Chapter Text
“What are you doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be watching the stew?” Kaeya asks, currently busy with some wood chips and a dagger he’d previously stolen from a treasure hoarder.
It’s been half an hour, and after a little panicking, some vegetable mishaps, and that one unfortunate moment where Elzer almost got murdered by a basket of potatoes, the three of them have finally managed to create the perfect lunch. Northern smoked chicken, Hertha’s version of the classic cream stew, a salad for people with small appetites like Kaeya, and–
“Hey, can I have one?”
Kaeya glances at Hertha, then looks at where his skewers are currently cooling. “Sure,” he says, grabbing one of the sticks before clipping the tiny carving he’d made at the lower end of it.
“Ta-da,” he grins, presenting it with a flourish, much like Gaia liked to do for his friends in the game. “Kaeya’s fruity skewers, ready to be served.”
Hertha takes it with a happy cheer, which makes Elzer curious enough to come over. Kaeya hands him his own and turns back to his work; he misses the way the other lights up, fingers tracing the wing ornament with careful admiration.
“Do you always serve them like this?”
“Not really,” Kaeya shrugs as finishes the last carving. “I just wanted to try it, and then I thought it’d be fun since you guys invited me here.”
“Where did you find him, Elzer?” Hertha’s expression is incredulous as she stabs her half-eaten skewer in Kaeya’s direction, who is suddenly very glad he isn’t in the range of her movements. “He’s nice, makes interesting stuff when he’s bored, and cooks like a - okay, maybe he isn’t as good a chef as Brook, but! He could definitely work at Good Hunter if he wanted to. These skewers taste amazing .”
“It’s the only thing I can make,” he’s quick to admit, which gets him nothing but doubt from his snacking companions. Kaeya wants to sigh - why do people never believe him when he says things like these? Does he look like someone who can do anything? What is he, the protagonist?
Kaeya’s internal gripping is interrupted by a chorus of shouts. It seems the others are back, though the sight that greets the three of them has a little more... leaves than expected.
“Got the drinks!” Ernest grins, raising one of the four pitchers he and another light haired boy are carrying over. He then waves it at the two others behind them, adding, “We might have taken a detour after getting the berries - I remembered Sara owed us some pie. Sorry if it took a while.”
“Did Good Hunter move to a tree or something?” Hertha plucks a stray twig out of the teens hair, looking highly unimpressed. “You guys are a mess.”
“Anemo slimes,” all of them reply, which only makes her snort.
“Fair enough. Now leave the food and clean yourselves up - I’m not having lunch with Guy looking like a pinecone.”
“Hey!”
Lunch at the winery was unsurprisingly chaotic.
Kaeya doesn’t know why Hertha and Elzer were ever worried about the food; barely fifteen minutes in, half of the spread was already gone, and now Guy and Ernest were rolling on the grass as they fought over the last serving of chicken. Hertha was watching while eating said serving while Elzer made sure no one ended up dying.
At least Huffman was enjoying his salad. Kaeya had snuck him an extra skewer when the others weren’t looking, earning himself a small but grateful smile.
“Thank you,” Huffman says, holding the food like it was something precious. “I wanted to grab another one earlier, but…”
He sneaks a glance at the still brawling teens. Kaeya pats his shoulder, amused but understanding.
“You should eat it quickly,” Kaeya suggests, then turns to the last member of their peaceful little corner. “What about you, Ben? I can make something if you’re still hungry.”
“Ah, no, I’m okay.” Ben shakes his head and tries to go back to his stew, only to be accosted by a huffy ball of light.
“Aa!”
“B-But I’m full! Really!”
“Uuu!”
“I’ll get you some pie.” Kaeya swoops in to save the other from his seelie. “And I told you not to attack people,” he lectures the creature, giving it a light poke for good measure. It only makes an indignant noise, and Kaeya shakes his head as it speeds away and hides behind Huffman, who had been the first person to take notice of it earlier when it had woken up.
“I still can't believe you managed to befriend a seelie,” Huffman smiles as the spirit nuzzles at the back of his neck. “Does it have a name?”
“I think so,” Kaeya hums. “But I have no idea what it is. It’ll probably take a while to figure out.” He reaches for the pie, carefully cutting it into eight slices when an enraged cry of ‘HERTHA!’ rings across the area.
“About time,” Ben snorts quietly. They watch as Hertha wrangles up the boys, expression smug as she drags them back to their original spot with a tired looking Elzer following after. Ernest and Guy are predictably sullen, so Kaeya hands the pie to them first, trying not to laugh when both of their moods brighten almost immediately.
Ah, the wonders of good food.
“Thanks, Kaeya!” Ernest says before shoving half a slice straight into his mouth. Guy grunts and proceeds to do the same, which makes Elzer sigh with resigned disappointment.
“Both of you are terrible,” he states with feeling, taking a plate of his own share. “You know Hertha likes to steal the last serving–”
“Steal is a little too strong a word,” Hertha argues.
“ –and that she always gets away with it, so is fighting really necessary? Every single time?”
“W-Well, don’t you think it’s unfair?” With his free arm, Guy gestures at his two food rivals and says, “I don’t even care if they get all the stew or pizza or whatever, but this is chicken! I love chicken!”
“Everyone here loves chicken, Guy,” Ben points out but is soundly ignored.
The rest of their lunch goes by in the same manner. Kaeya gets lost in the mundanity of it, feeling content enough to indulge in the various questions some of them have for him.
“But you don’t want to join the knights.”
“No. I really, really don’t,” Kaeya insists for what feels like the hundredth time as they circle back to what he’s starting to suspect is the reason he got invited here in the first place. It’s starting to get annoying - why do people keep asking him about this? Don’t they know how much work being a knight means?
“Not even the outriders?” Huffman tries to prompt, which makes Kaeya pause.
Maybe it’s because this is the first time someone mentions it, but Kaeya is suddenly very aware of the fact that he is a decade away from when the actual story starts. He knew that the outriders were still an active division - hard not to, what with their scouts and the hunters crossing paths so often - but he’d never thought much about it, since…
Since Amber’s grandfather was still leading it now.
Outrider Captain Zhou. Aside from several flashbacks, he didn’t appear much in the game, though the role he played was quite similar to Gaia’s: a man who worked in the shadows to protect those that he loved. Nobody knew it at that time, but the reason he left Mondstadt was to contact his old colleagues so he could gather more information on the Fatui’s movements.
It would have been nice if he told the grandmaster instead of just leaving. Kaeya recalls how Eula and Amber had cried when they found him and wonders why he never said goodbye to them, too. No wonder the outriders fell apart when it happened. To lose the captain who treated them like family, and just... two weeks after the cavalry was left by theirs...
The sound of a record scratch goes off in Kaeya’s head. That’s - those were not dots that needed connecting. He is going to pretend they didn’t exist.
(But it would make sense , a part of Kaeya still whispers, the part that was raised to tear his enemies apart.
Captain Zhou hated the Fatui. It didn't take a genius to see that and maybe there was history there, in the way his past men died in the same situation Diluc's squad and father did.)
“I’d be a terrible recruit,” Kaeya decides to say after an awkward amount of time. Huffman looks curious but thankfully lets it pass, about to shift into another topic when someone else beats him to it.
“Hey, why do you wear an eyepatch?”
Their entire group abruptly goes quiet. Kaeya blinks at Guy, who doesn’t seem to notice the way Hertha and Elzer are glaring daggers at the back of his head. It makes him feel a little fonder of the two.
Surprisingly, it’s Ben who speaks up first.
“You don’t have to answer that,” the teen frowns worriedly as Ernest smacks his friend for the obvious misstep. The seelie on his shoulder pipes in with a quiet cheep, but Kaeya just waves them off with a smile.
“It’s fine,” he says. It was bound to happen, though Kaeya is honestly surprised it took them this long to ask. Only one person had approached him about his eye so far and it was back when he still used bandages.
(“I can take you to a healer,” Marjorie had offered, walking down her usual path as Kaeya tagged along with some of her supplies. “Only if you want to, of course.”
“What do you- oh,” Kaeya had blinked at her, surprised at the offer. He hadn’t realized people were still worried about his eye. He’d been hunting for a month already, and after proving it wasn’t a problem, he simply thought people would ignore it.
“I appreciate the offer, but...”
“But?”
“My eye isn’t really injured anymore.”
“Ah,” Marjorie’s eyes had widened in realization, before it shifted to confusion. “Then the bandages..?”
“Easiest to use to cover it,” Kaeya had shrugged, and that had been that.
Two days later, Kaeya received a package, and huffed when he saw the tailored leather accessory. Marjorie refused to take his payment but eventually caved when he showed her some sigils.
Kaeya had counted it as a win.)
Brushing his hair out of the way, Kaeya considers what to tell them.
He’d made a habit of staying true to his own past so far and he wasn’t about to change that now. There’s a reason he introduces himself as Kaeya and not Gaia, and why he’d never claimed the other’s last name; for all that they shared the same body, they both had different experiences, and Kaeya didn’t want to simply erase the other’s existence.
Gaia deserved to be remembered, just as Kaeya deserved to live as himself.
“I had... an injury,” he slowly says, recalling the moment he’d lost his eye. There was a test, and at some point he’d gotten careless, so his trainer made sure he’d learned from it properly. He was lucky, really - most of his batchmates lost more than an eye that day. “But then I got used to it, so now I just keep it covered up.”
It’s better like this, too, Kaeya adds in his mind. Gaia’s secret aside, he was used to fighting with limited vision - having that handicap lifted would take a while to get used to. It had been a blessed coincidence that both their right eyes were the ones involved.
“Does it still hurt?” Ernest asks hesitantly. Kaeya shakes his head, wondering why everyone is so worried. It took more than this to offend him, plus living with a disability wasn’t so uncommon; most veteran adventurers even had a missing limb or two.
“Like I said, you get used to it,” Kaeya smiles as he tries to lift the mood. It’d be bad if the teens felt uselessly guilty over something like this, so he jokingly adds, “It’s fun to surprise people with how well you can shoot like this, anyway.”
“Oh really?” Hertha gives a slow smirk, and the twinkle in her eye would have been reassuring if it wasn’t so ominous. Kaeya fights back the urge to gulp and simply keeps smiling. “Hey, Kaeya...”
Oh shit. “Yeah?”
“How do you feel about a friendly match?”
Kaeya debates if it isn’t too late to run away.
“I’ll distract them,” is the first thing Huffman says to him while the others are busy setting up a sparring ring.
“Thanks, but you wouldn’t get away with it,” Kaeya returns wryly. “Better to get this over with before they end up cornering me in the future.”
The two of them share a commiserating smile. They watch the others for a moment, standing in comfortable silence before Huffman offers him a short wooden staff.
“Best of luck.”
“You too,” Kaeya huffs, accepting the practice weapon with the enthusiasm of a ruin guard idling in the wild.
“...and we’re done!” Hertha cries, punching a fist into the air as they finish moving the last hayroll into position. “Alright everyone, choose your fighter and may the best one win!”
“Huffman,” Guy immediately says. He settles on the highest roll with Ernest, who shakes his head at other’s choice.
“Sorry Rel, I’m gonna have to go with Kaeya on this one.“
“Using his nickname while saying that is just mean,” Hertha laughs as she finds her own seat on the circle. She then squints at Huffman, then Kaeya, then back at Huffman. “I’m not sure how good Kaeya is, so I’m going with Huffman for now.”
Beside Ben, Elzer raises his hand. “Are we allowed not to vote?”
“That’s boring.”
“And that doesn’t answer the question,” he brightly quips back. On his head, the seelie nods with a cheep. Huh. Apparently the creature now has its favorite NPC, and Kaeya can't tell if it's Elzer or Huffman.
“Fine, fine. Have it your way,” Hertha sighs, shooing them off when Ben decides not to vote as well. Finally, she grabs her pie, gets comfortable, and then looks expectantly at the two people who have been manhandled into this mock exhibition. “Well? What are you two waiting for, let’s start!”
“Maybe when you learn to host properly,” Kaeya jibes but obligingly moves to step into the ring. Huffman follows after him, and after setting the distance between their starting points, the two of them turn to salute each other.
And then the fight begins.
Huffman drops into a ready stance. Kaeya keeps an eye on him, swinging his staff a few times to get a feel of it.
In the game, Aurelius Huffman had been the ideal swordsman: courageous and reliable, with a skill honed through hours of hard work and discipline. He had a knack for outlasting his opponents, which made him a near-perfect fit for captaining the rearguard; even Varka had been impressed with the way he fought.
The Hávarðr knight, guardian of the hearth and one of Mondstadt’s most valiant sixteen - that was the person Huffman would grow up to be.
But that’s in the future, Kaeya reminds himself as they slowly start to circle each other. It would take a while for Huffman to reach the heights his other self did, but...
It wouldn’t hurt to give him a hint, right?
With that, Kaeya lunges forward and strikes to win.
Reflex is the only thing that allows Huffman to parry. Kaeya can see the surprise in his eyes and has to stop himself from smiling when it quickly turns to seriousness; if Huffman was planning to go easy on him, that wasn’t the case now. Speed was Kaeya’s best asset - for every person who’s strength overpowered him, there were three more he outclassed in return.
Kaeya holds back but doesn't let up on his attacks. He pushes Huffman on the defensive, trying to gauge his limits as he leads them closer to their temporary barricade. When an opening comes, he breaks through the other's guard, gets a hand on the staff, and yanks .
Huffman makes a low sound and surprises Kaeya by going with the motion. He spins, blocks Kaeya's next strike but doesn't parry it; instead, he uses the momentum to stabilize himself and launches them both back to where they started.
Kaeya can't help it - he laughs.
"You're amazing," Kaeya tells him and means every word. It's been ten minutes and Huffman is already adapting, the grip on his weapon far more confident as he shifts into a steadier form. Some people thrive when put under pressure and Huffman is definitely one of them - now, Kaeya is bearing witness to one of the things that made this person such a brilliant knight.
See? Kaeya pokes at the system or whatever it is that makes him run into the game's important characters despite the measures he's taken not to. Mondstadt will be fine without Gaia - she already has so many protectors.
"I feel like I should be the one telling you that.”
Huffman’s reply brings him back to the present. There’s a smile on the teen's face, small but challenging, and Kaeya meets it with his own eager grin.
Someone in the background blurts out what the hell . Neither of them pay any mind to it.
The spar continues.
Kaeya can feel the difference in the way Huffman moves; his feet are more grounded, and he doesn't let himself be led by the fight anymore. Kaeya wonders if he's been trained by someone who uses a claymore - the influence on his footwork would certainly fit.
As soon as he has that thought, something red appears at the edge of his vision. Kaeya falters, not because he's surprised - he's always aware of his surroundings, the habit's been trained into him before he could even talk - but because he knows who that is.
Why is that person here?!
Kaeya's panic unfortunately distracts him. When he feels the blow coming at his side, his body reacts faster than his mind.
Up until now, he'd been using Gaia's bladework. It was convenient, far less suspicious than the way he usually fought, and the fact that he was still learning it made the spar more fair. But the fear of being blindsided is a familiar one, and for a second Kaeya forgets that he's not the Vánagandr anymore.
He doesn't hurt Huffman. Kaeya has far more control than that, but what he does is going to bite him in the ass one day - he just knows it.
(It does. Seven years later and standing in front of a captain-less squad, Kaeya will look back on this day and wish that he could have made a run for it when he had the chance.)
"Are you okay?" Kaeya rushes to help Huffman up from where he's lying on the ground. The teen is fine, if a little dazed, and a few feet from them his staff lies forgotten where Kaeya had parried it with a bit more force than he'd like to admit. "Sorry, I was just - I got distracted, and then I panicked, so…"
"It's fine," Huffman chuckles, before wincing at the shouts of their previously quiet audience. "Ah…"
"What was that?" Guy cries out as Ernest laughs himself into a coma beside him. "Seriously, what was that?!"
"You flipped him." Kaeya doesn't know if it's awe or envy in Hertha's gaze; he avoids it anyway, generally uncomfortable with being given attention. "How did you flip him?"
"Both of you did great!" Ben joins in with a supportive thumbs up. Kaeya's seelie tries to mimic him but only succeeds in waving its ears; Elzer pats it anyway, then smiles at them with both pride and admiration.
"Match, I believe."
"Right," Kaeya claps his hands and carefully does not flee for the metaphorical hills. He beams at everyone, bright and disarming, and proceeds to say, “So this was fun, but I really should be going–”
“I see you’re all enjoying yourselves.”
“Master Crepus!” Elzer greets the man with a welcoming smile. The others have gathered around him, properly behaved and looking either curious or shy. None of the teens seem to be scared of the adult - aside from Kaeya, that is, who is doing his absolute best to hide behind an increasingly confused Huffman.
"Kaeya?" the teen asks as the rest of the group offer their own hellos. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Please don’t move,” Kaeya glances around for the best place to escape to. “Can you tell–”
“...seems you’ve brought a new friend.”
Kaeya - doesn’t quite stiffen, but something must show on his face because Huffman dutifully stays by his side. He even inches closer, as if to protect him, but Kaeya knows it’s a futile effort when the master of the house is already approaching.
“Hello,” the man smiles, crouching in front of them and not minding the dust that’s probably ruining his clothes. Crepus Ragnvindr feels as kind as Kaeya remembers, which only adds to the irony of the situation. “I believe we haven’t met yet. May I have the honor of knowing your name?”
No, you may not, Kaeya almost tells him but manages to stop himself at the last second. Master Ragnvindr isn't one to pry, but he’d already ran from him once - a second time was bound to be suspicious, and Kaeya doesn’t need some poor knight staking it out in Springvale for a kid who’s just trying to change his fate. And why is he pretending not to know me? He definitely remembers who I am.
Kaeya looks at the man, then at everyone else watching them behind him, and has to hold back a sigh.
Why does this keep happening to him?
“...Kaeya,” he finally caves after a great amount of reluctance. “It’s Kaeya, sir.”
“Nice to meet you, Kaeya.” Master Ragnvindr says, and it’s genuine enough to make Kaeya feel bad. “Welcome to Dawn Winery.”
Damn this game, Kaeya curses in his head.