Chapter Text
Diluc didn’t come home last night.
Up until now he’s been so very good about coming home before dawn at the latest and only staying overnight in the city if he warns her beforehand. At times she’s felt guilty for asking so much of him, especially when she knows very well he’s doing all of it for a good cause, a cause he believes in and a cause she should admire, but this first break in a reassuring routine has transformed all of that guilt and reluctant admiration into pure dread.
He can take perfectly good care of himself, or so Elzer keeps reminding her with that same incessant indifference, but that doesn’t stop her from hovering around the front door, pacing back and forth until her soles are worn down to nothing. She hardly got a wink of sleep last night, and if he doesn’t come home before sundown tonight she won’t be getting any sleep at all because she’ll be too busy putting together a search party for–
“Staring at the door won’t make him come back any sooner,” Elzer chides as he passes her on the way to his desk, a thick sheaf of papers in his arms. “If you’ve got so much free time on your hands, you could help me with some of this.”
“Bear the consequences for taking up so much extra work for the Guild by yourself,” she mutters bitterly, folding her arms.
“You’re one to talk about overworking.”
“I’m not–”
“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be so wound up right now that you’re forgetting Diluc is perfectly alright and will be back before you know it–”
“How would you know that he’s alright? You never even talk to him.”
Elzer huffs as he drops the paperwork onto the desk all at once. “Don’t start that again.”
Her eye twitches. “There’d be nothing to start if you’d simply–”
“Pray tell, my love,” he says, still standing, leaning on the desk with both arms, “what in Teyvat am I supposed to talk to him about?”
“Anything.” She’s this close to throwing her hands up in the air but frantic gesticulation won’t win him over if months of patience and pleading haven’t. He doesn’t need an easy excuse to write her off. “Archons, Elzer, anything would be better than watching him wordlessly from a distance.”
“You act like I’m avoiding him.”
“A silent game of chess every now and then doesn’t count. He needs–”
“If he wanted to talk to me, don’t you think he would do so on his own?” Elzer shakes his head. “You can’t force these kinds of things, Linde. You have to give him space.”
“This is about what he needs,” she says, marching towards the desk, “not what he wants. Why are you always so against the mere idea of talking to him? What are you so afraid of?”
“How has talking to him worked out for you?”
“That’s–” Adelinde sucks in a sharp breath. “At least I’m making an effort.”
“Just as you have with Kaeya.”
It’s a low blow but it strikes true. For years she’s tried talking to Kaeya whenever she’s had the rare fortune to encounter him in the city, but he’s even more slippery than he was as a child, always finding an excuse to get away from her before she can blink. And on his official visits to the winery, of which there have only been a handful and which only ever leave Diluc in a worse mood than before, he’s always arrived at the exact moment she finds herself too busy with some other task to personally receive him, and has taken his leave before she even has the chance to brew a pot of tea. It’s like he knows she’ll ask him to stay. It’s like he’s avoiding having to refuse her.
“He needs to know that you’ll be there for him whenever he’s ready,” she says, brushing her hurt aside. “How can he, if you never even try to start a real conversation?”
“Maybe talking works for you, Adelinde, but your relationship with them has always been very different to mine.”
“That difference is precisely why– perhaps there are things he’ll tell you about that he can’t tell me, but we’ll never know if you don’t–”
“You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
The frustration in her voice has at least some effect on him, because he looks down sheepishly and leans away from her, shuffling paperwork to distract himself. “Just let it go already, Linde–”
“Nothing will ever change if I let it go–”
“He’s home, and he’s safe, and he’s not the child he left as, no matter how much you want to deny it. You’d think that after everything that’s happened you would be satisfied with that, but nothing is ever enough for you.” He looks back up, apparently having rediscovered his ego. “Typical of you to always look for something more to burden yourself with.”
“I didn’t think you were the complacent sort.” She almost regrets stooping to his level when he winces at that penultimate word, but she doesn’t let it show and lifts her chin instead, brushing her hurt aside once more. “I don’t think Master Crepus thought so either.”
“…You don’t understand, Adelinde. You think you know what’s best for everyone–”
“I don’t think that, I just think sometimes you have to try before you get anywhere and I wish you wouldn’t be so quick to give up before–”
“He doesn’t love me like he loves you, so why on earth would he want to talk to me about anything?”
Adelinde freezes. Elzer freezes too. There’s not a single other soul in their vicinity to break the silence so all they can do is stare at each other in shock. His words, quietly though they’d been spoken, are still reverberating through the empty hall, defying the laws of physics to grow louder with each echo.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says at last, her eyes stinging needlessly. “Of course he loves you. Both of them love you very much. What are you saying?”
It’s true that Elzer hadn’t spent as much time with the boys growing up as she had, and perhaps they’d taken his constant presence for granted, but they do love him. Elzer has always been deeply loved by all of them, and he must know that, surely he can’t really think after all this time–
Is this her fault? Did she once again fail to see what was right in front of her before it was too late?
“…I’m going to work in the library,” he mutters, haphazardly gathering a stack of papers into his arms.
She’s powerless to stop him as he sweeps past her. He moves too fast for her to read his expression, to see if the shine in his eyes are tears or a figment of her imagination. All she does is stay rooted in place, still paralysed by that same echo.
“This isn’t over,” she calls after him just as his feet hit the first step. But he doesn’t reply and keeps heading up the stairs as if she hadn’t said anything at all.
At this point she should remember that she has other duties to attend to and accept the distraction they offer without complaint. Instead she sinks into Elzer’s chair and reaches for a pen with the intention of finishing the work he’d left behind, guilt guiding her hand before she can think better of it.
“You’re all the same,” she says under her breath, dragging the nib a bit too harshly across the page. “Stubborn, prideful fools.”
None of them will ever make the first move to remedy their relationships because none of them want to be the first to admit that there’s anything to remedy in the first place. And if she’s the only one who’s different, then… obviously it falls on her to fix all of this, doesn’t it?
It’s exhausting being the only one who seems to care enough to fix things. But maybe Elzer’s right and she doesn’t know what’s best for anyone, and she’s only going to burn herself out trying to help people who are apparently utterly opposed to it–
No. For once, he’s not right. He can’t be. She didn’t give up years of her life waiting for a miracle just to give up on all of them now.
The pen falls from her grip. Her restless feet carry her right back to where she was before, standing in front of the doors and waiting.
No matter how much she tells herself she needs to do more, all she ends up doing is waiting.
too many years ago
“Elzer, don’t tell me you’ve been sneaking the children out past their bedtime.”
“Does this look like my idea?”
She presses her lips together to suppress a chuckle, but Elzer’s pleading and frankly desperate expression is making that terribly difficult.
The thing about Diluc and Kaeya is that once they decide to hold on to something, it takes the strength of the Seven combined to force them to let go. So it’s no wonder that Elzer has found himself trapped like this on the sofa – with little Kaeya asleep in his lap, his small arms wrapped as tight as he can manage around Elzer’s torso, while Diluc maintains a fastidious grip on both Kaeya’s shirt and Elzer’s arm as he slumbers away at Elzer’s side. The boys breathe perfectly in sync in that leisurely rhythm of deep sleep, completely oblivious to Elzer’s growing anxiety.
“You didn’t end up in this position by magic, so it must have been at least partly your doing,” she says, placing a hand on her hip as she tries very hard not to smirk down at him.
“They were the ones who wanted me to explain an opening to them,” he mutters, nudging the chessboard-laden table with his foot even though he can barely reach it from his position. “I didn’t think they’d fall asleep just like that.”
“That means they trust you immensely,” she coos. “Or perhaps you simply bored them to death with your voice. Either way I think you ought to take over bedtime story duty from now on–”
“You just love having fun at my expense, don’t you?”
She can’t hold back a smirk any longer. “You know full well what they’re like when they stay up too late. These are the consequences for not putting them back to bed as a responsible adult would have.”
“Forgive me, Sister Adelinde, for I have sinned, but now I see the error of my ways,” he says with a roll of his eyes and a voice dripping with more sarcasm than can possibly be legal. “Now will you please help me already? I can’t feel my damn legs.”
“Language, Elzer.”
Elzer groans and throws his head back.
“You’re perfectly capable of moving them on your own, are you not? I can’t see why you need my help.”
“And wake them up?” Elzer’s eyebrows shoot all the way up to his hairline. “Thanks, but I’m not looking to make them hate me.”
“So you want them to hate me instead?”
“They could never hate you.”
“And the same goes for you, you fool.” She sighs. “Very well. I’ll take Kaeya if you take Diluc.”
“Be careful–”
“I hardly need to be reminded of that.”
She leans down and pulls Kaeya’s arms away from Elzer one at a time, then gently disengages Diluc’s hand from the hem of his shirt before scooping him up quickly into her arms. She tucks his head against her shoulder and watches in silent dismay as Elzer fumbles to get Diluc into his own arms, muttering under his breath all the while.
“Archons,” he groans as he finally manages to stand up. “When did he get so heavy?”
“Master Crepus can carry both of them at once. It should be no problem for you.”
“It’s not my fault fatherhood gave him supernatural strength,” he huffs, taking a laboured step past her towards the stairs.
At least he comes to his senses enough to stop his grumbling as they head upstairs, perhaps realising that it might end up waking the children and their efforts would all be for naught. She follows a step behind him, just in case, and breathes out a little sigh of relief when they reach the top. Elzer throws her a sharp look at that, but she keeps her gaze firmly ahead and leads the way to their room. It’s only as she’s shifting Kaeya onto her hip to free up a hand for the doorknob that Elzer decides to speak up.
“Pretty soon we won’t be able to carry either of them, will we?” His hand grazes the back of Diluc’s head as he looks down at the boy. “And they probably won’t even want to be carried.”
She watches them for a long moment before pushing open the door. “It’s a little early to be thinking about that,” she says as she lowers Kaeya into his bed and draws the blue blanket over him. Only differently-coloured bedding and a pair of small bedside tables separate his bed from Diluc’s – they may as well not be separate at all given the number of times she’s found them cuddling together in the same bed by morning.
“I mean, one day you’ll put them down and never pick them up again, but you won’t even know it.”
Elzer’s still hesitating next to her when she’s done with Kaeya, so she sighs and takes Diluc into her own arms and tucks him in the same way, ignoring Elzer’s musings.
“Maybe today is that day,” he finishes solemnly.
“It’ll be a sign that they’re growing up as they should, and that’s more important than anything else.” She glances up at him only to find him still staring down at the children with an oddly sentimental look on his face. “Where’s all this coming from? I didn’t think you thought about these kinds of things.”
“I don’t,” he says too quickly, “but I’m sure you do. Don’t you?”
Not if I don’t give myself the chance. “Our personal feelings on the matter are irrelevant.”
“It’s easy to say that now, but you feel so strongly about everything, Linde.”
“What I feel most strongly is that I want whatever’s best for the children.” She lets out a soft, slow exhale. “And right now what’s best is for them to get a good night’s sleep, so unless you need something else we should really take our leave.”
Elzer casts one more almost mournful look at the boys, a strange and silent pain twisting his expression in the dark, but says nothing else as she tugs him out of the room at last.
The sun has almost vanished beneath the horizon when the front door finally opens, and Adelinde would’ve sprinted over at the speed of light if she hadn’t been standing right in front of it already, practically vibrating with sheer anxiety.
“Master Diluc,” she breathes, air exiting her lungs fast enough to leave her lightheaded as soon as she glimpses a flash of red hair. “Archons, you had me so worried, I–”
The door opens fully to reveal that there isn’t just a flash of red hair. There’s a striking, unmistakeable blue right beside it, and she nearly faints on the spot at the sight.
“Hello, Adelinde,” Kaeya says, lifting a hand in greeting. His lips are curved in a very familiar, typically aggravating smirk, but there’s too much sincerity sparkling in that lone eye of his for it to read as anything but affectionate. “Long time no see, huh?”
He’s standing shoulder to shoulder with his brother. She can’t even recall the last time she saw them like that – and they look so different these days that the sight before her is practically unrecognisable–
But that smile – that smile on Diluc’s face, so subtle, so easy to miss, but so very much there – the kind of smile only Kaeya can bring out of him–
“A long time indeed,” she whispers, more to herself than anyone else.
Later she’ll reprimand herself for succumbing to the shock and not ushering them in straight away. But right now her eyes are drawn to the blinding white of bandages peeking out from the infinitesimal gap between the cuff of Diluc’s sleeves and the beginnings of his gloves. Looking up at his face again doesn’t do anything to reassure her – there are certainly bruises and scrapes that he didn’t have when he left, and beneath that little smile he truly does look utterly exhausted.
Not to mention… the cat hair. So much cat hair – the contrast makes them blindingly white too. There must be at least a hundred strands stuck to his dark black coat, enough to make it look a whole shade lighter, which is odd because if there’s one article of clothing Diluc cares to keep in pristine condition, it’s his coat.
She reaches for Diluc’s hand, pushing back the sleeve just enough to run her fingers over the bandages. “Master Diluc, what happened?”
Kaeya clears his throat awkwardly. “It’s a bit of a long story, actually.” He flashes her an equally awkward smile when she manages to tear her gaze away from the bandages. “Perhaps I– we could tell it to you over dinner?”
My little star – you always know how to surprise me, don’t you?
In all her waiting, she’d never imagined that Kaeya would be the one to invite himself over for dinner in the end.
He doesn’t need to be invited – he’s always been welcome here.
It seems he’s finally realised that for himself.
She looks over at Diluc and holds her breath. Any day before today and she would’ve expected him to be scowling at the audacity of Kaeya’s suggestion, even if he couldn’t bring himself to decline it outright.
But instead he smiles faintly and says, “I know it’s last minute, but would you mind cooking a little extra tonight?”
That smile is the breaking point.
The snow globe shatters, but the perfect scene inside doesn’t shatter with it – without the obstruction of a glass dome, it’s finally free of distortions.
They’re all… free.
In her mind she’s scooping them both up into her arms and shouting for joy, only letting them go to fetch Elzer and drag him downstairs for dinner with them. Everyone is finally where they should be – everything really is going to be alright again. She’s never been more sure of anything in her life.
The waiting is finally over. Isn’t it?
She has to fight to stop the smile from splitting her face in two, and bows a little to hide it.
“It would be my pleasure.”