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Kaeya had expected this, but Khaenri'ah's palace isn't very much like his old home.
First, the benefits: it's large, and he gets a room to himself; there's always enough food to eat; his clothes are so nice, just selling one tunic could easily feed his family — the one he left behind — for an entire week.
The drawbacks: his family is not here; the man who calls himself his father promised that he would take Kaeya back for periodic visits, but there's no way to ask him to follow through with it, not without risking an argument; his father's wife, who is not Kaeya's mother, refuses to look him in the eye, or even acknowledge that he exists; his father's daughter takes to him with a sort of wicked glee that promises future hurt and fills him with a sort of dread he's never known before.
There are kinder words for children like him, than what he hears whispered in the palace walls — children sired by men who turned their backs on the families they'd built for themselves, in favor of taking more than they were permitted.
On any other occasion, the palace would have no use for a bastard of royal blood rotting away in a tiny hut by the water — but Khaenri'ah reels from a war they'd only barely scraped through, not more than a few years ago — and though they've never cared to turn Celestia's way, it's no small matter that the gods are not happy with them. The kingdom teeters on the brink of something nobody dares to utter aloud — the kind of ruin that will spare no one, no matter their power or prestige.
His father's daughter, Kamilah, grips his hand tightly in hers and drags him away from the table the moment they're dismissed. She's smaller than him, but her grip is so strong that it threatens to shatter the bones in his wrist. This place is not his home like it is hers, and so he has no idea where she will take him — what she means to do with him. Before, she was content to chase him through the halls he still has no idea how to navigate, tackling him with all of her strength when she caught up; another time, she pushed him down a well, and wailed loudly when he did not resurface hours later.
He tries not to hold it against her, though — she won't live for very long after this moment. She's hurting too, as is everyone in Khaenri'ah when the land teeters on the brink of ruin. It's pointless to grieve for someone who is no more his sister than his father's wife is his mother, but the loss eats at him still.
Kamilah twirls, shrieking with laughter, and tugs on his arm to spin him out with her. With a few years more, maybe Kaeya would have one day learned this dance — but he stumbles, and her grip is all that keeps him from tumbling to the ground. "Mother says you're going to die for us," she says in a sing-song voice.
—because that's why Kaeya is here to begin with: because there is power in his eye — a key that will one day spell their land's salvation, no matter what the gods may choose to do with it in the near future. It's a gift bestowed upon him by the royal blood that runs through his veins — and a blessing for the royal family in which he has no part, because none of them are capable of taking on this burden.
"Do you think the gods are laughing?" she asks. "Do you think they'll be happy, once they finally destroy everything we've built?"
She's wearing a thick, fluffy red coat over her yellow dress, even though the palace never gets so cold that he ever has to wear more than a light jacket.
(—and then he remembers: home is no longer this palace, but the Dawn Winery, the Ragnvindr manor, a small rented room in Springvale, a cramped apartment in the city, a townhouse he was finally able to purchase with his own money that no one will be able to take from him.
A strange sort of magic swirled in the pyro Abyss Mage's hands, before it snaked through Kaeya's lungs and enveloped all that he is.
"Traitor," he heard the creature snarl, before everything fell away.)
"Stupid," she chides him. "The gods did not forget, and nor did we. Traitor that you are... did you honestly believe that we would do nothing, when you left us here to rot?"
At the end of the hall, there's a single door — not the same closet that Kamilah had locked him in days ago, but likely similar. She grins, wickedly, pyro dancing at her fingertips. "Then die for us, Kaeya Alberich."
She gives him a shove, and before he can right himself in time, the door slams shut behind him. There are no footsteps as she flees, but there's laughter — first in Kamilah's voice, but then growing more and more distorted the farther away she gets.
He's... going to die here. He's going to die for a kingdom upon which he turned his back, because he was too selfish to fulfill the one duty they'd demanded of him. Nobody will come for him here — not the man who calls himself his father, nor his wife, nor Kamilah.
He curls in on himself, hugging his knees to his chest and burying his face in them. If nobody will come for him, then he needs to break out himself — which is impossible when he does not recognize the room he was brought to, and cannot see an exit.
When the door opens again, he's no longer dreaming. Standing there before him is a tall figure covered in dark armor that swirls with lines of blue — hydro. It lunges for him, hoists him upright with an iron-grip on his arm, and stars begin to cartwheel around him as that same sickening brand of magic, that saw him here in the first place, fills his lungs.
"If you will not fulfill your destiny," says the Abyss Herald, "then we shall take what we are owed."
(It's not exactly an uncommon occurrence, for Kaeya to linger at Angel's Share until just before it closes for the night.
There are a number of reasons why he would think to do so, but Diluc wouldn't be caught dead asking him: Windblume's festive spirit that has yet to fully leave, perhaps; if not that, then it's the kind of sentimentality that almost makes such interactions between them tolerable.
But Kaeya's eyes are oddly sharp, as he stares down at his wine glass. "What are you doing next week?" he asks, far too casually for it to be anything but deliberate.
"Why do you ask?" Diluc retorts. It comes out a bit harsher than intended. On any other day, such a tone would make for a clean segue into yet another pointless argument.
But Kaeya doesn't rise to the bait. "I'm planning an investigation of sorts," he answers, quietly. "I have reason to believe that a small faction of the Abyss Order might be operating nearby."
An infiltration, then — standard, as far as the Knights of Favonius typically operate. "So take one of the knights with you," says Diluc, bluntly.
"Ah, but you see," says Kaeya, "I'm... shall we say, operating on a piece of intel to which no other knight is privy. It would be rather dangerous, should that intel come to anyone else's attention."
A piece of intel that the knights are unaware of... but Diluc apparently isn't? "Explain."
Kaeya laughs, but there's no humor to it. "Come now, Diluc, you can't be this dull-witted," he says. "What is it that you and I both know, but the rest of the knights do not?"
... a great many things, if Diluc were to recount their full childhood and history — but though Kaeya's posture remains open and deliberately casual, he holds himself rigidly still, with one hand braced against the countertop — as if ready to fight or run, depending on Diluc's reaction.
This... is not a conversation Diluc wants to have, ever again. The last time was disastrous enough — and it stings, that Kaeya still apparently expects violence in return for it. Though for him to bring it up here, now... "I take it you're not looking to join them," says Diluc, delicately.
Kaeya hums. "More to confirm a hunch, really," he says, "but then again, if I really did intend to join them, I wouldn't be having this conversation with you now." His eye narrows , as he laces his fingers together. "I learned my lesson well enough last time."
On any other day, such a statement would be a loose thread that would inevitably lead to an argument, if Diluc were to pull on it — but Kaeya's voice is oddly solemn, resigned. Whatever this is, he has to have been considering it for a long time — if not actively making plans, then simply thinking about it until the mere possibility of something productive coming out of it became too large to ignore. "Then you know why I'm the last person you should be asking for this," says Diluc, carefully.
"I'm asking because, should the worst happen, I know you won't hesitate," says Kaeya.
Diluc crushes the ensuing spark of anger before it can flare into something unmanageable — because if he retaliates now, then Kaeya will face whatever this is on his own, without aid. But if he thinks about it... Kaeya isn't trying to get a rise out of him, this time. "Tell me this hunch of yours," says Diluc.
Kaeya closes his eye, and breathes deeply. He drops his right hand from the countertop, and though Diluc can no longer see it from here, he knows that Kaeya wears his blade on that side — another precaution, depending on Diluc's reaction. "I have reason to believe," he says, slowly, "that there are some operatives from Khaenri'ah, working with the Abyss Order."
Slowly, deliberately, Diluc pulls his hands from his pockets and rests them on the countertop so that Kaeya can see them. "How so?" he asks.
Kaeya exhales slowly, and averts his gaze. "It's just... something I've suspected for a while now. It's... their clothes, if that makes sense. Someone I knew before... she would wear dresses and coats like that. And the language they speak — I can't understand a word of it, but it still feels familiar."
"That's not much to go on."
"I know." Kaeya's voice cracks at the end of the word. "It's just... at the time I left, they had nothing. And if I can put a stop to this without any more bloodshed, then I have to try."
There's more that Kaeya isn't telling him, of course. Why would he, when Diluc had already hurt him once for it? But he can't go. Diluc's seen what the Abyss Order is capable of, first hand. There's no telling if they'll use the same tactics on Kaeya, if his hunch is correct — but that's not a risk worth taking.
Still: if Diluc screws this up, then Kaeya will go alone. "I'm not terribly optimistic," says Diluc, "but if it's any comfort, then I'll go."
Kaeya exhales slowly, slumping forward and closing his eye. "That's all I ask.")
On the cliff overlooking the Thousand Winds Temple, dozens of cecilias scatter to the winds.
On Sundays when it's warm, Master Crepus likes to bring them here after the weekly sermon in the cathedral. He brings with him three canvases and three sets of paint: one for Diluc, one for Kaeya, and one for himself. None of them have the skill that would mark them as anywhere close to the fine artists whose work decorates the Dawn Winery's halls — but it's soothing, to sit here and do nothing but try to bring beauty into the world in this small capacity.
Diluc lies flat on his stomach to consider a cecilia, frowning at it and holding his pencil upright next to it, as if to measure the flower's length. Kaeya forgoes shape altogether, in favor of painting the stars.
Some weeks before everything fell to pieces, two golden, glittering stars fell to the ground. Falling stars were supposed to be a sign of luck — but in the ruin that followed, it would forever be difficult to see them as anything more than a harbinger of doom. The stars Kaeya paints, though, are the ones he could once see from Khaenri'ah — not from the palace, but from the tiny house by the water he'd lived in with his mother and grandmother, before.
They... wouldn't have stood a chance, when everything came crashing down. Everything had happened so fast — Kamilah went down first, pushing Kaeya out of the way of the falling rubble that crushed her moments later. Then there was his father's wife, scooping him up in her arms and mumbling panicked reassurances to him as she ran, all with a kindness she'd never once showed him before this moment. Then as she passed him along to his father, the room collapsed around her. His father ran, with Kaeya in his arms...
... and then, they were in Mondstadt. And it occurred to him, too late, that he never had a chance to say goodbye to the family he'd left behind.
Would they be angry with him, he wonders? To turn his back on his ruined motherland, to replace his old family with another... that's cruel of him, isn't it?
"What are stars made of, do you think?" asks Master Crepus, peering down at his canvas.
This is basic khemia, but Kaeya takes his time with the answer. Children his age aren't supposed to know such things — or if they do, they're considered prodigies. "Anemo," he answers. "Pyro too, actually — and sometimes dust likes to collect, so probably geo as well." But those two stars that had crashed to the ground that day, all those many years ago... somehow, it feels wrong to classify them in such simplistic terms.
Master Crepus gives him a strange, lopsided smile. "And you're sure you never once studied alchemy before coming here?"
It's not the first time he's asked this question. Kaeya has slipped up before this — revealed too much, exhibited knowledge of the way the world works that no one but the staunchest of Teyvat's academics would care to know — but how does one explain that what was common knowledge to him, taught to him in a land that no longer exists, is equivalent to advanced alchemy in the world he now calls home?
In the ruins nearby, an automaton stirs to life. It paces back and forth, endlessly — with nothing left to command it, it has nowhere to go.
"The field tillers have been rather restless as of late, haven't they?" asks Master Crepus.
... because the field tillers had been the first to fall back then, hadn't they? Smote down by the gods, turned to scrap metal despite all the powers at their disposal. What is left for the ones that survived but to roam here, endlessly? Kaeya can't go to them — not when they'll immediately see him as a threat.
What place do blood and steel have here, in a land blessed by the gods? What does it mean to exist in that world, counter to one's true purpose?
—what does it mean, that Kaeya and the field tillers are here when Khaenri'ah is not? What does it mean that they remain here, with little more than a purpose of destruction to guide their steps?
... except, Father would call it a ruin guard, not a field tiller.
Kaeya squeezes his eyes shut, and forces himself to think. He's not on a cliff with Diluc and Father — he hasn't done that with them since before Diluc joined the Knights of Favonius. And Father has never worn a jacket like that, with embroidery that glows blue.
Pitifully weak, Kaeya shoves him away then, and scrambles to his feet — but then the Abyss Herald before him grips his arm, twisting it painfully in his grasp. "Traitor," he says in a voice that is one part Father, one part something else entirely that Kaeya no longer recognizes.
"Let go," Kaeya chokes out, his voice cracking. The Herald's grip tightens, and he squeezes his eyes shut. This, in any other circumstance, would be where he would rely on his Vision — but he's of Khaenri'ah's blood and flesh. Somehow, it feels wrong to turn to Celestia here.
"You left us here," says the Herald. "You, who was blessed with the power to save us all."
"I didn't ask for that power." All he ever wanted, before Mondstadt, was to just stay there in that tiny house by the water with his mother and grandmother. All he ever wanted, since Mondstadt, was to live happily with Father and Diluc.
It's an old wound, the reality that such a peaceful existence will never be his fate. He's long grown used to it — but that's not something he can explain so easily to his old countrymen. Not when they've been counting on him for over five hundred years.
"Then you are worse than useless," the Herald denounces him, releasing his arm. "And now that you have laid your eyes upon this realm, you will not be permitted to leave."
... figures. He'll have to carve his own way out — just not while the Herald is watching. But there's a sluggish, sickening fog in his mind that makes him wonder if he's still dreaming, and it refuses to let him go.
His legs crumple beneath him, and he settles for lowering himself to the floor as safely as he can and watching the Herald leave.
(The entrance to the Abyss Order's lair is, for all intents and purposes, nearly indistinguishable from that of any other domain. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary about it is that it's here at all — because Diluc could swear that it wasn't, a week or two ago.
"Well..." says Kaeya, a bit awkwardly as he presses his hand against the stone door. "I'm off, then."
His voice is deliberately light — but there's a certain unsteadiness to it that makes Diluc want to grab him by the arm and drag him far, far away from this place. Kaeya had resolved to leave this burden behind for a reason, after all. "Take care," he says instead — and it occurs to him, sickeningly, that it's perhaps the kindest thing he's said to him in years.
The smile Kaeya gives him is one of tremendous effort. "Thanks. If I don't return—"
"You will," Diluc cuts him off.
"If I don't return," Kaeya repeats, "then get out of here, as quickly as you can manage. Assume the worst — not that I'm dead, but..." He exhales sharply, and gives him a small, pained smile. "... well, that your initial assumption of me, once you knew the truth, was correct."
... except, Diluc had been wrong. Kaeya had done nothing, for all the years they considered each other close friends and comrades, that could warrant what Diluc had done to him. All he did was tell him the truth, and Diluc had rewarded that vulnerability with violence.
In the end, he lets Kaeya go without further argument. Diluc is the worst kind of coward for it — for taking the easy way out of an uncomfortable conversation, instead of doing right by his brother.
Come the two-hour mark, Kaeya hasn't returned.
There's no telling how large the lair is, Diluc reminds himself — it could very well be taking him just that long to get through it. It will take him even longer than that to... come to an agreement with the Abyss Order, or whatever it is he intends to do.
This was a stupid, stupid plan, and Diluc is a colossal idiot for letting Kaeya talk him into it. It's just that... when Kaeya had told him, in Angel's Share — Diluc hasn't seen him look that unsure in years. He knows, logically, that for all of Kaeya's loyalty to Mondstadt, it's unrealistic to expect him to truly abandon Khaenri'ah to the ruin it became. He's still walking that line between the two kingdoms, taking both kingdoms' burdens upon himself — something Diluc should have made an effort to understand, when Kaeya had first tried to tell him.
Because if Diluc had been there, then Kaeya wouldn't be facing this alone. He wouldn't feel the need to hold him at arm's length on the chance that Diluc will retaliate against him for it, like he did once before. Diluc should be in there with him, helping him face whatever this is.
... so what could have possibly happened, for Kaeya to come to him with this now?
There's the Stormterror incident, of course — a divine being corrupted by Abyss mages, twisted for their own selfish purposes. And Lumine had mentioned, just last week, that the same had very nearly happened to the spirit in Wolvendom. Kaeya had been there for that, when she explained what had happened — just resolutely sipping his wine and paying attention, though not contributing to the conversation.
... by the three-hour mark, Kaeya still hasn't returned. It's then that Diluc decides to go in after him — Kaeya won't have to face this alone for much longer.)
It's a long, long way to Teyvat.
The man who calls himself his father trudges on, resolutely, and Kaeya does his best to keep up. The path upward is a series of long corridors, punctuated by stairs that spiral around a tall, silver tree. "Do you see?" asks his father, gesturing towards the branches. "This is the lifeblood of our world."
... Ley lines. The term comes to him, unbidden — because he's seen plants like this before.
"This is the foundation of our power," his father explains, "but we are not quite connected to it as you are."
... because the power that Kaeya harbors in his right eye had to come from somewhere. It's not something he asked for, nor is it something he worked for — and yet, it spells the salvation of his people all the same.
His father reaches into one of the pockets in his coat, and pulls out a piece of black cloth with a long string fastened to it. Then, he presses the cloth to Kaeya's eye, and ties the string around his head. "Here," he says, with far more gentleness than Kaeya has ever heard from him. "Keep it covered. If anyone else sees it, then they'll have reason to doubt."
Without the eye patch, Kaeya's right eye glows golden like the stars and the power that flows through the trees that line the corridors of this realm between worlds. It's a blessing from a realm beyond Celestia, bestowed upon Khaenri'ah's royal bloodline — and with the way his father presses his lips together, Kaeya wonders if, maybe, he would have preferred it if this power had come to Kamilah instead.
... no, there's no question about it. Of course he'd prefer to be with his wife and Kamilah — just like Kaeya would prefer to be with his mother and grandmother right now. But all of them are gone, and all he and his father have left is each other — and in a short while, once the ancient plot is set into motion, they won't even have that much.
What does it mean, that neither of them can go home again?
Kaeya's hated this man for as long as he's known his name, but he can't help but wonder now if his father would be terribly upset, if he were to just... hold him, now, like he once would do to his mother and grandmother. He doesn't know if his father every did that for his wife and Kamilah — but if he did, then maybe he'd appreciate the gesture.
For now, he settles for taking his father's hand in his — and if his father squeezes back, averting his eyes as if it can stop Kaeya from noticing the moisture there, then he says nothing.
The dream ends here, of course. It always does, because there was never a question what would happen next: the two of them would finally reach Mondstadt, culminating a journey of five hundred years that feels like hardly more than one of a few days. His father would leave him at the side of the road, reiterating a duty that Kaeya never wanted, and within a few hours' time, Father would come for him and take him to the Dawn Winery.
It doesn't matter, when his father's figure morphs into that of an Abyss Herald and the difference between the two grips is negligible. It doesn't matter that the Abyss creatures living here speak of a ruined land abandoned to the bowels of history, and a demand to adapt when it became apparent that their last hope would never come to save them.
They changed because they had to, in order to survive — and all the while, they pointed their blades and their magic and their alchemy towards Celestia and all she held dear, waiting for the day they would take back what they were owed.
—it doesn't matter when Kaeya can no longer move, that same sickly miasma as before snaking through his lungs and enveloping all that he is.
—but off in the distance, there's a phoenix made of flames, swooping towards him — or rather, the Herald holding him in place. "Let him go," says an all too familiar voice, low and threatening, and for the first time since he was captured, Kaeya thinks, Ah, this is a good dream.
(In the depths of the Abyss Order's lair, Kaeya remains suspended in the air, surrounded by a sort of miasma that gleams the same shade of purple as the crystal embedded in Stormterror's neck. His eye is dull, unfocused as a creature of the Abyss, something tall and glowing blue with what Diluc assumes is hydro, paces before him.
There's only one thing to do from here: Diluc summons flames to his sword, swinging it before him as a phoenix forms from the flames and careens towards the Abyss creature. "Let him go," he says through gritted teeth, and does not wait for a response.
Pyro has always been a poor match against hydro — but Diluc has spent years learning to fight without relying on his Vision, and that's exactly what he does against this foe as well. It's not quite like fighting the mages — this creature is faster, hits harder, keeps Diluc on his toes as he struggles to position himself in front of a barely conscious Kaeya.
—but the Abyss creature falls, just as all faced with his blade are expected to do. In an instant, the miasma surrounding Kaeya vanishes, and Diluc drops his claymore to grab him before he can fall. Kaeya's cold to the touch, but there's something closer to alertness in his eye as he blinks up at him, blearily. "You were supposed to leave me here."
—and because Kaeya won't remember this, when they finally go home, Diluc curls his arms around him and pulls him close. "I won't, Kaeya," he promises. "Never again.")
Kaeya wakes slowly, sluggishly, in a bed that is not his own and to a ceiling that barely grazes the edges of his memory. The fog that had clouded his mind before, made it so difficult to think beyond the illusions in front of him, is gone.
"Are you awake?"
He turns his head to the side, and blinks heavily at Diluc's blurred figure. Slowly, the pieces fall into place: he's at the Dawn Winery, in a guest room because he no longer has one of his own here. Why Diluc chose to bring him here, instead of dumping him at the cathedral's doorstep, is a puzzle that promises a headache if he pushes that train of thought further.
With a soft groan, Kaeya braces himself against the mattress to lever himself upright — only for Diluc to grab him, then, and pull him upright himself. Kaeya closes his eye as he tips sideways, into Diluc — and he needs to move, but... it's been a long time, since he was last in a position like this. There's no telling how long this lapse in Diluc's character will last, but he's tired; for as long as Diluc is willing to put up with it, Kaeya will be selfish, just this once. "How long...?" he asks, his voice little more than a hoarse croak.
"Almost a full day," Diluc answers.
"I meant back in..." Kaeya trails off, and hopes the direction of this conversation is obvious enough that Diluc will pick on its fragmented ends.
"Oh..." says Diluc, slowly. "A few hours, before I came in. After that... a matter of minutes."
Kaeya hums. It... didn't quite feel like hours, to him; it felt like he'd been there for weeks, but simultaneously like no time had passed at all. He's known for as long as he can remember that time flows differently in that passage between worlds, but it's always a disorienting experience to be confronted with the reality of it. At least this time, it hadn't been a discrepancy of five hundred years.
"Did you find the answers you were looking for?" asks Diluc, quietly.
Kaeya ponders the question, and turns it over in his head. Diluc doesn't sound particularly angry, which means that Kaeya hasn't done anything in the past few minutes to irritate him; he hadn't seemed angry when Kaeya first awakened, which means Diluc likely wasn't particularly angry before this, either. "My hunch was correct, for the most part," says Kaeya, very carefully, "but I was wrong about the scope."
"Meaning...?" Diluc prompts him.
"Meaning..." For an achingly long moment, Kaeya struggles to swallow around the hard lump in his throat. "It's not that there are operatives from Khaenri'ah working with the Abyss Order. It's that... The Abyss Order is Khaenri'ah — or at least, what's left of it."
That Abyss Mage, that Herald — they were his people. He was supposed to protect them — not abandon them for five hundred years, until they saw no other option than to become this.
"So... what happens now?" asks Diluc. Kaeya sits there and... forces himself to breathe, for a long moment — because there is no answer. There's nothing beyond the conclusions he already reached four years ago, now validated with proof that the people he's turned his back on are beyond his help. “It’s okay,” says Diluc, infuriatingly gentle. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I won’t—I won’t get angry.”
... so he said the last time, too — and all Kaeya had told him then was that he has no intentions of ever betraying Mondatadt. Sympathizing with the enemy, even after something like this... it’s out of the question. “I learned my lesson well enough the last time,” he says bitterly, shaking his head.
—because how dare Diluc sit there, ignorant, and presume that he knows anything at all about this world when he’s never once had to shoulder the weight of an entire kingdom? How dare he make promises he will never keep, when it had been so easy for him to turn his back on his home and abandon it for years, only to return to a land that would always welcome him back with open arms?
—because Khaenri’ah will never forgive Kaeya, for abandoning them. It’s a choice he made years ago — and he’d been so sure that it was the right one, when what little he knew of Khaenri’ah’s goals aligned with Mondstadt’s destruction, but now he’s... now he’s...
The first sob sneaks up on him, unbidden. It rips through him, making him shudder — and there are few decent places to lose control, but here with Diluc, in the midst of some sort of emotion-fueled breakdown over a land and people Kaeya had promised he left behind... it’s unacceptable.
... but the tears don't stop. They cascade down his face despite his best efforts to suppress them, dampening his eye patch, and his chest begins to ache from the physical strain of the sobs ripping through him. He's not quite sure what he's crying for at all — two homes he can never quite return to? A people he's failed twice over, first by accident and then deliberately?
The man who called himself his father and Crepus both, doing all that they could to serve the places they called home — his father's wife and Kamilah, who loved him at the very end despite all that they did before — his mother and grandmother, abandoned in that tiny house by the water, who never stood a chance... it all blurs together in his head in one sickening mess.
He can't do this here. Not when sympathy for the enemy could translate to anger from Diluc. It's not that he's not used to it — but he's not so sure he can handle it right now.
—but then Diluc's grip on him tightens. He pulls him closer, just like he did back in the Abyss Order's lair, and rubs his hand up and down Kaeya's arm. There are no reassurances, or promises that he likely won't keep — he just sits there, quietly, as Kaeya continues to unravel.