Chapter Text
Diluc first met the bard not at his tavern, but in a secluded corner of Stormterror’s Lair. Though, the whole thing was really less of a meeting , and more of a fleeting encounter, given he’d only seen the bard for a minute, from very far away. But though the time spent was certainly fleeting, Diluc’s memory of that encounter was anything but. It was a little annoying, but ever since that day, the bard had occupied the tiniest part of his mind - already more than he wanted to allow, honestly.
And yet, he couldn’t forget that one short moment. Couldn’t forget watching, from a distance, as the bard knelt before a weathered stone slab - a tombstone, he realised. Couldn’t forget the way the hilichurl camps he’d come to clear were immediately pushed to the back of his mind as the bard bent forward, shoulders shaking - and oh , he was crying. Diluc steeled himself, turned away, and kept walking. He’d approach the hilichurl camp from some other direction. Someone like Jean would probably have approached the bard, offered comfort, but Diluc only had the distinct feeling that he’d just laid eyes on something sacred, that he was definitely not meant to see. It made his skin crawl.
Still, he approached the tomb again once his work at the hilichurl camps was done, and there was some relief that the bard was no longer there. In his place lay a single cecilia, fragile amidst the devastation of the ruins. Diluc stepped closer. There used to be an inscription on the tombstone, but it had faded so much that all he could make out were very slight, very small indents. The stone itself was battered, cracked in several places, and had a large chunk taken out of one of its corners. If he hadn’t seen the bard here before, he would have walked past not knowing it was a tombstone at all. Strange, how one would just be here in the ruins that had been untouched for centuries.
He made a short bow in the stone’s general direction before leaving. And though he had intended to remain silent, words slid out of his mouth unbidden anyway.
“Be at peace,” he murmured, then turned and left. He didn’t think about the tombstone again until the day Venti showed up at the Angel’s Share.
-
Venti was the sort of customer who would bring nothing but trouble to his quiet tavern. Diluc knew this the instant he clapped eyes on that playful smirk, and his suspicion was confirmed when Venti ordered an entire bottle of dandelion wine for himself. A drunkard bard… Diluc looked over the counter, at where the rest of the tavern’s patrons sat, and huffed. Every single customer in the tavern was something of a drunkard, really. What was new?
He watched as Venti leaned on the counter and strummed idly on the lyre that he carried around with him, smoothing over the noise in the tavern with a few joyful tunes. Within ten minutes of ordering, the bard had downed almost half the bottle of wine, and yet there was no sign of drunkenness on his face. That in itself was curious enough, but DIluc kept eyes on him for one more reason - he would be loathe not to recognise that garish shade of green he’d seen in Stormterror’s Lair all those years ago. He was curious, more than curious, and close to approaching Venti to strike up a conversation.
Too bad the bard was a nuisance .
“Refills on the wine, Master Diluc!” Venti sang, with none of the symptoms of drunkenness and all of the symptoms of ‘I’m-here-to-cause-trouble’. “I must say, this is exquisite dandelion wine, the best I’ve had in decades.”
Privately Diluc wondered what on Teyvat he could mean by that, because Venti barely looked like he was old enough to drink, let alone to have been drinking for decades. But he levelled his best stare of disapproval across the counter, one powerful enough to make even the Knights of Favonius flinch. To make especially the Knights of Favonius flinch.
“You haven’t paid for the first bottle yet,” he said, voice carefully flat.
Venti’s grin only grew wider. “Then add them both to my tab.” A tab that would never be paid off, that was for sure. A tab that would linger to irritate Diluc until he was old and graying. In fact, he could feel his hair going grey right now. But it was still a request from a customer, and Diluc had to grudgingly admit that he had, at present, no reason to refuse. He sat a second bottle of dandelion wine on the counter, pointedly ignored Venti’s chirped thanks, and settled in a corner, watching over his tavern as night fell.
Four hours and five more bottles of dandelion wine later, Diluc was more than ready to kick Venti out of his tavern for good. By virtue of the glares Diluc sent across the tavern as closing time approached, increasing in intensity over time, the rest of the patrons had long since left. Only Venti remained slumped over the counter, a nearly empty bottle next to him. For all intents and purposes, he looked like he’d fallen asleep. Well, he wasn’t the first person Diluc had unceremoniously woken up and kicked out, and as famous as Mondstadt was for its drunkards, he certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Except when Diluc neared the tall stool that Venti was sitting on, he heard the bard saying something, and stopped in his tracks, suddenly unsure. A mumbling drunkard bard, that was new.
“The wind…” Venti breathed, voice slurred from all the wine. He was saying something else, too, something about Mondstadt, but the rest of his speech was completely incoherent. Diluc stepped closer and let his nose wrinkle at the obvious stench of alcohol that was practically emanating from the bard. He prodded Venti’s shoulder.
Turquoise eyes fluttered open, hazy and disoriented, before settling on a spot somewhere above Diluc’s head. Blinking slowly, Venti sat up and looked around. When he met Diluc’s eyes, his mouth fell open in a small ‘o’. The red flush of alcohol had already almost left his cheeks, and he certainly didn’t look drunk at all for someone who fell asleep drinking his sixth bottle of wine in one night.
“It’s empty,” Venti observed, as though that hadn’t been obvious enough.
“Yes,” Diluc answered, slow and tired, “because it is now after closing time. The Angel’s Share,” he emphasised, “is closed .”
“Ah, I slept for that long?” Venti chuckled. “Ehehe.” Not a hint of remorse.
Diluc scowled after the bard as he left, and locked the tavern doors behind him. Then, and only then, did he let himself sigh as he picked up the empty wine bottle Venti had left behind. Even after closing hours, work at the tavern continued - Diluc had glasses to wash and utensils to put away. And if this work was occasionally punctuated by memories of a lone cecilia resting before a cracked, weathered tombstone, well - he would certainly never reveal it.
-
The first thing Diluc had learned about Venti was that he was annoying. The second thing was that he was a raging drunkard with an absurdly high tolerance for alcohol. The third thing was that he was a Vision holder.
On the nights when Charles manned the tavern, Diluc liked to take the chance to go on what he called ‘peaceful nighttime strolls’, and what Jean called ‘poorly disguised rampages’. The only things he rampaged were hilichurl camps, though, which didn’t exactly disprove Jean’s point, though he preferred to think it did. On one of these nights, Diluc found himself facing a couple of mitachurls and their hilichurl shooter lackeys. And the wandering pair of Abyss mages that had spotted him and decided to join in the fun. And a gaggle of assorted slimes, because someone nearby had decided it was a good idea to set down elemental bait, or something. Or maybe his luck that night was just particularly bad.
Whatever it was, there was no problem Diluc couldn’t solve with his claymore and a bit of fire - or a lot of fire, if the situation called for that. He was certain of it. The Darknight Hero, as cheesy as the name was, did not need help. Which was why, when a glowing, Anemo-infused arrow whizzed past his ear and exploded several feet in front of him, whipping the winds into a tornado of some sort that sucked the various creatures he was fighting into it, he considered that more of a hindrance than anything. The tornado glowed and pulsed, purple and red and blue, and as Diluc made short work of the mitachurls that hadn’t been sucked into it, it faded away.
From where the tornado had been, slime condensate, broken hilichurl masks, and dead ley line branches fell, forming a sorry heap on the ground. Of the creatures who had been unfortunately sucked in, not a single speck remained. Perhaps calling the tornado a hindrance was slightly inaccurate. With the way it swallowed anything in the vicinity and spit out its remains, it was more like a monster than anything else.
“Yahoo!” called a high, oddly familiar voice from above. “Nice to see you again, Master Diluc! I see my bow fired true.”
The bard named Venti landed neatly on the ground before him and sheathed his bow, grinning widely. Diluc could already feel a headache coming on.
“You.”
“Me!” Venti laughed, very loudly, and the sound seemed like it would carry for miles in the quiet night. “What brings you out here, at this time?”
“Surely I should be asking that of you. Aren’t you due for at least two bottles of dandelion wine by now?” Diluc asked drily, taking in the gleam of the Anemo Vision that hung at Venti’s hip.
“I’m not always an alcoholic!” Venti protested, and Diluc sent him a look of doubt. “Though, I sure would love some dandelion wine right about now… too bad a bard has his duties.”
Diluc didn’t even have the chance to ask what kind of duties a bard could have, and why Venti’s ‘duties’ led him to be here, right now, in the middle of the night, because Venti prattled on.
“I’m curious why you’re out here, and it’s suddenly occurred to me that you fit the description of someone elusive I have heard of,” Venti mused, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Hair like fire, clothes dark as night,” he practically sang. Diluc had an idea of where this was going, and he hated it.
“Oh!” Venti gasped in mock surprise. Then he squealed .
“Don’t say it,” Diluc groaned, already preparing to turn around and walk away.
“You’re the Darknight Hero ! You have to give me your autograph, Master Diluc!”
Oh, what Diluc would give right now to be in his room, in the plush interior of Dawn Winery, and most importantly, bard-free. For now, he settled for giving Venti a scathing glare.
“I don’t give out autographs,” he said firmly, brushing past the bard and hoping that he would be left alone. But because that night was determined not to go in Diluc’s favour, Venti tagged after him, apparently unaware that his presence was not wanted.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here, at this time,” the bard said, in a tone that told Diluc he was perfectly capable of pressing the matter until he got an answer.
“Clearing hilichurl camps,” Diluc replied unhelpfully. It was the truth, a partial one, at least. Unleashing pent-up rage at hilichurl camps served the dual purpose of clearing said camps and clearing his head, giving him something else to focus on beside his own memories.
“Ah, but that would be the job of the Knights of Favonius, wouldn’t it?”
“The Knights of Favonius are woefully incompetent,” Diluc’s voice had taken on a harsh edge, but he found that he hardly cared, stomping through the grass at a pace that Venti had to jog to keep up with.
“Incompetent enough for an ex-Knight to have to step in?” Venti questioned, and there was something about his tone that made Diluc stop walking. For the first time that night, he met eyes with the bard, and found himself looking into eyes that - was it a trick of the light? - seemed to emanate some sort of glow. He was suddenly struck by a realisation that Venti seemed much older, and much more knowing, for a moment, a realisation that made him uneasy. Just who was this bard?
“It is not common knowledge that I used to be part of the Knights of Favonius,” he said quietly, turning away. Even within the Knights, only a few of them were privy to this information. For someone like Venti, with no connection to the Knights, to know this, was strange and suspicious.
“News travels far and wide on the wind,” Venti only said, not a single slip in his cheerful countenance. “Ah, have we arrived back at Windrise already? Why did you turn back, Master Diluc?”
“To get rid of you.” Diluc didn’t fail to recognise the way Venti swiftly changed the topic, but he figured he could let it slide. Any conversation that didn’t involve the Knights of Favonius would be a marginally better one.
“Master Diluc, you wound me,” Venti whined, eyes wide and hurt like a kicked puppy. Diluc rolled his eyes.
They reached the centre of the sloping fields that made up Windrise, and the faint light of the stars and moon was blotted out by the branches of the huge tree that stood in the centre of the place. Diluc stood before the Statue of the Seven in front of the tree and bowed his head briefly, which made Venti’s lips quirk up at the corners. The bard sat down without a care at the foot of the statue, swapping his bow for a lyre. He patted the space beside him.
“Sit down!” he chirped, completely at ease with the fact that he was sprawled out disrespectfully beneath a statue of Mondstadt’s Archon. Diluc stared at him for a long moment before he reluctantly sat down, at the edge of the platform the statue was on. Uncharacteristically, Venti remained silent, and only the gentle hums of his lyre’s strings spoke of his presence. Diluc didn’t turn around to look at him, but rested his elbows on his knees, staring at the shape of Mondstadt in the distance. He let the quiet night settle, and let his mind wander.
It was as close to a peaceful night as he could get.