Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This fic is set directly after my completed fic, Poisoned Dreams, though I am doing my best to write it so that you don’t need to have read that one in order to enjoy this one. There will be spoilers for Poisoned Dreams in the coming chapters, however. Also spoilers for the locked portions of Kaeya’s and Diluc’s profile stories.

            Diluc always feels weird returning to the Knights of Favonius Headquarters, but he has the feeling he should at least try to get used to it. Since things are finally good between him and Kaeya again, it’s very possible that he’ll find himself here more often . . . though hopefully the knights will know better than to make a habit of trying to summon him here, except in emergencies. Otherwise he’s just going to ignore their summons. This is the second time he’s been back here in two weeks, and if it was anyone but Jean who’d called him here, Diluc would have ignored it this time too. Well, anyone but Jean or Kaeya, but Kaeya is currently on forced medical leave, so if he’d tried to get Diluc to come here, Diluc would have come, but only to drag him back home.

            Kaeya, however, is almost certainly what Jean has asked Diluc here to talk about, and Diluc really doesn’t know how he feels about that. Things are a little strained between Jean and Kaeya right now, over some of the measures Kaeya felt it necessary to take when hunting down the poisoner who had targeted Diluc. Honestly, Diluc can’t say he approved of everything Kaeya did, but his criticism mainly revolves around what ended up happening to Kaeya himself. Jean’s criticisms were . . . well, for other things, and Diluc is one hundred percent on his brother’s side in this argument. (Though he has to admit it does feel strange to be blatantly and admittedly on Kaeya’s side again, after the past four years. Doubly so since it’s Jean they’re at odds with.)

            However, perhaps it’s not actually an argument, or at least not anymore. Jean did apologize the first time she swung by Kaeya’s house, but her main reason for coming had been because she needed information that only Kaeya could provide, not because she wanted to apologize. She’d stopped by again, a few days ago, allegedly to check up on him but in actuality because she had questions related to Kaeya’s work, and needed answers because things were falling apart without him. What Diluc had overheard of their conversation had been strained. It reminded him of the first few conversations between him and Kaeya, after he’d gotten back to Mondstadt after his search for answers about their father’s death. Diluc would have felt sympathy for Jean almost any other time . . . but again, he’s on Kaeya’s side of the argument. If it is an argument.

            “Diluc Ragnvindr, here to see Acting Grandmaster Jean, at her request,” Diluc tells Sir Athos, before he or Sir Porthos can challenge him, as they did last time he came here.

            “Good morning, Master Diluc. Master Jean let us know you would be coming by,” Athos says, and is much more friendly and familiar than when Diluc stopped by last week, despite their relationship literally not changing at all. “By the way, have you seen Captain Kaeya recently? Do you know how he’s doing?”

            That would be why. Diluc can’t exactly say he likes people kissing up to him for information, but . . .

            “I saw him yesterday evening. He’s recovering well,” Diluc tells them before walking past them and into the Ordo’s headquarters.

            Jean is waiting for him in her office. Diluc hears the sound of paper being torn up before he knocks.

            “Please enter,” Jean commands, but politely. It almost brings a smile to Diluc’s face as he obeys, and as he opens the door and sees her sitting behind the Grand Master’s desk, he can’t help but think that it suits her quite well. Though . . . there is a small, slightly bitter part of him that wonders . . . what if? What if he hadn’t left the Ordo? What if they’d done right by his father’s memory, or better yet, his father never died at all? Would Diluc be sitting where she is right now? There is a very good possibility . . . though an equally good possibility that he wouldn’t be in Mondstadt at all right now, but off with Varka on his expedition . . .

            Well, dwelling on it is pointless, Diluc tells himself. He’s where he is now because of the choices that he made, and he doesn’t begrudge Jean her hard-earned position at all . . . at least not as long as she’s not giving his brother a hard time.

            He catches a rare glimpse of Jean’s temper, which she quickly tries to tuck away at the sight of him, as she crumples what remains of the letter she’d been tearing up and sets it aside, perhaps to be burned later, as the Ordo’s confidential correspondences often are. Her annoyance is replaced by genuine happiness at the sight of Diluc and, he must admit, it’s difficult to remain at odds with her when she looks like that.

            “Diluc. Welcome. You’re looking so much better. Are you completely recovered from the effects of the dream poison?” Jean asks.

            “My fingernails are still slightly tinted, but that’s the only lingering side effect,” Diluc answers honestly.

            “And Kaeya?”

            “He’s fine.” This time Diluc answers with just the slightest edge to his tone. Only someone who knows him well would pick up on it. As expected, Jean does. She grew up with him after all.

            “Is the poison completely out of his system too?”

            “Mostly.”

            “ . . . But he’s past the worst of it?”

            “Yes.”

            Jean is silent for a moment, then a sad look enters her eyes. “You’re angry with me.”

            “I’m not angry with you, but I am on Kaeya’s side,” Diluc tells her.

            “I couldn’t just ignore what he did . . . and I thought we had settled things. I don’t want to be at odds with Kaeya,” says Jean. “There’s no knight I value more than him. I hope he knows that.”

            Diluc feels his ire slipping away in the face of Jean’s sincerity. Back in the old days, he’d never been able to stay annoyed at her for long, during the exceedingly rare times when they found themselves at odds. “He does know,” Diluc tells Jean, “and I think if you’d had that conversation any other day, it would have gone completely different. However, after what he’d just gone through . . .”

            Jean is silent for several seconds. “How bad was it, Diluc? When he was exposed to the poison?”

            “Worse than you can imagine.” Diluc had never seen Kaeya so close to breaking. He hopes he never sees his brother that way again. He can’t tell Jean about what happened, and he wouldn’t even if she and Kaeya weren’t currently having a disagreement. All he can do is give her a general idea of the scope of what Kaeya went through, and even that won’t nearly put it into perspective. “Do you remember when we were younger, and you and I speculated about what might have –”

            Jean’s office door flies open without warning, and after everything Diluc’s been through lately, his nerves are still raw and on edge, and he nearly summons a searing blast of pyro to strike down the intruder who might or might not be a threat.

            “Master Jean!” Huffman gasps. “You need to come quickly! There’s been a murder! It – he – it’s terrible, Master Jean! It’s the Blind Seer! He’s back!”

            Diluc doesn’t know who the Blind Seer is, but at the mention of that name he sees Jean go rigid and knows that this is bad.

            “That’s impossible, Huffman,” Jean says sternly.

            “I know it should be, but somehow it’s really him! I saw the body he just dropped myself!”

            Diluc looks sharply at Jean as he realizes that this isn’t just Huffman being his usual bumbling self. Whoever or whatever this Blind Seer is, he’s bad news and they now have a corpse to prove it.

            “But it can’t be Kurtz,” says Jean. “He’s dead.”

            “Yes but . . . he said he would come back, didn’t he? Do you think that’s what this is? The Blind Seer back from the grave to finish what he started?”

            “Please don’t be ridiculous, Huffman,” says Jean. “The dead can’t be brought back to life . . . at least not so easily. Besides, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Who is the victim?”

            “Poor Pollux Medlark. He was stabbed to death and left blindfolded, with his Vision left on his forehead. Poor kid only got his Vision last week.”

            A chill sweeps through Diluc at Huffman’s last words.

            “Damn it,” Jean swears, earning herself another sharp look from Diluc. Not because she was swearing in general, but because anything that gets Jean to curse has to be bad, and Diluc has the feeling this isn’t just because this crime is an offense against the Archons.

            “You see? It fits the pattern!”

            “I need to see for myself,” Jean says, and stands up. “I’m sorry Diluc –”

            “No need for apologies,” Diluc says quickly.

            “Grand Master?” Huffman asks hesitantly. “Should I send for Captain Kaeya?”

            “No,” Jean and Diluc say in unison. “Kaeya is still on medical leave,” Jean continues, as Diluc simply glares.

            “But it’s the Blind Seer.”

            “It is not the Blind Seer. He is dead,” Jean says sternly.

            “But . . . it’s still . . . it’s still a serial killer.”

            “It’s not. This is the first, and Barbatos willing, the only victim,” says Jean as she sweeps out from behind her desk. The breeze in her wake knocks the letter she’d been tearing up when Diluc entered off her desk. Instinctively, he bends down to pick it up and put it back on her desk for her. As he does, he can’t help but catch a glimpse of the writing on the letter’s envelope. That’s when he notices that the letter Jean was destroying . . . was addressed to Kaeya. At a glance, the sender looks to be from Fontaine. L’Agence Loraine. Diluc knows he’s heard that name before, but he can’t remember from what . . . but that’s not really important. He can’t help but feel a bit of disapproval that Jean is destroying a letter meant for Kaeya. Even though he knows it’s probably Ordo correspondence that she has a right to see and destroy, it still just seems not quite right to him.

            When he looks at Jean, he sees a gleam of guilt in her eyes before she quickly looks away.

            “But . . . Grand Master . . .” Huffman seems unwilling to let this go. “I know Sir Kaeya is a bit infamous for causing problems, but . . . I really think we should send for him.”

            What part of “Kaeya is on medical leave,” does this dimwit not understand?

            Jean hesitates. Then turns to Diluc, and Diluc prepares to shoot her request down. It’s never easy, when it’s Jean. He may loathe the Knights of Favonius as a whole, but Jean is and will always be a friend . . . but dragging Kaeya out of his recovery right now because her other knights can’t do their jobs is not a request he will consent to.

            “Master Diluc, I wonder if I could trouble you to join me, to look over the crime scene?” Jean asks instead. “Even though you are no longer affiliated with the knights, you do have an eye for important details . . . and if it becomes necessary, you can fill your brother in.”

            “Brother?” asks Huffman, looking surprised and wary. “Master Diluc has a brother?”

            “She’s talking about Kaeya,” Diluc says curtly, “and yes. I’ll come with you to the crime scene.”

            No disrespect to the dead, but Diluc wants to see for himself what all this fuss is about.

            “What? What? Kaeya is . . . Master Diluc’s . . . brother?”

            “Yes. Now, please arrange for a wagon so we can move the victim’s body to our premises, then retrieve one of Kaeya’s investigation kits for me and catch up to us. We’re going on ahead,” Jean says. “I assume that our knights have cordoned off the crime scene already?”

            “Oh. Um. Yes. Sir Raymond has taken charge of the scene. It’s in the alley between Copper Lane and Wind Way. But – brothers? How? Since when?”

            “The investigation kit, Huffman?” Jean prompts impatiently as she strides toward the door, Diluc at her heels.

            They make their way quickly to the mid-city, and as they go, Diluc can’t help but be aware of the murmurs as they pass. The change in the city’s atmosphere is palpable. There’s a fear hanging in the air that wasn’t here even a quarter of an hour ago, when he passed by. So, it seems that news of this Blind Seer is spreading quickly, and it seems Diluc may have underestimated how serious this actually is.

            “Jean? Who is this Blind Seer?” he asks.

            “No one. Not anymore, at least. He’s dead,” Jean says, giving him a strange side-eyed look that he can’t read. “However, before his death he was a serial killer.”

            That term again. Diluc isn’t familiar with it. “And a serial killer is?”

            “Someone who murders a series of victims,” Jean tells him. “Like the Lunatic Stabber or the Springvale Butchers.”

            The Lunatic Stabber, he has heard of. If Diluc remembers right, he was a madman who one day decided he wanted to kill someone every full moon, and then started doing so, until the Knights of Favonius managed to stop him. That was several decades ago, however, and that man died long enough ago that he seemed more like a monster from a story than an actual person who really lived. The Springvale Butcher, on the other hand . . .

            “The Springvale Butcher is just a myth. A monster story meant to scare children, that gets added to every time someone goes missing or has an accident in the area,” Diluc tells Jean. “My father told me that they told that same story when he was a lad too.”

            Jean gives him that strange look again. “No. The Springvale Butchers were very real. They managed to get away with it for so long because too many people believed what you did, and until . . . well, if we hadn’t realized there were multiple killers spanning generations, they’d be continuing to prey upon hapless travelers even today. You really haven’t heard about . . . about this?”

            “I take it I was away when they were caught?” suggests Diluc, his voice a bit more curt than he intends, but he feels like he’s missing something. Almost like Jean is holding something back . . . and worse, she’s only holding it back because she feels like he should know it, and is trying to see if he really does know. Unfortunately, he doesn’t, and can’t even guess what he’s supposed to know.

            “Yes. A lot’s happened while you were gone,” Jean says after a stilted pause.

            Diluc wracks his brain. “Kaeya did mention that since you started getting promoted, unsolved crimes have dropped drastically.”

            To his surprise, Jean winces slightly. “That’s . . . technically the truth.”

            Diluc frowns. What is he missing? He mulls it over in the few minutes they have left before they make it to the crime scene. Sir Huffman catches up to them just as they arrive, carrying a heavy satchel of supplies that he passes to Jean as they reach the edge of the crowd that’s gathered.

            “Make way! Let the Acting Grand Master through!” calls Sir Raymond, seeing them on the other side of the masses of gawkers.

            Realizing who it is, the crowd quickly parts for them, to Diluc’s surprise. He remembers his own days as a knight, when he had to do work in the city rather than patrolling and eliminating threats outside the walls. Crowds of people are difficult to control, to say the least. It’s very rare for them to act so quickly. It must be a mark of their respect for Jean.

            Diluc hears whispers and snatches of conversation from those who think they’re far enough away that they can’t be heard, or at least can’t be picked out of the crowd.

            “The Acting Grand Master. She was the one who caught the Blind Seer the first time.”

            “But . . . can’t be . . . declared dead by both the Church and the Ordo.”

            “ . . . Captain Kaeya? Have they sent for him?”

            “ . . . still recovering from being poisoned . . . really going to be okay without . . . ?”

            “I know, I know, but she needs the Blood Wolf for this, right? Don’t they work best together?”

            “ . . . back from the grave to continue his dark mission.”

            “Is he really back?”

            “Blind Seer . . .”

            “. . . Blood Wolf . . .”

            Diluc tones them out as they reach the front of the crowd, where he is surprised to realize that the only thing holding the crowd of gawkers back is . . . a line of chalk drawn on the ground, and two knights who aren’t even having to snap at anyone to stay back. Perhaps it’s because the dead body that makes this a crime scene is covered with a shroud, so it’s out of sight.

            “What – who covered the body?” Jean demands.

            “Sister Cynthia,” says the other knight who Diluc doesn’t know. The one who’s not Sir Raymond. “She thought it best to ensure the departed’s remains were treated with respect –”

            Jean frowns as she moves closer to the covered body and kneels down beside it. “You shouldn’t have let her. You know that. We have protocols for a reason.”

            “Yes, but . . . it’s . . .”

            “We thought it might be best, given the state that the victim is in,” says Raymond. “It’s one of the Blind Seer’s victims so it’s . . . not a nice sight.”

            “It’s not the Blind Seer’s work,” Jean says, yet again. “Kurtz is dead.”

            Diluc stays back a pace and half so he’s not in Jean’s way, and looks down at the covered body. There is a slight red glow shining through the shroud, from the victim’s forehead. A pyro Vision, Diluc realizes, feeling a slight reaction from his own, and he remembers Huffman mentioning that the victim’s Vision had been left on his forehead . . . but why?

            He watches, silently, as Jean carefully lifts the shroud, peeling it back to reveal young Pollux Medlark. Diluc’s seen a lot of bodies in his time . . . more than his fair share. The sight of Pollux now though, still manages to give him a jolt of surprise. The reaction from the crowd is worse. It sets them to buzzing, in distracting, irritating, ominous tones.

            It’s the way Pollux’s body was staged. The boy was blindfolded with a scrap of scarlet cloth. The deep red color of the fabric somehow makes his visage so much more macabre. His Vision, left in the center of his forehead, like a glowing third eye, adds to the effect. Diluc has to force his eyes away from the deceased boy’s face, lower, to find out how he died, if the cause is visible . . . and it is. Multiple stab wounds over the chest and stomach area. Jean is already looking them over, wearing a white cloth mask and white gloves pulled from the investigation kit, and also using a slender stick of wood to lift the boy’s shirt away from the wounds, and get a better look at the injuries. She keeps her expression neutral and composed. It’s only because they’re childhood friends that Diluc can tell that she’s relieved by whatever she’s found.

            “It’s not the Blind Seer,” she says with certainty, and loud enough for her voice to carry to the crowd. “It’s someone trying to make their work look like his, probably to throw us off their trail.”

            “How can you be sure?” someone calls from the crowd.

            Jean doesn’t answer them. Diluc approves. Instead, his old friend is focusing on the body again, while Diluc . . . well, he’s not sure what he’s really here for, actually.

            “Is there something you need me to do?” he asks, because he can’t help but feel a little bit useless right now. Even when he was in the knights, he never ran point on a murder investigation. Those were dealt with by the civic side of the Ordo, who patrolled the city and tried to keep crimes down. Diluc had been firmly on the military side, which patrolled outside the city walls to eliminate threats to Mondstadt, and kept their combat skills sharp, since they also made up Mondstadt’s standing army.

            “Er – not in particular. Just observe. Note everything you see. Every little detail. We’ll be writing them down when we get back to headquarters. Raymond, has anyone been sent to inform his family?”

            “No, Master Jean. Not yet. As soon as I found the body, I flagged down Huffman and sent him to get you. He met Devin along the way and sent him here to help me. I would have sent Devin to get more knights to hold down the scene, and gone to deliver the bad news myself but . . . but I’m not sure this is Pollux Medlark and not . . . not Castor.”

            Memory jolts Diluc. Mond is not an overly large city. Almost everyone knows just about everyone else, but he was away for three years, and has only been back for about one, so his lapse is understandable, but somehow he forgot that Pollux had a brother.

            Now it’s the only thing he can think about.

            His eyes slide back to Pollux and he can’t help but see the boy in a different light. He’s only fifteen . . . or maybe sixteen. Diluc’s seen him running around Mond with his twin many times. He’s not sure, but he thinks that Pollux is the more outspoken of the two . . . or was the more outspoken of the two, and that his brother is the calmer one, quieter, and content to remain in his brother’s shadow . . . or is it the other way around?

            People had often commented on how Diluc and Kaeya were so close, they seemed like twins, always able to predict what the other would do before he did it, always together. It’s only taken four years for so much of Mond to forget they were brothers. Will it be like that for Castor now too? Or Pollux? Whichever brother is still alive? In four years will people no longer remember that he once had a twin?

            It’s . . . not the same at all, there’s no comparison, Diluc shouldn’t even be thinking it and will never say it, because what happened between him and Kaeya was completely different. Estrangement is nothing compared to the death of one’s sibling . . . Even though Diluc nearly did kill his brother, that horrible night four years ago, and there have been multiple incidents, maybe even dozens, where one of them has nearly been killed since then. Diluc is a little startled to realize that he and Kaeya don’t know just how many close calls and brushes with death the other has survived anymore. Their most recent disaster, however . . . that’s still fresh on both their minds. That’s the reason Kaeya’s on forced medical leave right now, and not here, where everyone seems to want him. Diluc never thought he’d find anything to be happy about Kaeya being injured for, but he’s glad now that Kaeya’s not here to see this. There’s no reason that he needs to have dead brothers on his mind.

            “Is . . . is there no way to tell the difference between the brothers?” Jean asks.

            “They’re identical twins, so . . . no, none that I know of,” says Raymond.

            “I wish Captain Kaeya were here,” says the other knight, who Diluc surmises must be Sir Devin. “I bet he would know.”

            Raymond elbows him in the ribs. Jean frowns. Diluc tries to make sense of this. He knows that Kaeya’s men have a lot of confidence in their captain, but to expect him to be able to tell apart identical twins when he’s only looking at the one that’s been killed – wait.

            “Do we know if the brother is alright?” Diluc asks quickly. He doesn’t know how this hasn’t occurred to anyone else yet.

            “This is the Blind Seer’s work. He only targets people with Visions,” says Huffman.

            “People who have newly received their Visions,” Raymond elaborates, “Which should suggest that this is Pollux, I think, but Master Jean says this isn’t the Blind Seer’s work.”

            “It’s not,” Jean says. “The wounds aren’t right. Kaeya would say the same thing if he were here.”

            When they get somewhere with relative privacy, Diluc is either going to make Jean tell him why everyone keeps dragging his brother’s name into this, or he’s going to throttle the answer out of one of her subordinates.

            “We need to alert the family,” continues Jean. “I don’t want them finding out from rumors. Even if we’re not sure which twin it is.” She peels off her gloves and removes her mask, then pulls out a notepad of paper from the investigation kit and hands it to Diluc, then reaches inside her coat and produces a Fontaine pen . . . an expensive luxury that he’s sure Jean would never purchase for herself so it must have been a gift. “Sorry to abandon you, Diluc, but I want to do this myself.”

            “No need to apologize.” Diluc has no business going. Not that he’d want to. He can’t imagine anyone really would want to go and give these parents what is doubtlessly going to be the worst news of their lives. He takes the pen and paper from her, though he’s not sure when he needs them for yet.

            “Please write down everything you noticed here, and give these to Raymond when you’re done. Sir Raymond, when the wagon arrives, move the body onto it, please. Follow all protocols this time. Sir Devin, assist him. Sir Huffman, you’re with me.”

            She kneels down beside the body once more, before she leaves, and removes the Vision from the murdered boy’s forehead, then wraps it in a handkerchief with the Favonius Lion embroidered on it. Then she tucks it into a pocket on the inside of her coat.

            “Yes, Master Jean, but . . .” Raymond hesitates. “Are we waiting for Captain Kaeya? Should we delay moving the boy until he gets here to see the scene for himself?”

            “No. Kaeya is still on medical leave. He won’t be coming,” says Jean. Yet again.

            “Sister Rosaria then?”

            “Please no. Please don’t call her,” pleads Devin. “Because you know Kaeya’s going to take himself off medical leave soon, and when those two are together, I can never tell if they’re flirting or threatening to eat each other’s future first born.”

            “What are you talking about? Those two get along quite well,” says Huffman.

            Raymond gives him an incredulous look. “No. No, they don’t.”

            “There’s no need to call Sister Rosaria,” says Jean, “and Captain Kaeya will be remaining on medical leave.”

            Raymond frowns then glances from his fellow knights, to Diluc, to the crowd, then back to Jean. “May we speak further on this matter when we reconvene at headquarters, Master Jean?”

            “There is nothing more to speak of,” Jean tells him firmly. “Captain Kaeya is on medical leave. This is not the work of the Blind Seer. We will not be disturbing his recovery over this.”

            “I’m sorry, but I think you’re failing to estimate how much unrest this imposter killing is going to cause Mondstadt,” says Raymond, “and Barbatos help us if there’s more than one.”

            “Why exactly,” asks Diluc, his tone dripping with acid, “are you all so determined to pull my brother, who was poisoned with a torture drug just last week, out of his convalescence and into a murder investigation? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Kaeya is not the only one qualified to investigate murders in the Ordo, is he? Your Acting Grand Master herself is leading the investigation, is she not? Surely you’re not implying that the whole lot of you are so incompetent as to –”

            “Diluc.” Jean’s voice doesn’t sound charged with emotion, but Diluc knows her. “I’ll explain it to you.”

            But not now. Not here. Those are implied in her tone.

            Diluc gives her a curt nod, accepting this, trusting that she won’t put this off for too long. In fact, he thinks that he’ll return to the Ordo’s headquarters and wait for her there, just to ensure she doesn’t, and if she takes too long then he’ll just throttle it out of her knights after all.

            He understands that Jean is extremely busy, with all the work she takes on. Much of it is by her own choice, but that’s just who she is, the sort of selfless person who devotes her life to others, and to Mondstadt. He doesn’t want to make her job harder, but Kaeya is his brother, and there’s something going on that no one is telling him, and it’s grating his last nerve.

            Jean nods back, but before she turns away, Diluc gets a glimpse of a storm brewing behind her eyes.

            There’s a story there, he realizes. A story . . . and not a happy one.

Four Years Ago . . .

            It’s been a month since Jean’s two best friends’ lives fell apart. A month since Master Crepus died, and Diluc left Mondstadt and the Ordo, after fighting with Kaeya, and disowning him, and burning his hands so badly that Jean’s not sure if they’ll ever work right again. It is actually probably a good thing that Diluc left, because Jean is so furious with him right now, she’s not sure what she’d say to him. Despite Kaeya being insistent that it was all his fault, Jean very much doubts that it was. No matter what he’d done or said, there is no excuse for Diluc to burn his brother like that. None.

            It’s also been a month since Jean’s seen Kaeya. Grandmaster Varka had granted him as much leave as he needed, between bereavement and his disfiguring, potentially crippling injury, and Kaeya just . . . disappeared. No one in Mondstadt’s seen him. Jean’s asked everyone and looked everywhere. There’s a part of her that wonders if she’ll ever see him again. It’s ironic, but it was always Diluc’s fear that one day Kaeya would go away and never come back. He’d confided that in her once. After all, Kaeya had just shown up out of nowhere one day. Diluc was scared he could disappear just as easily. Though, in the scenarios Diluc imagined, Jean is fairly certain that Kaeya was always alive in them, just no longer with Diluc. Unfortunately Jean doesn’t have that luxury. Because if Kaeya’s not in Mond, then that means he’s outside the city walls, all alone, and he can barely use his hands.

            Her sole comfort is that he does have a Vision now. A cryo Vision. That he’s not supposed to use while his hands are healing, but hopefully, if he needs to, he will use it and manage to do so successfully, but he’s untrained, which means there’s only so much he can do against an enemy.

            If Kaeya didn’t have a Vision . . . as cruel as it seems, the Ordo would likely be considering retiring him if he couldn’t recover sufficiently. Everyone amongst them is required to be combat capable, from their alchemists and archivists, to the Grand Master himself. Kaeya may never wield a sword again. However, with a Vision, he could become proficient with a catalyst. It would take some time, and his lack of depth perception would work against him, but the order isn’t completely heartless . . . and also does its very best to entice allogenes into its ranks. After all, wielding a Vision is a guaranteed admission into the knights’ training. They’ll give Kaeya as much time as he needs to figure out how to fight with his new cryo powers.

            If he comes back.

            It’s on a cool, drizzly day that he does return, and funnily enough, Grand Master Varka has just pulled Jean aside to ask about him.

            “Jean. A word,” Varka says, catching her right as she enters the Ordo’s headquarters. He’d left the door of his office open, so perhaps he’d been waiting for her.

            “Yes, Master Varka? What can I do for you?”

            “Kaeya. When’s the last time you saw him?” There’s a note of urgency to Varka’s tone that worries Jean.

            “The day after . . . the day after Master Crepus died,” Jean answers honestly. “May I ask why, sir? Is everything alright?”

            Varka is silent for a second too long. “I don’t know enough to say if anything’s wrong. Have you any idea where he might be? Do you know of a friend he might be staying with? Or any properties he might have purchased on the sly, to take a lover to? Or a secret stick fort that you and the Ragnvindr brothers built when you were children that might have a solid enough roof for him to sleep under?”

            “No, sir. Kaeya doesn’t have any close friends other than . . . other than me.” Once upon a time there had also been Diluc, and Diluc had always come first. “He has no . . . property.” Jean decides not to focus on the more embarrassing part of Varka’s second query. “It was a topic that was slightly contentious in the Ragnvindr household. Kaeya wanted to give all or nearly all of his wages to Master Crepus, to pay him back for raising him. Crepus refused to take them. He said Kaeya was his son. He made Kaeya put them in a bank account so someday, if he wanted his own home, he could get it. Diluc . . . got upset because he wanted Kaeya to stay with him, always. Then Kaeya got . . . thrown off when he realized that there was already quite a lot of money in his account. Master Crepus had been adding funds to it for years. Kaeya insisted he would never touch it, he wanted to give it back . . .” Jean stops herself as her eyes tear up. Takes a moment. Then forces herself to continue. “As for stick forts . . . no. Any hideouts we had were all on Dawn Winery property . . . and I already checked them all.”

            Varka gives her a look full of sympathy and pats her shoulder. “I’m sure he’s safe.”

            Safe. Not fine. Perhaps because they know that Kaeya is not fine, and there’s no way he could be, and Varka doesn’t want to pretend? No . . . the man is many things, but subtle is not one of them.

            “Is there a specific reason why he wouldn’t be safe, sir?” asks Jean.

            Varka stills. He nearly flinches, Jean is fairly certain of that. Then, suddenly, his entire expression changes into one of genuine relief and happiness. “Speak of the devil.”

            A pang of hope beats in Jean’s heart and she spins around just as the Ordo’s front door closes behind Kaeya.

            He looks . . . not good. Not as horrible as he could, but . . . but he’s alive and safe, even if he does have a dark circle under his eye, and his Ordo coat is hanging off him so loosely that it’s painfully clear he’s been starving himself for the whole past month.

            Jean forgets herself, forgets that she’s having a conversation with the Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius, and runs to her friend.

            It breaks off a little piece of her soul when she sees Kaeya look at her with naked fear on his face, but he doesn’t try to get away from her. He stiffens as she flings her arms around him and embraces her friend, and he doesn’t hug her back . . . but it’s okay. He’s okay.

            “Sorry,” Jean says, and detaches herself. “I was worried.”

            “Sorry,” Kaeya echoes. “I didn’t . . . I should have let you know where I was going but . . . I didn’t know where I was going.”

            “Were . . . were you looking for Diluc?” Jean asks.

            “What?” Kaeya looks confused. “No, I – he – I steered clear of the winery.”

            “You don’t know?”

            “What don’t I know?”

            Jean hesitates. Then answers honestly. “Diluc left Mondstadt. No one knows where he was planning to go or when he’ll be back.”

            Kaeya closes his eye then opens it again very slowly, as he takes this in. Then he nods, accepting it, because what else could he do? Then his gaze drifts to Grand Master Varka, who’s just come up behind Jean, and he salutes. “Master Varka.”

            “Kaeya. Good to see you.” Then Varka, never one to stand on ceremony, grabs Kaeya and hauls him in for a hug too. “Damn, kid. You’ve lost weight.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “That’s not a good thing. Eat more. That’s an or – join me for dinner tonight. That’s an order.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “How are your hands?”

            Kaeya hesitates.

            “You can tell me,” Varka says. “You don’t need to worry, whatever your answer.”

            Kaeya holds up both his glove covered hands, the palms facing Varka, then slowly closes them into fists. His right one closes all the way, but it does so painfully slowly. His left one, his dominant hand, doesn’t. His fingers just sort of curl up but not all the way.

            “They’re scarred over,” Kaeya tells them, “and the scars are stiff.”

            “There are salves that can help with that,” says Jean, encouraged by what he’s been able to do so far. Maybe Kaeya won’t have to switch to using a catalyst after all.

            “Get him set up with some, will you, Jean?” Varka requests. “Not right this moment, but later this morning.”

            “Grand Master Varka?” Kaeya asks tentatively. “I . . . am aware that I no longer have the backing of the Ragnvindr family, so I understand if I am no longer –”

            “That’s not why you’re here, Kaeya,” Varka says flatly. “That was never why you were here. My predecessor’s predecessor refused to allow Crepus Ragnvindr himself to enter our ranks. You became a knight through your own merit. Whether you go or stay isn’t up to the Ragnvindr family. It’s up to you, and personally I hope you’ll choose to stay. You’re a good kid, and you have a place here as long as you want it.”

            Oddly enough, that doesn’t seem to encourage Kaeya. If anything, it only seems to make him look sadder and even more guilty, as he bows his head and responds. “Thank you, sir.”

            Varka nods. “Are you ready to come back to work? If you need more time, you can have it.”

            “I would like to come back, but with my hands . . . I can’t fight yet. Perhaps . . . While I was gone, I was . . . thinking . . . Recovering will take time, so perhaps . . . I could transfer from the military side of the Ordo to the civic side?”

            Varka’s eyes light up and he seems genuinely pleased with this idea. “Excellent thinking. Yes, yes, I like this idea very much. That will work out well for when – er . . . Oh, I know! You work well with Jean, don’t you? Our Captain of the Walls. I’ll transfer you so you can work under her. I’m sure she can find plenty of tasks for you while your hands continue to heal. Then, once you’re fully recovered, you can keep working under her, because let’s face it, a good breeze will blow you away, and this is Mondstadt, so it’s always windy. At least if you get blown away inside the walls we’ll have a chance of finding you.”

            Kaeya doesn’t smile, but he does look grateful. “Thank you, sir.”

            “Of course, boy. Now, come along, the both of you. I want to get –”

            “Grand Master Varka! Grand Master Varka!” Sir Silas shouts as he rushes into headquarters. “There’s been another murder! Another new allogene has just been murdered!”

            Jean’s jaw drops. A new allogene murdered? Who would do something like that? Many people without Visions would never even dream of raising a hand against anyone with one, no matter how long they’d had it. Not just because they’re so likely to be outmatched, but also out of fear that doing so would anger the Archons. To kill someone newly blessed by the Archons . . . that’s nothing short of heresy. What Silas just said though . . .

            “What do you mean another?” she demands. Then, Varka’s worry over Kaeya suddenly makes sense.

            Varka looks around at the other knights in the entry hall, of which there are quite a few. It’s the beginning of the workday, so members of the Ordo are entering headquarters, and stopping to talk with their colleagues . . . or at least they were. Now they’re all staring with the same shock Jean is feeling.

            Varka sighs. “So much for keeping it under wraps. Eroch won’t be pleased.”

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Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            Jean returns to her office with a heavy heart. She’d braced herself for delivering the worst news any parent could ever receive, but Mr. and Mrs. Medlark weren’t at home, or in the market, or any of the other half dozen places Jean and Huffman looked before Jean realized that she couldn’t afford to take up any more time on that search. There is an active murder investigation that needs her personal attention, and Kaeya has always stressed that the first day of the investigation is critical. So she left Sir Huffman waiting outside the Medlark’s house to deliver the news in her stead, and took word to Swan and Lawrence at the front gates, and Guy at the side gate, so that they are prepared to deliver the bad news to the Medlarks when they return to Mondstadt, if it turns out they’d left the city. She asks Hertha to assist Guy, if she sees that delivering the news to the Medlarks falls to him, and on her way back to headquarters, she runs into Sir Aramis, and sends him to wait with Huffman. It’s the Ordo’s protocol to have two knights deliver the news of a death, but even if it weren’t, Jean would have made the same moves anyway. Telling someone that their loved one has died is never easy. This way her knights don’t have to do it alone.

            What’s worrying is that the other twin, presumably Castor, is nowhere to be found either. Jean can only hope that he is alright. Whenever she passes one of her knights patrolling the city, she makes sure they know to keep an eye out for him.

            It’s only midmorning by the time she makes it back to headquarters, but Jean is already exhausted. Part of it, she is fairly certain, is the atmosphere of Mondstadt. News of the Blind Seer’s alleged return spread so fast. Everyone she passed was talking about it, many even approached her to ask if it was true. Even though she told them that it wasn’t, that this is definitely a different killer, people are still scared. As she steps through the entry doors, a flash of red immediately catches her attention, and Jean knows that her morning is about to get a lot longer.

            She hadn’t honestly thought Diluc would be here waiting for her. In the Ordo’s headquarters of all places. Well, she can’t say she’s surprised that his concern for his brother, and his wariness over Kaeya being dragged out of recovery for this is stronger than his distaste for the Ordo, and it really is good to see the Ragnvindr brothers openly caring about one another again . . . she just wishes that she didn’t feel like they were both against her after the dream poison incident. Right now she could really use them on her side.

            “Diluc,” she greets him, and opens the door to her office, ushering him in.

            “You okay?” asks Diluc, and there is genuine concern in his eyes for her.

            “Yes. We couldn’t find the Medlarks. Any of them. My knights are keeping an eye out for them at the gates, and Huffman and Aramis are waiting at their house. I just hope that the other brother is alright.”

            “Me too.” Diluc looks troubled. “I don’t wish to make a nuisance of myself at a time like this, but I need to know. People keep suggesting that Kaeya be brought in on this. Why?”

            Jean takes a deep breath to buy herself some time. She meant to figure out how she wanted to tell Diluc this on her way back, but there was too much else to worry about, and she hadn’t thought she’d be seeing him quite this soon.

            “Diluc . . . how much do you know about what Kaeya’s been doing since . . . since you left Mond four years ago?”

            “What do you mean?” Diluc asks.

            “I know you have your own information network. Have you not used it to keep tabs on your brother?” Did you care that little about him? a small, dark part of her wants to ask, but she keeps it in check.

            “I haven’t been having people spy on him, no. Nor having them try to dig up dirt on him.”

            “But Charles, Elzer, and Adelinde never mentioned his accomplishments? You haven’t heard your customers at Angel’s Share talking about his exploits?”

            Diluc shrugs impatiently. Jean takes that to mean that the people he’s close to knew better than to speak good words about Kaeya in Diluc’s presence, and Diluc simply blocked it out when his tavern customers did. Or perhaps he hadn’t known they were talking about Kaeya when they toasted him. Plenty of them use that ridiculous nickname for him, after all . . .

            “Alright,” Jean says, because she can see that Diluc is about to start getting annoyed if he doesn’t get an answer right now. “I guess I need to tell you the whole truth then, however much it stings my ego. You know how Kaeya told you that unsolved crimes in Mond have plummeted since I started getting promoted?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well, as I said earlier, that’s technically the truth. However, what Kaeya didn’t mention, that is very relevant, is that I started getting rapidly promoted after he was transferred under my command.”

            Diluc blinks. “You mean he –”

            A sharp knock on the door cuts him off.

            “I’m occupied at the moment,” Jean calls to whoever is on the other side of the door. “Unless it’s urgent, please come back later.”

            “Alright,” Kaeya says on the other side. “If you need me, I’ll be examining the body and looking over the case notes.”

            “Blast it,” Jean growls and starts toward the door. Diluc beats her there.

            “Kaeya.”

            “Hm? Oh, hello Diluc,” says Kaeya. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

            “You should be at home resting,” Jean says as Diluc scowls.

            “Perhaps . . . but let’s face it, we both knew this was coming. Though I thought I’d have another week or two of suspension before I was needed,” Kaeya says. “Another bet that would not have paid out.”

            Jean sighs and casts a glance out into the entry hall to make sure no one overheard Kaeya calling his forced medical leave a suspension. Thankfully, she doesn’t see anyone. She wonders if Kaeya still would have said what he did if there had been someone to hear. One thing is for sure. He is not happy. “Come in, Kaeya,” she tells him. She’s pretty sure this is a conversation best held behind a closed door.

            Kaeya obeys.

            “Please sit,” Jean requests, when Kaeya moves to lean against the wall instead.

            Again, Kaeya obeys, sinking into his usual seat at the foot of the table in Jean’s office. As he does so, Jean takes the opportunity to study her second in command. Kaeya is still much thinner than she would like. She’s sure that Diluc has been doing his utmost to correct that, but Kaeya’s always had the bad habit of starving himself when he’s injured, or ill, or really upset, then takes forever to gain it back. Aside from having lost weight that he couldn’t afford to, Kaeya actually looks okay, however. His skin color is back to normal. When he’d first gotten poisoned he’d been scarily pale. The poison had also darkened the veins in his face, particularly around his visible eye. Thankfully, there’s no trace of that now. He’s moving alright too, with his usual cat-like grace. Jean is glad, and . . . despite knowing that Kaeya should be at home resting, she can’t honestly say that she’s not pleased that he’s here.

            If she’s completely honest with herself, she’s not sure if she could do this without him.

            “I thought that we had come to an understanding,” says Kaeya, in the tone that means he’s doing his best to keep his voice neutral. “Is there a reason you didn’t send for me, Jean?”

            “I didn’t send for you because you’re supposed to be at home, recovering,” Jean says. “It’s barely been a week since you were dosed with a torture drug.”

            “I wouldn’t have let her send for you even if she’d wanted to,” says Diluc, “though everyone else certainly wanted her to.”

            Kaeya’s gaze flits to his brother, then back to Jean. “You had to know that I’d find out about this sooner rather than later. Between my informants and the fact that literally everyone is talking about it. People seem convinced that Kurtz is back from the dead.”

            “He’s not,” Jean assures him.

            “I know,” says Kaeya, “which means we’re dealing with a copycat. Assuming everything I’ve heard is correct?”

            Jean nods. Kaeya is always well informed, so she assumes that he’s heard all the basic facts by now. “The body of one of the Medlark twins was found in an alley, blindfolded with a piece of distinctively colored red cloth, his Vision left on his forehead. We believe that it was Pollux Medlark, but we’re not positive –”

            “Well, he is the one who received a Vision. The day after I was suspended, if I remember right.”

            “I thought we were calling it forced medical leave,” Jean reminds him.

            Kaeya gives a careless shrug. “I take it you didn’t check his hands?”

            “His hands?” Jean asks, confused.

            “You didn’t check his hands. That’s why you don’t know.” Kaeya sighs. “Pollux has thick sword calluses on his. Castor might have some too, but not like his brother’s, and besides that, he’s likely to have clay under his nails. From making pottery. He’s wanted to be a potter since he was a child. Pollux’s interests, on the other hand, have bounced around, but lately they all have something to do with fighting.”

            “He submitted an application for the Ordo’s upcoming try outs,” Jean tells him grimly.

            “I wonder if that’s why he was targeted,” Kaeya muses darkly.

            “What do you mean?” Diluc asks.

            Jean starts. She had forgotten Diluc was there for a moment. She’s surprised he’s not trying to drag Kaeya home right now, actually. Perhaps because he’s only sitting down and talking right now he thinks it’s not too much of a strain on his brother? Well, whatever his reason, Jean is grateful for whatever time she can have to pick Kaeya’s brain. He’s already given them the means to identify which twin their victim is. She’ll gladly take whatever other information he can give her in the time she has him.

            “The serial killer they call the Blind Seer was a young man named Kurtz,” Kaeya tells Diluc. He glances at Jean, probably trying to gage how much Diluc already knows. “He was . . . not a fan of how the Ordo affords special privileges to allogenes. As you know, just having a Vision lets you skip the admissions tests and gets you directly into training. Then you can take as long as you need to complete the training, and pretty much can’t fail out. Other trainees don’t have that luxury.”

            “I remember,” says Diluc, suddenly looking faraway.

            “It may seem unfair to people without Visions, but . . . well, there’s no use pretending life distributes blessings fairly,” Kaeya continues, “and beings that we are a military organization, it does make sense for the Ordo to do its utmost to recruit and retain powerful members.”

            Diluc snorts.

            “Yes, we did screw up with you,” Kaeya allows, “but Eroch was a traitor and we dealt with him, and now we need to deal with this.”

            Jean’s looking at Diluc so she sees it when it occurs to him for the first time that his brother may have had a hand in taking care of the bastard inspector who’d slighted Crepus’s memory. He actually opens his mouth to say something, but Kaeya speaks first.

            “Let’s go over the details if you don’t mind. The blindfold that was used. Was it linen, dyed Jueyun red?”

            “Yes,” Jean tells him. “Or if not Jueyun red exactly, a very similar shade.”

            “Sewn with a blind hem stitch?”

            “Er, I didn’t think to check that,” Jean admits. “Though I will.”

            Kaeya nods absently, his thoughts no doubt racing ahead to a dozen other little details that Jean hasn’t thought of yet . . . and hopefully some that she has. “Was he stabbed to death like Kurtz’s victims were presumed to be? And the wounds . . . ?”

            “Stabbed yes. Not like Kurtz’s though. Except his first one. A blade was used. Either a knife or a sword, I think. Not any sort of rounded instrument.”

            “Hm.” Kaeya taps his fingers on the tabletop. “So does that mean our new killer doesn’t know how Kurtz actually killed his victims? Or just didn’t have access to a weapon that could reasonably replicate the wounds? Or does he not actually care? That’s a possibility if he only staged Medlark like one of Kurtz’s victims to try and throw us off. That’s very possible, considering that the body was found in an alley. Kurtz made sure to leave his victims in more public places. Bigger risk, but bigger reaction. That alley isn’t used so often. It could have easily been afternoon or even tomorrow before the body was discovered . . .”

            “Kaeya,” Jean says, realizing what she should have already suspected, “did you go to the crime scene before you came here?”

            Kaeya nods.

            “Kaeya,” Diluc groans. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

            “The poison’s out of my system,” Kaeya says. “I’m fine now.”

            “That poison was a torture drug. You were tortured, and I had to watch,” Diluc says, his voice seizing slightly.

            Guilt flashes across Kaeya’s face. “I’m sorry, Diluc . . . but this is my job, and people depend on us to keep them safe. They . . . depend on me, personally –”

            “So I’ve heard.”

            “I can’t let them down,” Kaeya says solemnly. “Mondstadt’s been too good to me.”

            “You’re not letting them down just by taking the time you need to rest and recover.”

            “I’m recovered, Diluc. As recovered as I can be. I’m ready to go back to work, if I’m allowed to.” Kaeya looks at Jean, and the gleam in his eye is . . . interesting.

            Jean can’t quite read it. Maybe Kaeya looks that way because he knows that she can’t actually refuse him. Because, as much as Jean hates to admit it, her own abilities in hunting down murderers fall so far short of Kaeya’s that she doesn’t even reach his feet. Add to that the fact that serial killers fall into a separate category of difficulty altogether, and Kaeya just . . . it’s like he was made to hunt them down. No one comes close to him in this, and people have noticed, despite Varka’s attempts to shine the light and glory on Jean, so her career could advance and she could bring Kaeya with her as she ascended the ranks. It was a plan that had worked well to start with, but lately Jean’s begun to fear it will fall apart. There are plenty of people who know the truth. Who’ve figured it out and seen with their own eyes that Kaeya’s the one who does all the dirty work, who uncovers the details and makes the connections that no one else can, the one who finds the killers, while Jean gets the credit for her subordinate’s brilliance. It’s why Fischl treats her with very little deference, and why Kaeya gets recruitment letters from multiple detective agencies in Fontaine every month, trying to lure him away from the Ordo. It’s why Ningguang always wants to borrow him, and why Mond has given him that over-the-top and slightly ominous nickname. Jean lives in fear that one day Kaeya is going to realize his own value and go someplace that will give him the credit he deserves, and then everyone will realize that she never would have made it to where she is without him, and doesn’t really deserve to be there now.

            “Because without me there is no you.”

            Jean nearly flinches at the memory of Kaeya’s words, spoken in anger and hurt, after he just survived one of the worst nights of his life and she pushed him further than he could stand to be pushed at that moment . . . but that doesn’t make them any less true. She knows her value. She’s among the best swordfighters in Mondstadt, a powerful wielder of an anemo Vision, a healer, a quick thinker and a good leader . . . but all of that isn’t enough to be the Grand Master, or even just the Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. She’s not a problem solver, as much as she tries to be. Oh sure, she can take care of the little things, find missing pets, assign one of her knights to clear hilichurls off a route, or take care of it herself, and that sort of thing, but the major things? The big problems? She has yet to be the one to find the solution on her own. She’s never even solved a murder without Kaeya’s help before, let alone tracked down a serial killer.

            She glances at Diluc and sees him frowning, very clearly waiting for her to refuse Kaeya and send him home, even as Kaeya stares at her expectantly, knowing what her decision must be. She can only make one of them happy. So Jean makes her choice. Solemnly, she nods.

            “You can’t seriously –”

            “We need him on this, Diluc,” Jean says, exhaustedly. That, and she can only afford to make Kaeya mad so many times before he decides he’s better off working for someone else.

            “Don’t be mad at her,” Kaeya tells his brother, to Jean’s surprise. “She’s making the right call. We’ve never had someone imitating a serial killer’s crimes before. We don’t know if this is a one off, or a cover job, or someone trying to pick up where Kurtz left off. Because it’s Kurtz they’re imitating, it makes it especially bad. Doubly so because of the circumstances surrounding his death . . . and because of the whole heresy element of killing new allogenes.”

            “You’re still recovering. No, don’t deny it, I’ve seen you staring into empty space when you think no one’s watching, and I know you’re not completely okay yet,” Diluc returns. “You should be at home, resting.”

            “Perhaps Kaeya would consent to you accompanying him as he investigates? Then you can keep him from overdoing it?” Jean suggests before she can think better of it. Once she does, she internally cringes. Diluc and Kaeya have only just patched up their relationship. They’re still awkward in each other’s presence, and who knows if they even remember how to work together? Moreover, as far as Jean knows, Diluc has never been a part of a murder investigation, aside from maybe taking some extra patrols around the city after a murder was committed. Yet even though those are all very valid reasons, there’s another that makes this seem even more wrong. When it comes to investigating murders, serial killers especially . . . Jean is Kaeya’s partner. She always has been.

            Diluc frowns, and for a second Jean thinks (hopes) that he’s going to reject this proposal, but then he looks at Kaeya. Kaeya looks throughful for a moment, and Jean can’t help but feel a stab of disappointment when he nods his consent. Then he looks at Jean, as though he knows what she’s thinking, and gives her a sympathetic look. “We do need to figure out if there are other people in Mond who can do this.”

            Oh. That’s right. Kaeya had mentioned as much the last time they’d tracked down a serial killer together, a little over a year ago now. Jean supposes it’s a blessing that she was able to forget, since it’s been that long since they had one operating in Mondstadt. She remembers now how Kaeya thought their most likely candidates for learning these skills within the Ordo were Noelle and Albedo.

            “Granted, it would be better if it were someone the Ordo had a claim to, but if it turns out Diluc can piece together murders, I doubt he’ll sit on his hands if he thinks Mond needs someone with that skill to step up.”

            Jean nods and tries not to let what she’s feeling show.

            Kaeya stands. “I’ll go look at the body and the evidence now, then. Oh, before I go, have you sent anyone to speak with Fischl?”

            Jean shakes her head. “No. I didn’t think there was a need to.”

            Kaeya’s mouth quirks. “I think there is. I’ll go talk to her as soon as I see the body.”

            “But it’s not the Blind Seer we’re dealing with,” Jean says.

            “No, but it’ll make her feel better to hear it from me. He almost killed her, after all.”

            He almost killed both of you, Jean thinks, but saying that here, now, in front of Diluc, is probably not a good idea.

            “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” says Kaeya, perhaps misinterpreting her look . . . or perhaps realizing what she’s actually thinking and deliberately misinterpreting it. He opens the door to step out in the hall, then his expression freezes, and he adds softly. “I’m sorry. It looks like you’re going to have your hands full here.”

            “What –”

            “My son! They said that my son is dead, that he was murdered!” Bethilde Medlark bursts in through the open door, nearly in hysterics. Behind her are her husband, Strom, and the other twin. Both look sad and dazed, like they haven’t processed what’s happened yet. Jean tries to sneak a quick look at the living son’s hands, and thinks she sees dark crescents beneath his nails, making this one . . . Castor? Jean thinks that’s the one Kaeya said wants to be a potter, but she’s already forgotten. It could have been Pollux . . .

            “Mr. and Mrs. Medlark. Castor. I am so sorry for your loss,” Kaeya says, letting Jean know which twin is still alive.

            “As am I,” Jean says, and Barbatos, does she hate this part of her job.

            “Was he killed by the Blind Seer? They said he was killed by the Blind Seer, but the Blind Seer’s dead. How can that be?”

            “It wasn’t the Blind Seer, ma’am,” Jean answers. “We don’t know who did this yet, but –”

            “Then what good are you? Why haven’t you found him? Why weren’t you there to stop this from happening? How could you let this happen to my baby boy?” Mrs. Medlark all but screams.

            At the edge of her vision, Jean sees Diluc tensing, not liking how Mrs. Medlark is screaming at her. For a second she’s worried that Diluc is going to say something, and she’s pretty sure that he starts to, but Kaeya nudges him, catches his eye, and gives a very slight shake of his head, stopping him.

            It’s all too easy to look at Mrs. Medlark and see a screaming banshee, when in fact what she’s really faced with is a grieving mother who has just gotten the worst news that any parent could ever receive.

            “We are doing everything we can to find the culprit,” Kaeya says, trying to draw Mrs. Medlark’s attention toward him, away from Jean. Like he always does when a victim’s grieving family member lashes out. Even though he’s only officially been on this case for literal minutes.

            Kaeya’s been cursed at by the families of victims before. Cursed at, and spit on, and even punched on one occasion. He claims it doesn’t bother him. Jean knows better. She knows Kaeya draws their attention when they’re like this because he handles it better than she does. It doesn’t bother him as much as it bothers Jean, being the object of their ire, but it does bother him.

            This time, however, isn’t one of the really bad times. When the grieving parents look at him, something changes in their eyes.

            “I’ve heard about you,” Strom says.

            Kaeya gives a slight nod, probably because he’s not sure enough of the context to know how he should respond to this.

            “They say you’ve never failed . . . to get your man. That you always catch the murderers you chase. That true?”

            “I haven’t failed yet,” Kaeya says, not bragging, just answering honestly, “and Acting Grand Master Jean has assigned me to your son’s case.”

            Bethilde gives a slight sob and covers her mouth. Shakes her head. “He used to talk about you lots, you know.”

            Jean tries to hide that this is news to her. She had no idea Kaeya and Pollux were close.

            “He went through a spell where he wanted to be just like you. A great detective and a knight. He asked for an eye patch for his birthday one year, and switched from using a bow to a longsword. He was a good boy. Such a good boy. My baby boy . . .” She breaks off with a sob.

            “I had heard he enrolled in the Ordo’s training program after receiving his Vision,” Kaeya says solemnly. “I was looking forward to counting him amongst our knights. It grieves me that the only thing I can do now is find out who took him from you, and make them pay.”

            “Do it. Find the bastard,” says Strom, gathering his sobbing wife in his arms.

            Kaeya bows his head again. “I will do my utmost to. I don’t let people hurt my knights and get away with it.”

            “He would have been a knight. He would have been one of the best,” Bethilde cries into her husband’s chest. “My boy. My baby boy . . .”

            In the doorway, Jean sees a flicker of purple. Lisa has arrived, with her special cauldron and the basket she keeps a tea set and tin of leaves in. She must have heard the Medlarks from the library, and come to do what she could to help alleviate the situation. Jean is very grateful. For both her subordinates. Now it’s time to do her job, so that Kaeya can begin to do his. The real part of his, not the part of hers that he’s taken on to help her. Diluc’s not going to let him work for too long, so it’s best to get him where he needs to be as soon as possible.

            So Jean does her best to excuse Kaeya from the room, telling the grieving parents that he is needed to continue the investigation, but that she will answer what questions they have that she has answers for. Lisa clears away the papers off the table, then sets up for tea, as Jean guides them over. Mrs. Medlark is a bit clingy to Kaeya. Jean can’t blame her. This is another part of the job that Kaeya’s better at than her, but she needs to utilize his skills while she can, and they both know it. Kaeya politely extricates himself and heads to the door, pausing beside Castor before he leaves, to have a soft word with the living twin. Jean doesn’t hear what is said. It’s possible that Castor doesn’t hear either. His eyes are riveted to the floor, and his face is haunted. He doesn’t even look at Kaeya, or react when Kaeya pats a hand against his shoulder as he passes, and makes his exit. Diluc follows him, crimson eyes lingering on Castor, and Jean realizes that Castor’s not the only one who looks haunted. The look in Diluc’s eyes . . . no doubt he’s remembering the close call that Kaeya had last week.

            How much worse will that look get, Jean wonders, when Diluc learns how close Kaeya came to death at the hands of the Blind Seer? She’s not naïve enough to think he won’t find out. The Blind Seer is going to be all anyone in Mondstadt talks about for the next month, even though this new murder can’t possibly be his work.

            One thing at a time, Jean reminds herself, as Lisa guides Castor to the table to sit with his parents, and Jean pours them tea. Not as neatly or prettily as Lisa does, but Jean knows that grieving families never remember those sorts of details anyway.

            “We have only just begun investigating,” says Jean, “and since the investigation is ongoing, there are some things that we cannot discuss about it. However, if you have questions, I will answer them as best I can.

            “Did he suffer?” Bethilde asks, not touching the tea that Jean sets before her.

            A question that Jean doesn’t know the answer to.

            “No,” Jean says earnestly. “He didn’t suffer. It was quick. If I had to judge, from my own knowledge of wounds, he likely didn’t feel a thing.”

            Strom closes his eyes and two tears fall down his face, rolling down his cheeks.

            “People are saying that the Blind Seer killed him? How can that be?” the boy’s father asks. “I thought he died in the riots that – is it possible that it wasn’t him who died?”

            Jean shakes her head. “He did die. Kurtz’s face was disfigured from violence during the riot, but there were several other identifying features that left us certain the body we recovered could only be his. We believe that someone imitated Kurtz’s methods.”

            Castor speaks up for the first time. “Did you get the Vision back? Was it left on his forehead?”

            “Yes.” Jean reaches into her coat and pulls it out, still wrapped in her handkerchief. She places it on the table in front of the family, and carefully lifts the folded fabric away to reveal it.

            Castor reaches out for it, lifting it from the cloth it’s nestled in, then bringing it to his own forehead and pressing the glowing red gem to it, eyes squeezed closed and tears falling unabashedly.

            “Castor!” his mother chides.

            Jean thinks she understands why. There is so much they don’t know about Visions. Where they come from, whether they’re bestowed by the element’s Archon, or the nation’s Archon, or Celestia itself, what qualifies someone to receive one, and how, in rare cases, it’s possible for one person to use someone else’s Vision, to name a few. One thing that is widely believed, however, is that a Vision is deeply connected to the person it appears to. Some even say that it’s a manifestation of their soul. Seeing Castor pressing the Vision that had been left on his dead brother’s forehead to his own forehead now . . . it’s heartbreaking, and she is in no way going to tell him how it’s okay for him to grieve . . . but to his mother it might either seem morbid, or like he’s trying to hold onto his twin’s soul.

            This is going to be a bad one. Jean knew that the moment she heard the crime mimicked Kurtz’s work, but it’s driven home even more now that she’s here with the victim’s family . . . and without her usual partner for catching killers by her side. She just hopes that Kaeya will still be able to do what he does with Diluc practically breathing down his neck, and that Diluc won’t take it too hard once the past he missed out on gets dragged into the light.

Four Years Ago . . .

            Kaeya’s hands have recovered better than he thought they would, after Diluc cooked them in their fight, but they haven’t actually stopped aching since that night. He’s pretty sure the pain would have driven him mad if he hadn’t been able to get them healed by one of the Church’s allogenes. Now the pain is dull and tolerable. His reduced motor functions, however . . . that still stings.

            In one night he lost everything that mattered. The man who’d been more of a father to him than his own. His brother. His home. The use of his hands. He’d thought that he was going to lose his job too. Knights needed to be able to fight, after all, but Varka had come running as soon as he heard of Kaeya’s injuries, and had caught up to him because he’d passed out in pain, in the cathedral’s sick ward. He’d been there when Kaeya woke up and made it very, very clear that Kaeya still had a job, and offered Kaeya a place to stay while he recovered, which Kaeya declined.

            He’s still not sure if Varka’s kindness is only because he now has a Vision. Probably at least some of it is. The keeping his job part. He’s not sure about the roof over his head while he recovers part, which was part of the reason he declined.

            He’s still not sure about his Vision either. It’s . . . odd. It feels weird, like it’s a part of him, but not. He wonders if this is a reward from the Archons for finally telling the truth, or punishment from them, so he can never forget what he lost? It’s a poor trade for everything he’s lost. It’s cold, but makes the cold seem more tolerable. It also makes people look at him differently and treat him differently. He hadn’t been sure if he’d be able to get his hands treated at the church. He’s Khaenri’ahn after all, no matter how many years he’s lived in Mondstadt. There are people who will never see him as anything but Khaenri’ahn, subhuman, and a heretic, and some of the church’s healers have been reluctant to use their powers on him in the past. Usually the Ragnvindr family name is enough to make them acquiesce, but once Diluc had to threaten to bring financial ruin to a deaconess’s family to make her heal an arrow wound Kaeya took. The priest who’d checked Kaeya into the sick ward did have reluctance in his eyes until they fell on his Vision. Then all his hesitation melted away. Which was good. Kaeya doesn’t have the backing of the Ragnvindr family anymore. Just this cold cabochon of crystal, which he would trade in a second, to get even a fraction of what he lost back, if he could.

            He places it between his gloved hands, which he then folds into his lap, as he sits beside Jean. The meeting that’s about to start, he suspects, will be long and tense. He might as well let his Vision numb his palms, so he can be a little more comfortable. Whether he deserves that comfort is still up in the air, but he has a suspicion that he will be needed soon, and . . . well, he’s still a Knight of Favonius. For as long as he is, he’ll uphold his oath.

            The hall is packed. It seems they’ve pulled everyone they could in for this, to brief them all at once. That makes sense. The news that just broke seems big, with the potential to cause a lot of trouble, so their commanding officers would probably rather everyone hear it from them than from pieced together rumors. Being with so many other people all in one place, has always grated on Kaeya’s nerves.

            “Are you okay?” asks Jean.

            Kaeya nods, and does his best not to tense when Jean pats his shoulder, because in his mind’s eye, it’s Diluc he sees, giving him that small, comforting smile. Diluc asking him if he’s okay. Diluc would have chosen them seats near the wall too, just like Jean did, so that Kaeya wasn’t sandwiched between two people. He wonders if Jean chose this way deliberately, or if it was just a coincidence.

            “Hopefully this won’t last too long,” Jean says softly. “If you need to leave for any reason during the meeting, you have my permission.”

            “They want us all here for this,” Kaeya says, looking significantly around the packed room.

            “It’s okay,” Jean tells him. “You work under me now, and you’re injured. If this is too much for you, I’ll take responsibility, both for your absence, and for filling you in.”

            “ . . . Thank you.”

            How fast would Jean’s kindness melt away if he told her what he’d told Diluc? Kaeya would be willing to bet just as, if not faster, but . . . but his Vision changes things a little, he thinks. He kind of hates that, but to the people of Teyvat, Visions mean something. People who have them are treated differently. Diluc stopped his attempt to kill Kaeya because Kaeya received one. The church didn’t balk at healing his hands because he had one. Kaeya doesn’t know as much about them as he probably should, considering that he grew up with someone who had one, and considering that he’s a spy who should have been digging for information about these most dangerous of weapons. Diluc’s Vision wasn’t something he thought too much about, because it was just . . . a part of him, just there, and as for his mission as a spy, well . . . Kaeya has come to realize that he abandoned his mission long before he officially realized he failed as a spy. Maybe having a Vision, and the acknowledgment of the Archons would help Jean see that Kaeya means no harm to Mondstadt . . . but he’s not going to risk it. He doesn’t have much more he can lose, and so he will do what he must to hold on to what he has.

            A few more minutes pass. The hall fills up even more, not just with knights but with some members of the clergy as well. Then Varka strides to the front to address them.

            “As I’m sure most of you by now know, there have been a series of murders lately,” Varka says, wasting no time on pleasantries. “The victims of these murders have all been allogenes. Specifically, new allogenes. None of them have had their Visions for more than half a year.”

            This sets the crowd to hissing and buzzing. It seems that the sentiment that new Vision wielders are sacred and not meant to be harmed is indeed a popular one. Kaeya wonders if he asks Jean about it, if she’ll be able to explain that to him. He doesn’t think his questions will sound too suspicious, in light of both this reaction, and the fact that he now has a Vision too.

            “Moreover,” continues Varka, “the victims have all been found blindfolded, with their Visions left on their foreheads. We have been able to keep this information suppressed until now, while we investigated, but a fourth body was found this morning, in the lower city, right near the market. Word has gotten out amongst the civilians. While we would have preferred to keep the matter under wraps, and taken care of it discreetly, this does allow us to bring more of our knights into the search.

            “Master Varka? Do we have any suspects?” calls out a knight from the crowd.

            “We are looking into several people,” Varka says, and Kaeya can tell that he’s lying, “but we are not revealing their names to the entire Ordo. Inspector Eroch is overseeing the investigation, and will now be coordinating with Sir Hanson, Captain of the City Watch, and Dame Jean, Captain of the Walls, to increase patrols and knightly presence with the city. We will also be drawing from members of the military branch, and leaving them temporarily at the City Watch’s and Walls’ disposal, to increase our coverage . . .”

            Kaeya continues listening to Varka, but also takes the opportunity to scan the crowd. The other knights’ reactions are about what he expected, though he realizes that he underestimated how angry they would be. He also overestimated how long the meeting would last, since apparently Eroch is having most of the investigation’s details kept under wraps still. Which makes sense. No need to tip their hand to the killer, since telling so many assembled knights is equivalent to telling the whole city. Since Varka does not have a whole lot of information to divulge to them, he is able to tie up the meeting faster than Kaeya expected he would. Then other knights take turns asking questions that Varka cannot currently give them answers to, until the Grand Master has enough, and calls the session to an end. Then Kaeya waits with Jean, for the other knights seated in their row to file out before heading down to where Varka, Eroch, and Hanson have assembled. She brings Kaeya with her. Kaeya is fairly certain he knows why.

            Eroch turns a distasteful eye on Kaeya. Nothing new there. Hanson gives him a quizzical look.

            “Sir Kaeya recently transferred to serve under me,” Jean tells him. “I’ll be relying on him, so I thought it best to let him listen in now.”

            “Just as well that you’re here, kid,” Varka says to Kaeya. “I needed to ask you –”

            “To act as bait?” Kaeya finishes for him.

            “What? No, I needed to ask you if we could reschedule dinner to – bait? No, just no. Put that thought out of your mind, boy. We’re not dangling you in front of a serial killer like a worm on a hook, not now of all times.” Varka seems genuinely disturbed by Kaeya’s suggestion.

            “Actually,” says Captain Hanson, “it’s a good idea.”

            “No,” Jean and Varka say in unison.

            Kaeya opens and closes his eye several times, in his equivalent of a blink. “I thought that was what you were bringing me down here for,” he tells Jean, “and it makes sense –”

            “It doesn’t make sense. You’re still injured,” Jean says, rounding on him. “I’m sorry, but your hands aren’t fighting fit yet.”

            “Which is likely to make me a more appealing target, isn’t it?” Kaeya asks. “Predators prefer wounded prey.”

            “You haven’t even started learning to use your Vision yet, or at least you shouldn’t have yet,” Jean says, in a tone that suggests she knows Kaeya’s experimented a bit, despite being told by the healers not to. “You can’t defend yourself. Three new allogenes who were more capable of defending themselves than you are already dead.”

            There’s a lot Kaeya could say to argue with that. Starting with her claim that they were more capable of defending themselves than him. Kaeya’s not that easy to kill. If he was, he would have died in Khaenri’ah over a decade ago. Even with limited use of his hands, he’d consider himself more than a match for most people. It’s true that it will put him in some danger, but he thinks the risk is worth it. It seems like the best and fastest way to lure in their killer.

            “I agree with the Grand Master,” speaks up Eroch. “The risk to your safety is too great, I’m afraid, though your cavalier is appreciated.”

            What?

            Just what?

            Since when does Eroch care about his safety? Eroch is a ruthless bastard, and from what Kaeya knows about him, he’d happily sacrifice any dozen knights to wrap up a problem or further his own career. So why . . . ?

            “I think you’re allowing your personal sentiments to blind you,” says Hanson. “Sir Kaeya may be injured, but his resilience and resourcefulness is well known. Moreover, he may be our best shot at drawing this bastard out and putting a quick end to him. So long as Sir Kaeya agrees . . .” he glances at Kaeya.

            “I do,” Kaeya says immediately.

            “Then we can take precautions to ensure that he is as safe as possible while acting as bait,” Hanson continues, and Kaeya’s got to say, he never expected this senior knight who he barely knows to be the one vouching for him. “Please reconsider, Varka.”

            “I’m sorry, but no,” says Varka. “Until the kid puts some meat back on his bones and can hold his own in a swordfight again, I can’t allow it. That’s my final word on the matter.”

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            Kaeya leads Diluc to the laboratory where bodies are stored at the Ordo’s headquarters, when they have need to store bodies there. It’s not an area Diluc is familiar with. When he’d left the Ordo, it had been nothing more than a dusty basement storage room and all bodies were immediately entrusted to the Church. Jean and Kaeya have made a few enemies getting that changed, but their results could not be argued with. Mond’s unsolved murder rates have never been this low before. Ever. Even the most devout and set in their old ways devotees have mostly stopped complaining.

            Kaeya . . . actually can’t help but feel proud every time he comes here, despite the gravity of the room. Granted, a cold storage room, underground, where they keep corpses isn’t the sort of thing one is typically proud of, but it’s more what it represents. What he and Jean have accomplished. The two of them have revolutionized the entire process of investigating, and their process works. They’ve taken knowledge from bio alchemy, and Fontaine’s investigation agencies, integrated strategies from hunters and trappers, new technology, and cold hard logic, and turned it into a weapon against those who prey on the innocents of their city.

            “Kaeya . . . I’m sorry. About your friend,” Diluc says, just as they reach the cold storage room door.

            Kaeya looks at him sideways. “What friend?”

            “The kid who was murdered. Pollux. I didn’t know you were close.”

            “Oh.” Kaeya suppresses a wince. “We weren’t.”

            Diluc blinks. “But you said . . .”

            “What his parents needed to hear,” Kaeya says. Diluc really shouldn’t be surprised. He knows all Kaeya does is lie. Kaeya waits a moment to see if his brother is going to get angry, but mercifully, he does not. Then he continues. “After we caught Kurtz, Varka started assigning Jean and me to more and more murder investigations. We’ve learned how to handle the victims’ families. As cruel as this probably sounds, they’re an important source of information. Things go easier when they’re on our side. I was never close to Pollux. I was just lucky to know a few things about him.”

            “Somehow I feel that there was more to it than luck,” Diluc says.

            “What do you mean?” Kaeya asks as he holds the door open for his brother and ushers him into the laboratory inside.

            “You didn’t just know about Pollux, but Castor as well. None of the other knights could tell them apart, but you had the answer within seconds. You knew their hobbies, and which one had received a Vision, and that he’d enrolled in the Ordo’s tryouts . . . which you shouldn’t have known because that happened while you were recovering.”

            “I have good informants,” Kaeya says dismissively. “Something significant happens, they let me know. Someone receiving a Vision counts as significant, by the way. I’ve run into some snags in the past where I couldn’t access the Ordo’s collected information because clearance, and bureaucracy, and the like. So I started collecting the information on my own.”

            “Which doesn’t explain why you knew off the top of your head which twin wanted to be a potter and which twin wanted to be a knight.”

            Kaeya regards his brother for a moment, trying to keep his expression neutral. He’s not sure what Diluc is getting at. Is he trying to start a fight? For the past few months their relationship has been on the mend, and after all the crap that they went through last week, Kaeya thought they were good but . . . well, he’s realized that their tempers tend to flare up sometimes, and sometimes they just rub each other the wrong way. It’s not easy being brothers again. They’re not like they used to be, and don’t always know what the other is thinking anymore, but they’re trying. So . . . he doesn’t think Diluc’s trying to start a fight, but . . .

            “I’m sorry. I can’t tell what you’re trying to say,” Kaeya admits.

            “I – just that you . . . You seem good at this. Even if you say it was an exaggeration that you were close to Pollux, you knew more about both twins than anyone else. So . . . I don’t believe you. I mean I don’t believe that you . . . that you don’t care what happened to him.”
            “Of course I care what happened to him.”

            “Sorry, that came out wrong. I mean I think you cared about him. Both of them. Because you care about people,” Diluc says in a rather floundering way. “I never saw that before, when . . . when we were in the knights together, but lately I’ve noticed that you know everyone and everyone knows you. So, I think it might hurt you more than you’re letting on. That a kid you were on good terms with died.”

            Kaeya pauses to consider this, then gives a slight nod. “We weren’t close. That much is true, but I knew him.” He heads further into the lab, to the opposite side, where Pollux is resting on a chilled slab of marble, that rests on a coffin sized metal box filled with Mist Flower corollas. “Two years ago, he decided that he wanted to be me. He followed me around for three months. Fashioned himself a makeshift eyepatch and started carrying around a stick, acting like it was a sword. Right after his birthday, after his parents got him a training sword and an actual leather eyepatch, he decided that he wanted to be Stanley instead. Waste of a perfectly good eyepatch.

            “Castor was his brother’s shadow. They looked alike, but really acted nothing alike. He was quiet, but often impatient with his brother. I’m sure he regrets that now . . . Their parents made them do everything together, and Pollux, with his more forceful personality, tended to lead. Castor would have much rather been digging up clay at the lake’s shore, or making pots to fire in the pit he dug behind their house. They fought a lot.”

            “I imagine he regrets it now too,” Diluc says darkly.

            “Naturally . . . but Diluc?”

            “Yes?”

            “Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . do your best to remember that they are who they are.”

            “What?” Diluc looks confused.

            “Sometimes,” Kaeya says, hoping this won’t set his brother off, “it’s easy to see other people in the victims and their families. It makes it harder to . . . well, it just makes everything harder. So try not to. They are who they are. They’re not a mirror for anyone else’s circumstances.”

            They are not us, is what Kaeya means. We’re both alive. However bad things might have gotten, however close we came to losing each other, it didn’t happen. We are fine.

            Diluc meets Kaeya’s eye and gives him a curt nod. Then Kaeya turns to the body. He begins inspecting the victim carefully, wishing he’d been able to do this at the actual scene where it was found. Evidence and clues can be lost in transport, or in other ways of mishandling. Vile had mentioned, when she caught up to Kaeya, that Sister Cynthia from the Church had covered the body with a shroud, which is just asking to contaminate the victim with false evidence, considering how little care they take to keep shrouds sterile. He’s tried negotiating with Rosaria to change their policies but the Church is stubborn. Eventually he’s going to have to go over their heads, but that’s a problem for another day.

            “The light down here is surprisingly good,” Diluc comments.

            “Yes. It’s something Sucrose was able to cook up for us. She managed to infuse crystal cores with powdered luminescent spines and Flaming Flower pollen. Gives us light as bright as natural daylight. Then she went the extra mile and tried a variation with Mist Flower pollen.” The cold light cores are kept in a drawer. Kaeya retrieves one of them, then hits the lever that shutters the Flaming Flower cores, overhead. “At first she thought they were inferior, but while experimenting, we discovered that the Mist Flower lights let us see things we never thought we could see, like bruises under a victim’s skin. She single handedly solved a murder where a man who owned a very distinctive ring strangled his wife.”

            He holds the Mist Flower light over the victim, but nothing of note is revealed this time. Not that he was expecting it to, but you never know. Kaeya has learned to be thorough and check everything. He unshutters the Flaming Flower lights overhead, then retrieves a paper and piece of charcoal from a cabinet.

            “And what’s that?” Diluc asks.

            Kaeya fits the piece of paper to a clipboard then turns to show it to Diluc. A human silhouette takes up the majority of the page. “We use these to map out wounds, as best we can. It probably sounds morbid, but we measure each one too, and record it, then check inside the wounds for . . . well, anything. Dirt, threads, paint peelings. All of those have helped us find murderers, and the lengths and shapes of the cuts themselves can help identify what made them.”

            “And their placement on the body?” Diluc asks. “Has that ever helped.”

            Kaeya goes still.

            “Kaeya?”

            “Yeah,” Kaeya says, and gives his head a slight shake. “There was a case in Liyue. Varka loaned Jean and I to the Qixing.”

            “It was bad?” Diluc surmises from Kaeya’s reactions.

            “Yeah. The Constellation Killer. Have you heard – you haven’t heard,” Kaeya says, seeing Diluc’s blank expression. “Now’s not the best time to get into it, so let’s leave it at, ‘It was bad.’”

            “ . . . I’m sorry.”

            “Don’t be. It’s not your fault some crazy bastard decided to murder a bunch of kids, and stab the constellation of his next intended target into the one he just killed, like he was playing some sick game.”

            “I mean I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

            Kaeya shrugs. “Someone had to. Jean and I are the best at this, so it made sense that it be us . . . and Varka picked up my bar tabs for three months after he read our report so, I guess it worked out okay for me in the end.” He tries to inject a bit of levity into the situation, though he knows it’s not entirely appropriate and there’s always the chance that Diluc, or anyone else, could take it badly, but if he doesn’t then he’s pretty sure that the dark side of this job is going to eat him alive someday.

            That’s part of the reason why Diluc’s here now, and why he’s been keeping track of all the recruits, and personally requesting Noelle’s and Albedo’s assistance on murder cases for the past half year or so. For the record, Kaeya isn’t planning on calling it quits any time soon. Aside from being the best at hunting down killers, and feeling obligated to use his abilities to make Mondstadt safer, or their allies safer if they ask for his help . . . Kaeya actually likes the hunt. Especially when it’s a serial killer he’s after. There’s a thrill he gets when he’s on one’s trail that he’s never felt doing anything else before in his life, and it’s more intoxicating than even the finest wine. There’s also a part of him that likes the trust his abilities have helped him earn, from the people of Mondstadt, the praise and acceptance they give him, when he’d once been a scorned outlander, the way that being so good at this has made him desirable. Even that ridiculous nickname they gave him, there’s a part of Kaeya that revels in it. It probably makes him a horrible person that there are times that he gets bored and finds himself waiting for the next serial killer to surface, hoping they’re not too far off. It’s almost like an addiction in some ways, but it’s not exactly one he can feed at will now, is it? Still, all that aside, Kaeya knows that he’s not going to be around forever. He’s survived more than his fair share of brushes with death so far in his life, hell, even in the last four years alone. The life he’s chosen is a dangerous one, and he accepts that. Even if he doesn’t meet an untimely end, there’s still plenty of things that could go wrong to take him from the job. An ill placed sword slash to his eye could leave him blind, or a head injury or poison could damage his mind and make it lose the sharp edge that lets him do what he does . . . and of course, there’s always the ever present threat of his dad returning someday, and the life he’s built here crashing down around him. Whatever happens, happens, but Kaeya wants to make sure that he’s leaving someone behind who can do what he does for Mondstadt in his place.

            Ideally, he would like someone he could work with for a time, and improve upon the base he’s built, together with them. However, Diluc would never have been his first choice. Their relationship is too volatile, and as long as they’re working together, or even hanging around each other, they are going to argue. Kaeya worries that one day they’ll have an argument that they won’t come back from. Furthermore, Diluc is missing something. Honestly, everyone he’s thought to have help him is missing something. Amber would be almost perfect, with her keen eyes and excellent attention to details, but she lacks the ability to see the worst in people, and that’s crucial for this job. Albedo might be the most intelligent person Kaeya knows, but he lacks the ability to think like other people do, and figure out what drives them, and how they’ll react next. Sucrose is the same, and too awkward with other people to get the information she needs from them. Noelle is currently his best candidate so far, but she’s a bit like Amber, always seeing people in too good a light, and her tendency to get side tracked by tasks that aren’t related to the investigation is problematic. Once, four years ago, Kaeya would have put Diluc in the same boat as Amber. He’d been such a happy, cute, naïve lad, always cheerful, always thinking the best of people. Now he’s more like Albedo. He knows how horrible humans can be to each other, but he doesn’t understand what makes them tick. Perhaps he can be taught, but Kaeya’s not sure how he’s going to feel about learning this from him of all people, and Kaeya kind of feels like he's done enough to disillusion his brother to how horrible people can be.

            “Jean told me, you know,” says Diluc.

            “Told you what?” Kaeya asks warily.

            “What you didn’t. That the reason that unsolved crimes in Mondstadt have dropped so drastically is actually because of you.”

            “Oh, good,” Kaeya feigns relief. “For a second I thought she might have told you about the incident in Cat’s Tail with the fox and the fireworks, and you know what? Never mind.”

            “I’m being serious, Kaeya,” Diluc says.

            Kaeya resists the urge to shrug. “Okay. So you know. Does it change anything?”

            “I would have liked to have heard it from you.”

            “Well, Jean’s my boss as well as my friend. I’m not going to steal the glory from her. That’s not going to do anyone any good,” says Kaeya.

            “It’s hardly stealing if it’s yours,” Diluc says, “and it seems to me that everyone already knows who the real detective in your partnership is.”

            “Yeah . . . I guess we could only keep that under wraps for so long,” Kaeya admits, “but as for the credit and glory, better that she gets it. It actually makes a difference for her.”

            “What do you mean?” Diluc asks.

            Kaeya regards him for a moment, trying to read him to see if he’s being deliberately obtuse or if he really doesn’t know. “It’s better for someone who can be promoted to get the credit and the glory, even if it’s just on paper, is what I mean,” he says finally.

            Diluc frowns. “So why not you? I know I’ve given you a hard time about being lazy and inefficient, but I’ll admit I was in the wrong.”

            “I can’t get promoted. Not much more, at least,” Kaeya tells him. “Naturalized outlanders can only rise to the rank of captain. No further. I think I’ll probably eventually be named Captain of the City Watch, since that makes the most sense for my skill set.” The Cavalry Captain and Captain of the Walls are the entry level captaincies. The less important stepping stone posts. Captain of the City Watch is a much more prestigious position. It’s the most Kaeya can hope for . . . and honestly, he thinks that it will suit him more than any of the positions above it. Sometimes it does sting to know that he can’t advance any further, and that’s the reason why his promotions thus far have been delayed, so he wouldn’t reach the pinnacle of his career too early, but it is what it is.

            “That’s not fair.” Diluc’s indignant anger is unexpected, but a bit warming.

            “The rule’s there for a reason,” Kaeya reminds him. “We both know the reason.” Kaeya is the reason. Mondstadt can’t have foreign spies advancing too far in its military. That could be a disaster.

            Diluc still looks unhappy.

            “Besides,” Kaeya says, “it’s not the worst thing in the world. I like the work that I do. Hunting down murderous bastards suits me, and I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.” He could do with less dead children though. Less dead people in general. Of course the only way to make that happen is to catch the murdering bastards. “We have one to catch right now, so let’s go over the evidence together and see what we can figure out.”

            Diluc does not object. Nor does he seem put off when Kaeya goes about his process, explaining it. He even asks for some paper so he can take notes, and then asks some other intelligent questions. Most notably: “You and Jean have both mentioned that the wounds aren’t the right shape for the original Blind Seer’s work. That the stab wounds he inflicted were rounded. What sort of weapon did he use? Some sort of rounded spear? Or an awl?”

            “A dendro Vision.”

            Diluc blinks. “But I thought he hated allogenes.”

            “He did. Specifically the ones who made it into the Ordo off the prestige of their Vision alone,” Kaeya tells him. “When Jean and I caught him, the Ordo confiscated his Vision. It’s kept under lock and key. So, were he not dead, there could be a chance that this was him, just using a knife instead of that Vision. However, he is very dead. So there is no way that this is him.”

            “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to redirect the conversation,” Diluc says. “Tell me, Kaeya.”

            Kaeya tilts his head quizzically. “Tell you what?”

            “He targeted you, didn’t he?”

            “Oh. No,” Kaeya says, and manages a tight smile for his brother. “I wish it had been that easy, but no. He and I did end up clashing, but only because I sought him out. Not the other way around.”

            “But you were a knight with a new Vision.”

            “But I got my Vision after I became a knight. The distinction seemed pretty important to him,” Kaeya remembers. “Maybe he would have come for me eventually, but believe it or not, I don’t think he’d planned to.”

            “Why not?”

            “As crazy as this may sound, I think he respected me,” Kaeya says. “Or at least the version of me that he’d built up in his head. Of course I could be wrong.”

            “You don’t think you’re wrong.”

            Kaeya shrugs. “Either way, you can rest easy. Kurtz didn’t try to hunt me down. Not for lack of trying on my part.”

            “What?”

            “Don’t look at me like that. You would have done the same if you were me.”

            “But I was a better fighter and had wielded my Vision longer.”

            “Which would have disqualified you as bait,” Kaeya reminds him. “Whereas I was newly enVisioned and suddenly unable to even – ah . . .”

            “What? What else are you not telling me?” Diluc demands.

            “Nothing, I just realized how bad I must be making Jean and Varka look,” Kaeya says quickly, “but let me assure you, they were not a part of the failed plans that used me as bait. They, in no uncertain terms, shut down my suggestion that we use me as bait.”

            “But you did it anyway?”

            “Yes, but I wasn’t reckless about it, and I had backup. Don’t look at me like that, Diluc, you would have done the same,” Kaeya says. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because it didn’t work. Like I said, he never came after me. I didn’t make his list.”

            Diluc gives him a hard look.

            “Right. Moving on . . .” Kaeya goes over the other evidence and points out things of note to Diluc. The blindfold is, as far as he can discern, linen that’s been dyed Jueyun red. It’s not hemmed with a blind hem stitch, like the ones Kurtz made were. In fact, it’s not hemmed at all, but cut sheer across and already starting to fray. Nothing was recovered from underneath the victim’s fingernails. That was something Kaeya learned to check for early on. It really speeds things up when they know they’re looking for someone with bloody scratch marks, but unfortunately Pollux didn’t manage to sink his nails into his murderer. His pockets are empty, which could mean that he was robbed either before or after he was killed, or it could mean he was killed at home. Unlikely, since by now the Medlark’s have probably returned home, and since no one’s come to get Kaeya, it means they probably didn’t find their son’s blood painting their walls or floor. (Someone would have come and gotten Kaeya for that. He knows his fellow knights enough to know that they’d go behind Jean’s back to bring him in on this if they had to. They all want this Blind Seer copycat caught too badly to play by unnecessary rules.)

            There are dozens of little details that may or may not be important. Kaeya goes over them all, or as many as he notices. Is the broken lace on the victim’s boot significant? What sort of dirt is stuck in his shoes’ treads? There are so many little things that might mean nothing, or might mean everything. Kaeya writes them all down, because you never know what’s going to be the detail that cracks a case wide open.

            It’s early afternoon when they finish. Diluc drags him to Good Hunter for a meal, despite Kaeya’s protests that he has food at home. So much food at home. People won’t stop sending food to his home and it’s becoming a problem.

            “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late,” Diluc grumbles. “Or I would have dragged you here earlier. We’re eating here, because otherwise you’ll find something to do in your house and conveniently skive off from eating half your meal. You didn’t even have breakfast, did you?”

            Kaeya decides to be tactful and not express how impressed he is that Diluc can have an appetite after spending all morning with a corpse. They eat in mostly silence, then Diluc drags Kaeya back to his house to rest . . . and honestly, Kaeya does need the rest.

            He’d thought that after a day or two, the dream poison would be out of his system and he would be back to normal. For the most part he is back to normal, except . . . well, he still has no appetite. If Diluc, Lumine, and Paimon weren’t constantly on his case, he wouldn’t remember to eat until he got dizzy. He’ll need to do better about that now, however. He has a killer to catch. He can’t keep getting lost in his own head, as he has been doing either. Maybe having something this important to focus on will actually help with that. There’s not much he can do about the bouts of exhaustion he’s been continuing to have except . . . hope they go away? They are getting fewer and further between. Recovering from dream poison has been like recovering from an illness. He supposes, in hindsight, that it makes sense he wasn’t suddenly all better at once.

            “I’ll read over all my notes, and make a few more for . . . two hours? Then go back out?” Kaeya’s not sure why he’s asking for Diluc’s permission. His brother is not his keeper, and he can go where he wants, when he wants, damn it.

            “Three hours,” Diluc says. “Take some time to nap.”

            Kaeya sighs. “Fine. Wait. Oh no.” He stops in the middle of checking his precautions, to make sure no one broke into his house while he was gone.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “I need to . . . I guess leave a message for Fischl. She must be out of Mond today, since she hasn’t come to see me about this already, but . . . damn it, I don’t want her to hear about this from some random person, and there’s no way she won’t hear about it on the way here.”

            “ . . . You mentioned the Blind Seer almost killed her?” Diluc says after a short pause.

            “Yes.” Kaeya avoids looking at his brother. He doesn’t need to know everything about that fight, or how bad it had gotten. “Even though this is just a copycat, I still don’t want her finding out about it from a random person on the street. She should hear it from me. Right. I’m going to wait for her on the bridge.”

            “Kaeya –”

            “She deserves to hear it from someone who’s working on this case. I don’t want her being scared about this, Diluc,” Kaeya says, “but she needs to be on guard. We don’t know who this new killer is, and what he’s actually going for. He could just be trying to throw us off his trail by making this look like one of Kurtz’s murders, or he could be trying to pick up where Kurtz left off. If he’s doing that, then he might go after Fischl, since she was the one person Kurtz targeted but failed to kill. Or . . . damn it, where’s Lumine today?”

            “Around Stone Gate, I believe. She said she’d be back tomorrow, so I’m staying tonight. She doesn’t have a Vision though –”

            “How many people actually know or believe that though?” Kaeya returns. “Putting aside the fact that I don’t still need a babysitter, I’ll feel better once she’s warned about this copycat too.”

            “If I send one of my people to Stone Gate to find her, and wait for Fischl myself at the bridge, will you swear to me that you’ll rest?” Diluc asks.

            “No. Fischl will feel better if she hears it from me,” Kaeya says flatly. “She’s my friend, Diluc. I’m going to be there for her.”

            Diluc sighs.

            “I’ve already foregone interviewing the victim’s family and friends, and following up on any leads they might have given us.” At least for now. Kaeya has no doubt Jean will be tracking him down soon, to let him know people of interest that might have been mentioned to her and Lisa, and whoever went around to talk to Pollux’s friends, though knowing Jean she probably did that herself. She’ll want Kaeya with her when it’s time to talk to people who might have had grudges against Pollux, or reasons to wish him harm. “I’m trying not to fight with you, but this is something I’m not budging on.”

            “Fine,” says Diluc finally, “but you need to sit while you’re waiting, not stand. Also, wear an actual coat. It’s colder today.”

            “Fine,” Kaeya agrees, even though cold temperatures mean nothing to him so long as he’s not sick, drugged, or on Dragonspine.

            “I’ll join you after I send word to Lumine and Paimon.”

            “Thank you. For sending word to them. Not for following me around like a neurotic stalker.”

            That startles a laugh out of Diluc, who shakes his head.

            Kaeya gathers his notes, and the notes that he brought back from headquarters, that had been taken by others at the crime scene. Then he grabs his coat and heads out, along with Diluc. They part ways almost immediately, though not for long . . . and it’s . . . an odd feeling. To be working with Diluc again. Voluntarily. The dream poison incident had been out of necessity. This is different. Kaeya’s not positive yet, but . . . well, he thinks it’s better, even if Diluc is constantly trying to mother hen him. Very different from the last time he’d dealt with a murderer using this signature, though he hadn’t exactly been all on his lonesome then either . . .

Four Years Ago . . .

            Kaeya’s first day back on the job goes better than expected. After the meeting about the serial killer that someone’s started calling the Blind Seer (and that’s a stupid name if Kaeya’s ever heard one) he shadows Jean in a meeting she has with Captain Hanson. The two of them work together to set up a new patrol schedule to increase knightly coverage of the city. Jean is leaving the walls short staffed, but since they’re in a time of peace, that’s hardly a problem. There’s a reason why the Captain of the Walls is one of the two stepping stone captaincies. The Cavalry Captain being the other . . . and as that position is currently vacant, Varka has given them permission to tap any of the knights in that unit that they like, and use them as they see best for the time being. Kaeya, who was once one of them, is able to help them here.

            “Nymph,” he says immediately. “She’s the cream of that crop. She won’t be happy, having to do city patrols, but she’ll do it. Moreover, she’ll be able to hold her own if she runs into trouble. Greta, Micah, and Andros too. The others are all good fighters too. Diluc saw to that, he trained them himself, but Nymph, Greta, Micah, and Andros are the most likely to notice if something’s amiss on patrol.”

            “Can you make a list of the others in the order that you’d choose them?” Hanson asks.

            “Yes sir,” Kaeya tells him, then tries . . . but his hands won’t cooperate.

            The night that Crepus died, he confessed to Diluc what he really was: a Khaenri’ahn plant, left in Mondstadt as a child, to integrate himself, and eventually pass along information, if Khaenri’ah and Mondstadt ever went to war. Diluc had not taken it well. They’d come to blows. Then Diluc had summoned his searing flames onto his sword, and when they’d clashed the metal of their blades had conducted the heat straight into Kaeya’s hands.

            He’d only known pain worse that once before, but can’t really dwell on it without getting a migraine. If he never knows pain equal to it again, it will be too soon. The flames had been so hot that they fused Kaeya’s hands to his sword hilt. It had been hours before he’d been able to make it to a healer. He’d passed out from the pain on the side of the road twice, on his way to Mondstadt. He hadn’t known what the future would hold for him, at the time, though he had the feeling that a court martial and exile were probably in his near future. He knew that if he wanted to survive, he’d need his hands healed as fast as possible, and that the longer he waited, the less effective the healing magic would be.

            When it was all said and done, and the church’s healers had done the best they could for a newly enVisioned knight of the Ordo, he was left with permanent scars, a missing thumbnail on his dominant hand, and an unknown amount of nerve damage. It would take time, the deacon who treated him told him, to tell what the full extent of that damage was. His scars would not act like normal skin, and that, combined with the pain and weakness, would keep him from being able to figure out what his new normal was for some time.

            So when Kaeya tries to write with a quill for the first time since the incident, he discovers that, well, he can’t. His fingers won’t obey him, and it fits awkwardly in his grip, and the pain flares up, making him hiss, then look away from the two captains, embassassed.

            “I’ll work with him after we finish up here, if that’s okay with you, Captain Hanson,” Jean says, taking the quill from Kaeya. “He can dictate his list to me and I’ll take care of putting in the orders for their temporary transfers.”

            “That works,” says Hanson. “That will give you more time to think over the best choices.”

            After the meeting ends, Jean drags him to her family home for lunch, since it’s closer to headquarters than any restaurant. No doubt she had her own lunch packed and ready to be eaten in her office, but she knows Kaeya well enough to know that he’d skip the meal if she didn’t supervise him. Likewise, they could have gone to the Ordo’s mess hall, but with his hands as they are, eating in front of other people is kind of embarrassing for Kaeya right now. Finger foods are all he can really manage, so Jean makes them both sandwiches. She writes down the list that he dictates for her while they eat. After that, Jean cuts him free for a few hours.

            “I have some tasks to take care of, and unfortunately not enough time to walk you through them today. If you’ll meet me at around four this afternoon, I’ll give you a tour of the walls and introduce you to the other knights under my command.”

            Kaeya almost certainly knows them, at least in passing, and he’s sure there’s not much to a tour of the walls, but he nods his ascent anyways, because Jean is his boss now. Then, with nothing else to occupy his time for the next few hours, and really nowhere else to go, he decides to head to the library. It’s a good place to sit for a while and let time pass him by.

            Before he enters the library, however, a tentative voice stops him.

            “Sir Kaeya?”

            Kaeya turns and finds himself face to face with Amy, or Fischl, as she prefers to go by these days, and her familiar, Oz.

            “Good day, Prinzessin,” he greets her, using the title she prefers as he has for a while now. The little girl who he’d met in this very library several years back was certainly growing up, but still liked her game of make believe. Kaeya knows she takes some teasing for that from her peers, but honestly? Fuck them. The world’s too dark a place not to enjoy whatever happiness you can find, and even if that happiness comes from a story, or a game, that doesn’t make it any less real. Kaeya actually has a great deal of admiration for Fischl, she who found happiness in make believe . . . then made it real. “Ozvaldo von Hrafnavines. Well met.”

            “Good day to you too, sir knight,” says Fischl. Then she hesitates for a moment and bows her head. “I have not yet had the opportunity to extend my condolences to you. For that, I am in grave error. Please forgive me, and know that my heart aches for your sorrow.”

            Kaeya feels a lump grow in his throat. He has not had many people offer him condolences for the death of his adoptive father. In large part because he has done his best to avoid humanity for the past month. He’s not sure if he’s been officially disowned by the Ragnvindr family, but word of the falling out between him and Diluc has certainly made its rounds, thanks in large part to what Diluc did to his hands. Whatever protections or privileges that being part of the Ragnvindr family once gave him have probably all been revoked by now . . . including most peoples’ sympathy for his bereavement. Which is why he has waited a month to come back into the city. A month seems long enough that he can pretend those who don’t offer him condolences have just moved on, and aren’t ignoring his loss intentionally.

            “There is nothing to forgive, Prinzessin,” he says, and if his voice cracks a little, Fischl and Oz are good enough to ignore it. “Your kindness is a comfort to me.”

            “I have not long been in this world,” says Oz, sounding more tentative than Kaeya has ever heard him before, “so I have not experienced loss, nor can I pretend to understand your pain . . . but if there is anything that we may do to alleviate it, you have only to ask.”

            “Thank you.” That’s all Kaeya trusts himself to say at present.

            Fischl steps closer, hesitates slightly, then holds her arms open, tentatively, and when Kaeya doesn’t stop her, she gives him a quick hug.

            Kaeya and Fischl aren’t exactly close. They normally have a couple conversations a month, which revolve solely around books, though once they had one about eyepatches. He’s always considered her an acquaintance rather than a friend. Mainly because he’s only ever had two friends, Jean and Diluc . . . and now he only has Jean. Fischl, however, doesn’t have many friends either. Perhaps, Kaeya realizes, she’s considered him her friend all this time, even if they aren’t particularly close. She’s certainly acting like a friend to him now. Now, when he needs one the most . . .

            “’Tis a cold day,” says Fischl. “Would you perchance care to accompany me for a cup of tea?”

            It’s on the tip of Kaeya’s tongue to turn her down, but the flash of vulnerability in Fischl’s eye stops him. She probably doesn’t invite people places often on account of not having many people to invite. Nor is she used to going places other than the library or the market. How much courage had it taken her to work up the nerve to ask him for tea? And she had done it for Kaeya’s benefit, not her own.

            Kaeya offers her his arm, as he would to a lady at a dance. “It would be my honor to escort you to tea, Prinzessin.”

            Fifteen minutes later, they’re in a little tea shop that Kaeya has never been to before in his life, called Sugar Bee, and Fischl and Oz are not so subtly trying to stuff him with honey pastries. Kaeya almost chokes on his tea when he takes his first sip. He splutters it a little, but manages to not make too big of a scene, and quickly puts his cup down. His tongue stings, like it’s been scalded, but the tea hadn’t been that hot . . .

            “One has heard that you recently were blessed with a frost gem from the twilight skies,” Fischl says. “Is this perhaps the first time you have taken tea since acquiring it?”

            “Oh. Yes, you’re right,” Kaeya says. He’s heard that some things often change when people become allogenes. Cryo wielders tend to no longer feel the cold, unless it’s extreme, which Kaeya can attest seems true so far. They also seem to lose their ability to tolerate hot beverages except, or so he’s heard, when they are ill, though apparently hot soup is another matter. “Please pardon my lapse in manners.”

            “I assure you, no pardon is necessary, but perhaps you would care for another honey pastry?”

            Kaeya accepts, to make her happy. Their conversation shifts to books, as it always does, because that’s what the two of them have in common. All in all, it’s an enjoyable afternoon, though, inevitably, the conversation takes a darker turn, in light of recent events. Kaeya realizes that Fischl and Oz have something they want to ask him about, but are hesitant to. Perhaps because they don’t want it to seem like they brought him here simply to pump him for information, or maybe because they’re scared of what he might tell them, but the so-called Blind Seer is on everyone’s mind today, now that word of his dark deeds has spread around the city. So, when Fischl finally summons the courage to bring him up, Kaeya takes no offense.

            “I only learned about him today,” Kaeya answers honestly, “so I don’t know a lot. Only that he has targeted several allogenes who haven’t had their Visions for too long. I don’t know how long you have to have yours before he doesn’t consider you a target anymore, or what his motives are. Honestly, I don’t know if I would be allowed to tell you, even if I knew, because they’re keeping a lot of the information they’ve uncovered classified.”

            Fischl nods, but there’s a strain around her visible eye, and fear within it. That . . . is the last thing Kaeya wants to see. Now that he thinks of it . . . her parents are often away. Is she living alone? That . . . is not a good thing, especially not now.

            “The Ordo is increasing its patrols within the city,” Kaeya tells her, “and I am certain that we are taking greater precautions in the neighborhoods where newer allogenes live. I’ll personally make sure that there’s increased Ordo presence in yours.”

            “You have my thanks, sir knight,” Fischl says, and her gaze loses a bit of that scared gleam that had been darkening it.

            “Your kindness is truly appreciated,” agrees Oz.

            “No one should ever make you feel unsafe. Not in your own home.” A flash of pain burns through Kaeya’s head, as his mind can’t help but drift to memories of another time, another home, far away . . . Kaeya forces his thoughts back to the present, where they need to be. Because Mondstadt is his home now, not Khaenri’ah, and now he’s old enough, and hopefully strong enough that he can do something to put a stop to it when people make his home not safe. The damage to his hands might make it harder, but it’s not the first time he’s had to relearn how to fight, and now he has a Vision too.

            Kaeya feels slightly sick from eating too many honey pastries once they’ve finished with their tea. (After his finally cooled down enough that it didn’t feel like he was drinking acid.) He walks Fischl back to the Ordo’s headquarters, where they’d run into each other, so that she can go to the library as she intended. Before they part ways there, he extends to her an open offer to escort her home, if ever she needs him to. Even if he’s on duty, he knows that he’ll be able to work something out with Jean. Because he knows Jean. She’s not the type to let kids feel unsafe either.

            He holds the library door open for Fischl, then is about to enter as well, since he still has a bit of time before he needs to rendezvous with Jean, but a familiar voice stops him.

            “Sir Kaeya? A word, if you please.”

            Kaeya turns to find Captain Hanson standing behind him. “Of course, sir,” he says quickly, and waves a quick but cordial goodbye to Fischl and Oz. “What can I do for you?”

            Hanson glances around the Ordo’s entry hall, empty except for them, and Sir Wood, stationed beside the front doors. Apparently that’s not empty enough for Hanson’s tastes, because he motions toward the stairs.

            “We’ll talk in my office, if you have no objections. I have a suggestion I’d like to run by you.”

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt 

           When Diluc makes it to Mondstadt’s front gate, Kaeya is not there. Before he can mentally curse, and start to wonder if Kaeya sent him here just to get him out of the way, so he could run around doing whatever he wanted, Lawrence turns to him and makes a gesture toward the far end of the bridge.

            “If you’re looking for Captain Kaeya, he went that way not too long ago. Said to tell you he’s talking with Lynne, if you came asking about him.”

            Diluc nods his thanks and walks quickly across the bridge. Timmie gives him the stink eye for scaring off his pigeons as he passes. Diluc ignores him and certainly does not entertain any thoughts about doing something much more drastic than simply scaring the pigeons away.

            Kaeya is where they said he would be. Sitting at Lynne’s campfire, holding an apple that she must have foisted on him. “I figured you’d be happier if I waited here, where it’s warmer,” he tells Diluc when he approaches, “and that you’d appreciate the company here better.”

            “You weren’t wrong.”

            Lynne is pleasant company, while she’s there. She’s not overawed by Diluc’s status, as too many women of Mondstadt are, and it seems she’s an ally in the campaign to get Kaeya to eat. Certainly few others could have gotten Kaeya to eat a whole pork chop as a right after lunch snack, but Lynne somehow manages to, by preying on Kaeya’s manners and guilt. “Is it not good? I’m so sorry, if it’s horrible you don’t have to eat it . . .” Other than that, she’s mostly quiet, and keeps to herself, letting the brothers read over the notes that Kaeya brought with him, though before too long she wanders off to find more ingredients.

            Diluc reads over some of the notes that were written by the other knights; Sir Raymond, Sir Huffman, and Sir Devin. He is annoyed to find their notes are more thorough than his, pointing out things that he didn’t notice, like a strand of blond hair on the victim’s clothes that was too long and light to be his own, and a few lines of reddish-brown, dusty rubble that could have been a footprint, but may or may not have been the victim’s. They have spent more time at crime scenes than him, and Kaeya has probably coached them over what to look for . . . but he still doesn’t like being showed up by the knights. Any knights.

            A glance at the subsequent notes Kaeya makes shows that he is not pleased with what he’s seen in his own reading of his comrades’ notes.

            Long blond hair, where? Not logged. Possibly transferred to shroud and lost?

            Remind everyone to keep the Church out of our crime scenes.

            Possible footprint could not be victim’s. Was not killed there. Not enough blood at scene.

            Why think it was victim’s? Similar to what was on victim’s shoes?

            Sample, where? Who collected? Need Albedo/Sucrose to analyze.

            “How many murders have you solved?” Diluc asks, when Kaeya stops writing and flexes his hand. Diluc notices that he too, is using a Fontaine pen, identical to the one Jean loaned him this morning. Interesting that they both have one . . .

            “Uh . . . lots?” Kaeya says. “I lost count sometime in our second year. That was when we had the most. Varka had me and Jean pulled in on almost every investigation, I think to give Jean enough prestige so that he could promote her to Acting Grand Master while he was gone. He was planning his expedition even then.”

            “I see.” Diluc tries not to frown. He doesn’t approve of his brother not being credited for his work. Even if the credit is going to Jean, who he loves and respects. While he can understand the need to boost her reputation and esteem so that she could be quickly promoted, he can’t help but be displeased that it’s being done at Kaeya’s expense. Even if Kaeya is alright with it, as he claims to be, it doesn’t change the fact that those accomplishments are his. More than that, it puts Jean in a difficult and precarious position. Diluc saw the anguished conflict in her eyes as she confessed to him that Kaeya is the one responsible for so many closed murder cases, not her, and he knows Jean well enough to know that it must be eating her up inside, both that she’s stealing glory from one of her best friends, and that people are attributing something to her that she is not actually capable of doing. He’d bet the deed to Angel’s Share that she is actually terrified that someday people are going to expect her to find some terrible murderer, and she won’t be able to. Double or nothing that Kaeya has been doing his best to teach her how he does it, but Diluc has the feeling that not all of his skills are skills that just anyone can learn.

            “Towards the middle of the second year was when he started loaning us out to other nations, who needed help with serial killers. Which was fine, because around then murder cases in Mondstadt dropped drastically, and have stayed pretty low. I guess people are much more reluctant to commit murder if they don’t think they can get away with it. Go figure.”

            Diluc huffs out a laugh, which in turn gets a genuine, unsarcastic smile out of Kaeya. Then something catches his eye, and he picks himself up off the ground and waves at the sky. Diluc follows his gaze upwards and sees a very large, dark purple raven high overhead.

            “Oz,” Kaeya says, as though he needs to explain, then adds, “Fischl can see through his eyes.”

            Minutes later, the so-called Prinzessin der Verurteilung comes into view on the road from Springvale. Walking more quickly than most travelers would pace themselves. Probably out of deference to Kaeya. When she gets closer, Kaeya and Diluc head down to meet her, and Oz who has joined her and is flying by her side now.

            “Good Errant Knight,” Fischl says as she strides forward, a smile on her face. “It does gladden one’s heart to see you well again.”

            “Good day, Captain Kaeya,” Oz greets him too, “and Master Diluc. It is always a pleasure.”

            “Prinzessin. Oz,” Kaeya says, with a polite bow. “I have some news.”

            “Very well,” says Fischl. “Your sovereign shall grant you an audience. Accompany me to Sugar Bee, and I shall –”

            “This isn’t exactly good news, I’m afraid,” Kaeya interrupts. “I wanted you to hear it from me, instead of getting a pieced together version of mixed truths and rumors.”

            Fischl’s expression changes as she sees that Kaeya is very serious. She glances at her familiar once, then looks back to Kaeya solemnly. “Speak, good Errant Knight.”

            “This morning Pollux Medlark was murdered. We have not caught the culprit yet. We’re still going over evidence and figuring out who is suspect. The way that he was killed, or rather the way he was staged after he was killed is all anyone in Mondstadt is talking about today . . . because the person who killed him imitated Kurtz’s methods of staging his victims.”

            A look of scared shock crosses Fischl’s face. “The Blind Seer?”

            “It’s not him,” Kaeya is quick to assure her. “There are a number of stupid rumors going around that it is him, somehow, but Kurtz is dead. I promise you that. I confirmed it myself. So this is someone else.”

            “So it’s not him?” Fischl is no longer speaking in grandiose tones or language. She suddenly sounds, and looks, like a scared teenaged girl. “You promise it’s not him, Sir Kaeya?”

            “I swear,” Kaeya says solemnly.

            “He . . . he said, before the execution, that he would come back from the grave to finish his work. What if –”

            “That’s not possible.”

            “But there are means to bring back the dead. I’ve seen them, and I know you have to! What if –”

            “His skull was smashed, Fischl,” Kaeya tells her. “It was caved in at one temple. Every way of bringing someone back to life once they’re dead, or reanimating them to have even a semblance of life requires that the brain be intact.”

            “But what if it wasn’t really him, what if you were mistaken? If his face was caved in, even partially, it might not have been –”

            “Fischl,” says Kaeya, “it was him. I swear to you. There was no mistake.”

            “He’s right, mein Fräulein,” Oz speaks up. “Remember, you bid me fly over the crowd and seek him out, that he not escape with his life? As I told you, I saw when he fell.”

            Kaeya gives his blink equivalent and glances toward Oz, and Diluc takes it that this is news to him.

            “Oh. Right. I’d forgotten about that,” says Fischl. She still looks very young, and scared. Diluc watches as she wraps her arms around herself, like she’s cold, and his engrained manners kick in. He starts to remove his jacket, to loan her, but Kaeya beats him to it.

            “I’m sorry to have to give you this news,” Kaeya says as he drapes his coat around her shoulders, “and I’m sorry I don’t have more information for you. All I can tell you, other than that we’re doing all we can to find this new murderer, is that he is not Kurtz. Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about him to know what he intends to do.”

            “If he’s copying the Blind Seer . . . he shouldn’t be after me, right?” asks Fischl. “I’ve had my Vision some four years now.”

            “I wish I could tell you that you’re in no danger,” says Kaeya gravely, “but this copycat could intend to carry on Kurtz’s work, not just with new victims, but with the one he didn’t manage to kill. So, please be on your guard . . . I’m sorry. There’s . . . I really don’t have anything else I can tell you, other than that I will do everything I can to find this bastard, so that you can feel safe again.”

            “I know you will,” Fischl says, pulling Kaeya’s coat tight around her. “That’s what you do.”

            “You might prefer to take work abroad for the time being. Especially if your parents aren’t in Mondstadt right now. If you plan to stay, but would rather not be alone, my guestroom has been cleaned since the dream poison incident –”

            “You need to be careful too,” Fischl cuts him off. “You were the one who stopped the Blind Seer. If someone wants to avenge him, you’re a target too. Though they might not realize it was actually you who tracked him down and caught him, beings that the now Acting Grand Master showed up just in time to take credit for our victory.”

            Kaeya’s eye flits to Diluc, very quickly, then back to Fischl. “Well, she did help me out enough that I think we can let that slide, don’t you?”

            There’s more to the story than Kaeya and Jean have told him so far. Diluc can tell that Kaeya’s holding something back even now. When they’re back at Kaeya’s house, they are going to sit down and Kaeya is going to tell him everything, from beginning to end. Or if he doesn’t, perhaps Diluc will be the one to take this so-called Prinzessin out to tea, and see if he can get the full story from her. She seems far less likely to leave out details, like Kaeya and Jean have been doing since the beginning.

            Fischl looks defiant for a moment. Then her visible eye slides past Kaeya and lands on Diluc, and she looks startled. Then she draws herself up, her back straightening, and confidence returning to her mannerisms and her voice.

            “As you wish, my good Errant Knight. However, know that if ever you desire a position which affords you the accolades you deserve, there is always a place for you by my side,” she says loftily. Then for a reason that Diluc can’t discern, she strikes a pose.

            Kaeya gives her his thanks, along with a polite refusal of her offer. Then the two of them end up walking Fischl to her home, in the mid city.

            Diluc is, perhaps, the most recognizable man in Mondstadt. He is often greeted by well wishers, or stopped by passers by who wish to chat as he walks the streets of Mond, no matter where he may be going. Today, however, the people of Mond only have eyes for Kaeya. Well, perhaps for Fischl as well. They take in the sight of those two together, and seem reassured. Kaeya is greeted by most everyone they pass, and half a dozen others stop him to ask questions. Kaeya artfully keeps them moving, giving quick answers and not pausing for more than a second, often having to make polite apologies about not being able to discuss the ongoing investigation.

            Diluc saw a bit of this a week ago, at a legal hearing that ended up devolving into something of a circus. Ilsie Vander, who’d once been Diluc’s childhood friend before Kaeya came to live with him, and she revealed her true colors as a racist, had been screaming abuse at Kaeya, calling him slurs in front of the entire courtroom. The people of Mondstadt had not approved. Those in the crowd muttered darkly. Those closer to the situation essentially told Ilsie to shut up. Lumine actually decided to forego words and simply use a Palm Vortex to knock Ilsie end over end. Unlike Diluc, who is loved because of his family name, and his position as Mondstadt’s resident wine tycoon, Kaeya has endeared himself to the people of Mondstadt with his actions. Diluc can see it on their faces, that all look a bit less worn and stressed after only getting a nod of greeting, or a quick word from Kaeya. He makes them feel safe.

            Fischl invites them in, once they reach her house, and Kaeya accepts, though not for the tea and snacks that she offers. Instead, he convinces her to give them a tour of the house, and shows her how to set up precautions, to make sure no one can sneak in and go undetected. Fischl and Oz listen solemnly and take to his lessons quickly. Before leaving, Kaeya reminds them, once again, that should they chose, they are welcome at his house.

            Then, at last, they return to Kaeya’s home. It’s getting dark by then and, to Diluc’s surprise, when they enter the house, Jean is waiting for them in the entry room that doubles as Kaeya’s workroom. She must have a key, Diluc realizes, then mentally sighs at his own thickness. Of course she has a key. She and Kaeya have been working together all this time. She was probably the first person he gave his housekey to.

            “I already checked your precautions,” Jean tells them, standing to greet them. “They were all fine.”

            “Good,” says Kaeya, as he hangs up his coat. “How’d the investigation go today? Did the victim’s family give you anything?”

            “No,” Jean says with a shake of her head. “They couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt him, or any reasons why anyone would target him. Anyone but the Blind Seer, that is.”

            “It’s not Kurtz, he’s dead.”

            “I know,” says Jean. “Unfortunately, not everyone believes that. I took Raymond and we interviewed the neighbors. No one saw or heard anything amiss, either last night, this morning, or over the past week. No one skulking around where they shouldn’t have been, no loud arguments, nothing. I’m sorry, Kaeya. I did my best to turn up something, anything. I came up blank.”

            “It happens sometimes,” says Kaeya. He sinks into one of the chairs at the table, wearily. Today he’s been more active than he’s been since before he was poisoned, and it seems to be catching up to him, but Diluc can only tell that because he knows Kaeya. He also knows that Kaeya will completely ignore exhaustion and charge onward if he thinks it’s necessary. Diluc is almost glad that Jean didn’t find anything new for them to go on. It should keep Kaeya from running himself ragged, at least. “Where was the family this morning?”

            “Springvale,” Jean tells him. “Castor is taking an apprenticeship with a potter there, and moving in with his new master soon. Or at least he was. I don’t know if he’ll want to now, or if they’ll delay it. I can’t imagine simply carrying on if I lost my sibling . . .”

            Diluc can’t either.

            “Don’t project, Jean,” says Kaeya. “It will only cloud your judgment.”

            “Right. Sorry.” Jean sighs.

            “What did they say about Pollux not coming home last night?”

            “What? They didn’t say anything about him not coming home last night,” says Jean. “What makes you think he didn’t?”

            Kaeya gives her an incredulous look. “He had been dead for at least ten hours when I saw him, Jean.”

            “Oh. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry, Kaeya . . .”

            “We’ll need to go back and ask the family. Maybe they didn’t realize. Perhaps he snuck out . . . though I doubt he could do so without his brother knowing,” Kaeya says, thinking out loud. “They probably share a room. Even if his brother snuck out and Castor didn’t wake up, I’m willing to bet he has an idea where his brother was going anyway.”

            “And he didn’t think to speak up about it after his brother was murdered?” Diluc asks.

            Kaeya shrugs. “It’s not that unusual. Siblings are often either primed and ready to tattle on each other at a moment’s notice, or so used to keeping secrets for each other that revealing them is almost unthinkable. Even if something terrible happens. Maybe especially if something terrible happens.”

            Diluc opens his mouth to respond to that. Then he shuts it. Because what Kaeya just said rings very true.

            “I’ll ask him tomorrow,” says Jean.

            “No, I will,” Kaeya tells her, or rather tells both of them. “I’m coming back to work tomorrow, as usual.”

            “Kaeya –”

            “I’m not asking for permission. The delays in obtaining and consolidating all our information are unacceptable. You can’t tell me they’re not. Moreover, too many things are being mishandled. Not just interviews, but evidence as well.” Kaeya slides his notes across the table to Jean. “Even if this was just a normal murder, the way things are now still wouldn’t be acceptable. Since this bastard’s imitating Kurtz, we can’t afford anything less than perfection.”

            Jean sighs. “You’re right,” she admits. She sends a guilty glance at Diluc, then quickly looks away, back at Kaeya. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped that I could handle most of this myself and not bother you, but . . . I’m sorry. I’ve never been able to do this like you.”

            “You don’t need to apologize for not being like me,” Kaeya says with a sigh of his own. “It’s better that you’re you.”

            “For the record,” says Diluc, “I’m not pleased with this.”

            “Noted,” Kaeya responds in an annoyed tone.

            “But,” Diluc says, scowling at him, “I recognize the necessity of it . . . and I’ll be continuing to follow you and make sure you don’t overdo it since you’re still recovering.” If he thought he could convince Kaeya not to return to work, he would be arguing for it. Likewise if he thought he could convince Jean to keep Kaeya from his work. However, he knows better. He knows them. Kaeya’s not going to budge an inch on this, and Jean’s highest priority is and will always be Mondstadt. She’ll let him run himself ragged to protect their people, if she feels there’s no other way, and right now that’s probably exactly how she feels. Diluc’s not exactly unsympathetic, this murder investigation stuff is a lot more complicated than he’d ever imagined. However, Kaeya is his brother. He’s not going to sacrifice his health for anything. So, if he can’t stop him from working on this case altogether, he can at least support Kaeya, make sure he doesn’t collapse on the job, that he eats enough, and that if it comes to crossing blades with the killer, that Kaeya won’t be doing that alone.

            “I approve of your involvement,” Jean says, “though I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take on the title of Honorary –”

            Diluc gives her a glare so cold, it puts even Kaeya’s cryo powers to shame.

            “I didn’t think so,” Jean says.

            To Diluc’s surprise, Kaeya gives a slight chuckle. Diluc had expected protests from him. He supposes that sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.

            “There’s one more thing I want,” Diluc says. “I want to hear about what happened the first time you tracked down the Blind Seer.”

            “The only time we tracked down Kurtz. Because he did, in fact, die after that time,” says Kaeya. “This isn’t him, and if you’re going to work with me, you can’t act like you believe otherwise, especially not in front of other people.”

            “Fine, but I still want the full story. What happened?” Diluc demands. “I know you’re leaving parts out, deliberately. I’m guessing because you know I’m not going to like them.”

            He knows he’s right when Jean looks to Kaeya, probably planning on exchanging guilty looks with him. Kaeya, however, doesn’t look at Jean. Only smirks at Diluc in that infuriating way of his.

            “You do realize that if we wanted to omit every part of the story you wouldn’t like, we’d have to omit the entire thing, don’t you?” he asks. “Beings that you’re you and the investigation was conducted by the Ordo, and –”

            “You know what I mean, Kaeya. I want the full story now. You know I can get it from other sources, but I’d rather hear it from you.”

            “Fine,” says Kaeya, “if that is what you wish . . . but it’s not a story that I’m willing to tell without a drink –”

            “I’m not letting you drink on an empty stomach.”

            “My stomach’s not empty, Lynn practically shoved a porkchop down my throat not two hours ago.”

            “It’s about time for dinner now anyway. You can tell me while we eat.”

            “Well I can’t exactly tell you all about it and eat at the same time, can I?”

            “Yet you can tell me all about it and drink at the same time?”

            “That’s different.”

            “It’s not, you’re stalling and you know it.”

            “It’s not stalling to just not want you seeing me talk around chewed up mouthfuls of food like an ill mannered cretin,” says Kaeya, “and you’re the one who decided you want to do this while we eat.”

            “You’re the one who decided you can’t do this without drinking.” Diluc frowns. “Is what you have to tell me really that bad?”

            “No, it’s just tradition. I never recount our serial killer hunts unless I’m drinking.”

            “I am actually going to head back to headquarters,” says Jean. “I don’t want to impose on your dinner, and you’re more than capable of telling the full story. In fact, you’ll probably tell it more accurately if I’m not here, and you don’t need to spare my feelings.”

            Diluc frowns and is about to invite her to stay, even though they’re not in his house, but Kaeya speaks first.

            “Don’t order your pizza with all the toppings. You’ll regret it.”

            Diluc looks at his brother then at Jean, confused. Jean’s face is going red.

            “How did you . . . ?”

            “We’re right behind Cat’s Tail. It’s dinner time. You’re almost never in the area during the hours they actually serve pizza, and it’s your favorite, and it’s on your mind now, because it’s our tradition.” He looks at Diluc and explains. “Pizza and wine. It’s our victory dinner, whenever we catch a murderer. However, we have not caught this bastard yet, and the guilt of what is going to feel like a preemptive celebration is going to catch up with you, Jean, and ruin it for you, if you get our usual order with all the toppings. So, you should order a different type of pizza.”

            “You’re probably right. I’ll do that. Thank you.”

            “We’ll get all the toppings once this is over,” Kaeya promises her.

            Jean pauses. “Thank you, Kaeya.” It’s not just the promise of pizza, or advice on toppings she’s thanking him for, Diluc knows. He’s sure Kaeya knows too. Things between them seem much more relaxed and normal now. Diluc’s glad. Until this week, he’d never actually seen Jean and Kaeya at odds. The tension between them had been unpleasant, to say the least, and considering that their fight had stemmed from Kaeya’s methods of ensuring Diluc’s safety when someone tried to poison him until he lost his mind, Diluc could hardly stay out of it, or try to mediate. His place in that argument was firmly on Kaeya’s side. It’s a relief that they seemed to have moved past their disagreement now.

            He’s really missed this. Working with his brother, and his childhood friend. Doing something good together, something worthwhile. He really hopes that he gets an invitation to get victory pizza with them when this is over.

            They see Jean out. Then Diluc heats up some of the leftovers in Kaeya’s cupboard for their dinner. Kaeya pours them both cherry cider, then adds a shot of something to his own glass. They take their dinner to the living room, and Diluc lights the fire so the house can begin warming up for the night. Then they eat, and it’s very informal and different than any meal Diluc takes at Dawn Winery, where his servants insist on place settings at a table, every time, except when they allow him to take lunch in his office. It’s nice, though. The informality suits a place like Kaeya’s home, and it’s comfortable. They sit at opposite ends of Kaeya’s sofa, but the distance between them doesn’t seem nearly as great as it did only a little over a week ago, when they sat on this exact same sofa.

            Once they’re finished eating, Diluc takes their dishes to the kitchen. Kaeya follows, and refills both their glasses, spiking his own again . . . but not bringing the whole bottle of whatever it is he’s using back to the living room, so Diluc doesn’t think that the story will be too terribly bad.

            Diluc himself sits down again. Kaeya stands, as he often does when he’s ill at ease.

            “So, you want to hear about my fight with Kurtz? Or the process we used to track him down? Or . . . ?”

            “The whole story,” Diluc says. “From the beginning, please.”

            “Okay, but as a warning, there are multiple weeklong gaps between the points where things actually happened, in the first part,” Kaeya tells him. “Jean and I weren’t officially on the investigation at that point.” He gives a slight, but real laugh. “We sort of put ourselves on the case. Eroch was not pleased.”

            Diluc stiffens. “Eroch.”

            “Yes. He was the lead inspector on the case.”

            Well, at least now Diluc knows what Kaeya and Jean have been keeping from him. Or at least one of the things they’ve been keeping from him. His hate for Eroch is well known, so he understands why they were trying to avoid giving him the full story, and bringing up any parts that Eroch is too integrated in for them to tell without mentioning him. Though he’s not sure if that’s the only thing they’ve been trying to keep under wraps. He supposes he’ll figure it out as Kaeya gives him the full story. As long as he’s devoting his full attention to his brother, he’s fairly certain Kaeya won’t be able to gloss over any other details that he doesn’t want Diluc to know about.

            “He was not responsible for Kurtz’s crimes, by the way, if that’s what you’re thinking,” says Kaeya. “I am almost positive he had no idea who the so-called Blind Seer was. He only aided him by bungling the entire investigation as much as he could and blaming it on the knights below him. I’m pretty sure that his plan was to make this seem like just another thing Mondstadt couldn’t handle, so we’d have one more thing to turn to the Fatui for.”

            “Bastard,” Diluc growls.

            “Yes. Considering how quickly I was able to catch Kurtz once I got a look at one of his crime scenes, I think it’s fair to say that the Ordo could have caught him at least a few weeks earlier if Eroch had actually been trying.”

            “Do you really think that?” Diluc wants to know. “Or are you being modest to save the Ordo’s face?”
            Kaeya hesitates for a moment before answering. It tells Diluc what he needs to know. “I do things differently, and my methods are more effective. That much is true. I’m not arrogant enough to think they would have never caught him without me, though.”

            Diluc takes this to mean that it probably would have taken them several more weeks to catch the Blind Seer without Kaeya’s help, if Eroch had not been sabotaging the investigation. Without Kaeya, and with Eroch’s interference, the Ordo probably wouldn’t have caught the Blind Seer for several more months, if ever.

            “So . . . I suppose the beginning, for me, was the day Jean and I first heard about the new serial killer’s existence. That was the same day most everyone else did. They were keeping it under wraps at first. It’s actually impressive that they’d managed to for so long. Four new allogenes getting murdered isn’t exactly easy to conceal, considering the heresy aspect, and the fifteen minutes of fame that being blessed with a Vision initially gets you. Oh, but at the time, only three –”

            Suddenly, glass shatters and Diluc’s heart leaps into his throat. He’s moving on instinct before he even fully realizes it, or knows for sure what’s happening, because he dreamed this, only a week ago, and in that dream Kaeya took an arrow to the throat, then right after he woke up everything went to hell.

            He tackles Kaeya to the floor, praying to Barbatos that his brother hasn’t already been hit, and rolls them both so that they’re sheltered behind the couch. That’s when his mind actually starts to catch up, and he realizes that he’s probably overreacting, even though he definitely believes that it’s better to be safe than sorry. The shattering glass was almost definitely not an arrow piercing the window. Maybe a rock thrown by some bratty kid, or had Diluc accidentally knocked his glass of cider off the end table and not realized it? He’ll have to get Kaeya a new one, but that’s fine. All of Kaeya’s glasses are mismatched anyway, his brother could use a nice matched set, and they can laugh about this in the future, once Diluc’s heart stops hammering, once he’s certain that no one just tried to kill his brother.

            As he gives his brother a quick once over to make sure he’s not bleeding or otherwise injured, Kaeya stares up at Diluc, in dazed confusion. “Diluc, what –”

            There’s a thud, and then the unmistakable sound of an arrow shaft vibrating in place, having struck an immovable target. Kaeya recognizes the sound too, and his eye goes wide, then he starts cursing, tapping Diluc’s arm urgently, signaling his brother to get off him and let him up.

            “Stay low!” Diluc orders, as he obeys his brother’s unspoken request.

            Kaeya sits up and summons cryo, sending a blast of ice to seal the broken window and protect them from any future projectiles. Smart. Especially since when Diluc had dreamed about a similar incident, the first arrow had been followed up by a molotov cocktail.

            “Diluc! Melt that ice! Quickly!” Kaeya orders.

            “What? But you just sealed it –”

            “If the bastard’s still watching, the reaction will ruin his night vision!”

            That’s a very good point. If they ruin his night vision, he won’t be able to shoot. At least not with any kind of accuracy.

            Diluc draws on his Vision and sends flames shooting toward his brother’s cryo. It sizzles and melts instantaneously. Then Diluc rushes forward and leaps through the broken, now unobstructed window, cutting off Kaeya who’d had the exact same plan, but like hell is Diluc going to let him go first when he’s still recovering from being poisoned and someone just tried to freaking shoot him.

            He rolls as he hits the ground, then keeps moving, even as he scans the area around them for signs of the shooter. Movement on a nearby roof catches his eye. Diluc focuses in on it in time to see a shadowy figure leap off said roof, their wind glider activating, and carrying them to the city wall.

            Damn it. It’s going to be hard to catch up to the bastard now, but by Barbatos, Diluc is certainly going to try. He sprints toward the city wall at full speed, and is able to run about a dozen feet straight up it before gravity grips him and he has to lunge forward to grip the stones with his hands and start climbing. Or rather leaping. While keeping a wary eye on the top of the wall, in case the shooter tries to pick him off. Or in case a random patrolling knight decides to bother him instead of stopping the shady looking bastard running around with a bow and using his wind glider inside the city, which would be just their style. No one appears, thankfully, but as he makes it to the top of the wall, he realizes that unfortunately, no one’s in sight. He runs along the wall, to the nearest guard tower, and quickly scales it so he can look around from a higher vantage point, but still sees no one. The shooter’s gotten away.

            He looks for Kaeya then. He expected his brother to be right behind him, but Kaeya is nowhere in sight. Diluc leaps from the tower to a rooftop, to increase the amount of ground area he can see, but there’s still no sight of his brother. He leaps to another roof, expanding his search, and keeping an eye out for the shooter too, not that he has high hopes about the latter. He didn’t get a good enough look to recognize whoever had attacked them, couldn’t even recognize them by what they were wearing if he saw them again, and if they had any sense at all, they’d gotten back down to the ground, where they’d be just another citizen of Mondstadt, out on the town for the evening.

            After several minutes of searching for Kaeya, he hears a familiar whistle. The one he and Kaeya always used back in the day to get each other’s attention. He heads for it immediately, then drops to the ground, where his brother is waiting.

            “Where did you go?” Diluc asks, checking him over for injuries again. Kaeya looks winded, but unharmed.

            “I sprinted to the mid city. Once I saw he was on the wall, and how far ahead of me you both were, I knew I couldn’t get to the top of the wall in time to do any good. So I tried to get ahead of him and see if I could catch him once he jumped down.” Kaeya sighs. “Sadly, I was not fast enough.”

            It was good thinking, but it would have been hard for even someone at their best to move fast enough to make that plan work. Kaeya might be able to manage it on a good day, but he’s still recovering.

            “I guess I should recover the arrows then report this to Jean,” says Kaeya. “She’s probably going to make me sleep at headquarters tonight. If you want to head back to the winery and sleep in your own bed –”

            “Like I’m really going to do that right after someone tried to kill you. Do you think it was the Blind Seer?”

            “I know for a fact that it was not the Blind Seer, because Kurtz is dead, as I have said many times.”

            “I mean the new one,” Diluc says impatiently.

            “Don’t call him that, please. As for whether this was related . . . probably. It’s not like I haven’t made plenty of enemies, but it’s been a while since one of them tried to kill me in my home. The timing makes it more likely this is related to Pollux Medlark’s murder.”

            Diluc winces inside at the reminder that while he’s been away, quite a few people have tried to murder his brother.

            . . . He’s pretty sure that Kurtz did too, despite what Kaeya claims. Well, he supposes that he’s known most of the day that Kaeya and Jean probably crossed blades with him, beings as they were the ones who caught him, and he doubts they were all using training swords, but Kaeya’s interactions with Fischl today make Diluc think there was more to the story. Even more than just that Kaeya may have fought him alone, before Jean arrived at the tail end of the fight. If Fischl was there too, however . . . but she was only a child at the time . . . Diluc just doesn’t know. He feels like there’s a fact that he’s missing that will make everything make sense if he knows it, but he can’t figure out what it is, and Kaeya has gotten out of telling him the whole story yet again.

Four Years Ago . . .

            Jean does her best to keep her frustrations in check as she falls in step beside Kaeya for their evening patrol.

            It’s been over a month since the public and the majority of the Ordo learned of the Blind Seer’s existence and crimes, and since then two more new allogenes have been murdered. Mondstadt is scared and on edge. The people are losing faith in the Knights of Favonius to keep them safe. No progress has been made in the investigation, at least not that Jean is aware of. The last thing she needed was something else to stress over, even if the matter is a personal one, but . . .

            She’s just come from a meeting with Varka. In it, he told her that Captain Hanson has requested that Kaeya be permanently transferred from the Wall Guard to the City Watch.

            “Did you know about this?” Varka asked her, when he showed her the request form Hanson filled out, as it seems he was doing this as officially as possible.

            “No sir,” Jean told him. “Kaeya didn’t mention anything about it to me.”

            She has noticed that Hanson seems to have taken an interest in Kaeya. It’s not hard to see why. Kaeya’s showing an aptitude for work on the civic side of the order, particularly when it comes to investigating. How much he can actually do is limited, considering his rank, and the way this investigation is being run, but his suggestions have been good, nonetheless. Hanson has done his best to get Eroch to implement them. Moreover, she’s seen Hanson talking to Kaeya a handful of times after work hours. At first she was glad, because Kaeya doesn’t really have many people he can turn to, and Captain Hanson is a good man and a good friend. It feels like a bit of a slap in the face to learn he’s trying to poach Kaeya from under her command . . . even though she knows Kaeya deserves better than to just be a simple patrolman on the wall. In truth, the Wall Guard is designed to be a stepping stone or a fallback posting. New recruits get their feet wet here. Old knights return here before they retire. Even so . . . Kaeya is her friend, and Jean is loath to give him up.

            “I’m denying his request,” Varka told her, “though it might be a different story next time if that is what he wants. I’m sorry, but I have to ask: is everything alright between you and Kaeya?”

            “As far as I know, sir,” said Jean. “We’ve had no arguments and his hands are healing. He’s able to write again now, though clumsily. The scar salve is helping, slowly but steadily. He can close his sword hand around his sword hilt now, but when we tried to spar, it didn’t go so well. I think those muscles need to regain their strength.”

            “What’s left of those muscles, at least,” Varka said with a sigh. “Diluc really did a number on him. Whatever was that brat thinking?”

            “I couldn’t say, sir.”

            “Neither of those boys has spoken to you of their fight?”

            “Not beyond that it happened, sir.” Kaeya has been closed lipped on the subject aside from to say that it was his fault. Diluc isn’t around to ask anymore.

            Varka sighed. “If Kaeya comes and asks me himself for that transfer, I’m going to have a hard time finding a reason to say no.”

            “I can think of no reason why you wouldn’t allow it,” said Jean. As much as she’d hate to see Kaeya go.

            “Obviously because I want him paired with you,” Varka told her.

            “Paired, sir?”

            Varka looked flustered. “You two work well together, I mean . . . well, that’s not all. I have plans . . . Now’s not the time to speak of them, though, but soon. Just . . . try to keep the kid on your good side. Or get him to gain some weight back. Preferably both, but if you have to choose . . . Good side, I think. I can force feed him if it comes to it.”

            “I don’t think Sir Kaeya would like that, sir.”

            Varka laughed and waved as he turned to go down a different hallway than the one Jean needed to take.

            “Sir?” Jean called after him, “One more thing.”

            “Hm?”

            Jean had stepped closer to him and lowered her voice, even though no one else was in sight. “Sir Kaeya has requested, and I agreed, on increased patrols for the next three nights. He’s noticed a pattern to when the Blind Seer kills. Roughly every two weeks. The last murder fell inside the three day window he predicted as well.”

            “Interesting. Especially if it pans out. Well, arrange the patrols as you think best,” Varka told her.

            Jean had already made all the preparations before that conversation. There wouldn’t have been time to reorganize the whole patrol schedule and let everyone involved know about it. Varka didn’t need to know that, however. Nor that it had been Kaeya’s idea to keep him and Eroch out of the loop. In the end, it had been Jean’s and Hanson’s decision and they’d done what they thought was best.

            Now, Kaeya walks by her side, down back streets and through alleys in the lower city. They are in their uniforms, but at Kaeya’s suggestion, most of the knights patrolling tonight, are not. They don’t want to make the Ordo’s presence on the streets the next few nights too obvious, and spook their target. They’ve also shifted their focus, from potentially suspicious people to anyone driving a cart or wagon. Also, at Kaeya’s suggestion. When he explained his reasoning, Jean wasn’t sure how she hadn’t thought of that already herself, but it makes so much sense. The Blind Seer isn’t killing his victims at the sites where they’re found, and he’s hardly walking around with their dead bodies in his arms to get them to those places.

            “You seem troubled,” Kaeya comments, two hours into their patrol, as they stop for a break on a lesser traveled side street. “Everything alright?”

            “Oh. Yes,” Jean tells him. Then, because she realizes that this is going to eat her up until she asks . . . “Actually, I have a question for you.”

            Kaeya looks at her expectantly.

            “Did you ask Captain Hanson to transfer you to the City Watch?”

            “No . . . why? Did he request that?” Kaeya asks.

            “Yes.”

            “Oh.” Kaeya looks mildly surprised. “I wasn’t aware.”

            “Master Varka denied the request,” Jean tells him.

            Kaeya gives a slight nod and Jean hates that she can’t tell what he’s thinking. Diluc would know . . . but then, it wouldn’t really be a secret to anyone that Kaeya would want to stay under Diluc’s command.

            “Are you disappointed?” Jean asks.

            Kaeya shrugs. “Not particularly.”

            Jean frowns, even though that’s the answer she wanted. “Are you sure? There’s no way someone like you could be content forever, as part of the Wall Guard.”

            “With my hands still a mess and my sword skills diminished, there’s really nowhere else I can be for the time being, and not be dead weight,” Kaeya says logically. “Hopefully by the time you get promoted to another captaincy, I’ll be useful enough to follow you . . . if you’re alright with that.”

            “Of course,” Jean says quickly, and smiles at him. “There will always be a place for you by me.”

            The smile Kaeya gives her in return is a little bitter. Jean internally winces, realizing that this probably isn’t the first time Kaeya’s heard something like that.

            “Of course you needn’t feel obligated to stay with me if there are other postings you’d rather apply for,” she tells him, trying to smooth over her lapse. “Not that I’m saying you’re not welcome with me, because you are! It’s just . . . with all the good ideas you’ve had so far, for . . . you know, this . . . it’s not surprising that Captain Hanson wants you for the City Watch.”

            Kaeya shrugs again.

            “You seem to get along quite well with him,” Jean comments. “I’ve seen you together on your off hours a couple times, talking.”

            Kaeya sighs. “Is that what this is really about?”

            “What?”

            “Or maybe not . . . I expected you to have figured it out by now . . .”

            “What?” Jean asks again.

            “We’re not making small talk. It’s about work,” Kaeya tells her. “Though it doesn’t seem to be working.”

            “What’s not working?” Jean wants to know.

            Kaeya lowers his voice. Jean has to strain her ears to hear what he says next. “Using me as bait for the Blind Seer.”

            For a moment Jean can only stare at him. When she finally finds her voice, she can’t think of anything intelligent to say, and only manages to choke out, “What? Kaeya!”

            “Huh. So you didn’t know.”

            “Kaeya, that’s – why would you – I am not okay with that, Kaeya!” Jean says, anger surging in as she starts to get her thoughts in order. “With your hands in the state that they are –”

            “No need to worry. We weren’t reckless about it,” Kaeya tells her. “Or blatantly obvious. I’ve simply been renting a room from the boarding house Hanson’s uncle owns, and taking the same route home every day. At the same time as often as I can manage it. Along the route are the homes of several knights, and several more retired knights Hanson knows and trusts to keep their mouths shut. They’ve been keeping an eye on me.”

            “I didn’t approve this operation! Moreover, Master Varka didn’t approve this operation! Neither did Inspector Eroch –”

            “Fuck Eroch.”

            “Kaeya!”

            “Technically, I’m always off duty for it anyway. As are the other knights involved. So long as we’re not doing anything illegal, neither you, nor the Grand Master get to dictate what we do in our spare time,” Kaeya says, and damn it, he sounds so reasonable.

            Suddenly it makes sense why Kaeya insisted on going home for two hours after his regular shift ended, and his overtime shift for the Blind Seer patrols began.

            “That’s not the point, Kaeya!”

            “I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” he says softly.

            “Are you?” Jean demands. “Because I’m upset that you put yourself in danger when you can’t defend yourself. Are you sorry that you put yourself in danger?”

            “Jean –”

            “Or are you trying to get yourself killed? Please tell me that’s not what you’re doing, Kaeya! I know that – what’s happened . . . everything with your father and Diluc, I know that it must be hard. I know that I’ll never know how hard it is, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care! Please tell me you’re not deliberately trying to get yourself killed!”

            “I’m not,” Kaeya says quickly. “Jean . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t think that you’d think that.”

            The look of shock on his face is far more comforting than his words. Jean trusts it more, because of how blatant it is.

            “It really was about trying to catch this bastard,” Kaeya tells her, and Jean feels the anger that swelled up dying away.

            “You still shouldn’t have done that,” she tells him. “You shouldn’t be putting yourself at risk like that. Not right now.”

            Kaeya meets her gaze squarely. “Then tell me that’s what you would do. Even if your hands were injured, if you fit the bill for this bastard’s preferred target, tell me you wouldn’t try to lure him in and catch him anyway.”

            Jean can’t. At least not honestly. She looks away.

            “Heads up,” Kaeya says suddenly. “Carriage.”

            Jean looks up to see a carriage turning onto the side street that she and Kaeya have paused on. It stops moving once it’s out of the main street, and the driver steps off his perch and down onto the street. He wears a longsword at his side, Jean sees, and when he goes to grip it, she grips her own.

            “Everything alright here?” the carriage driver asks loudly.

            “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?” Kaeya returns, and Jean feels like elbowing him for the taunting tone he uses.

            “I heard a woman’s raised voice, sir,” the carriage driver says coolly.

            “We were merely having a disagreement, sir,” Jean says, relaxing slightly, as she walks closer to get a better look at the man. Kaeya follows at her side. The air around him seems a bit cooler. He’s probably preparing to call on his Vision’s power if he needs it.

            “Is that right, my lady?” the carriage driver asks, his voice losing its edge at her assurance. Then, “Oh. Captain Jean.”

            They’re close enough now that they can see each other’s distinguishing features, but Jean doesn’t recognize the man before her.

            “Master Jonas,” Kaeya greets him with more politeness and less taunting now that the misunderstanding seems to be cleared up. “Good evening.”

            A smile crosses Jonas’s face. “Sir Kaeya. Good evening . . . and my apologies for my intrusion.”

            “No apologies necessary,” Kaeya tells him. “How have you been?”

            “Well enough. What about you?”

            “Ah, you know me,” Kaeya says. Jean doesn’t fail to notice that he’s completely avoided answering the question. “Say, what brings you out on this fine night? A romantic rendezvous, perhaps?”

            “Nothing so nice, I’m afraid. Just put the finishing touches on this custom carriage. Delivering it to a client, then I have to walk all the way back to the shop. I’m thinking of making a detour to Angel’s Share, actually.”

            “Well, we shan’t keep you,” Kaeya tells him. “The captain and I should return to our patrol, now that I have been suitably chastised.”

            They go on their way then, and Jonas goes on his. Kaeya doesn’t offer an explanation about how he knows Jonas, but he’s not exactly required to, and Jean doesn’t ask. They resume their patrol, but have barely gone a block when they hear a scream. Jean and Kaeya trade a look, then both take off running in the direction it came from.

            Jean can’t help but feel like by the time they get there it’s too late, even though, if what Kaeya believes is true, the victims are killed elsewhere and transported to different sites. They’re the first knights on the scene, but a crowd is already starting to gather. When Jean gets a look at the body, she realizes why. She’d known what the Blind Seer does to his victims, but seeing it for herself is so much more macabre than just hearing about it. A young girl lays sprawled on the cobblestones, in front of a fountain. Her arms are flung to either side, haphazardly, and her hair is a wet, tangled mess. Like the Blind Seer’s other victims were reported to be, she is blindfolded, with a piece of vivid red cloth, the color so bright that it still stands out even in the dark, beneath Mondstadt’s streetlights. A hydro Vision rests on her forehead, its light dimmer than the other Visions Jean has seen, slowly fading now that its wielder is dead.

            What strikes Jean the most about the girl is . . . her hands. There’s nothing really special about them. It’s just the way that her fingers are curled . . . it just really serves to drive home how lifeless the victim is.

            “Jean. Jean,” Kaeya is shaking her.

            Jean snaps back to herself. “Sorry. What?”

            Kaeya says something about a perimeter. That’s right. They need to keep the crowd back. She sets to it, and when two more knights, Nymph and Lex arrive, she gets them to help. She notices, out the corner of her vision, that Kaeya isn’t helping . . . but is inspecting the body . . . and she knows that she should stop him and call him to help with the crowd, but they have that under control . . . and she knows that Kaeya is probably doing a lot more good than she and the other knights are. The opportunity to see the victim might help Kaeya figure something out that just hearing scant details about these murders couldn’t.

            It doesn’t take long for Eroch’s knights and some sisters from the Church to arrive and cover the body with a shroud, even though Kaeya already covered the victim’s face with a handkerchief. Then they load the body into a wagon, to be taken to the cathedral, to be prepared for burial. Once they’re gone, Jean and Kaeya trudge back to headquarters to write a report.

            Only behind the safety of her closed office door, with only Kaeya to bear witness to her moment of weakness, does Jean bury her face in her hands, and make a noise that’s far too close to a sob for her liking.

            “Jean? Are you alright?” Kaeya asks, almost tentatively.

            “I just . . . I feel like we failed,” Jean tells him. “We’re Knights of Favonius. We’re meant to protect the people of Mondstadt. Tonight we didn’t.”

            “But we will,” Kaeya tells her, and she feels him hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder.

            “How, Kaeya? What more can we do? We’ve tripled city patrols on regular days, and quintupled them for tonight, and we still couldn’t get there in time to see –”

            “The window when us arriving there would have made a difference was maybe a minute at best, Jean. That’s probably how long it took the killer to dump her there. Hannah was dead long before that.”

            “Who?”

            “Hannah Tanner. The girl. The victim,” Kaeya clarifies. “Her skin was cool, Jean. She was killed hours ago.”

            “We couldn’t stop that either.”

            “No, but we can use what we’ve learned tonight to stop the next murder,” says Kaeya.

            “How?” Jean wants to know. She looks at Kaeya hopefully. “Did you notice something important? Did you figure something out?”

            “I noticed several things,” Kaeya tells her. Then, to her shock and horror, he pulls a familiar vivid red blindfold out of his pocket. “Now we’re going to use them to figure out who our killer is.”

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            Jean has just triple checked all her notes, and lists, and Kaeya’s crime solving procedures, to make absolutely sure that there’s nothing else she can do to further their investigation tonight, and is getting ready to head home and call it a day, when there’s a knock on her door.

            “Please come in,” she calls to whoever is on the other side.

            To her surprise, Kaeya and Diluc enter.

            “What’s wrong?” Jean asks immediately, standing. “What happened?”

            Because something must be very wrong for Diluc to let Kaeya out this late, while he’s still recovering, after he spent most of the day working the case.

            “Someone tried to shoot one of us, through my living room window,” Kaeya tells her.

            Jean curses under her breath.

            “Probably him,” Diluc says, looking quietly furious. “If someone wanted to shoot me, they wouldn’t stake out your house waiting for their shot.”

            “It’s not exactly a secret you’ve been spending a lot of time at my place this past week,” Kaeya says. “People talk about you almost nonstop.”

            “That’s true enough, but I’m inclined to agree with Diluc,” says Jean. “Especially considering the timing of this attempt being the day this investigation started. If this is connected to the new Blind Seer case –”

            “Please stop calling it that.”

            “- then it makes sense why you would be targeted. Our killer has identified you as the greatest threat to him being caught,” Jean finishes.

            “Which doesn’t mean you won’t be targeted too, or even that it is connected,” Kaeya says. “It probably is, but we can’t rule anything out at this point. We didn’t get a good look at the shooter, by the way. He was on a roof, and leapt to the city wall. Diluc chased after him, and I tried to beat him to the mid city before he, or she, jumped down, but neither of us was fast enough.”

            Kaeya sinks down onto one of the couches in Jean’s office, looking like the day is catching up with him. Diluc stays on his feet, like his nerves won’t let him stay still.

            “That’s unfortunate, but not in any way, your fault,” Jean says. “Did you –”

            “Recover the arrows? Yes. They didn’t tell us anything, unfortunately. They’re standard iron broadheads with crane feather fletching. The kind you can get anywhere in Mondstadt or Liyue. It was too dark to check the roof he tried to shoot us from, but I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.”

            “Right.” Jean sighs. “I’ll make arrangements for you two to stay in the barracks tonight –”

            “No need. We’ll sleep on the couches in my office.”

            Jean would rather they sleep in beds, but has the feeling that it’s not worth the argument. “Alright. However, starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting guards outside of your house until we’ve caught this new – this copycat.”

            “That’s not necessary –”

            “This isn’t up for debate, Kaeya,” Jean tells him. “Mondstadt can’t afford to lose you. I can’t afford to lose you. You know I can’t do this without you.”

            Kaeya frowns, looking guilty. “I never really apologized for what I said the other day. When we were in Barbara’s office.”

            “You don’t need to apologize,” Jean says with a sigh. “Especially since it’s true.”

            “It’s not, and I shouldn’t have said it,” Kaeya tells her. “I am truly sorry. I . . . was not my best then.”

            Jean glances at Diluc, who’s standing off to the side awkwardly. She doesn’t think Kaeya told him exactly what was said by either of them, judging by his bemused expression, and she can’t help but feel a little relieved by that.

            “I’m sorry too. I should have done more to make sure you were recognized for your accomplishments. Don’t argue,” she says when Kaeya opens his mouth to protest. “No matter what the reasons for it were, I never should have taken all the credit. It wasn’t fair to you, or to the people of Mondstadt who deserve to know just who it is protecting them . . . and we both know I never would have made it to where I am without you.”

            “We kind of made it here together,” Kaeya says graciously. “Anyway, it’s getting late, and there’s nothing else Diluc and I can do tonight. You must be nearly finished too, and ready to get home for some well deserved sleep.”

            “Yes – oh, but you should know. The Jueyun red fabric lead has led us more or less to a dead end this time,” Jean says, because she feels like it’s best to let Kaeya know this as soon as possible. The lead that had narrowed things down for them so much last time wouldn’t do the same trick twice, it seemed.

            “Oh?” Kaeya opens and closes his eye several times, but more slowly than when he is giving his equivalent of a blink. He’s exhausted, Jean realizes. So, she should make this quick. “How so?”

            “Well, it seems that it got out to the general public, how last time we were able to narrow down our suspect pool from potentially everyone in Mondstadt to only ten people.”

            “How did you do that?” Diluc asks.

            “You might have noticed the color of the blindfold we found this morning was particularly bright and vivid,” Jean says. “Very deep red, leaning toward vermillion, but only in direct sunlight. In fire light it’s darker, leaning more toward crimson. It’s a very difficult color to get. They call that color Jueyun red, and only one company produces the pigment for it. The Feiyun Commerce Guild in Liyue.”

            “Xingqiu’s family’s company?” Diluc asks.

            “Yes. Though rest assured, the company itself had nothing to do with the original murderer, and likely has nothing to do with this copycat killer now. They’re only significant in that they make the pigment. Apparently from a byproduct of fermented Jueyun chilis and crushed geograna casings, but that’s beside the point. After learning that the Blind Seer was using one of their signature colors of cloth to make the blindfolds for his victim, they decided to stop offering textiles dyed in that color, feeling that it was disrespectful to the victims. They do, however, still sell the pigment powder itself, but . . . Kaeya?”

            Kaeya’s eye has slid shut since the last time he spoke, and his head is now nodding forward, listlessly.

            Diluc looks sharply at his brother then rushes over to him, probably terrified that Kaeya took an injury that he didn’t notice. Jean knows that Diluc was dreaming of Kaeya dying every night for weeks when he was being dosed with dream poison. She hurries over as well, and reaches out with her Vision, sending a thread of healing magic into Kaeya, as a diagnostic.

            “He’s not injured,” she is able to tell Diluc, very quickly. “I think he’s just tired.”

            Diluc eases an arm behind Kaeya’s back and gently repositions him so that he’s lying down on the couch, then covers his brother with the blanket Jean keeps here for just this purpose. Jean has stayed overnight in her office many times since being named Acting Grand Master. Kaeya, for all he likes to act like a slacker, has pulled just as many overnights, maybe even more. Neither of them are strangers to sleeping on the couches in their offices, not their own, nor each other’s. Jean sees no reason to have Diluc carry him upstairs to Kaeya’s own office, not when he’s already resting peacefully here.

            “I shouldn’t have let him run himself so ragged today,” Diluc says, a hint of self depreciation in his voice.

            “There is nothing you or I could have done to stop him,” Jean tells him. “When he’s chasing after a serial killer, he really has a one track mind. Like a bloodhound, some of the other knights used to say, until Varka called him –”

            “I want to know what happened four years ago,” Diluc interrupts her. “Both you and Kaeya have gotten out of telling me too many times, and I want to know. Now.”

            Jean suppresses a sigh. She’d hoped that Kaeya would have filled Diluc in, so she wouldn’t have to. Kaeya, of course, would have glossed over certain things. As much as she would like to as well, to spare Diluc from knowing, Jean doesn’t feel like she can. Kaeya would say Diluc doesn’t need to know. Diluc would argue that he has a right to know. While Jean thinks that he should know, even though it’s going to hurt him. There’s a part of her that’s tired of all the lies related to all their cases, but that’s mostly in regards to her taking credit for Kaeya’s brilliance. There’s another part of her that’s still angry about what Diluc did to Kaeya, even though four years have passed and Kaeya has clearly forgiven Diluc. Maybe Jean shouldn’t interfere, and should let it go like Kaeya has . . . but she was the one by Kaeya’s side for years, watching him struggle, and hide how much pain his hands were causing him, and sometimes still do cause him, even to this very day. She was the one who helped him relearn how to use his hands, and retrain in swordsmanship after he had to switch which hand he wielded his blade in, after they realized his left hand would probably never be strong enough to grip his sword hilt properly during a fight again. So maybe Jean’s not ready to let Diluc off the hook, even if Kaeya has.

            “Alright. I’ll tell you everything.” Or almost everything. Maybe it would be kinder to lay out for Diluc every single thing that burning Kaeya’s hands has done to him, and get it all over with at once, but that will probably annoy Kaeya. Besides, Diluc will figure it out for himself sooner or later anyway. He can only see Kaeya fight so many times before he realizes that his brother no longer fights left handed. So Jean will only tell him how Kaeya’s burnt hands affected him on that particular case, and not how drastically they continue to affect him even now. “Not here, though. I don’t want the story reaching Kaeya in his dreams.” Kaeya’s had enough nightmares lately.

            They leave Jean’s office, and Diluc follows her upstairs . . . to Kaeya’s office. Diluc’s old office, not that he ever spent much time in it. She sees Diluc frowning, possibly wondering if this is some kind of power play, but the truth is nothing so complicated. Jean goes to one of Kaeya’s cabinets, opens it, and selects a bottle of gin and two glasses.

            “No, thank you,” Diluc says, preemptively.

            “Kaeya won’t mind,” Jean tells him, knowing that’s not why he’s refusing, as she pours a small amount into the second glass for him anyway. She leaves it on Kaeya’s desk, then moves to sit down on one of the couches, by the wall. The furniture in Kaeya’s office is arranged very similarly to Jean’s. He just has much less in the way of decorations, and covers his walls in maps of Mondstadt and lists of various pieces of information relevant to his work. “I think he would actually be put out if I told you all about what happened without a drink in hand . . . even though I’ve told the story, or at least the abridged version, many, many times. Everyone wants to hear about all the serial killers we’ve caught. It never seems to occur to them that we might not want to relive those cases, and think about all those dead people over and over again.”

            “I’m sorry,” says Diluc, “but I need to know.”

            “I know,” Jean says. “You really should know. You were right, by the way.”

            “What?”

            “Your suspicions,” Jean tells him. “About how close Kaeya came to dying.”

Four Years Ago . . .

            Getting to the Blind Seer’s victim first (and filching the blindfold) allows Kaeya to discover three important things that can help them track the bastard down.

            One: Their killer is using a very distinctly colored type of cloth. Kaeya’s never seen that particular shade before, or the way it shifts in sunlight. At least not on fabric. The tea sets at Dawn Winery are glazed in that same color, but he’s never seen any cloth in that color, be it clothes, curtains, or anything in between.

            Two: Their killer can sew, and sew well. The way he (or she) hemmed the blindfold so neat and trim is proof of that. Kaeya has an awkward conversation with Adelinde, to get her opinion on the stitching, after which he firmly believes that their killer uses this skill for his or her profession.

            Three: This bastard’s not stabbing people with knives, like Kaeya had originally assumed. Hannah Tanner’s wounds were caused by something sharp but circular. Kaeya’s best guess is an awl.

            It takes a lot of legwork to turn these three facts into a suspect list, but something about the challenge of it awakens something in Kaeya’s blood. It sort of reminds him of when he was a lad in Khaenri’ah, learning to hunt. Before he lost his depth perception and had to give up archery, before the incident that made his whole world fall apart the first time. The lessons he’d learned then had seemed complicated and hard, but now, older, and if not wiser than at least more aware of the way the world works, the way people and predators and prey think, it all seems much simpler. Instead of using tracks on a game trail to hunt down his prey, however, he’s using clues that this bastard was kind enough to leave behind, to narrow down on his who he is, until finally, after visiting every textile and fabric vendor in Mondstadt, pulling records from Mondstadt’s Tailoring Guild, Leatherworker’s Guild, and Carriagemaker’s Guild, and the aforementioned awkward visit to go see Adelinde, Kaeya has a list of ten suspects to present to Varka, Hanson, Jean, and fucking Eroch.

            He explains how he compiled it, and confesses to borrowing the blindfold without permission, shows them the records he obtained to support his theories on why each man and woman on his list is a suspect, then waits to see which way the wind will blow.

            “This is excellent work, boy,” Varka says, a hearty grin on his face. “This might help us find the bastard!”

            “Indeed. Well done, Kaeya,” Hanson says, with a predatory smile.

            Jean, who accompanied Kaeya as he ran around Mondstadt like crazy, pats him on the shoulder, proudly.

            Eroch looks like he’s being forced to suck on pickled eggs. “I will have my knights look into it,” he says in a very acidic tone.

            “You’ll do more than that,” says Varka, frowning at him. “We’re going to act on this information.”

            “We have a process which we must follow, Master Varka,” says Eroch. “It may seem slow to the uneducated, but I assure you, it’s how things must be done in order to uncover –”

            “Yes or no, Eroch: Do you have any suspects?” Hanson asks.

            “That is not –”

            “Yes or no?”

            “I cannot divulge –”

            “He has no suspects,” Hanson tells Varka. “I say, while he follows his antiquated process, we use this information that young Kaeya has brought us and find this bastard.” He catches Kaeya’s eye, and Kaeya feels a matching predatory smile creep onto his own face.

            “That sounds good to me,” Varka says. “Our first step will be to put tails on all ten of these suspects.”
            “What?” Kaeya frowns. “Wait, sir, I would actually advise against that –”

            “Oh? What’s wrong, Sir Kaeya? Worried, perhaps, that your intel will not hold water after all?” Eroch asks.

            “Not at all, Inspector,” Kaeya tells him. “I’d like to point out, however, that alerting the killer that we’re onto him is not prudent.”

            “Then how else are we supposed to catch him in the act, hmm?”

            “You act as though catching him in the act is the only way to catch him. It’s not,” Kaeya says. “If our killer knows he’s being followed by our knights, he either won’t act as he normally does, or he’ll find a way to work around us.”

            “What do you suggest then, Kaeya?” Hanson asks.

            “We stake out potential victims,” Kaeya says. “Stealthily, in civilian clothes, not our uniforms. He’s going after newer allogenes. In Mondstadt it seems like only about one person a month receives a Vision. Which means that he’s already killed about half the people who have received a Vision in the past year. We should be staking them out instead, guarding them, and making sure our knights know what all ten suspects on our list look like. Then, when one of them gets too close to a potential victim, we grab them, search them, and interrogate them before they have a chance to actually do any harm.”

            “You sound scared, Alberich,” Eroch comments. “Are you worried that the Blind Seer’s going to get you, beings that you’re newly enVisioned? Is that why you’re doubting our knights’ ability to keep watch on these suspects?”

            “May I remind you that Sir Kaeya previously volunteered himself as bait to lure out the Blind Seer?” Jean snaps.

            “Be that as it may, the Grand Master’s idea is sound,” Eroch says. “Moreover, it’s the sort of action that the people of Mondstadt expect from the Knights of Favonius. If our killer is indeed one of these suspects on your list then we should endeavor never to let him out of our sight. I, for one, do not wish to tell any victim’s families that we allowed their loved one to die because we were watching potential victims, rather than potential killers and didn’t recognize the suspect before it was too late.”

            “As much as I hate to agree with Eroch, he’s got a point,” says Hanson. “It will be far easier for our knights to keep their eyes on one suspect than to keep their eyes on potential victims and keep an eye out for ten potential suspects.”

            “Are you serious?” Kaeya asks, unable to believe his ears.

            “Not everyone is good with faces, Kaeya,” Hanson tells him. “Asking all our knights to remember what all ten suspects look like might be too much.”

            “But in this city everyone pretty much knows everyone else already! If not by name than by face, and it’s the faces that are important they remember, not the names. It’s not like they need to memorize their faces and family trees!”

            Kaeya can’t help but feel betrayed. Until now, Hanson has always been on his side and supported his methods.

            Jean puts a hand on Kaeya’s shoulder. “Let this one go,” she advises.

            Kaeya doesn’t want to. It’s a terrible idea, and it’s likely to let someone else get killed . . . but he doesn’t really have a choice. He gives a curt nod and avoids looking at Eroch, who’s smirking like a toad and fiddling with that gods-ugly ring of his.

            Then they make their plans, and Kaeya sees what the problem really is.

            All of them, even Hanson and Jean, want a hero’s ending to this whole Blind Seer fiasco. The peoples’ faith in the knights has been shaken, since they’ve allowed this monster to prey on new allogenes for so long. New allogenes, who they consider to be sort of sacred, having just been recently blessed by the Archons, allegedly for some purpose. Catching this heretic in the act, and saving the life of the last would-be victim makes for a much better storybook ending than stopping him before he gets too close, and convicting him based on the fact that he was on their suspect list, in the vicinity of a potential target, and carrying a Jueyun red blindfold in his pocket, and an awl to use as a stabby stick.

            Personally, Kaeya thinks it’s disgusting that they’re all willing to let him get close enough to a potential victim that it puts the potential victim’s life in danger. Just because these people have Visions doesn’t automatically make them warriors or fighters of any kind, and ambush tactics alone can be enough to throw off anyone. Kaeya knows what it’s like to be helpless. He doesn’t wish that feeling on any citizen of Mondstadt . . . but of course, he’s been overruled.

            Varka himself insists on adding himself into the roster of knights staking out their targets, which just makes everything worse, because Varka is a hulking titan and there’s no way his presence will go unnoticed. Then, to add insult to injury, Kaeya himself is left out of the first week’s rotation, on the grounds that he might stand out too much, as an outlander, with an eyepatch, and a new Vision. Jean protests on his behalf, but is overruled, and Kaeya leaves the meeting feeling like Eroch won, even though they’re at least attempting to act on the intel he found for them.

Chapter Text

Four Years Ago . . .

            Predictably, the investigation stalls after the knights start tailing the ten suspects on Kaeya’s list . . . though to be completely fair, even if they’d done things Kaeya’s way, it would have taken, by his estimates, a week to get results. The Blind Seer had started off killing someone about every two or three weeks, give or take a couple days. However, Kaeya had noticed, that the time between his kills was getting consistently shorter. He’s not sure why. Animals are predictable in their patterns because their actions are based around their needs. When they need water, when they need food, when they need shelter, when they need to mate. Humans don’t need to murder each other on a regular basis, so trying to predict what this bastard is going to do is . . . different. Ten days is what Kaeya estimates the time between kills is down to now. He does tell Varka and the others as much, not that it makes much difference when it comes to their plans.

            Kaeya spends what’s left of those days trying to think of what more he can do to stop the Blind Seer. He has plenty of time, since his shifts on patrol have dropped back down to what is apparently normal for the wall guard, and when he’s not working, he doesn’t have much else to fill his time.

            He does try to regain his swordsmanship skills, but it does not go as well as he hoped it would. The scar salve Jean got for him has done wonders to loosen the scarred skin up and give him back more of his range of movement. Unfortunately, the damage to his hands isn’t just skin deep. Diluc’s flames cooked his hands. Literally. The muscles beneath his skin weren’t just damaged, they were destroyed. Healing magic could only do so much to fix them. The young deaconess in training he goes to see about them tells him that they may recover a little more in time, especially since he’s an allogene now, but not too much more, and it will be a slow process. She also gives him the go ahead to start using his new cryo powers more, and some Apprentice Notes to use as a catalyst, since he mentions, perhaps, trying a completely new style of fighting. He’d rather stick with swordsmanship, but he’s forced to recognize that might not be possible.

            Then again, it still might. His right hand, he realizes before too long, is in much better shape than his left hand. It helps that, as a child, his first melee weapons were long knives, wielded in pairs. They were meant to be a backup weapon after his bow, which he can’t use anymore now either. The knife training, however, made him more useful with his off hand than the average fighter, and it also helps that Kaeya’s spent so much time tossing and catching coins with his right hand, as part of his depth perception training. He knows that the number of people who are able to switch which hand they fight with are few and far between, but with enough practice, and perhaps with the help of a sparring partner, Kaeya thinks he can pull it off.

            Figuring out how to use his cryo powers isn’t as hard as he thought it would be. It probably helps that he’s been using them on and off before he was actually supposed to. Before working with Hanson and trying to use himself as bait for the Blind Seer, Kaeya had been living outside of Mondstadt’s walls, sleeping under trees and in wrecked, abandoned wagons when he needed shelter from the wind and the rain. He’d figured out a few things about his powers and used them to take down boars and get to fish. Precision attacks are something he can’t and will never be able to do, with his lack of depth perception, and since he slacked off on his exercises with his coin for so long, it’s worse than usual now. So the alternative is more blatant, predictable, but hopefully more powerful attacks, that lash out at everything right in front of him. If he can, he’d like to eventually hone them around his sword to give them a little more direction. As for an elemental burst . . . well, he still hasn’t figured that out yet. However, he has time.

            Jean tries to make it up to Kaeya, how they’ve taken his information and kind of shoved him out of the investigation. It’s not her fault, and he knows it, but it’s hard not to be resentful . . . but she is all that he really has. Except, maybe for Fischl and Oz. They’ve become friends over the past month, he thinks. Fischl does love the library, and so their paths end up crossing at headquarters about once a week. She’s taken Kaeya up on his offer to walk her home twice. She’s also jumped on the campaign to try to get him to eat more, inviting him to Sugar Bee, or to her house for dinner. Kaeya’s turned her down each time so far, because all her requests so far have conflicted with his patrol schedules, but now that he’s being iced out of the hunt for the Blind Seer, perhaps next time he’ll take her up on her offer . . . or invite her for a change.

            He’s also started trying to eat more, this past week. He knows that he’s lost more weight than he should have. So, even though he still doesn’t really have much of an appetite, he tries. Still, when the next window that he’s predicted the Blind Seer will strike again opens, it becomes much, much harder to stomach anything. He’s essentially waiting for the Blind Seer to kill someone else and he can’t do anything to stop it. He’s exhausted all his mental resources, and ideas, and it makes him sick that there’s nothing more he can do. He can’t even convince the Grand Master to put a guard on all the new allogenes who could be targeted because apparently though the Ordo does have that information, they keep it classified. Even though anyone with enough time on their hands could put it together for themselves if they just asked around Mondstadt for it.

            It’s only the first night of three that Kaeya’s marked as the Blind Seer’s killing window. He thinks it’s more likely that their killer will strike on the second or third day, because he can’t think of what would make him decrease the time between his kills so much. It’s only that fact that convinces Kaeya to drag himself out of his rented room, to get something to eat.

            Unfortunately, going out to get food has the added effect of forcing him to think about the future. Kaeya doesn’t plan to stay in that rented room forever. It suits his needs just fine for now, but eventually he’s going to start feeling better, and want to stay someplace he can cook for himself. Even when he lived with the Ragnvindrs, he would still cook occasionally. Usually when Diluc dragged him down to the kitchens in the middle of the night because he was hungry and thought Kaeya’s food tasted better than what he made. Kaeya actually does enjoy cooking, and sooner or later he’s going to get tired of eating only restaurant food or shelf stable foods. Then he remembers the kitchen at Good Hunter, that they let anyone who wants to use. So, to try and give his life a bit of variety, Kaeya stops by Mondstadt General Goods and buys milk, onions, and tomatoes, then some flour from Good Hunter because processing wheat himself right now just feels like far too much effort at that moment . . . but once he gets started cooking, his weariness seems to eb away a bit. It feels good to be doing something productive again, even if it’s only making Fisherman’s Toast. Maybe tomorrow he’ll go outside the city walls and get some different ingredients. With some carrots he could make a ratatouille. Or with snap dragons he could make cream stew. Hell, maybe he should go tonight, while he’s feeling like it. He probably will be back to feeling like living is just too much effort tomorrow.

            Kaeya is undecided on whether or not he’ll go foraging for ingredients later tonight, as he sits down at one of Good Hunter’s outdoor tables to eat his Fisherman’s Toast. He decides to wait and see how he feels when he finishes.

            As he munches on his toast, a hunter from Springvale approaches Sara.

            “Good evening, Lewis. Here to do business?”

            “That I am, Ms. Sara. That I am.”

            It’s none of Kaeya’s business and their trade talk doesn’t particularly interest him, but he can’t help but overhear.

            “Hmm . . . Some of these cuts aren’t up to par with what you usually bring me,” Sara muses as she inspects the goods.

            “Aye. I’ll be charging you less for them. Those are my young daughter’s. She just started joining us on the hunts last month, and you know the rules: every hunter dresses their own kills. These are the first of hers that were suitable for market. I know she’s still got a ways to go, but she’s getting there.”

            “Ah, yes. I’m sure she’ll be skinning and dressing game like a pro in no time,” Sara agrees cordially. “We all have to start somewhere, after all.”

            Kaeya freezes, his toast several inches from his mouth as he realizes –

            “Fuck.”

            He stands, his meal forgotten, even as his toast falls from limp fingers to the ground. Kaeya’s whole focus is on getting back to headquarters. He can’t believe he didn’t think of this sooner. No one just out of the blue murders someone with a bizarre, distinct style, just like no hunter starts off taking down boars and field skinning and butchering them perfectly. Which means that there is almost definitely another victim. Possibly several. Blind Seer victims who didn’t fit the pattern. Those details where they deviate could be clues. Kaeya could use them to narrow down his suspect list further.

            The City Watch are usually the only ones who investigate the run of the mill murders in Mondstadt. Gaining access to their offices, to look through unsolved cases from several months ago is the easy part. Kaeya stands out, yes, but he is also very damn good at acting like he belongs. He slows his stride to a casual, even lazy walk as he reaches the floor where the City Watch’s workrooms, offices, and records storage are. There are only a few knights here since the regular workday is over, and extra patrols consisting of knights who apparently don’t stand out are surveilling their ten suspects. Only one of them pays him any attention as he crosses the floor, to the record room.

            “Good evening, Sir Kaeya. What brings you by tonight?” asks Hertha, one of Hanson’s lieutenants and a fellow lefty.

            “They told me to check over some old files,” says Kaeya, pulling out his receipt from Mondstadt General Goods and fluttering it around a bit, as though it’s a list of his tasks. “Punishment for talking back, again.”

            “Punishment from Captain Hanson?” Hertha asks, looking troubled.

            “He intervened for me. Eroch would have had me polishing all the spare arms in the armory, which would have been a nightmare with how my hands are now.” Kaeya pulls off one of his gloves to show her.

            Hertha winces and looks away. “Ah, that makes more sense. Captain Hanson speaks highly of you. I couldn’t imagine that he’d want you punished.”

            “He saved me from an all nighter, that’s for sure,” Kaeya says, and puts his glove back on.

            “Wait a minute.”

            Kaeya tries not to freeze like a deer that’s scented danger.

            Hertha strides forward and for a second, Kaeya thinks she’s seen through him. Then she hands him a key. “You’ll need this to get into the records room.”

            “Ah, thanks. Well then. I better get started.”

            Hertha doesn’t stop him again, and no one else challenges Kaeya on his way to the records room. Nor does anyone disturb him as he begins sifting through the files, skimming over unsolved murder cases and the sorry excuse for notes they contain. He’s not sure quite what he’s looking for, but he thinks he’ll know it when he sees it.

            It takes two hours. Mainly because their organization system is crap. It would have taken longer if they took good notes, so it’s a bag of mixed blessings and curses, but it is what it is. Overall, two hours isn’t that bad in the whole scheme of things, especially when one considers that the Blind Seer’s investigation has been going on for well nigh two months, and Kaeya is the only damn person in the Ordo who’s made any sort of headway on the case.

            Kaeya finds the clue he’s looking for in the file of one Miri Kurtz. Not an allogene, or at least not a known one. Nor was she stabbed to death like the Blind Seer’s other victims. No, her throat was cut and she was found in an alley after being missing for three days, and was presumably dead all that time. Kaeya can’t really blame his fellow knights for not connecting her with the Blind Seer. He wouldn’t have either before making his list of suspects. Because the only thing that ties her to the case is the fact that she was Jonas Kurtz’s little sister, and beings that Jonas Kurtz’s family business regularly orders Jueyun red fabric for their carriages’ upholstery, and that Kaeya and Jean crossed paths with him that same night the last body was found, quite close to where it was found, Jonas Kurtz is at the very top of Kaeya’s suspect list.

            Kaeya doesn’t know what it means, only that it means something. It’s a piece of the puzzle and it doesn’t fit yet, but he’s certain that it will, that it already would if he just had access to the rest of the case notes about the other victims. Maybe Jonas killed her or maybe he has reason to believe she was killed by an allogene, or knows a new allogene did kill her, but got off because of their newly enVisioned status, just like Diluc held off on killing Kaeya right after he was granted a Vision.

            The City Watch’s workroom and offices all seem empty when Kaeya exits, file in hand, and planning to high tail it to the vicinity of Kurtz’s Carriagemaker shop, where Varka himself has no doubt taken up a post. Aware that something could happen to him en route, because life sucks like that, Kaeya leaves the file on Hertha’s desk . . . along with his receipt from the General Goods store. If the worst happens to him, she’s the one he trusts most to finish putting the pieces together for him right now, since she is one of the few who saw him enter the record room. Technically, he could have left it in Jean’s or Hanson’s office, with a note, but he doesn’t have the patience to try writing at the moment, and who knows if they could even read his handwriting in its current state.

            Kaeya’s not sure why he feels like getting this news to Varka immediately is so urgent. Kurtz surely knows he’s being watched, he’s not likely to try anything tonight . . . but he’s not behaving like a rational person would, beings that rational people don’t go around murdering other people, and dramatically staging their bodies. So, there’s an element to his behavior that Kaeya can’t predict. Yes, it’s best to assume that the sooner Varka gets this news, the better, but . . . Kaeya just can’t explain it. It just feels like if he doesn’t act right now something terrible is going to happen.

            When he finds Varka, Varka is arguing with Hanson, on a rooftop, in full view of half of Mond, and they claim that Kaeya’s the one who stands out?

            Rules about gliding in city limits and scaling buildings be damned, Kaeya climbs up to hear what’s going on. Midway up, he regrets it. His hands start aching horrible, but he continues out of sheer stubbornness.

            “Master Varka! Captain Hanson!” he calls, as soon as he managed to clamber over the roof’s edge.

            The two turn guilty looks on him. “Ah, kid,” Varka says, looking very sheepish.

            “I’m almost positive it’s Jonas Kurtz,” Kaeya tells them. “I just went through old unsolveds, without permission, you can reprimand me as you see fit, but Jonas’s sister, Miri Kurtz, was murdered three and a half weeks before the Blind Seer murders began.”

            “What?” Varka asks, looking floored.

            “Her death doesn’t match up with his style,” admits Kaeya, “but the timing of her murder can’t be a coincidence.”

            Hanson curses horribly. Then he looks at Kaeya, shamefaced. “We just lost him.”

            “What?” Just like that, Kaeya realizes that his gut feeling was right.

            “Not even just . . . it’s been nearly twenty minutes. He left his family’s shop and went into Angel’s Share. We sent Sir Bruce in after him, to keep an eye on him. He came right back out and said that Kurtz isn’t in there. He must have snuck out one of the back exits immediately and given us the slip. We’ve been scanning the area, but no sign of him so far.”

            “I’m sorry, Kaeya,” Varka tells him. “You were right.”

            Kaeya fights to keep a sneer off his face. “Why are you just standing around here? Why aren’t you getting the list of all potential victims and checking up on them?” he demands.

            He wants to face palm when both Hanson and Varka look shocked, like this hasn’t even occurred to them. Have they even realized that the reason Kurtz gave them the slip is probably, most likely, because he plans on killing someone tonight?

            “Go get the list!” he shouts at them, even though shouting at the Grand Master and the Captain of the Watch is a pretty bad career move, but the hell with them. “Or get someone to get it for you! I’m going to check on Fischl!” With that, he leaps off the roof.

            “Kaeya, wait! Damn it, Varka get the list and send people out to check on the potential victims. Kaeya, get back here! Don’t go alone!”

            Kaeya ignores the captain. He’s too intent on gliding as far as he can before he inevitably touches down and has to run, because twenty minutes. Twenty minutes is forever. Twenty minutes is more than enough time to get from Angel’s Share to almost anywhere in the city, and Fischl doesn’t live too far from here. Hopefully Jonas didn’t go after her. She’s not a good choice for a target, she’s got Oz to protect her, which makes it harder to take her by surprise, but Kaeya needs to hurry anyway, because she’s just a kid, and he likes her, and he doesn’t have so many friends that he can afford to lose a single one.

            He hears Hanson shouting behind him a few more times, but doesn’t actually hear the words he’s saying, and soon his shouts die away. Kaeya’s faster, younger, and not weighed down by armor since he’d gone home when his shift ended and changed into mostly regular clothes, with only his Ordo jacket to identify him as a knight. He can get to Fischl’s house much faster on his own. Kaeya hopes he’s wrong, and that he doesn’t need to get to Fischl’s house quickly. He hopes that Jonas didn’t go after her. He should have remembered that hope is for fools.

            Something is wrong. He feels that the moment he reaches to door to Fischl’s home. She lives in a large house, in a good neighborhood, thanks to her parents’ successful adventuring careers. Also thanks to those same careers, Fischl is often left home alone. There are no lights on inside the house, like there often are when people are home, but Kaeya sees flashes of electro . . . and something else. Some strange green light. Not anemo, he knows what that looks like. Maybe some sort of alchemical weapon?

            Doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, Kaeya will deal with it.

            He tries the doorknob. Locked. No matter. Kaeya summons his cryo power and forces it to flow through the crack between the door and its frame. Ice crystals burst forth and lumber groans. Something breaks, and when Kaeya yanks on the doorknob again, the whole door falls in.

            “Fischl!” he shouts as he rushes in, giving away any chance he still has the element of surprise, but hopefully drawing attention away from his friend. “Kurtz!”

            “Help!”

            Kaeya chases after Fischl’s voice. The poor girl sounds terrified. He finds her in a once fancily decorated dining room, now in ruins from the fight that’s clearly been raging. Fischl is bleeding, her bow broken, Oz nowhere in sight. She’s fighting desperately with her Vision alone, trying to keep Kurtz at bay with wisps of electro, but with no weapon or catalyst to direct them and concentrate them she can’t hold Kurtz off indefinitely. Kurtz is countering them with a longsword. That eerie green glow is emanating from him. No matter.

            Kaeya draws his sword and calls on his Vision, summoning cryo. More than he’s ever called on before, but fuck Kurtz. The blast strikes him with the force of a battering ram, knocking him away from Fischl and into the wall, then freezing him in place against it, encasing him in ice. Huh. That was so easy, Kaeya almost feels like he cheated. Not that he has any aversion to cheating in a fight like this. Because again. Fuck Kurtz.

            “Fischl? Are you alright?” Kaeya hurries to her.

            “Sir Kaeya!” Fischl stares at him with one wide, tearful, disbelieving eye. “You’re here.”

            “Fischl. I’m so sorry.” This should never have happened. Kaeya shouldn’t have let Kurtz anywhere near her. Hell, what had he been thinking? He knew that the Blind Seer would try to kill again sometime over the next few nights. He’d been off duty, he should have taken it upon himself to watch over Fischl. How could he have been so stupid?

            “Wh-what are you apologizing for, Sir Kaeya?” Fischl asks. “You saved me. He – I couldn’t – I didn’t –”

            “It’s okay,” Kaeya tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You’re okay.”

            “I’d never been in a fight before. No one’s ever tried to kill me before. I couldn’t summon back Oz, I couldn’t concentrate –”

            “It’s okay. You survived,” Kaeya tells her. “Most people don’t, the first time someone tries to kill them.” Kaeya almost didn’t. He really shouldn’t have. “But you did.”

            Fischl gives an off-sounding laugh. For a second Kaeya worries that she’s going to give in to post battle hysterics, which she has every right to, beings that she just survived a murder attempt by fighting tooth and nail, but Fischl keeps it together. “It’s not . . . not like in the stories. Battle. Fighting for your life, that is.”

            “No,” Kaeya agrees. She’s bleeding from multiple wounds, but not too badly. He thinks she’ll be okay. “They don’t tell you how scary fighting can be . . . but you survived. That’s all that matters.”

            “I didn’t expect him to have a dendro Vision. I’d never seen one before,” Fischl says.

            Kaeya frowns. “What?”

            Of course Kurtz chooses that moment to summon his Vision’s power, using it to augment his strength and break free of the ice Kaeya just trapped him in.

            “Fuck!” Kaeya puts himself between the murderer and the maiden, and holds his sword at the ready. “Get out of here, Fischl! Go outside and scream for help. The other knights are on the way, your calls will lead them here faster.”

            “I don’t think so!” Kurtz laughs, and there’s more of that glowing green. Near the doorway, Fischl yelps. Kaeya risks a glance and sees that Kurtz just used his power to seal off the room’s entrance with dendro briars. Fischl had nearly impaled herself on them, trying to race through.

            “Ah, the cunning Sir Kaeya,” Kurtz says. “Believe it or not, this saddens me.”

            “What does, Jonas?” Kaeya asks. Stalling for time. He doesn’t like his odds against an experienced allogene, especially not with his hands like they are now. If he can hold on long enough, maybe Hanson will catch up. He doubts Varka will be able to get the list of potential victims and send anyone in time. Even if he could, he might not send other knights here, thinking Kaeya and Hanson already had it covered.

            “Killing you,” Kurtz tells him.

            “You haven’t killed me yet.”

            “But I will. You and the undeserving little brat you came here to save.”

            “Fischl, stay behind me,” Kaeya tells his friend, because Kurtz is trying to circle around him, “and try to summon Oz back if you can.”

            “R-right!”

            “So . . . out of curiosity, why didn’t you want to kill me?” Kaeya asks Kurtz. “Is it because I’m too pretty to kill?”

            Kurtz laughs. “You are funny . . . but no. It’s not your pretty face that kept you off my list. It was your worthiness.”

            “Worthiness?” Kaeya laughs. “Are you joking? There’s never been a less worthy allogene than me. Except maybe you.”

            “The way you feel unworthy rather than entitled proves me right,” says Kurtz. “Most allogenes use their Visions to get what they want. However, you got what you wanted by your own power. Then you got your Vision. Much like me . . . except what I wanted and got by my own power was my Vision.”

            Something clicks in Kaeya’s head. “Your sister was the allogene. You murdered her for her Vision? And it lets you use it?”

            “That’s impossible!” Fischl gasps. “People can’t use others’ Visions . . . can they?”

            “It’s rare, but possible . . . at least that’s what I’ve read,” Kaeya says. That had been of particular interest to him when he still intended to pass information back to Khaenri’ah. Before he realized he could never give away information that might hurt Diluc and stopped looking into Visions. “I’ve read the original wielder needs to be dead first, and I’ve heard that having a blood connection to them makes it more likely. Seems like that might be true.”

            “My sister,” says Kurtz, “was an insufferable brat. After she was born, she got everything she wanted. My parents skimped on me to spoil her. I couldn’t have sword lessons because she wanted dancing lessons. I had to spend hours every day helping with everything in the carriage shop. She got to spend as much time as she wanted with her friends and never raised a hand to help with the family business, never so much as hemmed a carriage curtain. It was no wonder I couldn’t make it through the knights’ tryouts. I was so close, I know I was . . . If I’d had the time to practice, or the chance to learn from a master . . . or if I had a Vision . . . I’ll never forget how it felt, watching a damned child become a knight when my dream died . . . just because he had a Vision. I think we can at least agree that your brother was as unworthy of his Vision as my sister was of hers.”

            “No, we can’t, so shut up about my brother.”

            “Everyone knows he was the one who burned your hands,” Kurtz tells him. “Did he blame you for your father’s death? He is the one who should have saved Master Crepus. He had a Vision, after all.”

            Kaeya knows he should keep Kurtz talking, and not bait him. He knows . . . but somehow he can’t stop himself from smirking at the bastard and saying two words that are guaranteed to piss off whoever you tell them to. “You’re wrong.”

            “I’m not wrong,” Kurtz says with a scowl.

            “Nope, you’re wrong.”

            “You’re lying to defend, him, but for what? He –”

            Kaeya strikes as Kurtz is in midsentence. He tries to use the same tactic as before, but though he hits Kurtz, the older man is strengthened by his dendro Vision, and this time most of Kaeya’s cryo washes over him. The cold sticks enough to slow him down, which might be what saves Kaeya’s life when Kurtz retaliates. Dendro briars lash out like whips. Kaeya dodges, fast enough not to get entangled by them. Not fast enough to avoid getting cut at all. They open a gash in his upper arm and another on his side. Fischl, thankfully, seems to get clear of them, unscathed, and ends up on the same side of the briars as Kaeya.

            Kurtz springs forward then, slicing with his sword. Kaeya brings his own up to meet it, but as expected, his grip is too weak. His sword is knocked from his hands. Kaeya makes his opponent pay for it, with a cryo blast to the face, but without a weapon to help him focus his powers, it’s not as effective as it would have been. This time when Kurtz retaliates, Kaeya has no chance to dodge. He’s caught in Kurtz’s dendro briar attack at point blank range, wrapped up like a mouse in a snake’s coils. Dozens of spiny thorns, some of them nearly five inches long, pierce his skin like fangs, puncturing through skin, and muscle, some hitting bones, other sinking into organs.

            Kaeya almost laughs as he realizes what the Blind Seer’s mystery round stabby weapon is. It’s so not funny that it kind of is. His breath leaves his body in a gasp, and for some reason, he tastes blood in his mouth.

            “Sir Kaeya!” Fischl screams.

            “This fight may have gone a completely different way if your hands weren’t completely ruined,” Kurtz tells him solemnly . . . almost regretfully. “For whatever it’s worth, I wish it hadn’t come to this, between you and I . . . but I suppose now you see that it’s your brother who is to blame.”

            Kaeya tries to speak. Only manages to cough, pathetically.

            “Good bye, Sir Kaeya.”

            “Get the hell away from him!” A blade slashes right at Kurtz’s face.

            Kaeya’s blade.

            Fischl has taken it up, even though she clearly has no experience with sword fighting whatsoever, and Kaeya’s sword is too big and too heavy for a tiny girl like her. She must have tried to infuse her attack with electro, because violet strands are crackling around her now, but with an unfamiliar weapon, she can only accomplish so much. Even the power to summon Oz back to her side seems to be eluding her. Still . . . she did manage to slice open Kurtz’s cheek. Good for her . . . but not for long.

            “You little bitch!” Kurtz knocks the sword from her grasp even more easily than he disarmed Kaeya, then punches Fischl in the face, knocking her to the floor. “For that, I’ll kill you slowly.”

            No. No, it can’t end like this. Fischl can’t die. Kaeya can’t let her die. He has to do something . . . but he can’t move. No, this can’t be happening again. Kaeya struggles against the dendro briars. It hurts. It hurts like hell, he can feel several of them in his stomach, and one deep in his chest, and he knows that he’s not going to survive this, but if he can somehow save Fischl then maybe, just maybe that will make up for some of his other horrible failures, for some of the other people he let die. His old family. His new father.

            He can’t break free . . . but he does manage to loosen his right arm, and move it just a few inches. A gesture so useless that Kaeya could scream . . . until he realizes that his fingertips are brushing up against the outline of the coin in his pocket.

            It’s a one mora coin, so it has very little value . . . but mora is, fundamentally . . . a catalyst.

            It’s all Kaeya has to work with, so he seizes it with the fervor that only a dying man with one last chance to make one thing right can manage.

            Ice crystals erupt from the ground between Fischl and Kurtz, and all their points stretch toward Kurtz, impaling him and lifting him into the air, away from Fischl. The dendro briars holding Kaeya dissolve into dust and drop him to the ground. He can’t even try to catch himself. His head thuds against the hardwood floor and he sees stars . . . for a second he thinks he’s going to pass out.

            “Sir Kaeya! Sir Kaeya!” Fischl is suddenly beside him. Touching his face. Crying.

            “Ge . . . Vis . . .ion,” Kaeya tries to tell her. Kurtz isn’t dead yet. He’s still bleeding. All over Kaeya’s ice crystals. The bastard.

            “What? Sir Kaeya?”

            “Get . . . den . . . dro . . . Vi . . . shuh.”

            Fischl seems to understand. She hurries over to Kurtz and pats down his pockets, a bit skittishly, but that’s understandable considering he just asked her to loot the not-yet-dead body of the man who’d been trying to murder her only seconds ago. She feels the dendro Vision through the pocket of Kurtz’s jacket and fishes it out, then quickly returns to Kaeya’s side, and presses the glowing gem into his hand.

            “Can you use this, Sir Kaeya? Can it save you? It seemed to make him stronger. Sir Kaeya? Sir Kaeya?!”

            Kaeya feels his eye sliding shut against his will. Damn it . . . he really doesn’t want to die. At least he did one thing right in the end, but . . . he doesn’t want to go.

            “Sir Kaeya! Don’t die! Please! Sir Kaeya! Sir Kaeya!”

            Everything is turning white . . . and he has so much he’s left undone, so many regrets . . . chief among them, never managing to make things right with Diluc . . . but it’s beyond his control now. All that’s left to do . . . is let go.

            Then . . .

            “I swear by my sword!”

            Kaeya feels the wind on his face. It saves him again, but unlike last time, when he got his Vision and it was freezing cold, this time it’s warm, and gentle. The white turns to pale green, and when that clears, Kaeya finds himself looking into Jean’s worried eyes.

            “Hi,” he tells her. Then he passes out.

Present Day Mondstadt

            Diluc buries his face in his hands as he realizes what his screw up almost cost him. Every problem that he and Kaeya still have with each other, every lingering pain and raw nerve, and secret still remaining between them all stem back to that one cursed night four years ago, when Diluc tried to kill his brother. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be free from its haunting reminders.

            “But you saved him?” he asks Jean. Even though the answer is obvious. Because Kaeya is very obviously not dead. “Your Dandelion Breeze saved him?”

            “It kept him from dying right then and there,” Jean tells him, “but it was still touch and go for a while. The thorns on the dendro briars had pierced his stomach, his lungs, and other organs. One of them came perilously close to his heart. So he had blood in his lungs, and taint in his blood stream, and a badly placed chest wound. It made things . . . complicated. We almost lost him several times.”

            “But you saved him. You saved his life.” Diluc forces himself to stop hiding his face in shame and look up to meet Jean’s eyes. “Thank you. So much. I . . . thank you.”

            “You don’t need to thank me, Diluc,” Jean says wearily. “He was my subordinate as well as my friend, and the hero who’d just stopped the worst serial killer Mond had seen in living memory, or at least that we knew of in living memory . . . and it wasn’t just me. The Ordo’s and Church’s healers worked on him around the clock that first day. He had a fever that was so bad, we worried it would damage his brain. I could have never saved him all on my own.”

            “But if you hadn’t been there . . .”

            “He would have almost definitely died. Yes. We were very lucky that the suspect I was tailing happened to be on the move, which was why my path crossed with Captain Hanson’s . . . and lucky that I knew who he was talking about when he said Kaeya went to find Fischl. Most people back then knew her better as Amy.” Jean sighs. “All in all, we were just very, very lucky, and against all odds, Kaeya survived.”

            Diluc gets up. Crosses the room to where the drink Jean poured for him is still sitting on Kaeya’s desk. Picks it up and tosses the whole thing back. Then he splutters on it as it burns his throat and the inside of his nose somehow, and he realizes how bad an idea that was. He doesn’t drink any kind of alcohol enough to be able to toss it back so easily. The taste is foul in his mouth. He considers pouring himself more. He actually reaches for the bottle.

            “Don’t,” Jean tells him.

            Diluc frowns at her.

            “Not unless you want me to assign Kaeya another partner tomorrow. He needs someone sharp and at the top of their game watching his back, especially now. If you can’t be that person, I’ll find someone else who can.”

            Diluc sighs and returns to his seat. She’s right, and he knows it. If he drinks anymore, there’s a good chance he’ll still be drunk come morning, then hungover well into the afternoon. He shouldn’t have drunk this much. Even though it’s probably not enough to get a normal person more than a little buzzed, Diluc is a pathetic lightweight.

            “So . . . yes. Kaeya was unconscious for nearly a week. Then . . . I’m ashamed to say he woke up alone.” Jean sounds incredibly guilty. Diluc winces. “We tried to make sure that wouldn’t happen. Fischl and Oz were constant presences in his room everyday. She read to him while he slept. We also had a knight stationed with him at all times. Knights who knew him. Dame Nymph came by every morning, whether it was her turn or not. Captain Hanson spent half the nights that week sleeping in a chair by Kaeya’s bed. Master Varka himself spent plenty of time there too. I was supposed to be the one beside him that evening, the first time he woke up, but I stepped out for a minute to talk to Master Varka. Kurtz’s trial was coming up, but Eroch kept delaying setting its date, and tensions in the city were . . . I’m sorry. That’s no excuse for me. I should never have let him wake up alone.”

            “It wasn’t your fault,” Diluc tells her. It was his. Diluc’s. If he hadn’t burned Kaeya’s hands so horribly that they still hadn’t recovered over two months later, Kaeya would never have gotten so hurt taking down Kurtz. Then he wouldn’t have had to wake up in the infirmary at all, let alone wake up there alone. No one should have to wake up from something like what Kaeya went through alone . . . yet his brother had. Because of him.

            A horrible thought crosses Diluc’s mind, and he cuts off Jean’s guilty assertion that yes, it was her fault, because – “His hands – they’re not still . . . They’re all better now, right?”

            The pause before Jean answers is terrifying, but finally . . .

            “For the most part. We think they’re as good as they’ll ever be now. Obviously he’s back to sword fighting, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They still occasionally give him a bit of trouble. Usually when the humidity’s bad, or when we get a long streak of rainy weather . . . or when his gloves get wet and he doesn’t change them soon enough. That’s when his scars start hurting again,” Jean tells him.

            Diluc appreciates her honesty, even if it feels like a knife twisting in his gut.

            “He was miserable the whole time we were in Fontaine, because of them.”

            “Fontaine? What were you two doing in Fontaine?”

            “Chasing another serial killer,” Jean says with a sigh.

            Oh, that’s right. Kaeya mentioned that Varka started loaning them to Mondstadt’s allies.

            “If not for how much that country’s climate bothers his hands, I’d be worried about losing Kaeya to them,” Jean tells Diluc, “because they want him so bad.”

            “What?” Diluc frowns. “What do you mean?”

            “You know about how their Court is their way of life? Well, that makes good investigators a precious commodity, and as Klee is fond of saying . . . Kaeya’s the best.” Jean gives a slightly bitter smile. “They’re doing their very best to seduce him away from us. If you knew half the things they’ve offered him . . . he could essentially be their equivalent of a lord over there, if he chose.”

            Diluc feels an irrational surge of outrage.

            “That’s what I was tearing up this morning,” Jean says with the air of someone confessing to a dark secret. “Another invitation from one of their investigation agencies. I know you saw, and I know I shouldn’t . . .”

            “It seems to me that if Kaeya wanted to go there, he would,” Diluc says, and he knows it’s wrong how he now fully approves of Jean tearing up Kaeya’s mail without showing it to him. “I doubt keeping his letters from him would stop him if that’s where he wanted to be.”

            “I know. I still feel bad.” Jean gives Diluc a sad, guilty smile. “You have no idea though, how amazing your brother is.”

            “I think I’m starting to learn.”

            “You’ve barely even scratched the surface,” Jean tells him. “He makes the innocent people of Mondstadt feel safe, while the guilty live in fear of him. He’s so good at getting suspects to talk, to slip up . . . and he knows when they’re lying. He says he can see it in their eyes, which is why people who are guilty go so far out of their way not to look him in the eye when they’re talking to him that it’s actually comical. I can’t do what he does. I can’t look at things and people the way he does and make those connections . . . and he doesn’t just solve crimes. He stops new ones from happening. You have no idea all the things he’s done to keep the Treasure Hoarders under control here, to thwart the Fatui . . . I wouldn’t be where I am today without him, Diluc. I couldn’t do this without him.”
            “Neither could I.”

            Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, Diluc is back down in Jean’s office, dimming the lights as he prepares to try to sleep. Maybe he should have stayed in Kaeya’s office, so he didn’t risk waking his brother up from his much needed sleep, but . . . well it used to be Diluc’s office and the memories . . . he definitely wouldn’t have been able to sleep up there, and he needs to do his best to be rested for tomorrow and whatever it brings.

            He did snag the blankets off the couches in Kaeya’s office before coming back down. After he finishes with the lights, he brings one over to add on top of the blanket that’s already covering Kaeya. It’s a cool night, and even though people with cryo Visions claim they tolerate the cold better, that doesn’t mean that they’re always immune to the discomfort it can cause.

            Diluc can’t help but notice one of Kaeya’s hands dangling over the edge of the couch, his curled fingertips nearly grazing the floor. Kaeya still has his gloves on. Diluc knows when he sleeps at home, he always takes them off . . . and he switches his black leather eyepatch for a more comfortable medical style one, though Diluc’s not sure if he actually sleeps in that one, or if he leaves the eyepatch off completely when he doesn’t have company. Well, either way, he knows Kaeya wouldn’t want him messing with or removing his eyepatch now, considering how great of pains he goes through to make sure he’s never seen without it. His gloves though . . . he isn’t so rigid about making sure the scars on his hands are never seen. He’s either left or taken them off in front of Klee, Fischl, Lumine, Paimon, and Diluc, so he must not be as bothered about those scars being seen.

            Diluc lifts Kaeya’s hand, and carefully unfastens the strap that connects his glove to his sleeve. He wonders, as he slides the glove off his brother’s hand, if there’s a reason why only the left glove has a strap like that. Then, he finds himself staring down at the cruel parting gift he gave his brother that horrible night, four years ago.

            Every time Diluc sees those scars, he winces inside. Just looking at them, anyone can see how much they had to have hurt when they were delivered. How could he have done that to Kaeya? How can Kaeya not hate him now?

            “Diluc?” Kaeya asks, startling Diluc, almost making him drop his brother’s hand. “What’s wrong?” His voice is thick with sleep and confusion. “Why’re you holding my hand?”

            “Sorry,” Diluc apologizes quicky. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

            “’S fine. I wasn’t sleeping,” Kaeya blatantly lies. Then he closes his eye . . . and promptly falls right back to sleep.

            It makes Diluc both want to laugh and cry. How can Kaeya feel safe enough to fall asleep in front of him, after what he did? How can he even stand the sight of him, knowing that Diluc gave him such a horrible disfiguring, debilitating injury? It’s only dumb luck that injury didn’t get him killed.

            Diluc removes Kaeya’s other glove now . . . because if Kaeya sleeps with his gloves off normally, maybe it’s because his scars need to breathe . . . and because seeing what he’s done up close feels like penance, in a way. He doesn’t deserve to hide or be shielded from the consequences of his actions. He should always feel as horrible about what he’s done to his brother as he did when he first realized how bad he fucked up. Seeing his scars is the best way to remind him.

            He puts Kaeya’s gloves on the arm of the couch, where he can find them when he wakes up, then lifts his hands again and folds them over his chest and covers his brother with another blanket.

            Then, before stepping away, Diluc can’t help himself. He knows he shouldn’t, doesn’t deserve to touch his brother, or even be in his presence after what’s he’s done . . . but he can’t help himself. He rests his hand on the top of Kaeya’s head, just as he always did when they were children, and brushes his hair back from his forehead.

            “Sorry,” he says softly. Then he steps away and toward the other couch, to try and get some sleep. Because whether he still deserves to be at his brother’s side or not . . . well, he is still by his brother’s side. Tomorrow Kaeya has a job to do, and Diluc will support him the best he can.

Chapter Text

Four Years Ago . . .

            Kaeya is cold when he awakens . . . but at the same time, he’s sweating.

            Fever, he realizes. He has a fever.

            For several minutes, he’s confused. He’s not sure where he is, and opening his eye doesn’t help. His hair has fallen into his face, over his good eye, and beyond that, everything is blurry. The air around him is still, with no drafts, and smells sterile, and very much not like home.

            Something hurts. Or rather . . . it’s more like his whole body aches. Is he sick?

            He lifts his hand to brush his hair out of his eye and it takes so, so much effort. Where is Diluc? Diluc is always nearby when he’s sick, or when he’s injured. His brother never voluntarily leaves his side. So where . . . ?

            He remembers as soon as he manages to clumsily sweep his bangs out of his eye. Both because his fingers move far more stiffly than they should and because he can see the scars. Of course Diluc’s not here, making sure he’s okay. How did he end up here, though?

            Then it all comes back to Kaeya at once. Kurtz. Fischl. The fight.

            Kaeya forces his body into a sitting position. Archons above, he’s sore. Well, he did get impaled, in many places, but he doesn’t think that’s the reason why he feels this way, or at least not the whole reason, since healing magic had to have taken care of that right quick or he’d be dead . . . Oh, right. Those dendro briars probably punctured a few organs . . . and that would have tainted his blood, and that would explain why he has a fever. He remembers Jean being there at the end, right before he blacked out. She must be the reason why he’s still alive.

            Kaeya looks around. He’s in a sterile white room, by himself. An infirmary room. One of the church’s, he thinks, rather than the Ordo’s. Which means he must have been really bad off, if the Ordo brought him here. He presses a hand to his stomach, where he thinks he remembers that one of the thorns dug into his skin. Under his fingers, and the fabric of the white robe they dressed him in, the skin is a little tender, but feels smooth enough. There may be a little scarring, but there’s no open wound. Same with his side, and a spot on his chest where he thinks he was impaled too. Seems like they really put some effort into healing him, since he doesn’t seem to be sporting a single bandage. Excepting, of course, over his right eye. He checks to make sure it’s covered and feels a soft medical eyepatch in place there. Good.

            No one is in sight. The door is closed . . . and so very far away. Kaeya barely entertains the idea of getting up and looking for someone to ask . . . a lot of stuff. Is Fischl okay? Is Kurtz dead? How long has he been out? When can he leave? Again though . . . the door is so far away. Perhaps he can call for someone, he thinks, but when he tries, his voice dies in his throat and he starts coughing dryly, pathetically.

            There’s a jug of water and a cup on the bedside table. Kaeya reaches for it . . . but it’s so hard. It feels like all the good that using scar salve has done his hands has been undone in . . . however long he’s been in this bed. He’s not surprised when he fails to pick up the cup, instead knocking it onto the floor where it cracks apart. He’s too tired to even feel guilty or bad about it. The Church has given him too much shit in the past for him to give a damn if he broke their cup, even if they did help save his life now.

            The door opens. Kaeya plans to ignore whoever’s just come in, in favor of trying to get ahold of the water jug (to hopefully drink from and not knock over too), but then he hears a gasp, and it’s familiar, so he looks over and –

            “Kaeya!” Jean rushes up to him and for a second he thinks she’s going to collide with him, but she draws up short just in time to avoid a crash. She does, however, put her hands on his shoulders, and look down at him with eyes so bright. “You’re awake. Thank Barbatos.”

            “Chhae,” Kaeya tells her, then turns his face away to cough pathetically.

            Jean picks up the water jug for him, then holds it to his lips, carefully, tilting it back very slowly. “Small sips,” she tells him.

            Kaeya does his best to obey. The water is cool and feels so nice against his dry throat. It’s tempting to try to guzzle it down . . . but Jean said not to. She even takes it away before Kaeya’s drunk his fill, and he knows it’s to keep him from overdoing it and making himself sick but still . . . that’s just mean.

            “Hi,” Kaeya tells her, more clearly this time.

            “Don’t you ‘hi’ me, you idiot,” Jean says, her voice wavering. “I thought we lost you.”

            “Don’t cry,” Kaeya tells her, and reaches out to touch her wrist.

            “I’m not crying,” Jean insists, as two tears fall down her face, one from each eye.

            “You certainly are crying,” says Varka, from where he’s leaning against the closed door. Kaeya’s not sure how he didn’t notice the Grand Master’s hulking form over there. “Welcome back, kid.”

            “Thanks,” Kaeya says. Then he swallows. Even the few words he’s spoken so far have made his throat go dry again, but there are things he needs to know. “Fischl?”

            “She’s fine,” Jean assures him. “She’s been here every day, sitting with you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, Kaeya. I’d only stepped out for a moment . . .”

            “That was my fault,” Varka says, sounding sheepish. “We’ve had someone with you at all times until just a few minutes ago. I needed to have a word with Jean about the state of the city.”

            “So, naturally I woke up right then,” Kaeya says, doing his best to smirk.

            Varka laughs. “Had I known that was what it would take, we would have left you alone sooner!”

            “Please don’t joke like that, Master Varka,” frets Jean. “Kaeya, I am so sorry . . .”

            “It’s fine,” Kaeya tries to assure her. It would have been nice to . . . to not wake up alone, but Jean saved his life. Besides, she’s not the person Kaeya most wanted to see when he woke up . . .

            “You’re going to be alright,” Jean tells him, jumping to giving him the information about his diagnosis. “You’re running a fever because those dendro briars punctured your stomach, which gave you some blood taint. It was quite bad when we brought you in, and took a while to clear up, but you’re past the worst of it now. I’m so glad you’re finally awake.”

            “How long?” Kaeya asks.

            “A week to the day now,” Jean says. “Nearly to the hour, actually.”

            Kaeya suppresses a wince. A week. A whole week. He’s never been unconscious that long before . . . No wonder he feels like crap.

            “I guess you’ll be wanting a report now that I’m awake,” he says, doing his best to sound lighthearted.

            Jean’s smile freezes on her face. Varka suddenly looks shifty eyed. Kaeya is confused.

            “What’s wrong?”

            “Er, nothing,” says Jean, and she suddenly looks so guilty.

            “You can forgo the report this time, kid,” Varka says. “We’re not so cruel that we’d make you write a report as soon as you woke up. Besides, you can barely write anyway. We’ve already taken care of everything that needs to be taken care of before the trial.”

            “Trial? What trial?” Kaeya asks.

            “Kurtz’s trial,” says Jean, very softly.

            Kaeya’s blood runs cold. “He’s alive? I thought I killed him.”

            “He was within range of my Dandelion Breeze when I used it,” Jean says. “It – I saved him too. He’s imprisoned right now, awaiting trial.”

            That’s . . . wow. Kaeya doesn’t even know how to feel about that.

            “I’m sorry, Kaeya . . .”

            “So I have to testify?”

            Varka and Jean are both silent. When Kaeya looks up, he sees that they’re looking at each other, and even Varka looks guilty now.

            “It’s not necessary . . . we weren’t counting on your testimony,” Varka says. “It’s better that you get more rest. Yes, rest up, so when you come back to work –”

            “Master Varka, we can’t not tell him,” Jean says. She looks like guilt is eating her alive.

            “What?” Kaeya asks. “What’s wrong, Jean?”

            Jean looks at Varka, who hesitates, then gives her a slight nod. Jean takes a deep breath, then apologizes again. “I’m very sorry, Kaeya.”

            “You saved my life, even if you did save that bastard too. I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay with whatever you tell me.” Last month, Jean was the only friend Kaeya had left in the world. He thinks he’s picked up a few more since then, but Jean will always have a special place in his heart, and again, she just saved his life. No matter what she has to say, Kaeya doubts anything is going to change between them . . .

            . . . and once she’s finished telling him, Kaeya knows this to be true. It’s not that big of a deal who gets the credit for Kurtz’s arrest . . . and technically Jean did arrest him since Kaeya was, in fact, unconscious. Yet somehow Kaeya can’t help but feel cold and disappointed.

Present Day Mondstadt

            When Kaeya wakes up, he’s hungry for the first time in over a week. Despite having slept on a couch in Jean’s office all night, he feels oddly good. Refreshed. Maybe it’s because he has a purpose now, something to do, instead of sitting around his house on suspension disguised as forced medical leave.

            Diluc is sleeping soundly on the other couch, so Kaeya sneaks out as quietly as he can, and heads to the mess hall. (He knows better than to leave headquarters by himself, after someone took a shot at either him or Diluc last night. He doesn’t want Diluc to pitch a fit.)

            It’s early, but there are a handful of knights in the cafeteria anyway, getting a meal before the day starts, or in some cases, before they head home, having just gotten off the night shift. They take note when Kaeya enters, greeting him with smiles and waves, with genuine happiness in their eyes, and Kaeya can’t help but feel a pang in his chest. His fellow knights always act a bit brighter around him when he gets back after going on a long trip or recovering from an injury. It’s nice. Knowing he has people who like and respect him. He has to turn down invitations to sit at two separate tables before he makes it to the food bar, then a third while he’s piling food on plates for him and his brother. One knight offers to help him carry everything, but Kaeya turns her down as well. He doubts Diluc will appreciate him leading anyone back to see his bedhead.

            He actually makes it back to Jean’s office just in time. Diluc has apparently just woken up, found Kaeya gone, and come storming out, probably planning to drag him home by his hair. He narrowly manages not to crash into Kaeya, which is good, because otherwise their breakfast would have ended up all over both of them and the floor.

            “I only went to the mess hall, I didn’t leave the building,” Kaeya says immediately, to forestall any arguments. “I was hungry.”

            It’s the last line that really pacifies Diluc. As Kaeya knew it would. Diluc’s frown melts away, leaving him looking startled for a moment, then pleased. He accepts the plate of food that Kaeya passes to him, then backs into Jean’s office when Kaeya telegraphs his intentions to enter.

            “I assume you’d rather eat here than the Cavalry Captain’s office or the cafeteria,” Kaeya says. He has the feeling Diluc would rather stay out of his office entirely. “Normally I’d suggest we eat outside, but I know you won’t let me today, since someone tried to snipe one of us last night.”

            “You’re right,” Diluc tells him.

            “I usually am. So . . . do you want to eat at the Grand Master’s desk or can I?”

            A scandalized glint lights Diluc’s eyes for just a moment. Then he shakes his head. “We should eat at the work table.”

            “I’m eating at the Grand Master’s desk,” says Kaeya. Then he goes to do just that, sitting his plate and cup down on the Grand Master’s desk, and sliding into the Grand Master’s chair.

            Once, Diluc would have been freaking out and having a mini panic attack over Kaeya’s casual lack of respect for the office. Now he just shakes his head.

            “I want to check the roof the archer was on, now that it’s daylight,” Kaeya tells Diluc. “Then I need to find out what Jean meant by us not being able to use the Jueyun red dye to narrow down our suspect pool. Did she tell us last night? I can’t quite remember.”

            “That’s because you fell asleep while she was talking,” Diluc says, from his place at the worktable. At the head of the worktable, the hypocrite.

            “Oh.” Damn. Diluc is probably going to use that as an excuse to try to reign him in even more today. It will probably negate Kaeya’s returned appetite in terms of how recovered Diluc thinks he currently is. “Oops. Well, what was the reason? Did you manage to stay awake long enough to hear?”

            Diluc gives him a dry look, but nods. “She says that the Feiyun Commerce Guild doesn’t use that pigment to dye fabrics anymore. They stopped because they felt it was disrespectful to the victims. Allegedly. More likely they didn’t want their merchandise to be associated with a serial killer.”

            Kaeya takes a bite of bacon instead of voicing a dissenting opinion. Xingqiu’s family prides themselves on running an ethical business, and from what Kaeya’s seen of them, they do seem to be quite the model for how to do things right and still make a profit. It’s not worth arguing with Diluc over, however. He never knows what little argument might escalate and they’re getting along pretty well, so yeah. Not worth it. “So I guess we’re looking for people who have old stock of the fabric instead of who bought it recently? Or did Jean give a reason why we shouldn’t try doing that?”

            “No. However, the Feiyun Commerce Guild is still selling the pigment, so people can purchase it and use it to dye fabric themselves.”

            “Ah, yes. That does throw a wrench into things. It will probably be harder to track sales of the pigment than of bolts of fabric. Is there another angle we can come at this from? Hm.” Kaeya takes another bite of bacon as he considers. “I could try asking at the Merchant’s Guild, but I think it would be a waste of time. I really lucked out four years ago that Kurtz was using such a specific color and type of fabric, and that the fabric was only sold to craftsmen and not general consumers. So if tracking the fabric is out, then I guess another lead is . . . what’s wrong? What are you looking at me like that for?”

            Diluc’s expression has changed, and Kaeya can’t tell if he’s mad or . . . or upset in some other way, but not quite mad. He’s never seen that expression on his brother’s face before and doesn’t even know how to classify it.

            “Jean also told me about what happened four years ago,” Diluc says.

            “O . . . kay . . .” Kaeya doesn’t know where to go from here. “So you know how we tracked him down then?”

            “He almost killed you,” Diluc says, his voice haunted, “and it was my fault.”

            “It wasn’t.”

            “I burned your hands so badly that even two months later they weren’t healed.” Diluc’s self-loathing is almost palpable. “You couldn’t even hold a sword right.”

            “I was the idiot who ran on ahead and left Hanson behind,” Kaeya says. “I did that knowing I could barely hold a sword. I thought my Vision would be enough . . . and it was, though just barely. Also, to be completely fair, no one expected Kurtz to have a Vision. I honestly don’t think I would have beaten him in a fight where we were both using swords and our powers, even if my hands were fine. My powers weren’t refined enough at the time.”

            Diluc gives an abrasive laugh. “You skewered him on a giant cryo crystal formation.”

            “I mean the cryo skills I use with my sword,” Kaeya clarifies. “I only had a rough version of Frostgnaw then. No Glacial Waltz.”

            “Your talents would have been more advanced if you’d been able to actually practice them.”

            “You’re just bound and determined to take credit for my screw up, aren’t you?” Kaeya asks.

            “Kaeya, I burned your hands so badly I nearly crippled you,” Diluc says, his voice so filled with anguish that it sets Kaeya on edge with the need to fix this and fix it now.

            “You hurt me, yeah,” Kaeya admits, “but I ran into Fischl’s house knowing full well how badly I was hurt, and without knowing what kind of opponent I was actually facing. It was the dendro Vision that nearly did me in, and it wouldn’t have mattered if my sword skills were at their usual level or not. Listen to me, Diluc. You know when I’m lying, for the most part. I think you can tell right now that I’m telling you the truth. We both know that if you want to take down a dangerous allogene, you almost have to do it with elements . . . and that’s how I did it, in the end.”

            “But if –”

            “Oh, shut up,” Kaeya tells his brother, and enjoys seeing Diluc’s eyes widen comically. “Again, yes, you hurt me. Yes, I was still hurt two months later, but it was two months later. I’d had two months to adjust to my new normal. I knew exactly what I could and couldn’t do, and I charged on ahead anyway – and I’d do it again, which is not the point right now. The point is, it was my screw up. Not yours. You don’t get to take credit for it.”

            “But if your hands were –”

            “You can list all the what ifs until you’re blue in the face and it won’t make a difference, because they didn’t happen, so we will never know,” Kaeya says seriously. “I mean, what if my hands were perfectly fine, and so I stayed in the cavalry unit instead of transferring to the civic side of the Ordo? I wouldn’t have been there and Fischl would have died. Or, what if you hadn’t burned my hands and I never got my Vision but still ended up there somehow anyway? I would have died on those dendro briars. Probably. There’s no way to say for sure. Things happened the way they did, and it all worked out okay in the end. I forgave you for what you did to my hands a long time ago, and I’d be happy never to talk about it again.”

            Diluc looks conflicted. Like he has a lot he wants to say but doesn’t know how or if he even should now that Kaeya’s asked him not to.

            “It’s really okay, Diluc,” says Kaeya, more softly, to try to reassure his brother. Even though Diluc has toughened up a lot in the past four years, and comes across as cool and aloof, there are times when Kaeya can see the innocent naïve lad he used to be shining through his eyes. His adorable, ever chivalrous brother, who wanted to protect everyone in Mondstadt, but especially his loved ones. It must be tearing him apart inside, knowing that he gave Kaeya such a painful, lasting injury, and that he did it deliberately. Kaeya had not been looking forward to the conversation he knew would ensue when Diluc found out . . . and it was inevitable that he would eventually. Kaeya is sort of surprised that Diluc hadn’t noticed already that he switched up his sword hand. He guesses that he now owes Jean for breaking the news to Diluc for him so he didn’t have to.

            “I’m still sorry,” Diluc says. “I’ll stop talking about it now, if that’s what you want but . . . I will never stop being sorry for how I hurt you.”

            “Aww Diluc . . .”

            “And I’m sorry that you woke up alone in the infirmary. You shouldn’t have. I should have been there.”

            “Jean still feeling guilty about that?” Kaeya asks. She must be, if she felt the need to mention it to Diluc. He sighs. “It’s fine. We’re fine. I forgave you a long time ago, and it’s no one’s fault I woke up alone, it was just bad timing. Ugh, talking about this is making me lose my appetite.”

            Diluc makes an alarmed noise in the back of his throat. Kaeya suppresses a smirk.

            “We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Diluc says quickly. “Please, eat.”

            Kaeya nods and picks up his coffee. He takes a sip then gags and spits it back out.

            “What? What’s wrong?” Diluc is on his feet.

            “Too hot,” Kaeya says. He frowns at the mug then uses his cryo to chill it. Takes another sip and nods.

            “I guess you really are feeling better if you can’t tolerate hot drinks anymore.”

            “Hot drinks are disgusting.”

            “I hear in Inazuma they sometimes heat up their rice wine. What are you going to do if anyone ever serves you some of that?”

            “The same thing I did the last time a certain someone gave me hot mulled wine,” Kaeya says, looking at that certain someone. “I’ll freeze it too.”

            Diluc smirks as he cuts a slice off one of his sausages and stabs it with his fork. The rest of breakfast goes more smoothly, now that they’ve put the past behind them again . . . at least for the time being. Kaeya has no doubt that it will crop up again before this case is over, in some way or another. With a dead brother as the victim and a murderer imitating a serial killer who caused Jean and Kaeya so many problems, even after he was caught, how can it not? Well, at least Kaeya gets to enjoy the rest of his breakfast in peace.

            They finish eating before Jean arrives for the day. Kaeya belatedly wonders if she got home safely the previous night, but Diluc is quick to assure him that she took a guard home with her, in light of what had happened at Kaeya’s house. If their copycat murderer wants to knock off the people who worked on the case last time, Jean should technically be higher up on his list than Kaeya since on paper she was the one who caught him . . . though Kaeya guesses by now most of Mondstadt has realized who was actually responsible.

            For the record, he’s never tried to take the credit, even though it technically was his. He hasn’t bothered to hide what he’s doing at crime scenes either, however, so over time other knights, witnesses, and even just gawking civilians have realized he’s the one who actually finds the clues, puts them together, and hunts down their killers. People talk, as they do. Luckily for Jean, people seem to think that Kaeya has been working this hard for her, and giving her the credit to help her advance. They’re not exactly wrong . . . it just would have been nice if Varka had asked first.

            “We’ll check the roof first,” Kaeya tells Diluc, as they head to the lower city. “Then I want to check in with Fischl and see how she’s doing. After that, we’ll go talk to Castor, then pay visits to Pollux’s friends. They may know more than his parents about who might have had a grudge against him, or if there was anything amiss in his life of late. After that . . . well, we’ll see what we turn up and where we think we should go from there.”

            “Would you consider coming home to the winery tonight?” Diluc asks.

            “Er, sorry.” Kaeya shakes his head.

            “Someone tried to shoot you last night, in your own home.” Diluc’s voice takes a slight edge.

            “We don’t know for sure it was me they were after. Even if it was, I don’t want to leave the city unless I’m chasing down a lead,” Kaeya tells him. “If there’s another murder, I need to be on hand for it. Besides, Jean said she was sending guards to stand outside my house. Our shooter was no professional, so that will probably be enough to keep him from trying again.”

            Diluc makes a dissatisfied noise, but doesn’t argue.

            “Are you planning to stay in the city?” Kaeya asks.

            “Yes.”

            Of course. Diluc’s in full protective big brother mode now.

            “We’ll probably be hearing from Lumine and Paimon today. Maybe I can arrange for them to stay at Fischl’s place until this mess is over. Yes, that should give both Lumine and Fischl more protection, and I doubt anyone will be in a hurry to take pot shots at them when they’ve got a floaty pixie thing ready to fly after any attacker like a bat out of hell, and call out their identity and location.”

            “Hm.”

            Diluc’s not exactly sulking over Kaeya’s refusal to stay at the winery, but he’s clearly not happy about it either. Kaeya does the rest of his thinking and plotting in his head on the way to the lower city, to avoid saying something that might set him off. Then they scale the building that Diluc spotted the shooter on last night. Kaeya goes first and has Diluc wait at the edge once he’s up, so he won’t unintentionally destroy any evidence, even though there’s no guarantee there’s any evidence here to be found. He resists the urge to chuckle as he watches Diluc cast his gaze all around them, scowling at the people down below, the pigeons, the city wall and other vacant roofs, as though daring one of them, or an unseen shooter to attack them now.

            Kaeya scours the roof quickly, but carefully, looking for anything that’s out of place or could be a clue. In the past, he’s found threads and hairs, and even tobacco ash from a pipe, when checking over the perches used by snipers, stalkers, and assassins. Today he finds a bit of dusty rubble, light reddish brown in color, in a shape that might be a partial footprint.

Unrelated Note:

So, I’ve seen people make themed weeks with different prompts for each day, for artists and writers, and it looks like fun, so I was wondering, does anyone know if there’s a Ludi Harpastum themed week in the works? Or if not, is anyone interested in trying to organize one with me?

Chapter Text

            “I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt Pollux. He was friends with everyone . . . except . . . well, he and Newton Colmson used to fight sometimes . . . but they were still friends! It’s just . . . Pollux was kind of our leader, you know? He always had lots of good ideas for new fun stuff we could do, and Newt . . . well, didn’t. Though . . . even when Newt did have a good idea, now and then, lots of times we still did what Pollux wanted. People liked Pollux better, and Castor always backed him up.”

            “Yeah, I thought it was annoying how Pollux always wanted to do dumb stuff that got half of us in trouble, and yeah, I was annoyed when I always got outvoted . . . which is why I stopped hanging around him and his clinger ons, along with my two real friends. Their names? . . . I don’t want you hassling them over this, they didn’t hurt Pollux, they’d never . . . We’re not suspects? You’re just ruling people out? Oh, okay then. Patty and Geoff. Geoff couldn’t have done it anyway, he faints when he sees blood, and Patty . . . she just wouldn’t.”

            “Who told you I faint whenever I see blood? I don’t faint when I see blood? Whoever said that lied! What? No, there’s no need for that! No, please, there’s no need – okay, I lied, I lied! I can’t stand the sight of blood, it does make me go light headed, so please, don’t prick your finger! I might throw up! Oh Seven! Oh Seven! I think I’m gonna pass ouuuu –”

            “Someone who had a problem with Pollux? Not in general . . . but maybe with Pollux getting a Vision and deciding to become a knight. His mum completely smothered him. I’m surprised she even let him sign up for knight tryouts. Hell, I’m surprised he could even breathe, she always had his head smashed so firmly against her bosom. Funnily enough, she wasn’t like that with Castor. When we were friends with them, we used to joke that the easiest way to tell them apart was by which one wasn’t being chased after by their mom. Maybe it’s because Castor actually behaved. He’s always been pretty quiet. Pollux was the loud one. This . . . probably sounds bad, like I’m speaking ill of the dead, but I don’t think we were friends anymore. Not that we were enemies or anything, it’s just . . . we grew apart. We’re kind of at the age where it’s time to start deciding what to do with our lives, and he and his lot were still running around getting underfoot on market day, startling horses and smashing fruit. That’s not a good look if you’re planning on trying to get an apprenticeship in a year or two. Hm? Castor’s apprenticeship with a potter? That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but good for him.”

            “Could that rubble you found be clay?” Diluc asks, once they’re finished talking with a number of Pollux’s friends and back at the Ordo’s headquarters. They had tried to seek out Castor as well, to ask him if he knew what Pollux was doing the night he died, but according to his parents, Castor left earlier that morning and didn’t tell them where he was going. Only that he wants to be alone for a while, which Diluc can sympathize with. When his father was killed, and after . . . after he drove Kaeya off, he couldn’t stand anyone else’s company for several days. They’ll try to check in with the poor kid again tomorrow. “Is that why you asked about the living twin’s pottery apprenticeship? You mentioned before that he liked digging up clay from the lakeshore.”

            “I did think of that,” Kaeya says, as he puts the sample of rubble they collected from the rooftop into a petri dish, then holds a magnifying lens over it to get a better look, “but the clay in Mondstadt is greyish. This dusty rubble is reddish. I don’t know what it is or where it came from, but if I could figure it out, I might also be able to figure out where Pollux was killed. It was on his shoes, by the way. I checked. There was supposed to be a sample found at the site where his body was left –”

            “I know. I saw your notes.”

            “Oh. Well, that has gone missing. Along with a long blonde hair that was originally found on the body.” Kaeya makes a disgusted sound. “I really need to train a special team for this and make sure they all know how to not lose things . . . and how to keep the Church from coming in and screwing the investigation up. I just wish we had more people right now . . . Varka took most of the candidates for my hypothetical team.”

            Diluc wonders if his presence here is actually detrimental right now. If he hadn’t insisted on shadowing Kaeya, his brother would probably be teaching his processes to one of the knights or alchemists who he thinks might have an aptitude for it. He did say he wanted to find others who could do what he does, but even if it turns out Diluc can, it would certainly be more ideal for Kaeya to train someone who officially works with him.

            He watches as Kaeya unrolls a sheet of paper, glazed with wax, that he’d used to lift an impression of the partial footprint he found on the roof. He presses it down carefully onto a sheet of clear glass to preserve it, then sets it up so it’s leaning against the wall, like a painting in a frame. Then he sighs.

            “I’m not sure why I thought it might be clearer once I got it back here . . . There’s not even enough of it to tell what size it is. All we can really safely say is they have bigger feet than Klee, so we can rule out her and Diona.”

            “Don’t sell yourself short. We can rule out Timmie too.”

            Kaeya takes the time to make a rude hand gesture toward Diluc, but does so with a slight smile on his face. Then he looks back at their morning’s work and sighs again.

            “I’m missing something. I don’t know what, but I’m worried the only way to find it will be on another body, which is the last thing I want.”

            “Do you think there will be another body?”

            Kaeya gives him a helpless look. “I don’t know. This is the first time we’ve dealt with someone copying a serial killer, but what we have to remember is, it’s not him. Not Kurtz. So everything we knew about Kurtz and his patterns might or might not be useful, and right now it’s impossible to tell the difference.”

            Diluc tries to think of something useful to say, some helpful insight to offer. “Well . . . Jean said you were able to predict when Kurtz would kill –”

            “Yes and no. I noticed a pattern to his frequency . . . and I noticed that the time between his kills was consistently decreasing. That’s something we’ve noticed about a lot of serial killers. Not that we’ve caught tons of them or anything, just a handful of them, but Jean and I looked up old case notes about ones from the past too. Maybe half of them seem to speed up how often they kill, almost like an addict needing a fix . . . but it’s not relevant here, at least not yet,” Kaeya says. “With only one victim from this new murderer, there is no pattern yet. I hate to say it, but we might be reaching the point where we can’t do anything else until we have more to go on.”

            “What if . . . what if we consider the evidence that was lost. The long blonde hair. That girl who we talked to this morning, Patty, she had blonde hair . . . but short. Do we know if it was recently cut?”

            “It wasn’t. You didn’t notice all her split ends?” Kaeya asks.

            Diluc shrugs. He’s . . . not sure what split ends are, but he doesn’t want to admit it.

            “Also, it could mean nothing. Mrs. Medlark has long blonde hair, so it could have transferred to Pollux’s clothes while she was doing laundry, or when she hugged him . . . and Patty was right, Mrs. Medlark is known for being rather effusive about showing affection for her oldest son. Or rather . . . was known for it.”

            “Could she have done it?” Diluc asks. He knows he’s grasping at straws, but he doesn’t like seeing that tired, defeated look in Kaeya’s eye. Nor does he want to have to wait until they find another body to continue their investigation. “If she was overly attached to him and couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving home, leaving her . . .”

            “Then all she would have to do is rescind her permission for him to participate in tryouts,” says Kaeya. “Both parents’ signatures are required, if they’re both still alive and the candidate is a minor, which Pollux was. Same with the Adventurer’s Guild.”

            “Huh. Well . . .” Diluc tries to think of something else. Anything relevant. He jumps when Kaeya lightly slaps his shoulder.

            “You’re thinking the right way, suspecting everyone. Even the parents, which is good. I just don’t think we have anything that will make any theory we come up with more than just speculation . . . unless it somehow fits in with this damned rubble.” Kaeya sighs and gathers his notes, and puts them in a folder that he tucks under his arm. “I think we need a break. Let’s get lunch.”

            Diluc nods and follows him out the workroom door. “Then what? After lunch is over?”

            “I’m going to read over the case notes again, then see what other work has piled up on my desk while I was on forced medical leave.”

            That makes Diluc stop. He can’t believe Kaeya would slack off on this of all things, so there must be some reasonable explanation.

            “If there’s nothing else we can do, there’s nothing else we can do, Diluc,” says Kaeya as he takes in Diluc’s expression. “If there was, I’d be doing it . . . but there’s not. Other than trying to track down Castor, that is, but his parents promised to keep him home tomorrow so we can talk to him then, and half a day won’t make much of a difference at this point. Trying to find him when neither his parents nor his friends know where he is will likely be a waste of the rest of the day.”

            “Then you should go home and rest after lunch.”

            “I –”

            “Our deal was that you could work on this case and only this case,” Diluc tells him.

            “I don’t recall making said deal.”

            “Well Jean did, and she’s your boss,” says Diluc before he has time to think better of it. He remembers, belatedly, Jean’s confession and the tormented look in her eyes as she told him how it was Kaeya’s hard work that led to her promotions . . . her worries that Kaeya might be resentful, or might leave the Ordo someday, because he’s tired of having to obey the orders of someone who took credit for his work to further their own career.

            Thankfully, at least right now, Kaeya doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. “Yes, that she is,” he says with an air of resignation. “I’ll look over the case notes then . . . then go home and rest. Maybe I’ll be able to figure something out if that’s all that’s on my mind.”

            Diluc nods, satisfied. Then –

            “Sir Kaeya! I need a word!”

            A sister from the Church, clad in their most conservative uniform, appears as soon as they emerge into the Ordo’s entry hall.

            “Hello, Sister Cynthia,” says Kaeya, in the acidly polite tone he reserves for people who it’s no secret he loathes. “I’m afraid I can’t help you today.”

            “I’m here to take custody of the body of Pollux Medlark, to prepare it for burial.”

            “If you have a written order from the Acting Grand Master then what do you need a word with me for?” asks Kaeya.

            “I don’t have a written order. I don’t need a written order. The laws that Barbatos laid down in regards to the treatment of human remains are clear –”

            “Except they don’t come from scripture, meaning they were not issued by Barbatos himself but rather by some of his followers, a generation or more after Barbatos became the Anemo Archon,” says Kaeya, with the air of someone who’s made the exact same argument before, many times, “and even if these rules were issued by Barbatos himself, Mondstadt has a clear separation of the Church and the State. If you want to take custody of our victim’s body, then please go through the proper channels and get the Acting Grand Master’s written permission. Otherwise, please be patient while we continue our investigation, and be assured that we will deliver the remains to you within three days' time.”

            He pushes past Cynthia, and through the front door. Cynthia cuts between Diluc and Kaeya to chase him. Kaeya doesn’t bother holding the door open for her and lets it go. Cynthia yelps as it knocks her off balance, knocking her headdress askew over her blonde hair. She scowls as she straightens it and hurries after Kaeya.

            “In which time the body will begin to rot –”

            “You know we keep it properly chilled so it will not. Why do we always have to have this same conversation?”

            “Because your disrespect for our traditions is not appreciated! You act as if it’s wrong to wish to treat human remains with respect!”

            Kaeya gives her an annoyed look. “We treat them with respect, and we find out who killed them, which does more for the people they’ve left behind than putting them in the earth as fast as possible does.”

            “But the laws of the Anemo Archon supersede the laws of man –”

            “Again: separation of the Church and State.”

            “We should have expected this when an outlander was granted so much leeway over –”

            Diluc cuts between the nun and his brother, and gives her his coldest glare. “I’m afraid I must interrupt you here. My brother is very busy and has no time for you. This conversation is over.”

            “I –”

            “I said this conversation is over.”

            “We’re not –”

            “Or should I mention you by name when I send my regrets to the Cardinal about why Dawn Winery’s donations to the Church have so drastically decreased?”

            Diluc hears Kaeya snicker. Sister Cynthia falters. Diluc suppresses a smirk. He’s fortunate that Cynthia isn’t truly as pious as she tries to act, or that threat wouldn’t have swayed her. He gives her a parting glare, then sweeps past her, after Kaeya, who never stopped walking.

            Kaeya turns his head slightly, to catch Diluc’s eye, and Diluc can see the quiet gratitude in his expression. Diluc nods back.

            As far as facing prejudice goes, this incident wasn’t as bad as many others Diluc knows Kaeya has faced, and still faces. Cynthia seems like the kind who simply distrusts him because he wasn’t born in Mondstadt, not one of the ones who hate him for being Khaenri’ahn specifically. She’d likely treat someone from Liyue or Fontaine the same way. That’s still not okay in Diluc’s book, which is why he won’t let her get away with talking to Kaeya like that in front of him.

            For a moment, Diluc’s mind goes back to Ilsie Vander . . . the woman responsible for him, and later Kaeya, both being exposed to dream poison. She had been a piece of work. Always had been, actually, ever since they were children. She hated Kaeya the moment she laid eyes on him, and Diluc hadn’t understood why at first, until his father explained it to him. Diluc feels bad now for how he acted when Kaeya wanted to investigate her, when he learned that she and Diluc were involved in a minor property line dispute. Even though it was her ill, elderly father he’d wanted to defend, not her . . . he’d still ended up sort of defending her and getting in an argument with Kaeya over it. He regrets that now. Even setting aside the fact that Kaeya was right about her being suspicious, he shouldn’t have taken her side against Kaeya after how she always used to treat him.

            Now Diluc can’t help but wonder how much prejudice Kaeya had to face in the knights after Diluc left? The Ragnvindr family influence, and Diluc’s constant presence had kept it to a minimum when Diluc was a knight, but then Kaeya had lost both in one night.

            Diluc glances sideways at Kaeya as they walk. Kaeya, looking straight ahead, doesn’t notice. He wears his usual cool, calm expression. Looking at the confidence he projects, you’d never know all that he’d struggled with four years ago. It’s clear he got through it alright. He survived, despite multiple peoples’ best efforts. He was able to make it through without Diluc by his side . . . but he shouldn’t have had to.

Four Years Ago . . .

            Kaeya’s used to being in Diluc’s shadow. It worked well for him growing up. Everyone’s eyes were always drawn to his light, and the bright red of his hair, his glowing personality, and the Ragnvindr name that meant wealth, wine, and influence. It made it easy for people to overlook Kaeya, and let him make some stealthy maneuvers, gave him more free reign. Kaeya’s still adjusting to life without his brother. It’s unsettling to suddenly have all eyes on him.

            His first night back at work, it’s clear that a number of knights, particularly in the City Watch, know the real story about what happened with Kurtz. Hanson must have told them, before Varka decided that the official story was that Jean was responsible for apprehending Kurtz. Or maybe he told them in spite of it. Either way, the respect and admiration in their eyes throws Kaeya off, as he makes his way through headquarters, searching for Jean. People smile at him, clap him on the shoulder as he passes, even salute him in some cases, and it’s freaking weird.

            He finds Hanson before he finds Jean, or rather Hanson finds him.

            “Kaeya? What are you doing here?”

            Kaeya puts on his most innocent expression. “I work here, sir.”

            One of the knights behind Hanson snickers. Hanson rolls his eyes. “I mean, what are you doing out of the infirmary?”

            “I was cleared for release this afternoon.”

            “Then why aren’t you at home? Resting and recovering?”

            “ . . . No one told me not to come in for my shift.”

            Hanson gives him a look.

            “Besides, it looks like trouble out there,” says Kaeya. “If worse comes to worst, I figured my cryo Vision could help with crowd control.”

            “ . . . I can’t deny a cryo Vision would be useful for crowd control,” says Hanson, “but you’ve hardly had the chance to learn to use it.”

            “I’ve done well enough when I needed to,” says Kaeya.

            “Fair enough . . . I heard you managed to do quite a bit of damage even without your weapon to focus your power. That’s impressive.”

            Kaeya hasn’t told anyone about his mora as a catalyst trick yet. He’s not entirely sure that it wasn’t sacrilegious. Despite living in Mondstadt for about a decade now, there’s still a lot he doesn’t know about Teyvat’s religions and customs, and especially about Visions.

            . . . He also has a second reason for not having revealed that trick now, however, and that reason is . . . he might be a bit resentful about Jean being credited for his work. He understands Varka’s reasoning. Kaeya, as a naturalized citizen of Mond, can only get promoted so high in the Ordo. He knew that when he joined up, and was warned at the time that any promotions he did receive would take longer, so he wouldn’t peak as fast. Jean is now the best friend he has, and is probably the strongest candidate Varka has for his successor, now that Diluc is gone. It makes sense to do everything possible to facilitate her path. Kaeya would have agreed to it if asked . . . it might be the fact that he wasn’t asked that makes him resentful now, and makes him want to keep something for himself. So his mora as a catalyst trick will remain his secret for now.

            “Still, you’ve only just been released from the infirmary.”

            “All of my muscles and organs have been fine since the night I was injured,” Kaeya reminds him. “I was only bedridden because I was fighting off an infection –”

            “That kept you comatose for a week. I know. I saw.”

            That’s right. They told him Hanson had spent quite a bit of time by his bedside. He hadn’t made it there to visit between when Kaeya woke up yesterday, and when he was released this afternoon. Not surprising, considering it was night when Kaeya awoke, and the Ordo clearly has its hands full with the unrest in the city. Taking Kurtz alive has been causing all sorts of problems. Especially since for some stupid reason, Eroch has been delaying the trial. There can only be one outcome for it. All of Mond wants Kurtz dead, and the sooner, the better. In a city where alcohol flows so freely, however, sooner definitely is better. The longer they wait, the more likely some hot heads are to drink too much, and then try to take matters into their own hands . . . and with someone as hated as Kurtz is, once they get started, the average person is just as, if not more likely to side with the drunk hotheads than the knights. It must be starting to look like the Ordo is protecting Kurtz, not just from people who would lynch him, but from the consequences of his heretical crimes, and that is not a good look for the Ordo. So it’s all hands on deck now, to keep the peace in the city.

            “Jean and Master Varka told me . . . thank you for visiting me,” Kaeya tells Hanson, feeling a bit awkward. He’s not used to having a lot of people in his life who care enough about him to do something like that. It used to just be Diluc, Crepus, Adelinde, Elzer and Jean. Now the only one left on that list is Jean, but it seems a few new people have put themselves on it, Archons only know why.

            “It was the least I could do,” Hanson says with a sigh, “but if you’re truly thankful then take care of yourself. You should be –”

            “Captain Hanson! We’ve got trouble!” Another knight sprints in, completely out of breath. Once he skids to a stop, he braces one hand against the wall to keep himself from falling over as he huffs and pants. “Crowds gathering . . . across city. Multiple places. Varka and Jean . . . lower city . . . getting it under control, but . . . mid city . . . more crowds. Getting worked up . . . Need more men.”

            “Damn it,” growls Hanson. “We’re already spread too thin and I just let the last shift go home.” Hanson should probably be going home too. It looks like he’s been on the clock far too long as it is. He hesitates, then frowns and nods to Kaeya. “Alright, Kaeya. I don’t have much of a choice but to rely on your power, it seems, but don’t overdo it. If you feel like you’re in over your head, or if you start to feel bad, you tell me immediately . . . and this time you stay with me. No running off ahead.”

            “Yes sir,” Kaeya agrees.

            “I mean it, Kaeya. If you end up back in the infirmary I’ll see to it you get a full month of enforced medical leave.”

            “Yes sir,” Kaeya says again. Then he follows Hanson out of headquarters.

            There’s a saying amongst the knights that an allogene is worth three squads, all on their own, and anyone who’s ever seen Diluc or Jean in action know it’s true. Kaeya just hopes he can live up to it.

            They’re lucky that, so far, no one is rioting. The assembled crowds are doing quite a bit of yelling, but no one is getting violent or destroying any property . . . yet. Kaeya follows Hanson to Mondstadt Prison, where Kurtz is being held, and helps create a perimeter, using cryo to narrow the streets into choke points rather than completely block them off. Being squeezed through a bottle neck, losing sight of those around them makes people nervous, makes them think twice. It saps a bit of the fever from the crowds and keeps too many people from getting too close all at once.

            “How are you doing that?” asks another knight, Alaric. An electro allogene.

            Kaeya glances sideways at him. “I . . . use my Vision? I don’t know how else to explain it.”

            “You’re practically free sculpting . . . That should be impossible. At least without a catalyst. There’s a limit to the forms we can give our element, even though cryo and hydro tend to be more flexible . . . you’re not even using a weapon to direct it.” Alaric looks very put out.

            “Maybe it’s because he’s Khaenri’ahn?” another knight from the City Watch suggests. Not maliciously, just as an idea. Still, Kaeya can’t help but frown.

            “Nah, he’s Mondstadtian,” Alaric tells him. “The Anemo Archon’s clearly claimed him.”

            “I just mean he’s Khaenri’ahn by birth –”

            “But Mondstadtian by the grace of the Archons.”

            The other knight gives up and wanders off. Alaric nods serenely, then wanders off in the other direction. Kaeya stays near Hanson, as he promised. Or at least he does his best to. It isn’t long before things start to get heated within the crowd. Despite the knights’ best efforts to calm them down and convince them to disperse, there are too many hotheads amongst the crowd.

            “It’s been over a week! You’ve had that heretic murderer in custody for a week with no trial! What are you waiting for?”

            “Are you planning to let him off the hook? Why hasn’t he been brought to justice yet?”

            “Hang him! Hang the bastard!”

            “If you knights won’t then we will!”

            “His crimes are not just against men but against the gods! He killed new allogenes!”

            “Kill him! Kill him!”

            “Let’s get him!”

            Despite their angry cries, they are just cries. Just words. At least at first. Kaeya scans the crowd, frowning, noticing that the same phrases keep getting repeated, which is not unusual in a crowd like this . . . but they’re said in the same voices, just at different places throughout the mob. As though this is being orchestrated. Like there’s a small group of people trying to rile the crowd up from within. He can’t identify the agitators, however. There are too many people and it’s too dark, but maybe a knight with sharper eyes than Kaeya could, and they can try to separate those people from the crowd . . .

            Before he can suggest this to Hanson, though, the crowd starts throwing stuff. Vegetables. Bottles. Rocks. It’s happened before and it’s certain to happen again, and the knights are as prepared as they can be for it. They’ve all come with their shields to block the projectiles. Kaeya wonders if he should just make a damn cryo wall to protect them all at once, then expand it and push these disgruntled civilians back . . . or if he even can do that. He’s still learning his limits. He turns to Hanson, to ask the captain for permission to try, before things can escalate further . . . just in time to see a stone bounce off Hanson’s head.

            The captain goes down. Kaeya can’t make it to him before he hits the ground. Hertha gets there first.

            “Captain Hanson? Captain Hanson?”

            He’s out cold and the crowd has scented blood. Not good.

            “Shields up and weapons ready!” shouts a knight whose name Kaeya doesn’t know.

            Crap. This is not good. Not good. Not good at all.

            To their credit, most knights hesitate to draw their swords. They became knights to protect the people of Mond, not bear arms against them . . . but now it seems like they’re under attack by those same people they are sworn to protect.

            Alaric fires off a bolt of electro into the sky to draw attention to him. “All civilians, disperse immediately! This is your only warning!”

            His display of power was probably meant to intimidate, to make the crowd back down, but it has the opposite effect now, and seems to make him a target. Rocks and random items go flying in Alaric’s direction. He breaks out his spear and spins it adroitly, using it to bat each one out of the air before it can hit him.

            “I said stand down, damn it!”

            Kaeya stands, with one last worried look at Hanson. Enough is enough. He steps forward, in front of his peers and reaches into his pocket, grips his coin, then shapes his cryo with his mind. A wall of ice sprouts out of thin air, between the knights and the crowd. Ten feet high and two feet thick. Not bad . . . just one problem . . . Kaeya kind of misplaced where he put it. So now . . . his comrades are on one side . . . and he’s on the other side, with the angry crowd.

            “Well damn,” Kaeya mutters. Then shuts up. Maybe if he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t draw attention to himself . . . nope, that won’t work. He’s already been recognized. Angry murmurs, people pointing.

            “That Khaenri’ahn that Master Crepus adopted . . .”

            “. . . has a Vision now as well as making it into the Ordo . . .”

            “. . . don’t care who he is, if he’s standing in the way of justice –”

            “Kurtz is going to pay!” Kaeya calls out to them, pitching his voice as loud and clear as he can. “You are right that his reckoning cannot come soon enough. Believe me, I understand your impatience. That bastard almost killed me, and he almost killed one of my friends . . . but we must uphold the laws of Mondstadt. We cannot answer his lawlessness by breaking the law ourselves –”

            “He needs to answer now! Right now!”

            “What’s taking so long? Why delay?”

            “To build an airtight case against him, of course,” Kaeya lies off the cuff. He has no idea why Eroch is dragging his feet so, it’s almost like the bastard is trying to cause civil unrest with his incompetence. “To collect and put in order every single scrap of evidence that can convict Kurtz, to make absolutely certain that he hangs. We’re leaving nothing to chance. Not when it comes to this. We ask your patience now. We ask you to trust us.”

            “Why should we trust you?” someone shouts.

            Murmurs of “Khaenri’ahn,” and “Outlander,” cut through the crowd. Kaeya instinctively looks to his right, to his blind spot, where . . . where Diluc is not bristling, ready to tear into anyone and everyone who dares insult him for his place of birth.

            No. His defense comes from above.

            “How dare you, heinous heathen! Your sovereign will rend thy tongue out if thou speaketh thusly to him!”

            Then Fischl drops out of the sky on dark wings, and no, Kaeya did not see her gliding in a restricted zone. Definitely not. Didn’t happen. Oz bursts into existence right beside her as they take up a defensive stance right in front of him.

            “If thou seeketh to harm my knight, be warned that I will bring my full might to bear against you!”

            “What mein Fräulein means to say,” translates Oz, “is that she will take it very amiss if you make any move against the man who saved her life, and nearly lost his own, defending her from Jonas Kurtz.”

            More murmurs. Kaeya doesn’t know how to respond in this situation, he’s never actually been in one quite like this before. Maybe he should be trying to correct the narrative, since Fischl either didn’t get or didn’t give a damn about the memo saying that Jean was the one who saved her and defeated Kurtz, but . . . well, he kind of feels like he’s pushed his luck enough lying to the crowd already, and it really doesn’t benefit his safety to lie about this right now . . .

            “They said it was Jean Gunnhildr who caught the Blind Seer!”

            “Lies! Foul lies!” Fischl spits.

            “A misunderstanding,” Kaeya intercedes. “She was the one who apprehended him after . . . after Kurtz incapacitated and nearly killed me.”

            Fischl looks at him, her furious expression melting into confusion. Then a combination of sadness and anger as perhaps she realizes that someone over his head decided he was not to have the credit for his work. She then spins to face the crowd defiantly and points a finger at Kaeya.

            “Know this, peasants! Were it not for this Errant Knight, the Blind Seer would still be preying upon the Archon Blessed of our city . . . and my familiar and I would be dead! So if you wish to harm him, if you wish to challenge him, if you even wish to speak against him . . . I will fucking kill you!”

            “No, no, no killing,” Kaeya says, very quickly, and hastily reaches out to put a hand on Fischl’s shoulder. “No one needs to get hurt tonight. There’s been enough violence in Mond. I give you all my word that we will bring Kurtz to justice. We will convict him in a trial, and execute him for his crimes. So please . . . let this end here tonight, and beginning tomorrow, we will give you daily updates on our progress.”

            He doesn’t actually have the authority to make a promise like that . . . but it does the trick, so hopefully Varka will see the wisdom in making good on it. Otherwise they’re going to have another riot on their hands tomorrow, but for now the crowd disperses. The people go home. Kaeya waits, watches, nods to those who make eye contact with him, and does his best to look like . . . like he’s someone they can depend on.

            Fischl continues to stand defensively beside him, as Oz hovers on his other side. After a few minutes without trouble, when the street is nearly empty, Alaric drops down beside him. He must have been perched atop Kaeya’s wall, watching and waiting. Kaeya is grateful that the other knight let him handle this. Things almost went a whole different way.

            “Well done, Sir Kaeya,” Alaric tells him.

            “Thanks. Is Captain Hanson . . . ?”

            “He’s conscious. Possibly concussed. Resisting Hertha’s attempts to take him to the infirmary. He wants us to keep guarding this perimeter as a precaution . . . but I’d say you earned a break. Come back to the other side when you’re ready.”

            Alaric then leaves Kaeya alone with Fischl and Oz.

            An awkward silence falls between the three.

            “Sorry,” Kaeya says finally.

            “What – what could you possibly have to apologize for?” Fischl asks. “Sir Kaeya . . . you saved my life.”

            “And mine,” adds Oz, “as my life is tied to mein Fräulein’s, and I cannot exist without her.”

            “You were really scared the last time I saw you,” Kaeya reminds her, “and I couldn’t really . . . do anything to help anymore.”

            “I was scared for you. You saved my life and you were dying in my arms.” Fischl’s voice quavers. “I don’t have many friends, Sir Kaeya . . . Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to call you –”

            “Your good Errant Knight?” asks Kaeya, forcing a carefree smile as he recalls her words. Well, she hadn’t called him “her” good Errant Knight, only “this” Errant Knight, but in one of the Flowers for Princess Fischl novels, the titular character makes a rare true friend, and ever after he is referred to as her good Errant Knight. “I quite like the sound of that. It’s a high bar to live up to but . . . if my fairest lady of the shadows doth entrust me then I shall swear friendship to her from this day forth.” He paraphrases a quote from the novel, since he can’t recall the whole thing from memory. Fischl surely knows the full speech, but she seems delighted at his mere attempt.

            “Thy oath is accepted and will be honored, my good Errant Knight, and the faith you keep with me returned sevenfold. For I, Fischl, the Prinzessin der Veruteilung, do . . . rec . . . recognize thee . . . as . . .” Fischl pitches forward to crash into him, giving him a rather violent hug. “M-m-my f-friend!”

            That’s not how the quote goes, Kaeya’s pretty sure, but it hardly matters. He gently wraps his arms around her and pats her on the back, comfortingly. Oz alights on Fischl’s shouler and extends one wing past Kaeya, almost like he’s giving his version of a hug too.

            Kaeya . . . doesn’t know how to cry. He either forgot how or lost the ability to sometime between when he was an innocent child and when most of his family was massacred. Maybe it would have made his life easier if he still could, he’s heard people often feel better afterward, like they just let their emotions out, but . . . well, it’s not exactly a comfort that Kaeya himself deserves. He lost any right to that in Khaenri’ah when his mother and little brother were murdered in front of him, and he couldn’t save them. There have been many times when he’s wondered why he lived . . . and more than a few times that he wished that he hadn’t. Especially in the past two months . . . but . . . when he was on the brink of death, he wanted to live more than anything, and now . . . now he is so very glad that he did.

            This moment reminds him of a certain sunset he watched with Diluc, when they were children, when he was new to Mondstadt, and . . . it was the first time he felt like it was okay to be happy again since his world fell apart.

            Kaeya is happy to be here now with his friends. Happy to be alive.

Chapter Text

            Diluc goes back to Kaeya’s house with him for lunch. Kaeya has a lot of leftovers to use up. Diluc will grudgingly admit that the people who care about him may have overdone it a little bit in trying to stock his cupboards. Lumine and Paimon brought back a bunch of fresh Mist Flower corollas so they could preserve more, and Kaeya foisted a bunch of food off onto Mona, who seems to be perpetually broke and hungry, but there is still a lot of it.

            After a meal of leftover cold Sweet Madam and salad, they go upstairs into Kaeya’s office. Diluc wasn’t actually aware that he had a home office until now. He thought Kaeya’s workroom on the first floor was sufficient for Kaeya’s needs, especially since Kaeya was such a slacker . . . but he has since come to realize that Kaeya doesn’t slack off nearly as much as he tries to make people think he does.

            “The workroom downstairs is for normal work,” Kaeya explains, perhaps seeing Diluc’s pensive expression . . . or perhaps reading his mind . . . “It’s convenient since it’s right as you enter, and when I work at home and other knights need to come by, it’s right there as soon as they walk in . . . but obviously I can’t keep sensitive information somewhere it can so easily be swiped. I actually don’t usually bring confidential work home, but when I do, I work on it up here. Since there’s a lock on the door and a safe for documents besides . . . and a couple traps.”

            “So, in other words, don’t touch anything?”

            Kaeya gives a soft laugh. “They’re disarmed at the moment, since there’s nothing important here.”

            Kaeya then proceeds to hang all his notes up on a wall and stare at them for the next few hours. From time to time he moves a few pieces of paper around. He wears the look that he always does when he’s thinking really hard, and Diluc joins him in trying to brainstorm or figure something out, but neither comes up with anything. There’s just not enough in these clues.

            A few hours before dinner, Kaeya decides it’s time for a break and a nap . . . and he looks tired enough that Diluc thinks he’ll probably actually take one and not run back to headquarters or around the city, or try any other funny business. So Diluc heads to Angel’s Share to check in with his staff there.

            He ends up giving Charles a hand, since it’s especially busy that afternoon.

            “We always seem to sell more alcohol when there’s a serial killer in the news,” Charles tells him grimly. “People like to come in and talk about it, I guess.”

            “Has anyone said anything useful, that you’ve heard?” Diluc asks.

            “I would have gotten word to you if they had.”

            “Right.”

            “Funnily enough, these times are when Captain Kaeya always seems to avoid the taverns. Or at least avoids Angel’s Share. It’s possible he’s over at Cat’s Tail, or another establishment, I guess, but I doubt it.”

            “Oh?”

            “He comes back a week or two after he wraps up the case. I think he doesn’t like the attention when he’s working on these cases. Which is surprising, since they’re why Mond loves him. I used to think it was maybe because he was trying to make sure Jean got the credit, but by now everyone knows he’s the Ordo’s best detective.”

            “That he is!” declares a random patron. “A refill of my beer, if you please, so I can raise a toast to the captain!”

            Diluc obliges . . . and perhaps fills the man’s stein a bit fuller than is standard, but the man is raising his glass to Kaeya, so it’s fine.

            He and Charles don’t talk much for a while after that. Partly because he sends Charles out to take a break, but also partly because Diluc is not a fan of other people hearing his conversations.

            Which doesn’t mean he’s not happy to listen in on their conversations. As Charles said, the topic of the night seems to be the Blind Seer, or this copycat, as the case is, though not everyone is sold on it being an imposter.

            “He said at his execution that he would come back from the dead to finish his work –”

            “No, it was at his trial, when Master Jean was testifying.”

            “ . . . looking into it. The Blood Wolf . . .”

            “ . . .possible they got the wrong man? Or could the Blind Seer have had a partner?”

            “If it really is the Blind Seer, back from the dead, would he go after the ones who thwarted him?

            “ . . . trust the Blood Wolf. If he says . . .”

            “Okay, but I’m just saying, what if it was really Master Jean who got the Blind Seer, but she got the wrong person? We all know Sir Kaeya’s the one who really catches the serial killers, but my point is, he was new then, and he was injured, so what if . . .”

            “If that’s what the Blood Wolf says is true, or even if it’s just what he wants us to believe, isn’t that reason enough?”

            “Who is the Blood Wolf?” Diluc asks Charles when the man gets back from his break. Because the snatches of conversation he’d heard about this Blood Wolf were hard to put together, and asking Charles is easier than straining his ears, trying to hear more. “Another serial killer Kaeya caught?”

            Charles blinks. “No sir. The Blood Wolf is Captain Kaeya. Or at least, that’s a nickname he was given, by Master Varka himself . . . right here in Angel’s Share, actually. It was after he and Master Jean caught the Springvale Butchers. Someone made the comment that Sir Kaeya was like a bloodhound on a scent. Maybe it was because Varka didn’t like Sir Kaeya being referred to as a dog . . . I think you know too many people use that insult when they want to insult his lineage. However, whatever his reason, Varka declared, ‘Nah, the kid’s more like a Blood Wolf!’ Then he slapped Sir Kaeya so hard on the back, he almost knocked him over the railing. Thankfully Master Jean was there, and sober, and saved him from an impromptu flying lesson. The nickname stuck, though it’s usually not used on an everyday basis. People tend to call him that more when he’s tracking down murderers.”

            Listening to the story, Diluc can’t help but feel a pang in his chest . . . and a rueful feeling, like he should have known. Should have guessed. This, he realizes, is Varka’s solution to Kaeya’s ineligibility for promotion. Captain might be the highest official rank he can reach, but traditionally, there’s another unofficial position in the Knights of Favonius. The Wolf. A nickname traditionally given to someone expected to rise to a high position of leadership in the order, but not to the office of Grand Master. No, the Grand Master was the Lion, and the Wolf, their counterpart.

            Diluc knows all about that.

            It had once been his plan for Kaeya too, though he’d long since forgotten . . . but Diluc and Jean had been the two strongest contenders to succeed Varka, once upon a time. Both fierce fighters, both allogenes, both with prestigious enough bloodlines . . . and both of them had wanted the position. If Crepus hadn’t been killed by the Fatui’s plot . . . if Eroch hadn’t covered up his heroic death . . . things would have turned out very differently. Diluc would have given his all to his and Jean’s unspoken competition, done everything he could to become the Lionfang Knight, and made Kaeya his Wolf.

            It seems that fate hasn’t abandoned those plans for Kaeya at least, whether his brother knows or not. He very well may not. Kaeya is Mondstadt’s, through and through, but there are still plenty of tales and traditions that the children of Teyvat, and Mondstadt in particular, all know and learn, that he is oblivious to. The Lion and the Wolf may still be one of those. Diluc never shared his plans with his brother. He probably should have, rather than just deciding his brother’s fate for him, but he’d been young, and so sure Kaeya would want it because he, Diluc, wanted it so much.

            As much as he hates to admit it, it stings now. Knowing that it’s not his Wolf that Kaeya will eventually be.

            Diluc is less attentive for the next hour or two, and puts less effort into eavesdropping on his patrons to gather information than he should. He heads back to Kaeya’s house just after dark falls, to have dinner with his brother and make sure he behaved himself for the rest of the afternoon. Diluc isn’t too worried about someone taking a shot at him on his way to Kaeya’s house, but gives the rooftops outside of Angel’s Share a careful scan before proceeding, and keeps his senses honed.

            Even without paying any extra attention, however, he would have noticed when someone started following him. They weren’t exactly subtle. Diluc wasn’t sure why they even bothered trying to duck behind corners so clumsily, when he turns to look in their direction. They would have been far less conspicuous if they’d kept walking like they didn’t care he was looking their way, pretending that they weren’t trying to follow him without being seen.

            Diluc resists the urge to storm right over and grab this third-rate stalker by the throat. Instead, he does what caution demands, and disappears from his sight. Then takes to the rooftops so he can get the drop on him. Literally.

            He sees his shadow peering around the corner, then getting concerned when he realizes that he’s lost Diluc. The shadow hurries forward to look around the next corner to see if maybe Diluc just sped up. When he doesn’t see Diluc after reaching it, he telegraphs his confusion and disappointment with his body language.

            That’s when Diluc drops down, grabs him by the collar, and slams him against the wall.

            “Gah! Hey!” his stalker yelps and starts squirming. “What’s the big idea! Let go! Oh, you’re . . .”

            Diluc blinks. Then lets go. Because his stalker is Bennett. The ridiculously unlucky kid from the Adventurer’s Guild who he knows hangs out with Lumine sometimes, and allegedly Fischl as well. He doesn’t know the kid well, hasn’t ever spoken with him before, but he very much doubts the youth was following him with any malicious intent. Still . . .

            “Why were you following me, Bennett?”

            “You – you know who I am?” Bennett looks floored.

            “Yes,” says Diluc, impatiently. “Why were you following me?”

            “I – it’s – I heard . . . You’re working with the Blood Wolf right? I mean, with Captain Kaeya? Hunting down the Blind Seer?”

            “Do you have information?” Diluc asks, wondering if that’s what this is about. Could he possibly be this lucky and have a lead just fall into his lap?

            “No. I don’t. Sorry, I just . . . I was just . . . wondering how the investigation is going. Because . . . because Fischl’s my friend, and she’s really shook up over this, so if that bastard is back from the dead, I need to know, so I can protect her!” Bennett declares, standing up straighter, determined.

            It’s admirable. Naïve, but admirable.

            “It’s not the Blind Seer back from the dead,” Diluc tells him. “Kaeya assures me that his brain was destroyed.” Everyone knows that someone can’t come back from the dead if their brain is too damaged.

            “Then . . . what if he never actually died? What if they got the wrong guy?”

            “They didn’t. As I just said, it’s not the Blind Seer.”

            “But how do you know?” Bennett wants to know.

            “Without going into specifics, we know because this copycat is doing too many things differently from what the original Blind Seer did,” Diluc says. Then he gives Bennett a dark look. “I’m not saying anything more because I’m not allowed to. Next time you want my attention, try calling out to me instead of poorly stalking me. Otherwise I might bounce your head off the wall before I know it’s –”

            A woman’s scream rings out, high pitched and scared.

            Diluc turns and bolts.

            “Hey! Wait for me!” Bennett calls. Like Diluc is really going to wait around for a kid he barely knows when someone obviously needs help now. He ignores the brat and sprints at full speed in the direction of the scream. It came from the lower end of the city, closer to the market. It’s late enough now that most of the stalls are closed, with only a few closest to the city gates still open. Which means fewer witnesses, if this is another murder and not just . . . the Abyss Order sneaking in and causing more trouble, or one of Margaret’s cats turning feral and trying to eat someone’s face . . . which of course it’s not. There’s no way Diluc could be so lucky. Not when he was just talking to Bennett.

            He finds Donna standing horrified over the body of a teenage girl, with a Jueyun red blindfold over her eyes, a geo Vision on her forehead, and a growing puddle of blood beneath her.

Four Years Ago . . .

            “I will not lie under oath.”

            Jean had been adamant about that. She understood Varka’s reasonings for wanting the credit for Kurtz’s arrest to go to her, even mostly agreed with his reasoning, however much it hurt her soul to slight Kaeya this way, but she could not, would not, take the stand, swear before Lord Barbatos to speak only truth, and then commit purgery.

            “Then don’t lie,” Varka advised her. “Tell the truth, just in broad strokes. Plural pronouns are your friend. You were there with Kaeya, after all. Use ‘we’ as much as possible. The people will love that. It’ll make it look like you’re trying to share your credit with your injured lieutenant.”

            “His credit,” Jean reminds Varka, unnecessarily. “It should be his. This was all him.”

            “I know,” sighs Varka. “I do. I regret this just as much as you, but we’ve talked about this. You know why this must be done.”

            Jean does know. Which is the only reason she’s doing this. It makes her feel sick, and she wanted to cry when she saw the hurt flash through Kaeya’s eye when he learned that they weren’t letting it be publicly known that he’d figured out who Kurtz was and defeated him in combat. Not a single waking hour has passed since then that Jean hasn’t thought about trying to walk this back somehow, and give Kaeya his due . . . but . . .

            “For Mondstadt,” Jean reminds herself, right before she takes the stand. Before she swears her oath of truth. Before she looks out over the court, to where Kurtz is glowering at her in the defendant’s booth, flanked by half a dozen knights who are there as much for his protection as anyone else’s. At Fischl, who, as a minor, will not be called to testify in such an open and shut trial. At Kaeya, who sits beside Fischl, his face a horrible, polite mask that she just knows must be hiding hurt and resentment. At where Eroch is watching from the shadows at the back of the room, a sour look on his face, angered that Varka ordered the trial be held with no further delay, no matter what it was Eroch was trying to wait for. Finally, at Varka, her boss and her leader, whose hopes rest on her shoulders. He is depending on her. Jean can’t let him or Mondstadt down.

            “I come before you now to testify against Jonas Kurtz, who I witnessed attempting to murder a young allogene, and who I personally arrested after he was subdued. On the night of this incident . . .”

            Jean follows Varka’s directions. Broad strokes. Excessive use of “we” rather than “I” or “Sir Kaeya.” She’s practiced this story dozens of times to make sure she gets it right the one time that matters. She glosses over all of Kaeya’s contributions, from his detective work in narrowing down their suspect pool from everyone in Mondstadt to a handful of people, to his ability to accurately predict the window in which Kurtz would kill again. She makes it sound like they were together that night when everything went down, without specifically saying that she wasn’t with Kaeya, that Kaeya had been frozen out of the investigation for trivial reasons. Her phrasings suggest that they were together when they realized that Kurtz was the killer, and that they jointly realized it. Suggest that they went to Fischl’s house together and fought Kurtz together, and that Kaeya was injured in the course of their fight, and that Jean finished the fight without him, subdued Kurtz without him, then healed them both after placing Kurtz under arrest.

            Kaeya’s mask never slips. He must be so angry with her. He must be so hurt. It’s only been two months since he lost everything. This should have been his ticket to a promotion and security within the Ordo . . . to acceptance, which he’s had to work for every day on account of not being born here, while others, less worthy, never have to worry about that. It’s little comfort that there are plenty within the Ordo who know the truth, and a couple handfuls of rumors swirling through the city. Everyone who worked on the case knows Kaeya’s actual contributions, though many are doing their utmost to forget and rewrite their memories to line up with the Ordo’s selected truth. Captain Hanson’s knights take their cues from their leader, though. So even if he hasn’t told them the truth, those who already know aren’t willing to forget . . . and apparently Fischl set a number of people straight during that riot that Kaeya quelled outside of Mondstadt Prison.

            Fischl . . . right now, is furious. She glares daggers at Jean, which Jean knows full well that she deserves. Static electro threads spark from her hair and skin. The seat to her left has been emptied because of this. Kaeya, on her right, must be getting constantly stung, but ignores the pain. Of course. It must be nothing compared to everything he’s gone through already. He does speak a quiet word to Fischl now and then, perhaps trying to calm her down, but she remains irate . . . and she’s not the only one.

            “You lying allogene bitch!” Kurtz spits out at her once her account is finished. “You stuck up, spoiled, self righteous whore –”

            Angry voices rise, come to Jean’s defense. One of Kurtz’s guards shoves him back into his seat as he tries to rise.

            “Tell them the truth!” Kurtz demands. “You tell them! You had nothing to do with any of that! All you allogenes are the same!”

            “Silence! Order in the court!”

            “Taking whatever you want by any means you can get it, whether you deserve it or not. Flaunting your powers as privilege!” Kurtz gives Jean a disdainful look.

            “Silence!” the acting magistrate shouts again.

            “Everything you just said were lies and you know it!” Kurtz screams at Jean. “Why don’t you tell them? Why don’t you tell them what really happened? How you bumbled around with the rest of the knights, helpless and incompetent? How only Sir Kaeya –”

            “Shut up!” One of the knights beside Kurtz snaps angrily, and looks about ready to hit him.

            “If I could change one thing . . . I would have killed him. Better let him die as a decent human being than grow into an arrogant wretch of an allogene like you, Jean Gunnhildr!”

            “Silence, you!” Jean shouts back, rising to her feet. “Don’t you dare threaten him!”

            “Oh, I’ll threaten him all I like. I’ll threaten you too, and the little brat Sir Kaeya just managed to save by the skin of his teeth.”

            “Threats are all he has,” Kaeya’s voice rings out calmly. “He’s a dead man and he knows it. He’ll never hurt anyone again.” Don’t let him get to you, Jean, his eye seems to say. The look he gives her holds an ocean’s worth of encouragement.

            Jean takes a breath to calm herself.

            “Don’t count on that Alberich,” Kurtz growls venomously. “I’m not finished yet. Not with you, not with anyone here. The masters you heel to like a dog can execute me, if they wish. I’ll claw my way out of my grave to continue my work. I’ll slaughter every new allogene enVisioned in Mondstadt, until –”

            Kaeya interrupts him by laughing. Loud enough to drown out Kurtz’s curses. “Sorry, sorry, I know this isn’t appropriate but . . . I recognize that speech. It was given by a villain in a novel I read, almost word for word, until that last sentence. I don’t remember what novel . . . Do you know, Fischl?”

            “The Blood Stained Count of Romnia, Book One,” says Fischl, who has gone from milk white and scared to smirking superiorly in only seconds thanks to Kaeya’s antics.

            “Book One?” Kaeya looks at her incredulously. “You mean they made a Book Two?”

            “They made a whole trilogy, my good Errant Knight.”

            “Why?”

            “Such mysteries are not for those of mortal ken to know, one fears.”

            “Right . . . after we get out of here, let’s go find that publisher and put him on trial next. He’s publishing literal torture. Literally.”

            Scattered chuckles break out amongst those in attendance. Kurtz splutters and glowers at the two new allogenes.

            “Order in the court!” the acting magistrate shouts again, and it seems that the third time is the charm . . . but probably only because Kaeya managed to split Kurtz’s anger and embarrass the hell out of him, so now he’s no longer only focused on Jean and her half-truths.

            “This isn’t over,” Kurtz hisses, loud enough for the whole court to hear before he falls silent again. He continues to glare at Jean for the rest of her testimony, and even after that, until a recess is called.

            Jean takes advantage of the break to get some air.

            She half expects Kaeya to follow her outside. She’s not sure why . . . except if it was Diluc in her shoes now, Kaeya definitely would have followed him. She’s not sure why she’s equating herself to Diluc now, she’s never had that close sibling relationship with Kaeya that Diluc did. Kaeya was Diluc’s shadow. Even now, Jean has no doubt that if Diluc were to come back tomorrow and beckon to his brother, Kaeya would be at his side again in an instant, would pretend like nothing had ever happened if Diluc asked it of him.

             . . . Even so, she still half thinks that Kaeya will follow her, and maybe he would have, but Varka beat him to it.

            “How are you holding up?” Varka asks, and leans against the rail beside her.

            “As well as I must,” answers Jean. That’s all she can manage right now. What she has to do, and no more.

            “I hope you’re not scared about what Kurtz said in there,” Varka tells her.

            “I’m not.” Him coming back from the dead? Ridiculous.

            “Good. I can’t have my successor scared of ghost stories now, can I?” Varka teases.

            Jean stiffens at how he referred to her.

            “I’ve managed to pull enough strings to pull it off,” says Varka, sounding genuinely pleased. “This case made it possible. Tomorrow I will be announcing your promotion to Master of Knights.”

            “I’m grateful, sir,” Jean tells him, and tries to put some enthusiasm in her voice.

            Varka gives a self depreciating smile. “I know. You’re still upset over taking the credit from Kaeya.”

            “It’s his. He deserves it.” Jean gives Varka a pained look. “His work on the case, from the beginning, was nothing less than extraordinary.”

            “Which is why we need you in a position of power,” Varka tells her. “So you can raise him up with you and make sure he’s where the Ordo needs him, no matter what his rank is.”

            “Be that as it may, sir, I can’t help but wonder for how long Sir Kaeya will believe he needs the Ordo if he is always getting the short end of the stick,” says Jean.

            Varka smiles sadly. “Your concern is valid, of course . . . and you’re right. It’s not fair what we did to the kid. Nor was it fair what we did to his brother, and his father . . . though I would like to wring his brother’s neck, even now, if given half the chance. I guess in some ways it’s a blessing Diluc left as he did.”

            “What?” yelps Jean.

            “It’s harsh to phrase it like that, I know, but it’s true . . . let’s not pretend that you don’t know you were competing with Diluc to succeed me. After what he did to Kaeya’s hands, do you really think he’s the right man for the job?”

            Jean grits her teeth.

            “If you do, say so. Swear to Barbatos that you think someone who would do that to their own brother deserves to be the next Grand Master.”

            “I can’t,” admits Jean.

            “Neither can I. So can you blame me for being glad I found out when I did, however it happened?” Varka sighs. “I don’t think it’s any big secret that he was a few steps ahead of you in the race. Do you know why?”

            “His exploits as Cavalry Captain,” Jean answers. That had been a very sore point with her mother, when Diluc secured his promotion first, and took the rank of Cavalry Captain. Jean, who soon after became Captain of the Wall Guard, had far fewer chances to prove her valor than Diluc, and that mattered in the court of peoples’ opinions. Where once they’d been neck and neck, Diluc had begun pulling away . . . but Jean could live with that. Diluc was her dear friend. She wouldn’t ruin their friendship over their contest, not when they both wanted what was best for the Ordo and for Mondstadt.

            “I’m sure that’s what everyone thinks,” says Varka, “but no. What he had that you didn’t . . . was Kaeya.”

            Jean gives him a confused look. Varka then elaborates.

            “Crepus knew there was something special about him nearly as soon as he took him in. He didn’t decide to adopt Kaeya just because Diluc decided they were best friends. I trust you heard about the incident in Liyue?”

            “When they waded across the river and ran into some bandits?”

            “And young Kaeya killed four full grown men with a knife. Crepus brought Kaeya to me, shortly after, asked me to evaluate him as a fighter. He thought he had something special on his hands, and he was right. No normal ten year old can kill four men with a knife in as many minutes . . . if he even was ten then. He was so short and scrawny it was impossible to tell how old he was, and the poor kid didn’t even know. Crepus wanted to know then, if it was possible that Kaeya could ever become a knight. I don’t think the average layman knows our rules in regards to outlanders joining the Ordo. Luckily for us, we do admit them. Otherwise Crepus would have probably raised the boy to be the Adventurer’s Guild’s next rising star. He knew, even then, that Kaeya would be wasted tending crops the rest of his life. That was even before we realized what kind of mind the kid had.

            “The next time I talked to Crepus, he’d figured that out and saw fit to loop me in. Kaeya picked up writing Mondstadtian in the blink of an eye, then Liyuean, because Crepus wanted to see if he could. A couple years later, the kid was casually humiliating very skilled chess players who were oh so proud of their game. Then he followed Diluc into the Ordo and everything was far easier for Diluc than it should have been. I’m sure you noticed that too. The unprecedented number of raids against hilichurl encampments, with a record low number of injuries and no casualties. When I pressed Diluc, he admitted to me. They were using Kaeya’s tactics and Kaeya’s plans. Kaeya was trying to teach his brother how to think like hilichurls did and exploit it. It never really stuck for Diluc, but then, it didn’t need to as long as Kaeya was at his side. Kaeya tried to explain to me once how he did it. Tried to explain it in terms of hunting and tracking . . . and it didn’t stick for me either, to be honest . . . and I never thought he could . . . recalibrate his hunting skills and turn them against a serial killer.” Varka gives a rueful smile. “Which is all a really long winded way of saying that Kaeya was Diluc’s advantage over you . . . because with that mind of his, Kaeya is potentially more useful to Mondstadt than either you or Diluc. Even more useful than me, to be completely honest. Fighters like us are far more common than thinkers like him, but since he can only rise so far on his own, we needed one of you to take him with you.”

            Now that Diluc is gone, that someone is Jean.

            “Thank Barbatos this Blind Seer crap is almost at an end,” says Varka, clapping one of his massive hands down on Jean’s shoulder. “I’ll be transferring Kaeya under you when you take over as Master of Knights, of course. No point in splitting the two of you up, after all. I expect you to watch out for him, make sure he lands on his feet, now that he doesn’t have such an urgent mission to throw himself at and distract himself with. He is going to need someone. Now that the Ordo is the only family he has left. I think it’s best for you, him, and all of Mondstadt if that someone is you.”

            “You don’t have to appeal to my sense of duty over this, sir. Kaeya’s my friend,” Jean says earnestly. “Of course I’ll look after him.”

            “Good girl. You take care of your wolf . . . and your wolf will take care of you.”

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            Jean feels like she failed.

            This is the part she hates most when they’re on the trail of a serial killer: finding another body. It means that they didn’t manage to stop the killer in time. Even though they’ll get them eventually. It always makes her wonder what more they could have done. What more she could have done. Kaeya, she knows, always does everything he can, and he takes it as hard as she does whenever there’s a new victim. Jean wishes she were his equal when it came to intellect. She can thrash him across the training courts with swords and literally throw him across the court with elemental powers, yes, but she would trade a good chunk of her fighting prowess for an equal amount of cunning if she could. Then maybe together with Kaeya, they could have stopped this. Kept this girl from being murdered so senselessly.

            She stands to the side, arms crossed, stony faced, watching, and just doing her best to keep it all together, and look like the kind of leader Mondstadt deserves, as Kaeya looks over the body for clues, his sharp eye taking in everything. Diluc stands beside him, paying close attention both to what his brother is saying, as well as to his brother’s condition. Kaeya is definitely (thankfully!) on the mend, but neither Diluc nor Jean have forgotten how suddenly he dozed off last night. Jean wishes they didn’t need him so badly for this case, wishes that they could let him just rest and recover more.

            Sir Devin showed up very quickly, even before Jean arrived, in plain clothes since he was off duty, and has been helping Sir Miles with crowd control. Sir Bruce has been tasked with keeping Donna calm, ever since Kaeya showed up and Diluc managed to detach himself from her. Funnily enough, she pulled herself together quite a bit after Diluc was no longer available to cling to.

            A representative from the Church shows up while Kaeya is still collecting evidence. Sister Cynthia is just like a dog with a bone about trying to do things by their old procedures. Jean considers having a word about her with Sister Rosaria. Prickly, Rosaria may be, but she doesn’t tolerate nonsense. She also doesn’t seem to like Jean very much, or at least doesn’t feel like she can rely on Jean, which makes asking favors from her awkward. Perhaps it would be better to send Kaeya to ask her. Jean actually isn’t sure if Rosaria likes Kaeya any better, or if those two . . . well, she, like most people, has no idea what is actually going on between those two, and she knows better than to ask, but she does firmly believe that all feelings aside, Rosaria genuinely respects Kaeya.

            When Kaeya is finished collecting as much information as he can about the state of the body where they found it, he helps prepare it for transport and load it into the wagon that Jean called for. Then they begin the long walk back to headquarters, through streets that are lined with people who have come to gawk.

            The citizens of Mondstadt call out questions as the procession of knights pass. Kaeya answers a few of them. Ignores most of them. The long trek back to the upper city feels like a walk of shame, and even though it’s early in the evening yet, Jean wants to do nothing more than to crawl into bed and go to sleep.

            Instead she accompanies Kaeya and Diluc to the laboratory in the basement and stands vigil as Kaeya begins the even longer process of going over their victim and all the evidence the victim provides with a fine tooth comb. Diluc watches as well, and after a few minutes, moves to stand beside Jean, since Kaeya isn’t explaining what he’s doing this time, as he probably did last time. Jean’s not sure if that’s because he expects Diluc to know it by now, or if he’s just tired and wants to get this done with as fast as possible.

            “Have you eaten dinner yet, Kaeya?” she asks after half an hour. Diluc gives her a sideways look, and belatedly Jean realizes how morbid it must be to an outsider, talking about food while they’re standing in front of a corpse. However, Kaeya and Jean have long since lost their squeamishness when it comes to being around dead bodies, and unless they’re really bad, their appetites aren’t affected anymore.

            “Not yet,” Kaeya tells her, barely looking up.

            “Half an hour. Then you take a break.”

            “Can you grab me something from the cafeteria? Before they start clearing away the good stuff?” Kaeya asks.

            “Any preferences?” Jean asks, as she heads toward the door.

            “Not soup, please.”

            “Can I get you anything, Diluc?” Jean offers, since she’s going anyway.

            “No, thank you,” Diluc says, looking away from both her and the body.

            Jean goes to the cafeteria and gets some Northern Apple Stew for herself and some cold cuts, bread, and cheese for Kaeya. Enough that he can share with Diluc, who will probably get hungry eventually. She heads back to the workshop to check in with them, then eats her dinner in the hall, since Diluc would probably . . . not be pleased about her chowing down in front of a corpse. A few minutes later, Kaeya and Diluc exit the lab to join her, well before Kaeya’s allotted half hour is up. Meaning he must be hungry. Good.

            “I would like to think that it’s so obvious now that this isn’t Kurtz’s work that people will shut up about the nonsense that he’s back from the dead,” says Kaeya, as he stacks slices of bacon and cheese onto a piece of bread to make an open faced sandwich, “but I know they won’t. They’ll never admit that they want this to be him, because that’s a much better story, even though these are nothing like Kurtz’s kills.”

            “They’re not?” Diluc asks. Jean is glad he voiced the question so she doesn’t have to.

            “Nope. Even putting aside the difference of murder weapons . . . insofar as you can consider a Vision a murder weapon.” Kaeya takes a bite of his dinner and quickly chews and swallows, making them wait several seconds for an explanation. “I probably don’t need to tell you two that this victim was murdered in the market. Not killed elsewhere and brought to a dump site, like Kurtz always did.”

            Jean resists the urge to facepalm. Now that Kaeya’s pointed it out, she really wishes she could kick herself for not realizing it on her own. He’s right, of course. The pool of blood beneath the victim . . . that was something new, something none of Kurtz’s murders had when they found his victims. At least according to the old case notes. She and Kaeya only saw the one victim with their own eyes.

            “Poor Susanne was killed while she was walking down the street. All her stab wounds were in her back. Her blindfold was on haphazardly, which could mean that it was put on her sloppily, in a rush . . . or she could have knocked it askew herself. I don’t think she was dead when he left her. It probably didn’t take her too long to die, but . . .” Kaeya gives a sad shrug.

            Jean closes her eyes and exhales. “You know who she is, Kaeya? The victim?”

            “Susanne Millner. From one of the northern villages. I don’t know which one. I’ll ask my sources to find out for us, so we can notify her father. She doesn’t fit Kurtz’s pattern, by the way. She’s had her Vision for . . . I think two years. Kurtz never targeted anyone who’d had their Vision longer than six months.”

            “Do you know why?” Diluc asks.

            “No, but if I had to guess, it was either because he didn’t want to fight a trained allogene, or because he enjoyed the heresy factor. Since killing someone who just got their Vision is supposed to be an affront against the Archons,” says Kaeya.

            Diluc makes an odd, startled sound. Jean looks at him sharply. Kaeya looks at him with sadness. Then he speaks.

            “It’s important to keep our minds in the present right now. Not in the past. We’re dealing with two completely different situations that are nothing like the other. It’s a mistake to look at what we’re facing now through the mirror of the past.”

            Jean is pretty sure that he’s not just talking about Kurtz and this new killer . . . and that he’s not only talking to Diluc. Because Kaeya’s gaze flits to her, and his expression is sympathetic, and of course Kaeya knows that Jean’s been thinking about what happened four years ago . . . and knows that she’s never actually stopped feeling guilty for taking the credit that should have been his. Even if she did it for the right reasons, or thought she was doing it for the right reasons, it still feels wrong, even to this day, and there’s no way to make it right anymore. Unless . . .

            “On the very slim chance that this somehow is Kurtz –”

            “It’s not Kurtz,” Kaeya says irritably.

            “But if it somehow is –”

            “It’s not.”

            “Or if he had a partner that we missed, or he really has been resurrected somehow –”

            “What part of ‘This is not Kurtz’ can everyone not understand?”

            “ – then you must let me take the blame for the fallout, Kaeya,” Jean says. “The blame wouldn’t have been yours anyway, even back then, you were only a lieutenant . . . but I took the credit that should have been yours. It’s only right I take the blame too.”

            “Very noble, Master Jean, but for the last time. It. Is. Not. Kurtz. I’m going to start getting mad if people don’t stop suggesting it is. I never expected you to be one of the people who wanted him to still be alive, or undead.”

            “I don’t,” Jean protests.

            Kaeya gives her a look. The look. The one that sees right through her, and she knows, even if she never admits it, Kaeya knows that . . . maybe since the beginning, she’s been hoping that this was a second chance. To give Kaeya the accolades this time around, as he fully deserves.

            “I appreciate the sentiment, Jean. I really do,” Kaeya tells her. “I know you’ve got my back. You’ve always had my back. Even when you don’t agree with the measures I take. If it weren’t for you I . . . have no idea where I’d be. I need you to trust me now, though. This is not Kurtz’s work. This is someone else copying him, and badly. Now, stop moping, both of you, you’re going to make me lose my appetite.”

            “Wouldn’t want that,” says Diluc, trying for a good natured tone.

            “You can’t afford to lose anymore weight,” Jean agrees.

            “You might lose your status as Mondstadt’s most eligible grandson-in-law candidate if the pensioners see you’ve been reduced to just skin and bones,” Diluc teases, and his voice has gained a bit of warmth as . . . as they fall into their old pattern of gentle teasing as a means of encouraging.

            “Don’t count on that,” Jean says, a real smile spreading across her face. “Do you know how many matronly grandmothers would just love to feed him up?”

            “Oh, too true. Better be careful, Kaeya, or you’ll be swamped by matronly grandmothers.”

            “Oh, the horror,” Kaeya says, but with a smile on his face.

            The rest of their dinner break passes much less stressfully. If not for the circumstances, it would have actually been quite pleasant.

            “I’m going to stay the night here again,” Kaeya says, at the end of it, once he and Diluc have cleared the large platter of cold cuts and bread Jean brought for them. “In a few hours I’ll probably start losing my focus. When that happens, I just want to go to sleep, then wake back up and start again tomorrow. Not waste time walking to the other side of the city and back.”

            “I’ll be staying here tonight too,” Jean says, then looks to Diluc, and asks, even though she’s pretty sure she already knows the answer. “Will you be as well, Diluc?”

            “Yes.”

            It’s nice to see the old Diluc is back. The boy who always watched out for his brother.

            “If you’d rather sleep in my office than Kaeya’s, feel free to. Or I could have a bed in the barracks –”

            “No need,” Diluc says. “For the bed in the barracks. I will take you up on the offer of the couch in your office, however.”

            Maybe Jean should have arranged to sleep in Kaeya’s office, and Kaeya in hers, so that Diluc can keep an eye on him, but she knows Kaeya will probably sleep a little better in his own office, and Jean will sleep better in hers. They’ve both done it often enough that they’re familiar with their office couches, and she thinks Kaeya can be counted on to behave right now. He seems well enough, again, and motivated, but not manically so. She’s not worried about her reputation, should people find out she and Diluc slept in the same room. The knights are co-ed, after all, so they won’t think anything of it.

            After they finish eating, Jean takes their dishes back to the cafeteria, while Kaeya goes back to examining the body and looking for evidence, taking Diluc with him. Once the dishes are returned, Jean goes back to her office. Even though she still partly feels like she should be with Kaeya, she knows that her time now would be better spent trying to make a dent in the paperwork that this case has caused to accumulate. So, she works at that for the next few hours, until Diluc knocks on her door and steps inside when she bids him to enter.

            “If you’re still working I could wait in the library . . .”

            “No, it’s alright,” Jean says, and sets a stack of forms aside. “There’s nothing here that can’t wait until tomorrow, and I’m ready to call it a night. Were you warm enough last night? There are extra blankets in the lower cabinet by the clock if you need one.”

            “I was fine,” Diluc tells her. “Do you have a preference for which couch you want?”

            “I usually crash on the one closer to my desk.” The one Kaeya fell asleep on last night, which means Diluc slept on the other. “Is Kaeya . . . is he feeling alright?”

            “I think so,” answers Diluc. “He’s much better than he was last week. I was worried that this case would be really bad for him . . . what with the first victim being a dead brother, and –” Diluc stops talking abruptly. A guilty look creeps across his face.

            Jean frowns, wondering if she should ask, or leave it alone. In the end, she decides to ask. “Are you thinking about your fight with him?”

            Diluc gives a humorless little laugh. “Yes. I am. It’s kind of hard to stop thinking about it, now. That’s not what I was worried he would be thinking about, though.”

            “ . . . Why not?”

            “Because he has something far worse I was worried he was thinking about. Actually, I do know that it’s crossed his mind, several times. I’ve seen him wince like he does when he sees or thinks of something that can induce one of his migraines. I guess he’s had plenty of practice not thinking about it, however.” Diluc sits down on his couch, his expression just so sad.

            “Are you able to tell me about it?” asks Jean.

            “I can’t. It’s not my story to tell,” Diluc says, and looks at her with regret in his eyes, “but . . . do you remember what I was saying the other day, before Huffman barged in?”

            Jean tries, but can’t. She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. So much has happened since then, I can’t recall.”

            “You had asked how bad it was when Kaeya was exposed to dream poison,” Diluc reminds her, and now Jean does remember and wants to kick herself for forgetting.

            “And you told me it was worse than I could imagine.”

            “I was about to ask if you remembered when we were younger, and Kaeya had only been with us for a year or two. We knew that he had horrible nightmares sometimes, and that something really bad happened to him in Khaenri’ah, before he came here. Do you remember some of the guesses that we made about what might have happened?”

            “I remember you saying that you thought his mother was dead, and that he’d seen her die.”

            “I can’t tell you what actually happened, because it’s not my place to but . . .” Diluc gives a pained sigh. “It was worse than anything we ever guessed . . . and the dream poison forced him to relive it.”

            Jean hadn’t expected to sleep well that night. The new victim alone ensured that. Her conversation with Diluc right before they turned in was just another nail in the insomnia coffin. She lays awake for hours, wondering what horrors Kaeya’s past holds, kept in check behind a wall of migraines. Lisa had mentioned it to her, her theories about Kaeya’s mind using migraines as a way to defend itself from past trauma. Diluc has pretty much confirmed it . . . and confirmed that the dream poison cracked that wall wide open, forcing him to remember. Then, when he was at his very worst, Jean had argued with him.

            She wishes she could redo that day now. She wishes that she could redo many things.

            Sometime after midnight, she finally manages to drift off, but her slumber is restless, and she awakens several times during the night, unable to stay asleep. Then, around the break of dawn, her office door flies open without warning and cracks against the wall, waking both her and Diluc.

            “Master Jean! Gah!” Sir Otto yelps, and when Jean sits up, she sees Diluc picking himself up off of Otto, having tackled him.

            “Sorry, Sir Otto,” Diluc mutters ruefully, and holds out a hand to help him up. “Reflex.”

            Otto isn’t one to hold grudges, however, and his news is too urgent for him to do more than give Diluc a quick pat on the shoulder, accepting his apology and putting the matter behind them.

            “I’m sorry for barging in, Master Jean, but this is urgent. Last night there was a grave robbery. Or, at least, we assume it was a grave robbery and not . . . not something else.”

            “What happened? Whose grave?” Jean asks, even though she knows, or at least has a very good guess.

            “Jonas Kurtz’s grave. The Blind Seer’s.”

Four Years Ago . . .

            “Jean? I have a question. Well, several questions. I was wondering if you could help me understand something.”

            Jean looks to Kaeya, glad for the distraction, but still feeling that heavy guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach that she gets whenever she looks at him now. They haven’t actually talked one on one since Kaeya woke up. Jean doesn’t think Kaeya’s angry with her. Hurt and disappointed maybe. She needs to have a word with him alone, when possible. Now is not that time, however. Which is not to say she won’t answer whatever questions Kaeya wants to ask her. It’s just that they’re at Kurtz’s public execution, awaiting the prisoner’s arrival, and a dozen or so other knights are within earshot. So the apologies she wants to give to Kaeya will have to wait.

            “I can certainly try,” Jean tells her friend. “Please feel free to ask me anything, and I’ll do my best to help you understand it.”

            Kaeya looks rueful. “There’s a lot I don’t actually know about Visions and allogenes. I never asked because, well, everyone else already seemed to know, and I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that I don’t belong here –”

            “You belong here,” Jean interrupts him. “You do. Your Vision is proof of that, and even without it, you still belong here. At my side. You’re my friend.”

            A small smile crosses Kaeya’s face. “. . . Thanks. Still . . . I never asked those questions, but I did pick up a few things, or at least heard rumors. Like . . . is it true that the element of your Vision is determined by what sort of person you are?”

            “The information about that isn’t exactly definite,” Jean tells him. “People do have theories, and some of them seem to hold water. Like people with pyro Visions tend to have passions. I mean, they’re very passionate about what they do, but they tend to have a passion. Some lifelong hobby or career that they would pursue for all they’re worth, whether they received a Vision or not. Like Diluc . . .” She trails off.

            Kaeya stares down at his hands. Gloved now, and probably forevermore. “Yeah,” he says. “Diluc always wanted to be a knight.”

            “I’m sorry. I . . .”

            “It’s okay, Jean,” Kaeya tells her. He looks up and meets her eyes. “You don’t need to avoid talking about him around me. I mean, I don’t want to talk about him a ton, but when he comes up in conversation, it’s fine. He’s still your friend, after all.”

            Jean isn’t so sure about that. She loved Diluc, not exactly like a sibling but perhaps like a cousin. The same way she loved Kaeya. She is not okay with what Diluc did to Kaeya and she doesn’t give a damn about his reasons or his grief.

            “And . . . he’s still my brother.”

            “Kaeya . . .”

            “I know. I’ve been officially disowned. That won’t stop me from being there if he needs me. I probably don’t deserve a third chance not to screw up being a brother, but if I get one anyway, I’m taking it.”

            “Third chance?” Jean asks. If whatever happened after Crepus was the second one . . . “What was the first one?”

            Kaeya winces and touches his temple. “Ah . . . never mind that now.”

            “Right . . . you were asking about what kind of people get what kind of Visions. The other elements tend to have trends too. Like people with electro Visions tend to be –”

            “Weirdos?”

            “Outliers, is what I was going to say. Though, yes, the less politic people classify them as odd,” Jean says, with a small smile. “It’s said that they’re the sort of people who walk their own path, regardless of the norms or what others think of them. Oddly enough, both geo and anemo seem to have quite similar traits. Hard working, almost to the point of obsession –”

            “That’s you in a nutshell.”

            “While people who get cryo . . .” Tend to be failures. Tend to be the sort of people who failed at something very important. However, Jean doesn’t want to say that . . .

            “The one I’m actually interested in is dendro,” Kaeya says, gracefully redirecting the conversation. “That’s the one that I’ve actually heard the least about. What sort of traits tend to be common in people with dendro Visions?”

            “Oh . . . uh, I’m sorry, but there’s not a widely known common trait that they seem to share. Dendro is rare.”

            “I wonder what sort of person she was . . . Miri Kurtz, I mean.”

            “I’m sorry. I don’t know the answer to that either. I’ve seen her around town before, but I don’t think I ever met her.”

            “There’s no reason for you to be sorry, Jean . . . and I mean that, you know.”

            Suddenly they’re not talking about Miri Kurtz anymore. Jean’s eyes sting as she looks at her friend. “Kaeya, I –”

            Her words are drowned out by shouting. Kurtz has arrived. He is being led out of Mondstadt Prison, flanked by an entire squad of knights, and onto the scaffolding erected just outside the prison.

            The crowd buzzes angrily, hisses, shouts curses at the condemned man. Jean stares across the distance and steels herself. She hates executions. She knows some people love them, consider them fine entertainment, but if it were up to her, they would be abolished. Yet she is responsible, at least in part for this one. If she hadn’t healed Kurtz, they wouldn’t be here now. It was the right thing to do, she knows, or at least believes, but she essentially only undid Kaeya’s hard work for them to redo it in front of a crowd, a few weeks later. Which is why missing this execution was never an option for Jean. Even if her new position as Master of Knights didn’t require her to be here. She is responsible for this, and so she must bear witness.

            “I’m sorry I didn’t finish him off,” Kaeya says softly beside her. “Then we wouldn’t have to be here.”

            Jean looks at him sharply. She remembers how Diluc always used to swear Kaeya could read peoples’ minds. When asked, Kaeya only ever laughed and never gave a straight answer. Jean can’t help but wonder if there was some truth to Diluc’s suspicions after all.

            “I remember how much you hate executions,” Kaeya says, when he looks up and sees her staring at him. As though he just read her mind again and is trying to offer her an alternative explanation . . .

            Well, even if he can read minds, Jean knows he can’t read them all the time. Otherwise he would have known Jonas Kurtz was the Blind Seer when they ran into him in that alley some weeks ago. Maybe it’s only if he’s around someone long enough, or if he’s close to them.

            Jean hates herself a little bit for the surge of satisfaction that last idea brings her. If feels almost like she’s pleased to be replacing Diluc. Which she’s not. She thinks that she can miss her old friend, and wish that things had turned out differently for him, but also be glad that Kaeya is her lieutenant now. Especially since Diluc doesn’t deserve Kaeya’s loyalty anymore.

            She tries not to wonder whether she deserves it either, after stealing his credit like she did. Still, that was nothing compared to what Diluc did to him, and Jean is going to make it up to Kaeya. She’ll repay this debt if it’s the last thing she does.

            Kaeya steps a bit closer to Jean as the noose is fitted around Kurtz’s neck. His shoulder brushes against hers, and even though Kaeya’s blood now runs cool thanks to his Vision, she can feel the warmth intended in the tiny gesture. She lets the back of her hand brush against his.

            Then Kurtz turns to look at them. Or at her. It feels like he’s looking straight through her, venom dripping from his gaze. Kaeya elbows her gently, making her jump, but freeing her from the trap of Kurtz’s glare.

            “I don’t think he likes us.”

            Jean manages to choke back a very inappropriate laugh at her friend’s literal gallows humor.

            It’s almost over. They’re minutes from being done. Then they can put this behind them. She’s going to drag Kaeya to a tavern with a good kitchen, and treat him to drinks and a meal, and make sure he eats. Sometime soon, she needs to inspect the room he’s renting and make sure it’s not a rat’s nest. If it doesn’t meet her standards for how a friend of hers should be living, she’ll bring him home and clear out a room in the Gunnhildr family mansion for him. She ignores the voice that tells her Kaeya won’t accept that, that he probably wants his own space right now, somewhere he has control over, somewhere he can’t be kicked out of.

            Varka moves to address the crowd. Jean tries to pay attention as he reads the list of crimes Kurtz has been convicted of, but her mind feels far away. The only words she really hears are at the end of his spiel.

            “Jonas Kurtz, as penalty for these crimes, you have been sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. By the power entrusted to me as Grand Master of Ordo Favonius, I now hereby see it done.”

            With that, Varka draws his claymore and slings it, one handed, to slice a rope. The trapdoor built into the scaffolding, on which Kurtz stands, opens immediately, dropping him to his death . . . or at least it was supposed to.

            It should have been a six foot drop. That should have broken Kurtz’s neck instantly when the rope went taut. However, something goes wrong. Jean can’t tell what, but it’s almost like the rope gets caught on something, so Kurtz slides a foot or two, then jolts to a stop, then slides another foot or two, and jolts to a stop again. When the rope reaches the end of its length, Kurtz barely has any momentum. So his neck doesn’t break.

            Jean flinches, realizing what she’d expected to be a one minute execution is now going to be a twenty-minute one, as Kurtz is slowly strangled to death.

            “Was that anemo?” Kaeya asks her, speaking close to her ear so she can hear him over the bloodthirsty cheers of the crowd. “That wasn’t normal. Jean, did you feel – Fuck!”

            “What?” Jean asks. Then she sees it. Several masked, cloaked people darting through the crowd. One of them flings a curved knife like the sort Fatui agents like to use. It spins through the air to slice right through the rope that Kurtz is dangling from, dropping Kurtz to the ground. The crowd roars and descends upon the condemned man, intent on tearing him apart.

            Then, several small explosions break out amongst the mass of people. One of them takes out one of the scaffolding’s legs, sending splinters flying, making the rest of the structure creak and tilt precariously. Others send out sparks, dark smoke, and shrapnel. Within seconds the whole scene has descended into chaos.

            “We need to secure Kurtz!” Jean says, drawing her sword. Not to cut down anyone in the crowd, except maybe those masked agitators or Kurtz himself, but she needs her weapon to most effectively channel her Vision’s power.

            “Right,” Kaeya agrees. Then, bizarrely, without his weapon, he summons a path of cryo, right over the heads of the crowd and sprints across it.

            Jean tries to follow, but quickly realizes that she can’t. It’s collapsing behind Kaeya, too delicate to support itself, let alone two peoples’ weight. “Kaeya!”

            Kaeya glances back over her, still moving, and she sees surprise on his face. This is probably the first time he’s tried to do this. Jean has the feeling that Kaeya has been making things up as he goes along, and it’s been working splendidly for him so far, but this time his idea isn’t panning out the way he expected it to. However, he keeps running along the path of cryo he’s created, and it holds just as long as he needs it to, collapsing behind him. Moving forward really is his only choice if he doesn’t want to plummet.

            “Go!” she shouts to him. “Get to Kurtz and trap him in cryo if you can! I’ll be right behind you!”
            “Right!” Kaeya calls back but doesn’t look back again.

            Jean is left to make her own way through the panicked masses.

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            Kaeya frowns down at the empty grave. Looking into a coffin that’s had a body rotting in it for four years is not how he wants to spend his morning.

            “What do you make of it?” Jean asks. Her voice is tense. Kaeya hates that. Hates hearing his friend sound so worried. “Is there any way he could have dug himself out?”

            Only because it’s Jean does Kaeya not roll his eye. “Look at the coffin lid,” he tells her instead. “See how it’s been broken inward? With a spade, most likely. You can tell by the way the splinters are bent, and the size and shape of those marks that didn’t break through the lid.”

            “Oh . . .” Jean sounds relieved. “Yes, I see now.”

            “So, unless Kurtz somehow gained the power of telekinesis, became undead, found a shovel, and used it to dig himself out, I think it’s safe to say that this is just grave robbery,” Kaeya says.

            “But why?” Diluc wants to know. He looks no more pleased to be there than Kaeya feels. “What does this even accomplish?”

            “Distraction,” Kaeya answers. “I feel like our killer’s goal right now is to not get caught, and so he’s trying to confuse the issue. Which is pointless because every time he does so is another chance for him to screw up and get caught, but I’d prefer stupid little games like this to him dropping more bodies.”

            “Do you think him taking a shot at you was another one of these games?” Diluc asks.

            “Not so much a game as him trying to just kill me so I won’t catch him or her,” admits Kaeya, “but you still need to take precautions in case you were the target . . . or you could become the target. If he can’t kill me, he could go after you to throw me off my game.”

            He sees Diluc clenching one fist out the corner of his eye, and knows it’s not the potential threat to his own life that has Diluc furious. Kaeya only manages to hold back a smile. It’s nice being brothers again. Knowing that if someone hurts him, that someone will be flayed alive and die screaming. It makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. However, smiling at the site of a grave robbery is highly inappropriate, so Kaeya resists.

            “Jean? Can you get some of our people to take boats out on the lake to look for Kurtz’s body? The water seems like the most likely place for our graverobber to have ditched it.”

            “I’ll do that, but Cider Lake is pretty big, Kaeya.”

            “I know . . . and I don’t know how well a corpse at this stage of decomposition will sink or float. Actually I don’t know what stage of decomposition it’s in. Maybe Sucrose would? If there’s only bones left, they’d sink on their own, but if there’s still . . . tissue and other stuff, it might float if it’s not weighted down. Even then, it would need to be weighted down properly. Stuff that floats has a way of rising to the surface otherwise. Whatever he used to weight it down could be a clue.”

            “I’ll head there now and send teams out, unless you need me for something else here?”

            Kaeya feels weird as he shakes his head. He’s so used to doing the detective thing with Jean, it’s weird now having Diluc being his shadow instead. However, there’s no point in wasting Jean’s time when there’s nothing she can contribute here that Diluc can’t, and Diluc certainly isn’t willing to go anywhere. “Just make sure you have a couple knights with you as a guard. That will probably be deterrent enough. Our killer isn’t exactly a trained assassin.”

            “How long do you think you’ll be here?” Jean asks.

            “Not too long, I don’t think. Why? Something else you need me for?”

            “Actually, yes,” Jean says. Then she looks extremely rueful. “I want to open the vault.”

            Kaeya looks at her confused. “Why? We’ve already established that Kurtz is not undead.”

            “We’ve established that whoever was buried in this grave is not undead,” Jean says. “We aren’t one hundred percent sure that person was Kurtz.”

            “We are,” Kaeya says, trying not to sound too annoyed. “I identified the body myself.” Amongst other things, he doesn’t say.

            “Please. For my peace of mind.”

            Well, Kaeya supposes that it’s a small enough price to pay for his best friend’s peace of mind. “I’ll be back within the hour,” he promises. They’ll need to make it quick though. He wants to track down Alfred, the bard who’s always at the cemetery at night, and was the one who found that Kurtz’s grave had been plundered . . . then had wandered off somewhere, because the knights don’t have the manpower they used to, and Otto had to make a choice between manning his post at the cathedral entrance, guarding the now empty grave, staying with their potential witness, or reporting the crime to headquarters. He’d chosen right, of course. It’s not his fault they’re so short staffed.

            “What was that about?” Diluc asks after Jean leaves, and Kaeya has started fishing paper and glue from his investigation kit.

            “Ah . . . we’ll explain at headquarters,” Kaeya tells him. “It’s not something we should really discuss in the open.”

            Or something they should really discuss with someone outside of the Ordo, but Diluc is the very last person who’d use this information against Mondstadt.

            “I see . . . but what are you doing now?” Diluc asks as Kaeya starts tearing up the paper he pulled out of his bag.

            “Making a cast of this shovel print. Or spade print.”

            “Why?” Diluc doesn’t sound annoyed or like he thinks this is a waste of time, just perplexed.

            “So we have it to compare to digging instruments our suspect might own, once we have a suspect. Also to take to the smiths in town. See if any of them recognize it as their work. Or rather a flimsy copy of their work.” Kaeya dips the torn paper scraps into the glue, then starts layering them into the imprint, so they fill in the empty shape.

            “Clever,” comments Diluc.

            “I try.”

            “You came up with the idea for that?”

            “It’s actually a work in progress for what I really want to use the idea for.”

            “What’s that?” Diluc wants to know.

            “I want to figure out how to use it to make casts of murder weapons from stab wounds, but so far I haven’t had any luck finding something that will hold the shape right,” Kaeya admits. “Either whatever we try using expands while it’s setting, or doesn’t set at all, or even dissolves, or just crumbles. Albedo and I have wasted many a boar carcass trying.”

            “ . . . I don’t think I’ve told you yet, but, what you’re doing . . . I mean all that you’ve done . . . it’s really amazing work,” Diluc says.

            Kaeya looks at him in surprise.

            “Your ideas,” Diluc says, perhaps thinking Kaeya is confused as to what he’s talking about. “The way you’ve come up with entirely new means and methods to find and save evidence and . . . other stuff. So that you can catch murderers . . . and make Mond safer. It’s really something else.”

            It’s been a long time since Diluc complimented him like this. Kaeya is so startled that he almost forgets his manners. Almost, but not quite.

            “Thank you.”

            It means a lot to Kaeya, but he can’t find the words to say it. Suddenly his smooth talking ways fail him. So he coughs awkwardly and continues to work, filling in the shovel impression in the dirt. Once finished, he stands.

            “That will take about twenty minutes to set. I’m going to look around the area until it does, see if I can find any other clues. Otto, keep an eye on that will you? Make sure no one touches it.”

            “Do you want me heat it? Help it dry faster?” Diluc asks.

            “No,” Kaeya says quickly. “You could dry the earth around it, make it change shape and crack. Thanks for the offer, though . . . coming?”

            The brothers walk around the cemetery, looking for anything unusual or out of place. Diluc finds a crystal button, but it’s pretty far from Kurtz’s grave, and its setting is weathered enough to make Kaeya think that it’s been lost and exposed to the elements for awhile. Still, they put it in a petri dish to keep with all the other evidence, because you never know.

            Nothing else catches their eyes, unfortunately, so they head back to the Ordo’s headquarters, after collecting the now dry cast of the shovel imprint.

            Jean is waiting for them, her office door left open so she can see when they enter. She catches Kaeya’s eye and glances sharply at Diluc. Kaeya shrugs, trying to convey that it’s not going to hurt anything if Diluc knows, one way or the other. Actually, he thinks it’s best if Diluc knows about the vault. They have no way of knowing what the future will bring, but they do know that Diluc will never use knowledge of the vault against Mondstadt. Jean either takes his gesture as it’s intended, or comes to a similar conclusion on her own. Without a word, she heads into the library. Kaeya and Diluc follow her, down the stairs, to the restricted section, then to a small door at the back of the room, mostly hidden from view and easy enough to dismiss as a cleaning closet. Jean takes out a key and opens the door, to reveal a narrow flight of stairs, leading downward and disappearing into darkness. Kaeya steps forward and takes the lead, summoning enough cryo to his hand to get a nice steady light.

            “What is this?” Diluc asks as he follows them down, bringing up the rear.

            “Restricted storeroom,” Kaeya tells him, “and the vault. We use them for medium to very dangerous items that we find, confiscate, or have turned into us. Cursed curios, possessed weapons, and the like . . . as well as Visions.”

            “What?” Diluc asks sharply.

            “Yes. This is where yours was kept too after you – don’t touch anything by the way, the stuff in this room is all moderately dangerous,” Kaeya says as they reach the first room. “The stuff in the next room is all very dangerous, but it’s all in steel cage shelves to make not touching it easier. Oh, and by the way, you were never here.”

            “I take it this is someplace only the Grand Master and a select few confidents know about?” Diluc asks dryly.

            “Yes,” says Jean. “I only learned of it when . . .”

            “When you were appointed Acting Grand Master?” Diluc guesses.

            “No . . . I was probably supposed to only learn about it then, but . . . it’s a long story.”

            “We’ll tell it to you sometime,” Kaeya promises. “Over drinks. You’ll love it, it’s got violence and intrigue and a really happy ending. Mostly. Huh.” He stops before they reach the door to the vault.

            “What’s wrong?” Jean asks.

            “Wasn’t there a creepy looking sword on that shelf?” Kaeya asks, staring at the space he’s sure the odd weapon used to occupy.

            “I don’t know, I’ve only been down here once since Master Varka left, and I don’t remember.” Jean, knowing that Kaeya’s memory is like a steel trap, at least when nothing from his childhood in Khaenri’ah is concerned, looks at him with trepidation. “Should we be worried?”

            “Well, it was only in the moderately dangerous room. If I remember right, it was a cursed sword we took off some Treasure Hoarders at the base of Dragonspine, and it sucked the life out of its wielder so there’s a limit to the amount of damage anyone could really do with it.” Kaeya sighs. Another day, another problem. “I’ll look into it later. One problem at a time.”

            “Have the Knights of Favonius considered not leaving dangerous items around where anyone could walk off with them?” Diluc asks.

            “It was only moderately dangerous, and it was behind two locked doors,” Kaeya says. “The really dangerous stuff is behind this one.” He comes to a stop in front of it.

            “What one?”

            “This one.” Kaeya gestures at the space in front of him.

            “That’s a wall, Kaeya.”

            Jean laughs softly.

            Diluc’s assessment is fair, to be honest. They’re stopped right at a narrow gap between the wrought iron shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling of the moderately dangerous room. The lines of the door are hidden behind the metal beams of the shelves, while the keyhole is completely invisible.

            “Would the Acting Grand Master like to do the honors?” Kaeya asks.

            Jean removes a medallion from inside of her jacket and places it against the wall, lining it up to fit inside what looks like a half circle scratched in the wall’s paint. The door depresses inward, then slides open. Jean quickly steps inside, and Kaeya motions for Diluc to follow, and quickly. Kaeya himself just makes it through before the door slides shut again. Diluc looks back at it nervously.

            “Don’t worry, we’re not trapped,” Kaeya tells him. “Jean’s key works from inside as well as out, and even if it didn’t, I can pick the lock.”

            “Which is why I needed Kaeya for this,” Jean says. “Not to get into this room, but to get into the Vision safe. Not even I have the key to it. There’s only one and Master Varka took it with him.”

            Diluc stares at Kaeya long and hard. “Since when are you a master lockpicker?”

            Kaeya is not about to say: “Since I got my Vision,” because that will probably always be a sore point between the two. So he just laughs instead and goes to the safe against the far wall.

            “Did you know that both the lock on the door we just came through and the lock on this safe are completely unpickable?” Kaeya asks, as he wraps the fingers of his right hand around his mora coin then places his left hand against the metal of the safe. “Venessa’s successor commissioned them from a master craftsman from Sumeru, who guaranteed that no one would ever be able to open them without the keys.”

            Then he closes his eye and summons his cryo. Just a touch, to cool down all the metal in the mechanisms, so he can “see” them. Kind of. Not really. He can sense the heat, or lack thereof, so he knows where the tumblers are. Then he summons a bit more power and shapes it on the other side of the metal plate his hands are pressed against, in the empty spaces, and triggers the tumblers.

            The click of the lock opening is always so very satisfying.

            Diluc stares at the hoarfrost left by Kaeya’s power and blinks several times. “Does Varka know you can do that?”

            Kaeya whistles innocently.

            “He suspects, I’m sure,” Jean says. “Kaeya used to break in here regularly before you came back home.”

            “Why? Oh.” Diluc realizes as Kaeya opens the safe door wide, revealing its contents. He falls silent, maybe from guilt or maybe from reverence. Those native to Teyvat have it engrained in them to see Visions as something sacred, so to be in the presence of so many at once clearly makes them feel some kind of way. Even if these are all dim, with only the slightest hint of a glow to prove they’re real, since all their masters are long dead.

            For a second, Kaeya’s heart feels like it’s seizing when he lets his own gaze fall on the collection. He barely manages to suppress a choking noise as his mind registers the lack of a bright red glow amongst the dead Visions. It’s instinct, and this is the first time he’s opened the safe since he swiped Diluc’s Vision to return to his brother. Before that, before Diluc returned home, its bright red glow was always a relief to Kaeya. It was proof that Diluc was still alive.

            Kaeya manages to control himself. It helps that the Vision he’s looking for is right there, hanging from his brother’s hip. Just not on the black velvet lined trays with the rest of the Ordo’s collection. It also helps that both Jean and Diluc are completely focused on the collection so they don’t see his momentary lapse of composure. The last thing he needs is them trying to coddle him any further.

            He looks back at the collection, and forces himself to focus on the ones that are there. Over the centuries, the Ordo has collected almost one hundred Visions. Ninety-eight to be exact. Or at least they still have ninety-eight. Diluc’s was ninety-nine, but that one never should have belonged to the Ordo anyway.

            Most of the Ordo’s collection is made up of Mondstadtian Visions. When an allogene dies, if their Vision doesn’t disappear somehow, Mondstadtian law says it then becomes the property of their family. Often the family has it buried with them. Sometimes they hold onto it in hopes that someone else in the family will be able to use it someday. It’s rare, but it happens, as Kaeya well knows.

            The Ordo is only supposed to obtain Visions for two reasons. The first is if an allogene or their family wills it to the Ordo upon their death, and usually that allogene was part of the Ordo. The second is if it is confiscated from an enemy of Mondstadt. While it’s rare for an allogene to go bad these days, it does happen.

            “This one is Kurtz’s,” Kaeya says, picking out one of only two dendro Visions in the collection. He lifts it and tosses it to Jean like a proper Khaenri’ahn heretic. “Dim. As we knew it was. Feel better?”

            Jean catches it and holds it very close to her face, peering into it. Kaeya stops summoning cryo glow, so now the only light in the room is from their own Visions. Even in the dark, all of the Ordo’s collection barely has any glow at all. Just a very dim gleam inside each gem that could easily be mistaken for a reflection, but proves they are real Visions and not just glass or crystal. Even with it that close to her eyes, Jean can probably only barely see the spiral within the Vision.

            Finally, Jean relaxes. “I didn’t doubt you, Kaeya,” she says ruefully. “I just needed to be sure.”

            “I get it,” Kaeya tells her.

            “So what now?” Diluc asks. “We’ve established that Kurtz is definitely dead.” There’s an odd look on his face, like maybe he was hoping Kurtz might be alive, so he could kill him again.

            “I want to track down Alfred.”

            “Who?”

            “Alfred Brother. The bard. The one who lost his daughter,” Kaeya says. “He spends most every night in the cemetery singing to her now. If he had seen someone digging up the grave, I think he probably would have called it a night and let us know sooner. Still, he might have seen something relevant but just doesn’t realize it’s relevant yet. Diluc and I will go talk to him and see.”

            They return Jonas Kurtz’s Vision, or rather Miri Kurtz’s Vision, to the safe, lock it back up, then leave the vault. Locking it behind them, of course. Kaeya gives the space where the missing sword should be a baleful look and makes a mental note to ditch Diluc and Jean sometime before the day is up so he can check in with some of his sources.

            Once they’ve left behind all restricted access areas and are back in the main part of the library, they hear raised voices. Familiar ones that don’t sound happy.

            “Fischl,” Kaeya says, and hurries ahead to see what’s going on. Jean and Diluc pick up their pace too and the three friends rush into the entry hall to find Fischl and Paimon arguing with Sir Wood. Mona is standing nearby, frowning, and Bennett is right behind Fischl, looking about ready to start arguing too. Oz hovers agitatedly off to the side. Lumine is with them, but more calm. She is the first to see them arrive.

            “Kaeya,” she calls, and waves him over, as though he’s not already on his way.

            “What’s wrong?” Kaeya asks, hurrying over to Fischl’s side. “What’s going on?”

            “Is it true?” Fischl asks him. “Was Kurtz resurrected from his grave?”

            “No. He was dug out, with a shovel. Someone’s playing stupid games,” Kaeya tells her.

            “But what if they resurrected him after digging him up?” Bennett asks, very unhelpfully.

            “They couldn’t. His brain was too damaged to turn him undead even before he spent four years rotting,” Kaeya reminds them all.

            “But what if that wasn’t really Kurtz?” Fischl asks. “What if the wrong man was buried, and Kurtz is still out there, alive?”

            Kaeya looks at Jean who shakes her head. Knowledge of the Ordo’s collection of Visions is strictly confidential. Letting Diluc in on the secret is very different from letting a teenage girl with no connections to the Ordo or familial ties to any of them in on the secret . . . but Fischl looks so scared. For a second, when he’s looking at her, Kaeya sees the terrified little girl who he rushed ahead blindly to save. The one who held him and cried over him in what they both thought were his last moments.

            He can’t just leave her so scared like this.

            So Kaeya makes a decision.

            “Prinzessin, Master Oz, if you please,” Kaeya says. “Acting Grand Master Jean and I would like to speak with you in confidence.”

            “Kaeya . . .” says Jean, a warning in her voice.

            “It’s okay,” Kaeya tells Jean, and hopes she knows that means he’s not going to tell her that they just finished checking Kurtz’s Vision. Honestly, he could have told Jean earlier what he’s about to tell Fischl now, and saved them a trip to the vault, but after the argument he had with Jean last week . . . well, Kaeya would have preferred to keep this card up his sleeve. However, Fischl needs him to play it, for her peace of mind, and so he will.

            Diluc follows them into Jean’s office. As do Lumine and Paimon. Bennett looks like he wants to, but Mona holds him back. Then she gives Kaeya a very knowing look, and a nod before he closes the door to Jean’s office. Which he now very much wishes was the door to his own office. Because Kaeya really wants a drink right now, and has plenty of alcohol in his office, whereas Jean has none.

            “Jonas Kurtz is dead, Fischl. He died trying to escape his execution, with his skull caved in.”

            “But what if it wasn’t him?” asks Fischl. “What if those people who helped him escape had a double prepared? Or –”

            “I know it was him,” says Kaeya, “because I was the one who caved in his skull.”

Four Years Ago . . .

            Admittedly, Kaeya didn’t think his cryo bridge idea through very well. He knew it could be done over water, and be stable, so he just assumed he could make one out across thin air too, but nope. It’s falling apart even as he runs on it, and if he stops, if he even slows down for a moment, it will break apart beneath him and drop him into the panicked crowd below.

            It actually feels like a pretty appropriate metaphor for his life right now, but he doesn’t have much time to think about it. Kaeya doesn’t really know what’s going on, or who those masked idiots who freed Kurtz are, but he’s sick and tired of this whole damn thing. He worked very hard to find Kurtz, then very hard to kill Kurtz. Then Jean undid his work, just so they could put him on trial and sentence him to death and redo his work, and now this?

            Really. Enough is enough.

            So Kaeya runs with no hesitation. He catches a glimpse of Kurtz, escaping between two masked men who have put a long coat on him to cover his undyed prison clothes and help hide his identity . . . but they’re still within the masses and the crowd still recognizes him. They grab at the fools trying to help him escape, and Kaeya sees one go down, probably to be beaten to death or literally torn apart. The whole crowd is in a frenzy.

            The other masked man manages to break through, with Kurtz and get to an alley between buildings, an alley with no masses clogging it, and to hold off pursuit, he throws down a bottle which bursts into white phosphorous flames. Just the sight of them makes Kaeya’s brow bead with sweat and sets his heart pounding harder, with fear, but he can’t afford to be distracted now, can’t let Kurtz get away, so he pushes all thoughts of flames and burns and pain aside and makes it to the roof of one of the buildings forming that alley before all his cryo collapses.

            Kurtz and the masked man are talking urgently. Kaeya can’t hear what they’re saying. Doesn’t actually care right then either, because fuck them both. He grips his mora coin to help focus his power better and throws down his cryo with the force of a meteorite. He means to smash them both with one attack, but they dive apart, the masked man back toward the direction he’d come, and Kurtz the other way. And now the masked man is caught between ice and fire and two walls with overhanging ledges, so even if he tries climbing them, he won’t be able to get away. The icy meteorite from Kaeya’s attack rises far higher than the overhanging ledges and is too sheer to climb, and oh, it looks like those white flames are dying down. It won’t be long before the crowd pushes through and kills that fucker dead.

            Maybe a good knight would try to save him, but Kaeya would prefer he die a violent death at the hands of a mob.

            Kurtz is trying to get away. Running through the maze of alleys made by the many small buildings around Mondstadt Prison. Kaeya, on the rooftops, easily keeps pace . . . okay, maybe not that easily. He will admit, he’s not in as good of shape as he should be in. He probably does need to start eating more again . . . and he will. Once this is over.

            Thankfully Kurtz, lacking the vantage point that Kaeya has, ends up sprinting into a dead end. Kaeya gains ground as the murdering swine stares at the wall in front of him in disbelief. Then, right as he turns around to run back the way he came, Kaeya drops another iceberg down, sealing the exit.

            “Trapped like a rat. It suits you,” Kaeya says, looking down on Kurtz in every possible way.

            “Sir Kaeya . . .” Kurtz glares at him then gives an ugly smile. “Of course it would be you who caught up to me. It certainly wouldn’t be Dame Jean.”

            “I’m the only one crazy enough to try to freeze a pathway over nothing and run on top of it,” says Kaeya. He makes a mental note to find a book about bridge building, so next time he knows what kind of supports he needs to create. Or . . . “Next time I’ll just have her launch me.”

            Then Kaeya jumps down. Which he knows he probably shouldn’t. He can keep Kurtz trapped here easily until backup arrives to take him into custody again. Of course trying to get Kurtz back to the scaffolding to rehang him is going to be a nightmare with the state of the streets right now . . . and what if they give him a stay of execution and reschedule? That won’t do at all. Kaeya wants this done with. Needs this done with. There are too many things he needs to do but can’t with the shadow of this hanging over him, and Fischl is having trouble moving on too. She’s scared, will probably be scared until she knows Kurtz is dead, and Kaeya firmly believes that kids should be allowed to feel safe in their own homes. Kaeya is in a position to make his belief a reality . . . this time, at least.

            Kurtz sees the intention in Kaeya’s eye and gets shifty. “You don’t have to do this, Kaeya.”

            “I know. I’m doing it because I want to.”

            “You and I are more alike than you –”

            “I am nothing like you, you son of a whore!” Kaeya snarls and lunges forward. That attack wasn’t planned. He’d planned on killing him cleanly, giving him a quick death. An ice sword through the heart that he’d claim was self defense, but Kurtz’s comparison unexpectedly drives Kaeya over the edge. Hell, maybe he’s been teetering on the edge for days, maybe even for the past two months, and this is everything finally catching up with him.

            He grabs a handful of Kurtz’s hair and slams his face against the roughly hewn stone wall.

            “You killed your sister! You sick fuck! Kin slaying trash! Don’t you ever compare me to you! I didn’t kill my siblings! It’s not the fucking same as not being able to save them! I tried to protect them! I tried! It! Wasn’t! My! Fault!” With each sentence, then each word, Kaeya slams Kurtz’s head against the wall anew. He feels, but doesn’t really register when the bastard’s skull cracks. Even if he realized what was happening, he probably wouldn’t have cared, he’s so blinded by rage right now. Even as pain lances through his own head, as though he’s the one whose skull is being battered against a pile of rocks, Kaeya keeps up his attack until his strength fails him. Or rather his stamina. He really does need to get back into better shape.

            He releases Kurtz, lets him go, and the bastard’s corpse slumps to the ground, so he lies on his back and . . . yuck. He’s missing a chunk of his damn head.

            “Fuck,” Kaeya whispers as he realizes he kind of overdid it.

            A flicker of purple light makes him spin. Electro. Another allogene? Damn it, did someone see that? No one is in sight. Maybe Kaeya imagined it? When he thinks about his past he gets migraines and they have affected his vision before, made him see lights where there were none . . .

            Well, no one’s screaming bloody murder, no one seems to be there, so Kaeya’s going to hope that it was his imagination. If not . . . oh well. He’ll deal with the consequences when they come.

            Kaeya leaves his cryo blockade where it is, to keep people out of the alley and away from the body, and climbs back up the wall to the roof. Jean or another knight will probably catch up soon, so he can flag them down and report this. Until then he waits and spins his latest lie.

Chapter Text

            “I know it was him,” says Kaeya, “because I was the one who caved in his skull.”

            Diluc blinks. Jean groans. Fischl falls silent, but looks up at Kaeya, her visible eye very wide.

            Kaeya glances at Jean and stands a bit straighter. “He had been sentenced to hang from the neck until dead and the city was a rioting mess. There was no way I could have gotten him safely back to the scaffolding, and no guarantee that the execution would have resumed even if I did. Mond needed to be done with him, so I did what I deemed necessary without worrying about the details.”

            “He was a piece of shit who deserved to die,” Diluc says, and moves to stand a little closer to Kaeya.

            “You know that I can’t officially condone that sort of behavior, Kaeya,” Jean says, looking exhausted. “Of course, I was not the Acting Grand Master then, so it is not my place to condone or approve of your actions.”

            “You’re my hero,” Fischl says, and links her arm with Kaeya’s.

            “Er – thanks,” Kaeya says. He looks at her and Oz, then at Lumine and Paimon. “I know this probably comes as a surprise, and you might not approve, but I would appreciate if you didn’t tell –”

            “I already knew,” Oz says suddenly.

            Kaeya’s and Fischl’s heads both jerk toward the talking raven.

            “Oz!” Fischl yelps.

            “So, you did know,” Kaeya says ruefully.

            “Forgive me, mein Fräulein. You know I would never normally keep anything from you, but Sir Kaeya did not seem to want his actions known, and he saved our lives . . .”

            “Yes. This is true.” Fischl straightens her back and inclines her head again, regaining the confident posture that befits one of her status, even if that status is imagined. “One is certain that the good Errant Knight had his reasons for not revealing his heroism, and you did well to keep his secrets thusly.”

            “Paimon approves too,” Paimon pipes up. “That Blind Seer guy was bad news and Paimon thinks the world is better off without him.”

            Lumine nods, but she looks pensive.

            “Still, it is not the knights’ place to act as judge, jury, and executioner,” Jean says. “Though there are many who would doubtlessly approve, especially since Kurtz had already been sentenced to death, we do ask that you keep this information confidential.”

            “Kaeya?” Lumine asks. “May I ask you something?”

            “Certainly.”

            “Was something wrong then? Did Kurtz say something to you? Or threaten to do something? You aren’t the sort of person who usually goes around crushing peoples’ skulls. Not that I think what you did was wrong,” Lumine says quickly. “Just . . . I wanted to make sure you were . . . you were okay, I guess.”

            Kaeya gives a mirthless laugh. Trust Lumine to see through to that detail . . . and now everyone is looking at him with concern, because they’ve realized what she said is true.

            “I believe the good Captain’s privacy on this matter should be respected,” Oz speaks up.

            “Thanks Oz,” says Kaeya, coming to a decision, especially in the face of the naked concern everyone is showing him, “but it’s okay. I’ve trusted you all with the truth . . . so . . . I might as well give you the truth. But thank you for keeping that secret for so long.”

            “’Twas the least I could do.”

            Kaeya takes a deep breath, then looks to Diluc, and to Jean as he answers Lumine’s question.

            “I snapped,” he admits, “and the reason I snapped was because Kurtz told me we were a lot alike. I know that he meant it in terms of having made our way through life without Visions to that point, but all I could think in that moment was that he was a kin slayer who killed his own sibling and he was likening me to him.”

            Diluc’s jaw clenches. Jean frowns in confusion.

            “I don’t understand. That time you and Diluc dueled, you didn’t hurt him, did you?”

            “No . . . but Diluc wasn’t the brother I was thinking of,” Kaeya admits. He closes his eye as pain slices through his skull.

            “What?” Jean sounds baffled.

            “My good Errant Knight? Are you ill?” Fischl asks, sounding very worried.

            “I’m okay. I just get migraines when I think about my childhood. The parts I spent in Khaenri’ah. I had . . . a little brother there . . . and Mom was due to give birth to another baby soon. Then . . . some bad men came to our home and massacred most of my family . . . and I couldn’t protect them. I know that’s not what Kurtz was talking about, at all, but I couldn’t help but think . . . that I would give anything to see my little brother again . . . or just meet my new sibling . . .” Kaeya’s voice breaks, “and that monster killed his little sister.”

            “Aww . . . Kaeya . . .” Paimon sounds like she’s about to cry.

            A warm hand, heated by pyro, touches the back of Kaeya’s head, right at the base of his skull, helping to ease the pain a bit. Kaeya leans into it. Takes a deep breath. Then tries to shift his thoughts away from his dark past before he gives himself a full blown migraine.

            “So yeah. I snapped.”

            Suddenly, something slams into Kaeya. No, three somethings. Lumine, Paimon, and Fischl each try to crush him in a hug at the same time, and the combined, unexpected force, literally staggers Kaeya. Diluc grabs his shoulder to help steady him, just as Kaeya flings out a hand to brace against the tabletop. His hand hits something and sends it skittering off the table’s edge. A teacup. It falls to the floor where it shatters.

            The three girls quickly release Kaeya, looking embarrassed and murmuring apologies. Kaeya tries to give them a smile to show them he’s not upset, then bends down to retrieve the pieces of the broken teacup.

            “Sorry, Jean –”

            “No. No apologies from you,” Jean says, her voice wavering. “Kaeya, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I never . . .”

            “I never told anyone,” Kaeya says. “Not until recently. It quite literally hurts to think about the past, even more than reading Khaenri’ahn glyphs and . . . and . . .” Kaeya trails off, staring at the shards of the cup in his hands. “Jean?”

            “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Jean hurries forward. “Did you cut yourself?”

            “No . . . Jean, where is this cup from? Liyue?” Kaeya asks, his eye still rivetted to the pieces.

            “I think so. Why do you ask?”

            “What’s wrong, Kaeya?” Diluc asks.

            “Did you figure something out?” Jean is more familiar with Kaeya’s crime solving expressions.

            Kaeya hands each one of them a shard of the teacup. It’s white and blue on the outside . . . but inside, beneath the paint, now visible since it’s cracked open, is light reddish brown fired clay.

            “Does that color look familiar to you?”

            “No . . . wait, yes,” Jean realizes.

            “The dust from the footprint on the roof, and on Pollux’s shoes,” Diluc says.

            “What are you guys talking about?” Paimon asks.

            “Hush. I think they just made a breakthrough in the case,” Lumine hisses.

            “Can . . . can you import clay?” Kaeya asks. Because the idea sounds vaguely ridiculous to him, clay is essentially mud, and Mondstadt has plenty, but people import different types of wood and fabrics and such, so why not clay too?

            “I don’t know. I think so, probably,” Jean says.

            “You can,” Fischl confirms. “The Adventurer Who Bears the World’s Curses tells a lively tale of one misadventure which occurred as he was escorting a merchant caravan laden with Liyuean clay.”

            “So that means . . . what does that mean?” Jean asks, looking at Kaeya with wide eyes.

            The possibilities are spinning around and around in Kaeya’s mind, and the most likely one comes to the forefront, except . . . in order for that one to be true, then . . .

            “Jean, Diluc,” Kaeya says urgently. “When you found the Vision on Pollux’s head . . . had it started to dim, since he’d been dead all night? Or was it still glowing brightly?”

            Jean and Diluc both start and look at each other. The realization that crosses their faces is enough of an answer for Kaeya.

            “Damn it,” Kaeya groans. “This is why you send for me when there’s a crime scene.”

            “Hello, Castor.”

            Castor jumps about a foot off the ground at their greeting. Then he stares, wide eyed, at Kaeya and Jean. He doesn’t look long at Kaeya, doesn’t make eye contact with him except for that initial moment when he looked up from the pot he was glazing, which is interesting in two ways. One, because word has gotten around that Kaeya can tell if someone’s lying to him when he looks into their eyes, and the story has changed to him being able to tell if someone’s guilty just by making eye contact . . . and two, because the glaze that Castor is using is a nice Jueyun red.

            “C-Captain Kaeya . . . Master Jean . . .”

            They’re in the rather sizable shed behind the Medlark home, which Mr. and Mrs. Medlark allowed their boys to convert into space for their hobbies, years ago. It’s Kaeya’s first time here, though he’s heard about this place in passing. Sometimes Pollux would gather other youths from Mondstadt to come here and play or train with him. The floors are covered with mats to soften falls during practice fighting, and the walls are lined with practice weapons. Lots of them. Wooden ones, metal ones with blunted edges, mostly long swords, but there are practice claymores and pole arms mixed in too, and some small bows that the twins look like they’ve outgrown. Wooden training dummies are lined up near one wall. All the stuff needed for combat practice takes up almost all the available space, but in one corner is a little square with no mats and a dirt floor, covered with clay dust. Reddish brown clay dust. There’s a small potter’s wheel that Castor was using when they entered, and a set of scorched, broken shelves behind him, as well as some covered buckets and boxes that probably hold Castor’s pottery supplies.

            When Kaeya really looks at it, even knowing what he does, he can’t help but feel a twinge of pity. It’s clear that the area was bigger once. The mats bordering it are newer than the ones on the other side of the room. Not all of the other mats are the same age either. It looks like little by little, Castor lost his own space to his brother, until he had only that small corner left.

            Also of note, the pattern of dust, or rather dust stains on the mats is odd. They’re mostly clean in the middle, with marring around the edges . . . like they spent a long time with the other side up, while dust and damp fell in the cracks between the mats and made those patterns. Interesting . . .

            “We’re sorry to bother you, Castor,” Jean says, “but we have a few questions.”

            “Actually,” says Kaeya, as his gaze comes to rest on a darker stain than the ones caused by the clay dust, “we don’t.” He walks over to the mat, his nose wrinkling at the smell that he can now detect, and flips it over to reveal a massive bloodstain on the other side of the mat. “We just want to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

            When they’re caught, murderers usually react in a handful of different ways. Some go on the attack. Others flee. Some try to lie their way out, while others crack and confess. Kaeya and Jean have learned to always be prepared for the first two. They’re both armed and highly alert since it is an allogene they’re planning to arrest. Moreover, they have backup, both in case of injuries or if Castor tries to run. Diluc is waiting just outside the shed door, and Noelle is with him. Then Fischl and Lumine’s whole party came along, not exactly invited but not unwelcome either. Fischl deserves to see this laid to rest, Oz makes escape impossible for Castor, and Lumine’s an honorary knight. Mona’s hydro Vision will be useful for stopping the spread of flames if things go sideways, and Bennett can contribute a little extra healing if they need it . . . but today they’re lucky, and all their backup turns out to be superfluous. Castor doesn’t try to run, doesn’t try to fight them. He just sits there numbly for several seconds. Then he lowers his gaze to the floor.

            “I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t know what happened. It was an accident.”

            “You accidentally stabbed your brother twelve times, blindfolded him, and transported his body halfway across the city?”

            “After I . . . after I did it, I panicked. I didn’t want . . . I couldn’t . . .” Castor grits his teeth and bows his head. Tears drips down his cheeks and off his chin.

            Kaeya nods to Jean.

            “Castor,” she says gently. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that you’ve had to go through this. You must have felt so alone.”

            “So alone that he had to seek out other company to kill,” Kaeya says crassly.

            “Kaeya, enough,” Jean says in a strained voice. “Can’t you see how much pain he’s in?”

            “Probably not as much as I would have been in if he actually managed to shoot me.”

            “Be silent, Kaeya. That’s an order.” Jean sounds genuinely upset with him. If Kaeya didn’t know better, if they hadn’t done this song and dance many times before, he really would have thought that he’d crossed the line and would be backing down. Maybe. Actually, probably not, since Castor took a shot at him, then went and murdered someone else, but then Jean wouldn’t get genuinely upset with him for snarking at someone who did all that. “Castor, I’m very sorry. You didn’t deserve that . . . and I’m sorry to have to ask this, I’m sorry to have to cause you more pain . . . but I need to know what happened. Can you talk to me? Can you help me understand?”

            Castor is silent for a long moment, crying soundlessly.

            “Castor . . . it was to you that the Vision appeared, wasn’t it? It was your Vision all along . . . but your brother was able to use it too somehow?”

            “No. I mean, yes,” Castor grits out. “It came to me. Right after I earned my apprenticeship. My whole life I’ve wanted to be a potter. I love it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I didn’t need big adventures or glory. I’d rather stay home where it’s safe and quiet . . . but I was still happy to get a Vision. It felt like the Archons were . . . were telling me I’d done right. Even though Pollux . . . Pollux . . .” His voice breaks.

            “It’s okay,” Jean tells him. “I promise, it won’t always hurt like this . . . and believe it or not, talking about it will help.”

            “Which is why you should definitely not talk about it,” Kaeya says. “The pain you feel right now? You deserve it. You should always feel as bad as you do right now.”

            “Kaeya!”

            “He killed his own brother! And for what? A chunk of crystal?”

            “I didn’t mean to kill him! I didn’t mean to! It was an accident!”

            “Oh sure. An accident.” Kaeya gives the boy an ugly smile. “I believe you completely.”

            “I believe him,” Jean says flatly. She puts a hand on Castor’s shoulder. “I want to hear what really happened, Castor. You know that stealing a Vision is a serious crime, both against the Archons and against Mondstadt’s laws? It was very, very wrong for Pollux to take yours from you . . . and for your parents to let him. I want to help you, Castor . . . and I want to help take your pain away. Please talk to me. Please tell me what happened.”

            Castor takes a deep breath. “Even though I didn’t want to be a fighter or Adventurer, I was still happy to get a Vision. Especially since it was pyro. I could have used it for my pottery. Firing my work faster, or . . . making new techniques. In Inazuma they have this way of glazing that makes these beautiful cracks over most of the surface. I don’t know how they do it. I thought that using my Vision I might be able to replicate it, or come up with something new entirely.”

            “That sounds lovely.”

            “Pollux never knew what he wanted to do. He jumped around a lot. One week he wanted to be an Adventurer, the next a hunter, and the week after that he wanted to be a pirate. The one thing he did know was that he wanted my Vision. It would make whatever he decided to do a whole lot easier. He couldn’t even use it, it didn’t work for him even though we’re twins. His plan was to fake it working by throwing pyro potions and fireworks, and Mom and Dad said he could have it!”

            “That was very wrong of them. That wasn’t fair, and it’s against the law. We never would have even let Pollux into the Ordo’s tryouts if we knew how he came by his Vision.”

            “One of the conditions Mom and Dad gave him for getting to keep it was that he had to join the knights.”

            “And what about you?” jeers Kaeya. “What did you get out of it? Surely you got something for it, no one just gives up their Vision, and if you traded it then it’s not theft, is it?”

            “I didn’t get anything for it! Mom made me give it to Pollux! She said I didn’t need it as much as him, and it was hers anyway because I lived under their roof and didn’t actually own anything! So she could take it from me and give it to him, and there was nothing I could do about it! She told me if I argued then she and Dad wouldn’t let me go to Master Brock’s for my apprenticeship.”

            “That must have been so hard,” says Jean sympathetically.

            “I . . . I was going to let it go. Because there was nothing I could do. Then, the night before I was supposed to start moving my stuff to Master Brock’s place . . . Pollux burned my display shelf with one of his potions. It was an accident, a careless one, but still an accident, but it was where I had all my best pieces. The ones I worked the hardest on. Even the ones that won me my apprenticeship, and I . . . I don’t know what happened. The next thing I knew, I was standing over him and my fettling knife was buried in his chest. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill my brother . . .” With that, Castor breaks down. He buries his face in his hands and just sobs.

            Jean puts a hand on his back and rubs gently. Kaeya can see it in her eyes that she does feel genuine sympathy for him. Less than she would if he hadn’t killed a second, unrelated allogene and shot at Kaeya, but she’s probably going to feel rotten over how she’s going to manipulate him into writing out his confession and signing it next, though she’ll do it anyway. Jean’s reliable like that, and Kaeya is grateful that she has never flinched away from the unenviable job of having to play the nice interrogator, and using that genuine sympathy of hers as a weapon.

            As a point of fact, Kaeya can play the nice interrogator when he has to. Jean is just much, much better at it. Kaeya has a harder time pretending to be nice to people who he’s just hunted down like the animals they are, and it’s almost like the murderers resent him for exploiting all the mistakes they made and catching them. Go figure.

            Kaeya glances toward the shed door and catches a glimpse of red, and has to suppress a sigh. Of course Diluc was hovering close enough to come charging in if it came to a fight. So, of course he heard everything that Castor said. In his case he’s probably feeling less sympathetic and more self-loathing.

            This damn case really did drag the past back into the light for all three of them, in all the worst ways. Kaeya is just glad it’s over. Aside from taking Castor to Mondstadt Prison to await his trial, and dealing with his already grief stricken parents who will now be either inconsolable or outraged, or possibly both, and having to keep the city calm while they put a rush on holding the aforementioned trial so they don’t have any riots. It kind of makes Kaeya nostalgic for a few days ago, when the worst thing he had to look forward to was translating that old Khaenri’ahn book and getting migraines for however long that took.

            No matter. Kaeya and Jean will do their jobs as they always have, and Kaeya will do everything he can to support her . . . and if Diluc needs to talk, or just needs to be around them to regain his equilibrium after this nerve wracking case, then Kaeya will be there for him too.

Four Years Ago . . .

            “Your sovereign is pleased to see you remain in good health. This morning’s events were quite harrowing, and one did worry over thy safety, good Errant Knight.”

            “My apologies, Prinzessin,” Kaeya says with a gallant bow. “I would have been by to alleviate your worries sooner, had I been able to, but with the city in its state of unrest, my shift only just ended.”

            Between the rioting and explosions, injuries, property damage, and the hunt for those mysterious masked figures who’d instigated the violence and freed Kurtz from the gallows, it was all hands on deck in the Ordo. Everyone, from their military branch to their alchemists, even their librarians and cleaning staff, were all tapped to help, restore order, clear debris from the roads, put out fires, roll bandages . . . the tasks had seemed never ending. They never did find those masked bastards, aside from a couple of their corpses, torn apart by the mob. None of them had any identifying information on them, nor have they been identified yet, but Kaeya has a suspicion that he knows who they worked for . . . and he intends to look into it further. Once he’s rested a bit. Only now, past dinner time, but approaching prime drinking hours, were those who had been on the clock since before the execution allowed to go home. Kaeya had considered heading straight to Cat’s Tail and spending his whole week’s paycheck to drink himself to oblivion, but he has the feeling that if he starts down that road there will be no coming back for him. He can’t afford that now, and he has more important things to do tonight anyway.

            “Will you come in, my good Errant Knight? My sire and lady mother are home and would love the honor of meeting the valiant hero who saved their royal scion. Have you eaten? I shall arrange a feast in thy honor. Though thrown in haste it may be, of its quality you can be assured –”

            “Mein Fräulein, forgive my impertinence, but Sir Kaeya looks exhausted.”

            “Goodness gracious! Forgive me, good Errant Knight. I seek not to impose upon your time if you must seek rest!”

            “Nothing to forgive, Prinzessin,” Kaeya assures her, “though regrettably I cannot stay. I only came by because I wanted to make sure you were told, despite some of the rumors that are circulating, that Jonas Kurtz is indeed dead. I saw his body and confirmed it myself.”

            He knows Fischl hasn’t been sleeping well since that night Kurtz almost killed them. He wants her to be able to feel safe again.

            “One thanks you for thy leal service, my good Errant Knight. One is truly blessed to have a friend such as you.”

            Kaeya’s not sure what leal service is, exactly, but no matter. He gives her another bow, this one more formal. “I should be going now. My next shift starts just after dawn tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll see you again soon . . . and if you ever need me for anything, please don’t hesitate to seek me out.”

            “Many thanks, good Errant Knight.”

            Kaeya turns to leave.

            “Good Errant Knight?”

            Kaeya turns back. “Yes, Prinzessin?”

            “I’m planning to join the Adventurers’ Guild. My lady mother and my sire have given their consent. It is my intention to become an investigator for the guild, and making use of mine familiar’s power, I intend to rise quickly through the ranks and amass wealth and treasure while having all manner of adventures. If . . . if ever you wish to leave the Ordo . . . if you grow weary of the slights and unfairness cast upon you by those you work with . . . know that there will forever be a spot reserved for you in my retinue. You would be a most welcome addition, and I swear by my Edelstein der Dunkelheit, your contributions would never be miscredited or your valor overshadowed that others may steal your glory. I would never treat you like that. You deserve so much more.”

            The offer is tempting, even though it’s being extended by a fourteen-year-old girl. Starting anew, joining an organization that doesn’t so much ask for loyalty as it asks for enthusiasm . . . an organization that transcends the borders of all of Teyvat’s countries, so if one day Kaeya’s original purpose in Mondstadt were to be revealed . . . he would be more likely to have someplace else left he could go. He and Fischl could very possibly make a good team. With her ability to use Oz to scout and Kaeya’s tactical mind, he’s sure they could go far. Their elements work well together too . . . It’s a nice daydream, but that’s all it can be.

            “Thank you, Fischl. I really mean it.” Kaeya sighs. “Unfortunately, there’s something important that I need to do. Something I might be the only one who can do, and I need to be a knight in order to do it.”

A couple of notes:

The final chapter of Blind Mirror should be finished and posted within 24 hours. It always feels good to check another fic off as done, especially when it’s a long one. :)

Thank you for all the comments left on this fic so far. Sorry I haven’t responded to more of them, but by now I think everyone knows that I do my best not to spoil my own plots, and there were many insightful comments that responding to, or even failing to respond to if I was responding to everyone/other parts of the comment, could give away more than I wanted to. I’ll be responding to comments that are left for this chapter before I post the final one tomorrow, so if you have questions, now’s the time to ask them.

One last thing for now: tomorrow, on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/StrangeDiamond5) I’ll be having a poll to decide which of the three Twitter thread fics I’ve done so far will get a part two. (Options are the Harry Potter/Genshin Impact Reincarnation AU, Fire Emblem Three Houses/ Genshin Impact crossover, and Game of Thrones/Genshin Impact Reincarnation AU) So, if you have a preference, and a Twitter account to vote from, check it out, tomorrow, after the final chapter of Blind Mirror goes live.

Chapter Text

Present Day Mondstadt

            They wrap up the case of the Second Blind Seer, as too damn many people have started calling it, as nicely and neatly as it can be wrapped up. Kaeya is disgusted by how badly people seem to want to use that stupid name, but there’s really nothing he can do to stop them and it’s not worth the energy it takes to try.

            Jean gets Castor’s written confession for the murders of his brother and Susanne Millner, who he so senselessly killed just to try and get away with Pollux’s murder. He also confesses to taking that shot at Kaeya, through the window of his home since by now Kaeya’s acquired a reputation for always catching the killer he’s after.

            They find the remains of Jonas Kurtz in the fire pit behind the Medlark house. Castor attempted to dispose of it there, not realizing how hard it really is to reduce bones to ashes. On the bright side, it’s much less disgusting to just be able to toss all the charred bones into a bag, rather than have to transport a corpse that’s been decaying for four years halfway across the city. Kaeya even toys with the idea of giving the bones to Sucrose to examine for a while, since studying bones is her thing, but she’s not at headquarters. Apparently Albedo took Timaeus somewhere and they asked her to watch the alchemy shop by Mondstadt General Goods for them. So Kaeya really has no excuse not to turn the bones over to Sister Cynthia when she comes to harangue them about giving them to the Church for reburial.

            After that there’s paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. Forms to fill out and sign, reports to write, and equipment and supplies lists to make so they can replace whatever they used on this case before the next one crops up. Jean asks for his help with a few things too. The main one being to look over the statement she’ll be reading to the public and circulating copies of. She lingers in the doorway of his office, and as he reads over it, Kaeya realizes it’s because she wanted to see his reaction to her words.

            This is the first serial killer they’ve caught since she became Acting Grand Master of the Ordo . . . and she’s giving full credit for tracking him down to Kaeya.

            “Are you sure about this?” he asks her.

            “I am. By now everyone knows that you’re the real detective in our partnership, Kaeya. I’ll only look like a fool and a glory hog if I keep taking the credit for myself,” Jean says practically.

            “Fair enough.”

            “ . . . And I hope you know . . . I never wanted to steal it from you.”

            “I know,” Kaeya tells her.

            Diluc disappeared once they got back to the Ordo’s headquarters, so Kaeya is spared having to work with his brother breathing down the back of his neck. Before departing he warned Kaeya not to overdo it, and stated that if Kaeya is not back at his house to start resting by dinner time, then he is coming back to drag him home. The threat isn’t necessary. Kaeya and Jean have their tradition. After catching a serial killer they get off work early, eat pizza, and drink wine. Usually at Kaeya’s place. Because twice, at Jean’s place, they have overdone it with the wine, since the Gunnhildr family’s wine cellar is a little too well curated . . . but they do not speak of that. Ever.

            Fischl and Lumine’s party went their own ways after the arrest, since the potential threat against Lumine and Fischl was neutralized. As far as Kaeya knows, none of them have any immediate plans, but he’s sure they’ll all find something to get up to soon enough. Especially Lumine and Paimon. Because it’s been a few minutes since those two got up to something world altering, so they’re probably overdue.

            By the time Kaeya calls it a day, he’s gotten done everything that he needs to, at least for now. There’s still the matter of that creepy cursed sword that went missing, but that can wait until tomorrow. He swings by Jean’s office to let her know he’s going, and is pleased when she decides she’s done enough for the day too. They walk to Cat’s Tail together to get the pizzas, and end up ordering two with all the toppings. Then they head to Kaeya’s house, where Diluc is pacing and staring at the clock. He relaxes at the sight of them. Then, for some reason, his eyes light up at the sight of the pizza boxes, and he looks very happy. Kaeya’s not sure why, he knows Diluc likes pizza well enough, but doesn’t think he really, really loves it or anything, but no matter. He’s always happy to see his brother happy.

            “Another serial killer caught,” Kaeya says, sliding the boxes onto his kitchen table then heading to his alcohol cabinet. “Though, I don’t know if a copycat technically classifies as a serial killer . . .”

            “He did kill two people, and nearly killed you,” Jean points out.

            “He didn’t nearly kill me, his aim was crap . . . but I agree with your reasoning. What he did was bad enough. Remember that when you start feeling guilty about sweet talking him to get his written confessions.”

            “I’ll try,” Jean says as she grabs plates and wine glasses for them. “Do you still have any of those sparkling Fontaine whites?”

            “I do, as a matter of fact.”

            “You two drink Fontaine wines for your celebrations?” asks Diluc, sounding betrayed.

            Jean makes a guilty sound. Kaeya smirks. “Not exclusively, but there are some investigation agencies in Fontaine who are fond of sending me ridiculously expensive bottles, and there’s something really cathartic about pairing them with pizza.”

            That makes Diluc shake his head, but gets a chuckle out of Jean. Kaeya selects a bottle of a vintage that he and Jean have enjoyed before and chills it with a touch of cryo. Then he summons his sword and sabers the bottle open. Because he can. He pours glasses for him and Jean, then cherry cider for Diluc, then each of them plate up some pizza for themselves and head into the living room, bringing the rest of the bottle and the boxes with them.

            Kaeya sinks into the center seat of the couch, even though traditionally, he sits on the right side and Jean on the left, so he can see her in his peripheral vision that way and doesn’t have to turn as far to look at her when they talk. However, he can tell that Diluc feels a little out of place, just coming into their tradition, so him sitting in the middle makes things easier now, and keeps Diluc from having to wonder if he should sit in between Jean and Kaeya or in the chair several meters away. Jean takes her usual place on his left. Diluc sits to his right.

            It’s been a very long time since the three of them have done something like this. Gotten a meal together, or spent leisurely time together, just the three of them. Kaeya didn’t realize how much he’s missed it until now.

            “This is really good pizza,” Diluc says, sounding impressed.

            “Isn’t it?” Jean asks enthusiastically. “Cat’s Tail makes the best pizza in Mond. It’s such a shame they don’t deliver, and that their kitchen closes early. I almost never get a chance to order from them.”

            “According to my sources, their secret is their oven,” Kaeya reveals. “It burns hotter than a normal oven, and cooks the pizza faster, which makes the crust nice and crispy.”

            “Glad to see you’re using your connections to gather important intel.”

            “Glad you approve, brother.”

            Jean laughs.

            They lapse into silence as they eat. Kaeya refills his glass twice, and Jean’s glass once. Diluc doesn’t need a refill, but then, he’s not drinking to feel the buzz like Kaeya and Jean are. Though the silence starts off easy, as they near the end of the meal, Kaeya can’t help but feel like it’s somehow changed. Become more brooding. Which isn’t unusual for his and Jean’s post-serial killer catching celebrations, because in their investigations they have seen some really messed up shit. He’d rather hoped that wouldn’t happen this time, however. They’re all three together again, this should be a happy time, even in light of what the killer they just caught did . . . but, Kaeya realizes, the past is still sinking its claws into all three of them, perhaps especially because of what Castor did. Killing his brother in a fit of anger. Then imitating Kurtz.

            Castor dredged up dark memories and mistakes that Diluc and Jean still regret to this day, despite them trying so hard to make things right . . . and Diluc and Jean don’t have as much practice as Kaeya at putting the past out of their minds. Kaeya’s glad about that, really, he never wants them to need to have as much practice as him, but neither does he want this eating them alive, especially not now that things between the three of them are good.

            Unfortunately, Kaeya only has one idea for how to fix it right now, and it’s not the most ideal solution. Still, a surefire way of getting both of these two to snap out of their guilt and brooding is to make them realize that someone they care about needs them, not just in general, but right at that moment . . . so, as painful as he knows it will be, that’s what Kaeya does.

            “Sorry,” he says, probably seemingly out of the blue. Out the corner of his eye he sees Jean start and look at him, perplexed and worried by his tone. When he turns his head to the right to check his brother, Diluc is looking at him sharply. “I told you multiple times not to compare this case to the last one, not to think about it in terms of the past. So, we never even considered the fratricide angle.”

            “You don’t need to apologize for that,” Diluc says, slightly incredulous.

            “There was no way anyone could have realized they had that in common,” Jean tells him. “If anything, we should be apologizing for not realizing that the Vision hadn’t dimmed at the rate it should have.”

            “That’s not your fault, you didn’t realize he’d been dead all night until I said something, and by then it had slipped your minds.”

            Honestly, Kaeya is a little annoyed that they didn’t call him to the crime scene because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have missed that detail. However, he is not going to bring that up right now, because they don’t need anything else to feel bad about right now. Everything that Castor did is the fault of Castor and Castor alone. They are not to blame for him being a selfish piece of shit who decided to kill someone else in a vain attempt to throw Kaeya off the trail of his brother’s murder.

            “I should have been thinking harder about Castor’s motive. Before we knew it was Castor, I mean. I was actually kind of . . . putting it out of my mind that he had a brother whenever I could. Because of, you know . . . Kurtz’s last words. Even though I know that’s not how Kurtz meant them. He wasn’t accusing me of being a kin slayer like him, I mean. Even if he was there’s . . . a big difference between killing your sibling and not being able to save them. I know that. I do. It’s just that sometimes I don’t believe it . . . and lately . . . this past week, I mean . . . I’ve been thinking that forgetting my brother . . . is kind of like letting him down again.” Kaeya winces against the pain that’s been building inside his skull. “Until the dream poison . . . there was so much that I’d forgotten. I couldn’t even remember his name.”

            “Kaeya . . .” Jean whispers.

            Diluc reaches out with a pyro heated hand and presses his palm against the back of Kaeya’s neck, at the base of his skull.

            “Thanks. I . . . I wonder if I could tell you about my little brother? So that even if I forget again, at least someone will remember? You said that if I ever needed to talk . . . you said to come to you,” Kaeya reminds Diluc, though he’s sure his brother hasn’t forgotten. “And Jean . . . would you be willing to listen too?”

            “Of course,” Jean says, reaching out to take one of Kaeya’s hands, wrapping her own slender fingers around his. “Of course.”

            “Whatever you need,” Diluc says gently. As Kaeya knew he would.

            Both of them are completely focused on Kaeya now. Not on the painful mistakes that still haunt them, even though they’ve done all they could to make things right. Even though Kaeya’s forgiven both of them for anything they think they need forgiveness for. How could he not when they clearly care so much about him? The two of them are the only ones Kaeya would ever play this card with. Would ever make himself this vulnerable in front of, just to pull them out of their own dark thoughts . . . but once Kaeya starts talking, he quickly realizes that this isn’t completely a ploy. He really does want to talk about his little brother. No matter how much it hurts.

            “His name was Hagey . . . well, I think it was actually Hagen. I called him Hagey. Big brother’s privilege. He was the cutest kid . . . and the biggest juice fiend you’ve ever seen. When I went out hunting, I always tried to find some fruit to bring back to make some for him. He was always waiting for me at the door, with big hopeful eyes. ‘Juice, Kae! Juice!’ was how he always greeted me, and . . .”

            Kaeya keeps talking. Tells them everything he can remember about the brother that he lost. Depressingly, it’s not that much. But they listen. To everything he says. And when he’s finished, they make sure he knows they’re there for him. Diluc keeps his hand pressed to the back of Kaeya’s neck and gives him a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Jean wraps her arms around him carefully, and hugs him tight. Kaeya doesn’t cry. Not this time. Somehow, this isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. His head still hurts, horribly, but . . . it’s like his big brother and his best friend help keep him anchored.

            It’s . . . nice. Having family again.

Four Years Ago . . .

            It’s taken all of Jean’s courage to call upon Kaeya at his home. Or at least at the room he’s renting. Somehow she can’t really bring herself to think of it as his home. It’s her first time here, and her first time seeing Kaeya alone, in a non-work situation since he woke up after Kurtz nearly killed him. She’s brought a peace offering. Even though Kaeya hasn’t seemed particularly mad, and has inferred that things between them are okay, she can still tell that he was hurt by Varka’s decision . . . and Jean’s decision to go along with it. She knows that if Kaeya is truly upset, no bribe is going to change his mind, however . . . but she still feels like she owes him something anyway.

            She knocks. Then hears soft footsteps within. The door opens, just wide enough for Kaeya’s stormy blue eye to peer out. Then he shuts it, leaving Jean gaping, at least until she hears the sound of a chain latch being undone. Then Kaeya opens the door again, wider this time.

            “Hello, Jean. Everything okay?”

            “Yes. Hi Kaeya. May I come in?”

            “Certainly.” Kaeya steps back so she can enter, then closes the door behind her.

            Jean looks around, trying not to seem too critical. Even though she is assessing the space, making sure it’s a decent enough living place for her friend, who is now her righthand man. It’s small, but spartan. Well lit, with clean cream colored walls. Not much, or really anything in the way of furnishings, but she guesses that’s because Kaeya doesn’t have much since being disowned by Diluc. He has his bedroll made up neatly in one corner. She’s pretty sure it’s the one he was issued when he was serving under Diluc in the cavalry. No pillow, no extra blankets. Jean will have to find an excuse to gift him some soon. She’d gift him a whole bed if she thought he’d accept it. Kaeya does have money, however, so maybe he hasn’t bought one because he doesn’t want one. Maybe he’s not planning to stay here long and that’s why he hasn’t bought any furniture. He doesn’t have a table or any chairs either.

            There are papers on the floor, spread out in what seems to be a particular order. Upon closer look, Jean realizes that they’re for two separate projects . . . or investigations. One is the Blind Seer case, now laid to rest. She can only tell because Kaeya has written some key words much larger than the others, in his shaky, broken handwriting. Jueyun Red. Rounded Piercing Weapons. There seem to be lists under those key words, so those must be Kaeya’s personal notes for the case, that he hasn’t cleaned up yet. She doesn’t have time to look at the other, and there don’t seem to be any oversized, easily readable words on them anyway. There is, however, a box with fresh pizza in it near them, and the delicious scent hangs in the air, so whatever those papers are, Kaeya must have been working on them over his meal before she arrived.

            “What can I do for you, Jean?” Kaeya asks, politely.

            “I brought you some more scar salve . . . and this bottle of wine.” Jean holds the offerings out to him.

            Kaeya looks confused, but takes them carefully. The breakable wine bottle in his right hand, which he seems to have to depend on now, since it has recovered better. His left hand is slower to lift the stone jar of scar salve, but his movements are much better than they were a month ago. “Thank you very mu . . . Jean, do you know what this is?”

            Of course Kaeya recognizes an expensive bottle of wine when he sees it.

            “I know. Kaeya, I am so, so sorry.” Jean’s vision goes a little blurry with tears, which she blinks back. “I should have never . . . I didn’t want to but Master Varka . . . No. I knew it was wrong. I still went along with it. I have no excuse. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to correct the report and let everyone know that it was you who –”

            “Don’t.”

            “What? But –”

            “Jean, we both know the reason you went along with Varka’s scheme. For Mondstadt.”

            Jean shakes her head, even though he’s right. “That’s no excuse for my deception, nor my betrayal –”

            “You didn’t betray me, Jean.”

            “I did. I took credit for your work, your brilliance, and your heroism. You deserve to have everyone know what you did for Mondstadt,” she tells him.

            “Everyone who matters to me already knows, Jean,” Kaeya says. “If you try to change the record now, it’s going to do more harm than good. You’ll be tarnishing both our reputations. Yours, because those who believe you won’t look kindly on you for lying, and mine because there will still be plenty of people who won’t believe you, and will think that I somehow put you up to this. Don’t,” he says when she opens her mouth to protest, “you know it’s true. At this point, trying to change the narrative isn’t going to do either of us any good. Besides, I’m okay with this. I work better when there isn’t a lot of focus on me. This way we both benefit. As does Mondstadt. Isn’t that what really matters?”

            “It’s not the only thing that matters,” says Jean. “You matter. You’re my friend.”

            “You’re my friend too,” Kaeya tells her, very solemnly. When Jean’s gaze drops to the floor, Kaeya sighs and sets down the gifts she just gave him (also on the floor), then reaches out to put his hands on her shoulders. “Jean, you’re the only one who . . . you’ve been here for me even though . . . when I had no one . . .” He stops and sighs. “I would give my life for you, you know? What’s a little bit of glory compared to that?”

            Jean doesn’t feel like she deserves his friendship. She’s not a very good friend. Then again, if Diluc is the standard he’s comparing her to, Diluc who scorched his hands and his heart, then Kaeya’s standards are far too low. One doesn’t even have to try to beat that. Kaeya deserves so much better than either of them . . . but right now, she’s what he has.

            “If it bothers you so much . . . there’s a few ways you could make it up to me,” Kaeya says.

            “Anything,” Jean says instantly.

            Kaeya smirks. “You don’t even know what I’m asking for yet.”

            “It doesn’t matter. If it’s within my power, I’ll do it.”

            “Well, my first request is easy enough. Tedious, but not difficult.”

            “What can I do?”

            “My left hand is never going to fully heal, and by now I know, it’s ruined for swordsmanship.”

            “Kaeya . . .”

            “So, I need to relearn how to fight, but with my right hand. It’s not a completely hopeless cause, I promise,” says Kaeya. “Before Crepus took me in I trained in long knife fighting. That uses both hands. So I have something to go on, at least. I’ll need a sparring partner –”

            “I’ll do it. I’ll be your sparring partner,” Jean promises. “No matter how long it takes, we’ll get you so you’re as good with your right hand as you were with your left.”

            “Thanks. As for the other thing . . . I think that Eroch is a traitor. I think he’s working against Mondstadt, and I intend to take him down. Will you help me?”

Ending Notes

Thank you for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed this fic all the way to its conclusion. I plan to write more stories in this continuity, but I am going to be quite busy in the coming weeks, so my plan is to focus on shorter works for awhile.

Speaking of which, on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/StrangeDiamond5) I’m setting up a poll to decide which of the three Twitter thread fics I’ve done so far will get a part two. (Options are the Harry Potter/Genshin Impact Reincarnation AU, Fire Emblem Three Houses/Genshin Impact crossover, and Game of Thrones/Genshin Impact Reincarnation AU) So, if you have a preference, and a Twitter account to vote from, feel free to stop by.

There may be bonus chapters for this fic to come. I currently don’t have any planned, but you never know when inspiration will strike.

In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys the new content coming in the 1.4 update. I really love this game, and I’m happy to be able to connect with so many other people who love it too.

Oh, one last thing: in case you haven’t seen it yet, this fic has gotten some fan art too!  Special thanks to @vatloena on twitter for this picture: https://twitter.com/vatloena/status/1367994285111603201