother thought was the best thing to do in response.

The Vision next to his heart burns away the last of his hesitation.

Diluc, he thinks, curling his hand into a fist until the ice on his nails bites through his glove and into his skin, you’d better have killed yourself with your own stupid curse by the time I find you, because you are so fucking dead.

Dragonspine, contrary to what some might expect of a mountain eternally blanketed in snow, is always changing thanks to its fierce and relentless winds. So most of Diluc’s footprints are gone, for better or for worse – and yet, he’s left such an obvious trail in his wake that he might as well have sent up a distress flare with every step he took.

As Kaeya climbs the mountain, he finds more Fatui corpses strewn along the path than he’s ever seen at any one time, so perhaps he does have something to thank Diluc for when they meet. Just the one thing, of course. And only after beating some sense into him.

The corpses are just like the grass in the field – blackened, withered, shrivelled-up. Undeniably dead, but clearly killed in a most unnatural manner. Kaeya stumbles over the body of one unfortunate Hydrogunner lying too close to the narrow mountain path, and it crumbles instantaneously like a poorly-made snowman. As if it had never been composed of anything but lifeless ash.

What did all these Fatui think in their final moments? Diluc probably didn’t even bother drawing a weapon. He might’ve just materialised behind them with an outstretched hand and a killing glare. Did they realise how doomed they were when they saw him?

…Did it hurt, being killed like that? Was it quick? Or was it a creeping, drawn-out thing – did they feel each individual cell dying off, one by one in unstoppable succession, unable to do anything but watch in helpless horror as what was once their life was stolen from them in a single touch–

He looks away from their now-unmasked faces before he can form an educated guess either way.

The path Diluc’s chosen isn’t entirely unfamiliar to Kaeya, but it’s an unconventional one that pretty much only the Fatui have the requisite experience to navigate with any certainty. Kaeya’s only ever bothered exploring it on his own, because every member of his company would slow him down – and at least half of them would drop out halfway up, because it’s a long, treacherous path leading to one of the highest points inside the mountain. And just before the path’s end, there’s a dark little cave tucked quite out of the way that makes for excellent shelter when the blizzards pick up.

(Not a bad place to die, either, Kaeya had thought, the last time he–)

Diluc always did have annoyingly good instincts when picking expedition routes. No wonder Varka was so quick to assign him to the cavalry all those years ago.

Nothing to do but keep going, then. Catch up to him before he notices the corner he’s backed himself into, and drag him back down before he can escape elsewhere.

It’s not any warmer inside the mountain than it was outside, but at least the wind chill isn’t quite so piercing here. What is piercing, however, is the saturated crimson of the flecks of blood upon blue-white snow, unevenly dotted all along the path leading even higher up towards the summit.

Blood, the essence of life, amidst all this death–

He has to avert his gaze before the sight can freeze him in place along with the mountain’s cold.

Diluc may be able to kill everything he touches now, but that doesn’t mean he’s been made immortal.

Does he have medical supplies with him? If he does, would he even use them? Or have his newfound abilities corrupted him to the point that he no longer cares about his own life–

No, there’s no point in wild speculation when he’s this close to getting answers from the man himself. The path doesn’t go on for much longer. Unless Diluc somehow veered wildly off-course without killing anything and leaving a mark, then he’s very close by. Closer than he’s been in three years.

(Closer than Kaeya ever thought he would be, after everything that happened.)

The high arch of the cave’s opening hasn’t changed one bit since the last time Kaeya was here. He pauses halfway up the sloped path, watching the dark, shadowed entrance appear and disappear behind the mist of his shallow breaths as he steels himself for what lies ahead.

(The last time he was here, he’d been missing this final piece of the puzzle. All that’s left is to see if it fits.)

He clutches at the Pyro Vision through his shirt. It’s hotter than ever – scalding, even – but the cold washing over him now rivals even the mountain’s merciless winter. No Visions can help him here.

Diluc never liked Dragonspine, some long-silent part of him thinks, as if that has any relevance to their current predicament.

Of course he didn’t. The only person you know who does can hardly be called human, a louder, sharper part of him shoots back.

Can a man who kills everything he touches still be called human?

…There’s only one way to find out.

He pauses again just before the entrance, bracing himself with one hand against the icy wall. The shadows are darker than ever now that he’s so close. Not even a flicker of firelight breaks through them. Assuming there is a lit fire in there – assuming Diluc is in there…

Maybe he isn’t, and all this anxiety has been for naught.

Only one way, Kaeya chides himself, and, accompanied by the overture of a strained breath and the thick crunch of snow underfoot, he pushes himself off the wall and steps into the shadows of the cave at last.

For a moment, there’s no movement at all.

But then–

There–

A lit fire at the very back of the cave – a dying fire, obscured by the haunted figure hunched over it.

The figure’s head snaps towards him at breakneck speed. Two blood-red eyes burn bright beyond compare.

He’d almost forgotten how bright his brother’s eyes could be.

He’d missed this.

Only when he registers that unquenchable fire does the reality of the situation finally hit him. When that fire melts the ice that’d been plaguing him since the moment he received that letter this morning – no, since the moment he was cursed with the ice to begin with, three impossibly long years ago – only then does it hit him that he’s seeing his brother in the flesh for the first time in three years.

He could cry. He could scream. He could run right up to the idiot and hug the shit out of him and tell him everything he’d been dying to pour into those letters he’d sent but held back out of fear of losing what little was left of their relationship after he’d burned as much of it as any one person possibly could in a single conversation–

He stands completely still.

Diluc scrambles to his feet–

And all of a sudden the dying fire blazes anew, lighting up the whole cave in dawn-like splendour. Lighting up Diluc’s face so Kaeya can see him, truly, for the first time in far too long.

He drinks up every detail he can like they’re the last drops of a vintage wine. The crimson of his hair, a little darker than Kaeya remembers but no less fiery. His skin, pale and littered with scars both fresh and faded. His clothes, tattered and torn like they’ve been burned, dark as night, with moon-white bandages peeking out from every gap. The countless shadows upon the new, hardened lines of his face, cloying in the way they cling to his gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes–

But underneath it all still lives that fire.

The kind of fire that’s always burned through every one of Kaeya’s plans, that Kaeya will never be able to outrun as long as he lives–

“Kaeya,” Diluc says, solemnly cleaving the silence just as he had three years ago.

It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? To those three years, to that one night that started and ended it all–

Well, for Kaeya, anyway. Obviously Diluc’s had far more going on in that time than he has.

“Long time no see, brother.” Kaeya smiles. He can’t tell if it’s genuine or not, let alone how it comes across.

“Kaeya,” Diluc says again, testing the word like one does a new weapon.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” Kaeya shifts his weight to his other leg and starts to step forward. “Rather cosy for Dragonspine, I must say–”

A rattling chain limned with black fire flies out from nowhere and strikes the snow right in front of him before he can take that step.

“Don’t move,” Diluc growls. “Not a single step closer.”

Kaeya lowers his foot into the blackened, melting snow. “Why?”

Under the roaring of the fire is the rasping of Diluc’s heavy, uneven breaths. When Kaeya pulls his gaze from the wisps of steam around his feet, he finds Diluc with one shoulder raised, canted away from him, a hand outstretched – a half-gloved left hand surrounded by that very same black fire. The lightless flames cast even darker shadows on his face as they curl and coil between his fingers like writhing snakes in time with those uneven breaths.

So that’s what it looks like in action.

The red gem on the back of Diluc’s hand is exactly the same colour as his eyes.

That’s the last thing Father saw, before he…

Gods. Gods – of course Kaeya had known it was Diluc who ran off with the Delusion after that fight, having prised it from Father’s hand while the body was still warm – he’d known all too well, and it’d taken a great deal to persuade Eroch not to include that pesky little detail in the report of Father’s death, to stop him from twisting the story and besmirching the Ragnvindr name any further – but he hadn’t expected Diluc to actually go and use it–

Diluc, does your idiocy know no bounds?

Shouldn’t he know better than anyone else the hell that thing unleashed on their family?

Maybe that’s why you’ve got this curse. If you’re so keen on destroying yourself, why not take everyone else down with you?

But why would he want that–

Why, why, why–

“I can’t– you– just leave, Kaeya.” He waves his Delusion-bearing hand in a decisive gesture of dismissal that sends soot-like sparks flying through the air. “You have to get as far away from here as you can.”

“Why?”

Diluc grits his teeth and growls. “Don’t make me repeat myself–”

“Do me the same courtesy, then.” Kaeya steps forward over the puddle of melted snow with all the authority of a Cavalry Captain. Defiance lifts his chin for him. “Why?”

Diluc cowers for half a second and attempts to back away – but there’s nowhere to go except the still-blazing fire and the icy wall behind him. He rights himself with a sharp breath and a sharper glare at Kaeya, as if he believes the smouldering flames in his eyes will be enough to scare him off.

As if he’s forgotten how poorly that worked out last time.

Kaeya takes another step.

Diluc’s back hits the wall and he gasps with uncharacteristic frailty. “Kaeya– Kae, please–”

We’re doing nicknames now? Dear me, someone’s desperate.

“You have to believe me–”

And reenactments of three years ago, too?

“Because” – Diluc’s pitch continues rising out of control, his eyes going wide and darting around wildly in search of an exit Kaeya won’t permit – “there’s a curse, and I– you can’t–”

“Oh, that?” Kaeya shrugs. “I already know all about it.”

Diluc goes so pale he makes the ice look warm. “What?” he whispers, hoarse – but it echoes loudly off the walls anyway.

“Yeah, Adelinde told me everything.” He’s not sure how much longer this casual facade will hold, so he has to make the most of it while he can. “You do remember telling Adelinde, don’t you? Surely you didn’t expect her to keep it a secret.”

The look in Diluc’s eyes suggests he very much did. Evidently, he never realised that Adelinde’s steadfast loyalty only goes so far – that she’s more loyal to her own ideas of what’s best for Diluc than she is to Diluc himself.

“Then,” Diluc starts again, even hoarser than before, “you already know why–”

“I’m not asking why you thought you had to isolate yourself up here until you dropped dead. I’m asking why you thought any of us would let you get away with it.”

Each of Diluc’s breaths has that gravelly quality which suggests it could be his last. He’s completely backed up against the wall now. The stark contrast between his pitch-black cloak and the blinding white of the ice only highlights his incessant trembling.

The blood-red gem shines brighter.

Diluc’s eyes are trained like a falcon’s on Kaeya’s feet, on the yet-intact snow around them. Just as Kaeya prepares to take another step, Diluc looks up again, throws his still-flaming hand out again, and asks, defeated, “What do you want from me?” He makes it sound like this is some sort of hostage situation. Like he isn’t the one holding himself hostage.

Kaeya holds out his own hand the way Diluc used to when they were children – all those times when Kaeya ran from the winery, swearing he wouldn’t be found, that he’d spare them from himself once and for all… only for Diluc to show up at every one of his carefully-chosen hiding places with an open hand and a reminder of the promise he made the day they officially became brothers.

I’m your big brother now, Diluc had said, his smile brighter than all the stars in the sky combined. So I’ll always be there for you. You’ll never be alone ever again – I promise.

“Do I really need to spell it out for you?” Kaeya says, fighting the urge to curl that open hand into a closed fist and drive it straight into his brother’s nose.

How long do you intend to keep breaking the only promise that ever mattered to me?

He relents when Diluc stubbornly remains silent. “Come with me,” he says, suddenly soft and wavering as the mist around them. “Come back home, and we can all talk about this like adults.”

Dawn Winery still is, and always will be, Diluc’s home. No matter what he’s seen or done, no matter how cursed he may be, he must know that he’ll always belong there–

“No.”

Somehow the single word of denial is a thousand times more infuriating on its own than if it had been accompanied by the catalogue of expletives Diluc would surely love to throw at him right now.

“Don’t be difficult,” Kaeya says, shutting his own catalogue before he can lose any more control of this situation. “You know you can’t stay here forever–”

“And you know why I can’t go with you, so give it up already and get out–”

“Diluc,” Kaeya warns, “I’m giving you one last chance–”

“I’ve given you my answer,” Diluc snarls. “Leave.”

So you’re sticking with being difficult. “Alright then.”

Diluc blinks, and falls out of his fighting stance. “You–”

“Change of topic,” Kaeya says breezily, flashing his sharpest smile. “I’ve had a lot of time to practise, you know, these past three years. Want to see what your little brother’s been up to while you were away?”

“Huh?”

The smile twists into a proud smirk as he throws up his hand behind himself and summons a colossal wall of ice right in front of the cave’s entrance, thick as the walls around the city, rising all the way from the snow-covered ground to the icicle-tipped ceiling in an instant. He doesn’t have to look – the sudden and absolute silence combined with the fresher, sharper cold at his back tells him the cave has been perfectly sealed off. The blazing fire beside Diluc dies.

Diluc’s mouth falls open.

“What, not impressed?” Kaeya laughs without restraint, relishing the way it echoes louder in the now-sealed chamber. “Don’t worry – I’ve got plenty more to show you.”

He’ll knock Diluc out and drag his unconscious body down the mountain if he has to – but he’s not going to sit back and let his brother rot away in here. Not even if that’s what he wants for himself.

Diluc snaps back into his fighting stance quicker than Kaeya can blink. “What do you think you’re–”

“You should know, Diluc, that the only way I’m leaving” – his sword appears in his hand in a flash of golden light – “is if you kill me.”

He doesn’t give Diluc a chance to reply before launching a volley of icy arrows straight at his heart.

Diluc dodges, barely, and throws out his chains – they cut through the ice with a hiss, and the jagged shards evaporate before they can land on his clothes.

“Your reflexes are as sharp as ever,” Kaeya says, laughing again as he closes in on his bewildered brother. “I suppose you’ve been practising too, huh?”

“Kaeya– what’s wrong with you– Kaeya!”

His pleas fall on deliberately deaf ears. Kaeya spares no effort as he throws out more and more of his ice, pride coursing through his veins at the way they cut through the air, the way Diluc is firmly on the back foot, scrambling with his Delusion to keep the ice from touching him. It’s been a while since anyone gave Kaeya a challenge worth rising to. And rise he does – he compacts the snow at his feet into a block of ice and guides it to shoot out of the ground like a pillar and carry him up with it, so he can loom over his idiot of a brother with a more manic smile than ever.

Diluc stares up helplessly at him for a second, his chains falling slack. “You’re insane–!”

“All thanks to you!” Kaeya shouts as he fashions a dense disc of ice in mid-air above his brother and casts it down to plummet several feet and trap Diluc underneath it, maybe crush him just enough to incapacitate him in the process–

Except Diluc manages to block that, too. His fiery chains strike the dead centre of the ice with a raucous clang, and the disc cracks cleanly into several pieces that crash to the ground around his heaving, breathless form.

The Delusion’s chains hit surprisingly hard. Kaeya shouldn’t be surprised, really, considering those things held back the damn Drake.

But Kaeya’s no drake. He’s a mere human – and not one like Diluc, either. Raw strength has never been his thing. It’s not in his bones or in his blood. And he’s gone and trapped himself in a freezing cold arena with the strongest person he knows. A living, breathing harbinger of death.

He grins. Couldn’t have asked for more.

Diluc isn’t content with simply defending anymore. He throws those chains out again towards the base of Kaeya’s icy tower and manages to cut cleanly through that too, forcing Kaeya to leap before he falls back within Diluc’s reach. He pulls together the mist in the air to form stepping stones of ice, determined to maintain his hard-earned high ground.

“Kaeya, I’m serious– quit messing around–” Diluc can hardly get a full sentence out in between his attacks, chains darting towards their target with the speed and precision of vipers. He manages to hit every platform Kaeya makes just milliseconds after Kaeya lands on them.

He narrowly misses crashing face-first into an icicle as he continues darting around above Diluc, only ever pausing to hurl more piercing projectiles towards him. “You first–”

Somehow Diluc manages to get a step ahead of him. A chain breaks through his current platform to wrap vice-like around his ankle and pull him straight down to the ground, and he falls with a strangled shout. His sword flickers out of existence. The snow breaks the fall somewhat, but his joints still howl in protest and his head is pounding, awash with dizziness as he tries to stand–

Not that Diluc was ever going to allow that either. With the chain as leverage, he yanks Kaeya up by the ankle, swings him round at top speed and slams him back-first against the wall without remorse.

Everything goes dark and quiet for a few endless seconds until Kaeya manages to force his eyes open again. There’s a ringing in his ears now, a high, wailing sound pervading his entire being. He chokes on air that seems too cold for him all of a sudden. It tastes like blood.

He tries solidifying the snow beneath him to help him stand again, but his body refuses to cooperate. A whimper escapes him against his will as the full extent of his injuries begins to make itself known. That stabbing pain in his chest – he’s almost certainly cracked a rib or two, or gotten close enough to doing so that he should back off now if he has any interest in surviving this.

(Does he?)

Kaeya doesn’t even realise the chain around his ankle has retreated until it wraps around his wrist instead and tosses him back towards the sealed entrance. It immediately goes taut and holds him there, unaffected by his squirming in its grip.

“You have to leave, damn it,” Diluc growls. He rattles the chain as fresh flames rush along it like breaking waves to shore. “Enough of this already.”

Kaeya’s too numb to feel the heat of the fire even as it licks at his exposed skin. He wheezes. “Only if you come with me–”

“Don’t be stupid!” The chain rattles again. “I can’t– do you have a death wish?!”

Yeah, about that–

Diluc yells something incoherent and lifts Kaeya once more, dangling him like a puppet just far enough above the ground that his toes can’t reach the snow. There’s something feral about Diluc’s wide eyes as he stares him down, the desperation behind them burning brighter than any flame.

While Diluc keeps staring, desperate yet indecisive, Kaeya twists his hand as much as he can and wraps his fingers around the chain in turn. Then he holds his breath and channels all the cold he can muster, all the cold left within him – all of it, down the cursed metal, until bitter frost is racing straight from him to Diluc across the flaming links and extinguishing the fire in an instant–

And then the chain snaps and shatters and crumbles into flakes of brittle, burnt metal that drift to the ground like fresh snow.

Kaeya braces his fall with his aching arms and looks up just in time to see Diluc stumbling back and clutching his own hand, his eyes flicking wildly between the Delusion and Kaeya.

The victory is painfully short-lived – Kaeya hasn’t even managed to kneel before Diluc is yelling again, and his chest tightens with dread when more black fire bursts from that accursed glove and an inky, writhing mess of metal emerges from the fire like some perversion of a phoenix. It lunges across the cave straight towards him, constricting his entire arm this time, threatening to burn it off entirely, condemning it to a more doomed fate than his eye–

So Kaeya does the only thing he can think of doing and pulls right back on the chain.

He still can’t feel the fire’s heat, though he sees the redness on his palms where he’d gotten too bold with it – but he feels Diluc’s fear as keenly as if it were his own when he’s yanked forward, stumbling through the snow and closer to Kaeya, close enough to touch–

He’s flying again. Something cracks as he hits the wall, and he’s not sure if its his ribs or his heart itself.

He groans as the pain forces his eyes open. His vision is too blurry to be useful anymore – all he can make out is a smudge of reddish-black amidst the blinding white, like dried blood under the light of the moon. Diluc is backed up against the wall again, diametrically opposite him. Even as an indistinct blur, his trembling is obvious.

Up against the wall.

Cornered.

So Kaeya just has to–

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” Diluc calls out, choked. “So please, Kaeya– please, Kae, please – just–”

Unfortunately, the feeling isn’t mutual.

With the last of his strength, he lifts his hand one final time, aiming at the bloody blur that is his brother–

And pulls forth the ice from the wall in a flash of light until it surrounds Diluc’s entire body, freezing him in place with only his head exposed.

He thinks he hears Diluc scream. Maybe he should’ve frozen the head too.

Whatever his brother is trying to say ends up drowned out by Kaeya’s own sigh of relief, the persistent high-pitched ringing in his ears, and the shifting of snow as he allows himself to slump against the wall at last.

This would’ve been so much easier if you’d just held still and cooperated.

“Kaeya– Kaeya, stop, what is this?! Let me go, damn it!”

He shuts his eyes and tries to take as many deep breaths as the sharp pain in his chest will permit. Even the thickest sheets of ice over frozen lakes in the dead of winter used to melt as soon as Diluc got near them – so if he hasn’t freed himself from Kaeya’s last-ditch prison yet, then there’s probably nothing to worry about.

Probably. But he should still get up and end this once and for all before Diluc figures out some ingenious escape plan. If Kaeya lets that happen, who knows if he’d be able to track down Diluc again? And he’d certainly never be able to face Adelinde and tell her what happened here.

He’s going down with Diluc, or not at all. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

Standing is an ordeal all on its own. The ice wall is too slippery to function as a proper support, and he nearly falls at least twice before getting back on his feet, but he manages in the end, in spite of his body’s vehement objection.

“No– no, Kaeya, you can’t– don’t come near me!”

“Oh, shut up,” Kaeya mutters under his breath. His head is killing him faster than Diluc ever could. It’s like a hangover, but worse, and those pitiful cries of his name aren’t helping in the slightest.

“Kaeya–”

“First thing you’re going to do when we get out of here,” he says, massaging his chest with a weak groan as he trudges towards Diluc, “is bribe the Church into giving me the nicest room in the infirmary.”

Diluc isn’t even pretending to listen to him. “You have to stop this– Kae, please– you can’t–”

“The one with the big window, and an en-suite bathroom – you had to stay there one time, don’t you remember?”

“Stop fucking around and listen to me–”

“I’m not the one who’s been ‘fucking around’.” Kaeya’s footsteps are heavy as his heartbeats. “I tried the civil route. To talk. You left me no choice. This is all your fault.”

He comes to a stop when Diluc is just within arm’s reach. The gem of the Delusion is still glowing, burning bright with foreboding beneath the thick ice. This restraint might not hold as long as Kaeya hoped – if anyone has the force of will to still command the Delusion while immobilised, to endure this much ice without even a Vision on his side, it’s the man right in front of him. The fact that he hasn’t succumbed to the cold yet is an impressive feat in and of itself.

Not to worry. This will all be over soon enough.

Diluc is breathing hard, almost– no, definitely hyperventilating. His face is practically obscured by opaque clouds of mist from his own condensing breaths; only the ardent light of his eyes breaks through. He’s going to pass out if he keeps this up.

It’s hard not to feel sorry for him when he’s been reduced to begging. Three years wasn’t enough time to dampen Kaeya’s sympathy, apparently. “One last chance, brother. I’ll let you out of here” – he raps his knuckles against the ice right above Diluc’s heart – “if you just promise to come back home with me.”

Diluc jerks his head away, as far from Kaeya’s hand as possible. “I can’t go home – what do you not get about this?” Frost glitters upon his eyelashes. A swollen tear escapes from his wide, desperate eyes, but freezes halfway down his cheek. “Do you want me to kill every living being in Teyvat?! To kill you?!”

…Oh?

Well, if that’s how it is, then there’s only one thing left for him to do. He’s procrastinated long enough.

Offering his brother a thin smile, Kaeya starts to lift his hand towards Diluc’s face.

“No– Kaeya, that’s– you have to stop–” Diluc keeps twisting and pulling away uselessly, but the ice holds firm. Thank Barbatos for that. “You don’t know what you’re doing–”

“Don’t move, Diluc. Let’s just get this over with.”

He shakes his head with unrestrained panic, turning to the side as if that’s any deterrent. “You can’t do this– you’ll die – don’t make me watch you die–”

You were prepared for that once before. “Close your eyes, then.”

“Don’t make me kill you!”

If this works, it works.

And if it doesn’t…

“No– please– nonononono–”

Well, this is as good as it was ever going to get.

“Kaeya– you can’t– Kae–”

Just before the numbed tips of his fingers land upon Diluc’s bone-white cheek, Kaeya draws in a final breath and closes his eyes. All the memories of his brother flash before him – all the dawns and dusks, the nights spent under the stars, the days spent under the sun – all their firsts and lasts, their promises and secrets – all illuminated by Diluc’s fire, burning in the background of every worthwhile moment of his godforsaken life. His blood burns too, pressure building behind his eyelids until he can’t see anything except searing, white-hot flames.

The last thing he hears as his fingers meet flesh is a choked cry of his name–

“KAEYA–!”

…And then he opens his eyes again.

Oh.

He closes and opens his eyes once more for good measure. The world rushes back into focus and cold colour – no white-hot flames threaten to burn away what remains of it. A few more blinks, and the cold crawls back into his head, its icy tendrils unfairly rooting him in reality as if he’d never left.

Part of him is disappointed.

(Naturally.)

But–

But the gentle curve of Diluc’s cheek still fits as perfectly as ever in Kaeya’s palm. More tears have rolled down and turned to sparkling frost at his touch. He scrapes them away with a leisurely brush of his thumb, listening intently as each crystalline particle falls away to join the snow at their feet.

So…

That settles that.

Diluc’s eyes fly open. His pupils are blown wide, blotting out all the incandescent light of his ruby-red irises. He gasps, deafeningly loud in the silence, and even more tears roll down to join the rest in their frozen fate, a couple catching on the trembling, twitching corners of his lips. Kaeya brushes those away too.

Not even a curse can keep us apart, huh?

A proper smile tugs at Kaeya’s own lips – not a smirk, nothing so forced. He laughs to himself somewhat breathlessly and brings up his free hand to cup the other side of Diluc’s face, too, then gently guides it back from its extreme tilt so they’re looking at each other head on. As they should’ve been from the beginning.

Now that they’re so close, Kaeya notices he’s grown ever so slightly taller than his big brother – so he takes full advantage of the new height differential and presses a quick kiss to Diluc’s forehead, laughing softly again at the louder gasp that elicits.

“What’s killing me,” he says, continuing to wipe away the crystallising tears as a strange warmth floods his veins, “is that you haven’t aged a single day since you left. Still as baby-faced as ever.” He squishes Diluc’s cheeks as much as he dares, for emphasis, and hopes that suffices as a cover for his lie. “How’d you manage that, you bastard?”

Diluc blinks slowly, then rapidly, then he stops blinking entirely. His breaths are getting shallower than Kaeya thought possible. “What– you– I– how?”

Oh, Luc… “What was it you said earlier? Something about killing ‘every living being in Teyvat’?” Kaeya tilts his head. “Well. I’m not quite from Teyvat, am I?”

The realisation – reminder, revelation? – only makes Diluc’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his damn skull.

…And I’ve been holding off a curse of my own, too, he remembers at last. It’s alarming how easily he forgets the very reason he was left in this land in the first place. It’s always easy to forget when Diluc is around – Diluc, whose smiles used to so easily convince him that he belonged in Mondstadt, once upon a time – but Diluc doesn’t need to know any of that, doesn’t need to know how little Kaeya had been thinking just now, not when he’s only one skipped breath away from falling unconscious right here in Kaeya’s hands.

He tries for a more reassuring smile, though he’s not sure anything will work at this point, except perhaps knocking Diluc out as originally planned. “Thought you would’ve at least learned by now that no matter how hard you try, you can’t kill me,” he says, laughing to alleviate the accreting tension in his throat.

Diluc breathes as if he’s never learned how to before and he’s figuring it out on the spot. “You– what– Kae–”

“Almost forgot – I brought you a gift. Figured you could use it more than me,” Kaeya blurts out before Diluc can choke on his name yet again. He reaches under the collar of his shirt and undoes the necklace carrying the Pyro Vision. Its protective warmth, in hindsight, might’ve been the only thing that kept him from being incinerated by the Delusion’s fire. “Here.”

As soon as he loops that flimsy chain around Diluc’s neck, the icy prison melts just as violently as it was formed, in a flash of light, with a burst of steam – and for a split-second, a thousand rainbows dance across his vision, across his brother’s face, before he’s forced the shield his eyes from the scalding heat with the backs of his hands.

The newly-freed Diluc sways on the spot for a few moments before dropping to the ground like he’s made of stone.

Kaeya follows him, albeit more elegantly, and cups Diluc’s face again to keep him from collapsing into the snow. His eyes are unfocused, his skin is colder than Kaeya ever remembers it being – and his face is even whiter than before–

“Whoa, whoa – hey, Diluc, stay with me,” Kaeya says, patting Diluc’s cheek. Ice rushes to his fingertips on instinct, and he presses them against the back of Diluc’s neck in what is hopefully a grounding gesture. “Don’t go passing out on me now. Come on.”

Good thing I can still touch you, he thinks to himself. What would you do without me–?

No. He’s not going to imagine that. There’s no point dwelling on things that will never come to pass ever again.

A scant amount of colour seeps back into that wan complexion, but it’s not nearly enough. Diluc shakes his head weakly. “You’re… You’re not…”

Kaeya stamps out the spark of panic that ignites at the way he’s slurring his words. “I’m okay. I’m here. I’ve got you.” He keeps one hand on Diluc’s neck while using the other to take Diluc’s hand and press it against his chest – his beating heart. “I’m alive. Aren’t I?”

He holds his breath unconsciously, waiting for any sign of Diluc’s acknowledgement – any sign that his brother isn’t somehow slipping away from him despite being closer than he has been in years–

That’s when the frigid palm over his heart suddenly warms up, a candle coming to life, and Diluc’s gaze clears again, like lakes in spring when the last vestiges of winter’s ice finally melt. It burns a little, but not in a bad way – a cleansing, purifying, healing warmth. The kind that’s always suited Diluc best.

Diluc retracts his hand like he’s been burnt – but then he’s reaching for Kaeya’s face instead. Kaeya focuses all his efforts on keeping still so as not to scare off his brother as viciously trembling fingers approach his face. Diluc presses his lips tightly together, but he looks like he wants to scream when he finally brushes against Kaeya’s skin, his cheek, just under his eyepatch.

They stay like that for what feels like aeons. Diluc doesn’t allow himself a single breath. The air between them is completely still – dead, one might say – and even Kaeya finds himself holding his breath once again, like the slightest current of air in the wrong direction will whisk this miracle of a moment away. All the while, Diluc’s hand doesn’t stray from his cheek. Frozen by fear. His pulse races faster and louder than all the Knights’ horses combined – every beat reverberates through those ungloved, mercifully-burning fingertips.

“You’re– you’re really… okay,” Diluc whispers.

Kaeya blinks away the offending tears threatening to blur his sight, and nods. He covers Diluc’s hand with his own and leans into his brother’s wary touch. “I’m okay,” he echoes.

Diluc cups his face with both hands, reversing their positions from just a moment ago. “You’re not hurt? Not in pain? Not– not dying?”

Other than a possibly broken rib, and some first-degree burns… “This is the most alive I’ve felt in ages.” It’s not even a lie.

Diluc’s hands fall away from him, hover like fireflies between them – and then, without warning, those hands are being thrown around his neck, clawing at his back, and dragging him down into a hug fierce enough to rival Adelinde’s. So much for their new height differential – he’s back to feeling smaller than ever. But perhaps he shouldn’t have expected to feel bigger than his big brother for long.

“Kaeya,” he whispers, though it’s closer to a sob now, rasping and uneven, “gods, Kae, you idiot– absolute fucking bastard– fuck–”

Only Diluc could get away with swearing like that without raising any doubt about the true depth of the affection behind those words–

“Ow,” Kaeya croaks out as Diluc squeezes him tight, effortlessly crushing his entire upper body with his arms alone, as if Kaeya’s own injuries weren’t already doing a damn good job of that. “Okay, I might actually die if you keep that up–”

“You could’ve died just now – what were you thinking?” But evidently he doesn’t actually want an answer, since he shoves Kaeya’s head against his shoulder and tucks it under his chin to keep him in place and muffle any attempt at coherent conversation. “Why did you have to– what is wrong with you?!”

And only Diluc could jump right from hesitant whispering to furious yelling unimpeded by the emotional whiplash.

Kaeya grapples for purchase on the lapels of Diluc’s coat and manages to wrench himself just enough out of the iron-fisted grip to speak. “Calm down–”

“You came after me,” Diluc snaps, his voice breaking in ways Kaeya never could have imagined. “You knew the risks, the danger – and yet you still– you couldn’t have known you would survive. You didn’t know that, did you?”

The trouble with Diluc is that he swings wildly between not thinking at all and thinking too much all at once. It’s a nightmare to work around. “Never mind that–”

“No– how can I? You don’t understand,” he says between even more choked sobs – and with that, his strength gives out. He slumps back, half-lying in the snow – but he’s still strong enough to pull Kaeya along with him, unbothered by the weight of a grown man cradled upon his chest.

There’s a persistent hissing of steam as the snow around them continues melting, evaporating. As if the indignant heat radiating from every inch of Diluc’s body wasn’t stifling enough.

Kaeya gives up on trying to escape the half-hug, half-chokehold, and instead eases himself into the embrace by returning it, wrapping two hopefully-steady arms around his brother’s shivering torso.

“Don’t cry,” he says, sighing and sagging against him. Diluc’s heartbeat is terribly loud from this position. “I’m not dead.”

Diluc sucks in a shaking breath between his teeth and tangles his fingers in Kaeya’s hair before whispering, like an abandoned child begging for answers from the gods, “Why would you risk it?”

Isn’t it obvious?

A future without you in it isn’t one worth living for.

Can he say that, though? Diluc would surely take it the wrong way.

He fidgets with Diluc’s coat, tracing back and forth over a small patch of worn leather right between his shoulder blades. Then he laughs, self-deprecating. “I guess I internalised one too many of Adelinde’s stories about true love always saving the day.”

A harsh gasp escapes from the back of Diluc’s throat.“This isn’t the time for jokes–”

“I’m not joking.” Kaeya hides his face against Diluc voluntarily this time. “I love you.” The words come out easier than he anticipated, but he still can’t bring himself to check his brother’s reaction. Instead, commanding his voice to stay strong just a little longer, he continues, “So I couldn’t let you suffer on your own. That made it worth the risk.”

Diluc stills, enough for Kaeya to think he may have accidentally frozen him again – but then a heavy tear lands on Kaeya’s skin, so hot it vows to burn him alive.

“Why?” Diluc whispers again, quieter, his voice too feeble to render the single syllable as anything more than a hollow and fractured sound.

It shouldn’t matter why – at least, not between them.

I’ve loved you for so long it’s just an instinct now. I’ve forgotten the reasons why.

And if I tried to look for them, I’m sure I’d find too many to name.

“Hmm. Well, seeing as I’m the only person you can still touch, it’d be a pain for you if I didn’t.” He laughs breathily. “How about you count your blessings without questioning them–?”

Diluc moves startlingly quick. The press of his lips to the crown of Kaeya’s head is so scalding that when combined with the rough hold on his hair he’s not sure it even counts as a kiss. It’s something more conclusive, more possessive. A brand.

And he knows his brother well enough to tell exactly what words he’s searing into Kaeya’s skin. The words Diluc is – mistakenly – too guilt-ridden to speak aloud: I don’t deserve you, but you’re all I have left.

Kaeya’s not going to dignify that with a response.

When it dawns on him that Diluc probably isn’t going to move his lips or attempt to say anything at all for a while, Kaeya takes the initiative and asks, “How long have you been like this? Stuck with this curse, I mean.”

Diluc’s only answer is to hug him tighter. Too long, then.

There’s another, more pressing question that slips from his tongue before he can find a more tactful phrasing: “Why’d you come back now, if you were just planning to hide out in the mountains?”

“I… I heard the Fatui were becoming more active here,” and Kaeya is suddenly very aware of the Delusion and its blood-red gem, still glowing on Diluc’s half-gloved hand, “so I thought– I might as well try to keep them away with this… power… until I figured out the best course of action.”

Of course Diluc’s first thought after being inflicted with a horrible curse was to try and defend his homeland with it. Even if he believed he could never walk freely among said homeland’s people again.

Diluc has always harboured a kind of nobility that has nothing to do with his blood or his name, his occupation or his status – it’s something that burns right from the depths of his soul, bright enough to obliterate any shadows that dare to come close.

Kaeya can never– will never be his equal in that regard. But he can at least make sure this noble soul doesn’t burn out too soon, forgotten in frozen solitude.

(Given that his motives are entirely selfish, it should be easy enough.)

“I think you already know what I’ll say your best course of action is.”

Diluc flinches as if he’d forgotten the sole reason Kaeya came after him today. “Kae– I can’t. You can’t ask me to–”

“Why not?” Kaeya pulls away and sits up straighter to look Diluc in the eyes, though Diluc doesn’t withdraw the hand cupping the back of his head. “I didn’t die. You couldn’t kill me. So you can come home with me–”

“And what about everyone else?” Diluc raises his voice, then immediately looks away, ashamed. “I can’t put them all at risk. Not even if they’re asking for it.”

“I’m not saying you have to come home and shake everyone’s hand. You don’t have to choose between killing everyone you love, or effectively killing yourself up here.” Diluc’s black-and-white thinking – him always needing Kaeya to remind him of the value of nuance and compromise – could almost be nostalgic if it weren’t for the situation at hand. “There has to be a middle ground, but we’ll never find it if you keep running away.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” Diluc insists. “One slip-up, and someone would die. I’d kill them. I can’t do that. Putting everyone’s lives at stake just for a little comfort? I– that’s too much to ask of anyone. I mean– what would Father say?”

I’m sure Father didn’t think dying by your hand was so bad, his mind supplies unhelpfully – and thank the Archons his filter caught that one. That would’ve instantly destroyed any progress he might have made here.

“We’ll be careful.” Kaeya has to take a breath to keep himself from rambling. He needs Diluc to see him as reliable, not desperate. “We’ll work out a plan, with everyone at the winery, we’ll make sure we’re as safe as we can be – and we’ll start small. Just Addie, maybe, we’ll just talk to her first. And you know how she is, a stickler for rules – she’s the last person who’d slip up–”

“One slip – the smallest opening in my clothes, the tiniest bit of exposed skin, the briefest touch – that’s all it would take– and then she– I–” Diluc chokes on a gasp before catching himself with a shaky breath.

“Shh,” Kaeya says as he reaches for Diluc’s face once more, to cup his cheek, smooth out the notch of worry between his eyebrows. “It’s okay. Don’t panic.”

His big brother has always been the type to get a little carried away in his imaginings without someone to rein him in with a reality check… but not like this.

…Perhaps he’s speaking from experience.

Kaeya has never thought of himself as naive, but it seems even he underestimated how cruel the world could have been to Diluc while he was all alone. Alone, and suffering from the weight of a curse too great for any one person to bear by themselves.

(Not without breaking.)

Much to Diluc’s likely chagrin, that only fortifies Kaeya’s determination.

“Kae – you know it’s too dangerous–”

“Then we’ll find a way to lift this curse.” He flashes his brother the brightest smile he’s smiled in years. “We’ll make everything right again.”

Diluc narrows his eyes. “This isn’t one of Adelinde’s fairytales–”

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But if we work together, I know we can do it. We’ve always been able to do the impossible together.” The warmth in his chest is so unrelenting and unyielding, he must have leeched it off Diluc somehow. “You weren’t born with this curse. I won’t let you die with it either.”

“Kaeya–”

“You just have to come with me–”

“Kaeya, seriously–”

“I won’t let Adelinde – or anyone – come to harm by your hands,” Kaeya barrels on before Diluc can conjure up too many protests. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’ll have a million safety nets in place for everything. You know me, I’m good at planning like that–”

“But–”

“And if all of that is still too much, then– maybe we don’t have to go anywhere near the winery. We can live somewhere else – somewhere remote, but not hostile, not Dragonspine – just the two of us. You’d have me, and you’d be far enough from anyone else that you wouldn’t have to worry. You’d still have your freedom, instead of being trapped in this place, and we’d be able to work something out together. That works, doesn’t it?”

He’s on the verge of making promises he can’t keep, commitments he can’t follow through on, but he’s willing to try anything at this point. Anything to make sure they stay together, because the only thing he’s certain of is that there won’t be any fixing things as long as they’re apart.

And though he somehow survived these last three years, he can’t handle another day of separation. He just– can’t.

Diluc is momentarily placated, even hypnotised by the idealised scenes Kaeya paints for him – but those three years have flipped his once-ceaseless optimism on its head, and he snaps out of his daze with a furrowed brow. “I can’t let you waste your life trying to help me.”

“What’s wasteful about it?” He tries and fails to repress a rising flood of righteous anger at Diluc’s unparalleled idiocy. “If you think looking after your brother is a waste, then bad news, but you wasted eleven years of your life on me – so the least you can do now is let me return the fucking favour.”

Diluc’s brow furrows further. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Really,” Kaeya drawls, the single word dripping with exactly the right amount of sarcasm. He only breaks eye contact for a moment to stare at the Pyro Vision hanging next to Diluc’s heart. “I wonder what Father would say about that.”

“…Don’t bring him into this.”

“You started it.”

Diluc looks away. “Either way – I didn’t–”

“That’s not for you to decide,” Kaeya says. He refuses to give up a single millimetre in this fight. “It doesn’t matter what you think – it doesn’t change how much everything you did back then mattered to me. Still matters,” he corrects himself before Diluc can exploit that opening. “And I’m going to repay you for all of it, whether you think you deserve it or not. So you can choose to make it difficult for yourself – or you could make the rational choice and work with me here. Make this easier on both of us.”

Diluc clenches his jaw and continues refusing to look at him.

“I’m not just asking for my sake,” Kaeya lies. “Everyone else misses you too. They’ve been so worried all these years – they want nothing more than to see you again.”

Diluc begins to chew on his lip, already chapped by Dragonspine’s merciless air. A droplet of blood trickles down towards his chin, and Kaeya has to fight the urge to tell him to stop, the same way Diluc used to tell him to back then, when he couldn’t keep his irrationally anxious habits in check. That version of himself seems even more distant than Diluc’s gaze.

Alright, fine. He didn’t want to have to resort to this approach – he hates that he still has to rely on things like this, that Diluc refuses to just listen, even after all these years – but appealing to his brotherly instincts has always been a surefire way to get through to him.

“Luc,” the nickname Kaeya had only dared to employ after the adoption papers were signed and stamped, now softly sung, carefully balanced on his tongue, “I want to help you. Please, let me help.” The genuineness of the tears gathering in his eye is both frustrating and convenient. “You’d do the same in my place.” He blinks up at his brother. “Wouldn’t you?”

Predictably, Diluc’s resolve crumbles. His eyes flash with concentrated anguish, then he exhales like the weight of the world is being lowered onto his shoulders and wipes away Kaeya’s tears before Kaeya can blink them away himself, muttering something about crybabies and baby brothers under his breath – but it’s all a facade. Kaeya has, undoubtedly, won.

He ducks away from Diluc’s hand with fake self-consciousness and hastily wipes away the last of his tears. “Let’s go then. You’ve– we’ve both been up here long enough–”

“Wait.”

Kaeya’s heart sinks all the way to his feet. Nonetheless, he says lightly, “What is it?”

Diluc places his Delusion-wearing hand on Kaeya’s shoulder. “I’ll come with you – on one condition.”

Oh, fuck you and your conditions – I could’ve knocked you out and dragged you down this mountain ages ago – I don’t have to do anything you say, I’m only entertaining this bullshit out of common courtesy–

Kaeya gulps down as much of his vexation as is humanly possible. “Go on.”

“I need you to promise” – Diluc’s grip on his shoulder tightens – “that if I end up killing anyone by accident, that you’ll end me right then and there.”

…What?

“And if– if you start to feel even a little bit of pain when I touch you – if whatever’s protecting you from me stops working, starts to fade – you’ll kill me then, too.” Diluc takes hold of both his shoulders now with renewed vigour. “You have to, Kae. You have to choose your own life over mine. No matter what.”

He’s going to be sick.

He’s never been this sick even when he’s drunk himself into oblivion in the space of five minutes. His vision swims, his thoughts fracture like collapsing suns, his head and his heart fall out of step with each other and he can’t even breathe as the image of Diluc dying in his arms overtakes him, overwhelms him–

“That’s two conditions, you idiot,” he mumbles, helpless, useless–

“Both with the same result.”

Diluc, impaled on a Favonius sword.

Diluc, bleeding out in the snow, with no fire to rescue him, no Vision’s light to guide him home.

Diluc, being lowered into the dirt beside Father–

“Kae,” Diluc says, moving his hands to cradle Kaeya’s face with a tenderness that’s entirely at odds with the subject of his words, “you might as well freeze me again if you can’t promise me this much, because I’m not moving from this spot unless you do.”

The tears he’d only just driven away return with a vengeance.

I haven’t even had you back for a full day, and you’re already planning your exit?

Asking me to do the one thing you yourself couldn’t do three years ago?

“Luc, I can’t– you can’t ask me to–”

“You’re asking me to risk killing everyone I care about.”

“This is different and you damn well know it.” His voice is so rough it hurts to speak.

I’d rather die than kill you.

Sure, I’d rather die than do a lot of things, but this–

I’d kill everyone else in Teyvat a thousand times over before I let you die.

He’s never fought his brother with the intention of killing him – even today, he’d only gone all out because he’d known Diluc would fight back, would survive – because Diluc is a survivor, a warrior, a leader – he doesn’t surrender, he doesn’t give up and let himself be killed–

He can’t do that now, not when he finally has his Vision back–

“You said you wouldn’t let anyone come to harm by my hands.” Diluc fixes him with an impenetrable look. “You know there’s only one way to make absolutely sure that never happens.”

He swats Diluc’s hands and their unearned warmth away.

This isn’t who you really are.

How can he ask for his own execution so casually? How can he expect Kaeya to be okay with that?

You’re not supposed to be like me. You’re supposed to be different. Better.

Doesn’t the hypocrisy of it all drive him mad?

Diluc’s hands find his shoulders again, and don’t move even when Kaeya tries to shrink back from their too-kind, too-pleading weight.

…Good thing Kaeya’s not completely out of the habit of lying to the ones he loves most.

“Okay,” he whispers, screwing his eye shut and letting his voice wobble freely. He doesn’t have to feign any difficulty here. “Fine. Whatever you say.”

Diluc’s gaze hardens. “Swear on Father’s grave.”

I haven’t even visited it once since the funeral – but Diluc doesn’t need to know that. “I swear on Father’s grave,” he says, solemn.

Diluc regards him coldly – and, notably, doesn’t show any signs of gratitude. Perhaps he senses Kaeya’s deception. Perhaps he learned how to in their three years apart, more than he ever did in their eleven years together.

Kaeya distracts himself from the conspicuous silence by hugging the idiot once more. Reminding himself that his fool of a brother is still alive, that his accursed Vision still hums with energy, that his blasted heart still beats. That Kaeya hasn’t killed him. Won’t kill him. Will keep him from being killed at all costs, no matter how unfeasible or unfair it may seem in Diluc’s eyes. He’ll take his brother’s opinions into account on every other matter but this one. If Diluc has a problem with that – well, that’ll have to stay his problem.

Diluc’s reciprocation of the hug is markedly more guarded than before. Kaeya tries not to read anything into that. He closes his eyes with a silent sigh of resignation.

That’s when an odd but not unpleasant sound graces his senses – a flutter of whispering, delicate chimes, like the footsteps of a fairy, soft as mistflowers and snowfall. Kaeya opens one eye just in time to witness a Cryo crystalfly landing on Diluc’s head.

He holds his breath – he’s become quite an expert in that today – and braces himself for the withering of its shimmering form to black dust, the ruthless, instantaneous extermination of its tranquil glow–

…But nothing happens.

The crystalfly lives on, its coruscating wings rippling serenely, reflecting the icy light of the walls in a million directions, illuminating his brother’s bowed head with a pale halo.

…These things do count as ‘living’, don’t they?

He remembers being distraught the first time he caught one – when he opened his hands expecting to see the glimmer and gleam of pure elemental energy, only to find an empty husk. He remembers the first time Diluc showed him how to catch them, to hold them, without crushing all the light and life out of them.

Diluc, who taught him the meaning of life. The value of it. How to protect and cherish even the most fragile and ephemeral of beings.

How could someone like that have ended up with a curse like this?

But this crystalfly proves everything, doesn’t it? That deep down, beneath the scars and curses and pain, Diluc is the same as always.

This curse isn’t a true part of him. It hasn’t corrupted him irreversibly. Kaeya can still fix this. Any doubts he may have had in that regard have been driven out by this single crystalfly’s light.

(Hell, maybe it’s already been fixed – maybe whatever happened here was enough, and everything is okay again–)

(No. He can’t get carried away just yet. The curse and its effects were surely too great to have been cured so easily. Surely.)

(But gods, does he want to believe–)

They’ll go back to the winery and catch more crystalflies together, just like they used to when they were kids. They still have that much. They still have each other. They haven’t lost everything yet.

If Kaeya has his way, they won’t lose anything else ever again.

And what has he been doing for the last three years, if not getting his way at any cost?

As if sensing Kaeya’s reforged will, and satisfied with its own handiwork, the crystalfly takes off towards the icicles above with a hushed beat of its sparkling wings. The tips of those wings caress Diluc’s hair as they go, leaving a gossamer-thin layer of frost in their wake that Kaeya brushes away easily, just as he had Diluc’s tears.

The man himself doesn’t appear to have noticed a thing. His mouth is pressed into a brittle, thoughtful line, and he’s squinting at nothing. He can’t be thinking about anything good with a look like that.

Oh, well. At least he didn’t ruin the moment. And Kaeya will have all the time in the world to explain what happened to him later.

When they finally go home, together.

“Let’s get moving. We’re not frozen in place, after all,” he says. It’s impossible to hold back his smirk now, but he makes a valiant attempt nonetheless at not sounding too excited, at masking the intoxicating rush of hope to his heart. “I reckon we’ve only got about two days before Adelinde starts hunting us down.”

Diluc’s too-thoughtful squinting is now directed at Kaeya. “Two days?”

“I told her to give me three days to find you and tell her what was going on, and, well, this day’s almost up. It’s a long way from the winery to Dragonspine, you know. Thanks for that.” He huffs, but there’s no real irritation behind it. “Realistically speaking, she already knows exactly where we are and is just counting down the hours before she can move. Always did have a supernatural sense for that kind of thing, didn’t she?”

To his surprise, Diluc cracks a small smile – yet it’s still blinding, somehow. “That fairytale about the evil stepmother with eyes in the back of her head might’ve been the only one she didn’t make up,” he says with a weak little laugh that melts Kaeya’s heart to a puddle.

Laughter spills from his own lips without him having to think about it. “All those years she must have cheated at hide-and-seek! We ought to demand a rematch for every victory we were robbed of, when we get back.”

That makes Diluc laugh in return. The laughter they share, however faint, however muted, diffuses the tension with ease, and the invisible weight on his chest he didn’t know he was carrying starts to float away.

“Aren’t we too old for that now?” Diluc says, the corners of his eyes crinkling ever so slightly, just enough to be noticeable, the light in them soft, almost sweet.

“We’re the same age she was when she committed those inexcusable crimes. I believe this would be what’s known as ‘poetic justice’.”

Diluc’s eyes soften even further. “Still into poetry, huh?” he murmurs, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

It’s too soft all of a sudden, too sincere. The warmth of being so lovingly remembered could burn him alive, if Diluc wanted it to.

But Diluc never would.

Without answering, Kaeya pushes himself to his feet, exaggerating his noises of exertion to coax irritation rather than affection from his brother – though that ends up backfiring, because all Diluc’s irritation is drenched in affection now, like it’s just overflowing from him for some inexplicable reason.

(Okay, so the reason might be extremely, glaringly explicable, but Kaeya has every right to refuse to admit it to himself–)

He holds his hands out to his brother, opening and closing them impatiently. “Come on,” he whines. “You must be even more sick of this cold than I am.”

Diluc’s gaze flicks towards the Cryo Vision on Kaeya’s hip before he rolls his eyes and moves to accept Kaeya’s help – but at the last second, he stills. Before Kaeya can ask what’s wrong, he hastily tugs the Delusion off and shoves it into some hidden inner pocket of his coat, then grasps both of Kaeya’s hands simultaneously in a stronger grip than he was prepared for and pulls himself straight up without regard for Kaeya’s half-hearted protests – and when they’re finally standing shoulder to shoulder, side by side, Diluc wordlessly laces their fingers so their hands are perfectly intertwined.

(As they should have been from the beginning.)

They march together through the mess of trodden snow and slush towards the once-entrance of the cave. The great wall of ice looms over them, oppressive – but no longer invincible.

“Ready when you are,” Kaeya says quietly, giving Diluc’s hand a gentle squeeze.

His Pyro Vision flickers. He takes it into the palm of his left hand, considers it like an old friend, a hundred conflicting thoughts racing through his mind, so loud and obvious that the unrelenting commotion resounds in Kaeya’s own heart. But after a sharp exhale, he releases the Vision and lifts that same hand up towards the wall. It instantly gives way, melting before Diluc has the chance to summon a real flame, ice receding at a steady pace to reveal a tunnel the perfect size for the two of them. The residual water rushes out and off the edge of the snow-covered path that led them both up here, falling so far they can’t hear the moment it splashes against the ground.

Diluc gives him one final, fiery look, then turns his resolute eyes forward, squeezes his hand back, and takes the first step out of the cave at last. “Let’s go.”