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As soon as I arrive here, my hiraeth disappears.
Quiet. Everything had been peacefully, unbearably quiet.
Evening light poured in through the window, pink and gold beams tangled in his hair, his pen dragging across the document on the Acting Grand Master’s desk. Jean had been called away from her duties to give another piece of herself away helping someone find their cat or their lost watch, and that left Kaeya to fill in for her while she was absent. The paperwork was mind-numbingly tedious and he had found himself pacing the room more than once to fend off boredom, but the sun was setting now and with its descent he had finally managed to finish signing off on the rest of the documents. He had expected to feel the tension unknot itself from his muscles, yet no relief came, even as he pushed himself off the chair and headed for the door.
It wasn’t just today. Lately, it felt as if something inside of him was coiling, prepared to snap at any moment. Kaeya had chalked it up to stress; he hadn’t been sleeping well and his body was repaying him tenfold for his late nights and the few scant hours he managed to rest. But that . . . didn’t feel right either.
Kaeya descended the steps of the Favonius headquarters, squinting his good eye against the warm golden glow of the sun. If he were an honest man, he would admit that he knew the source of his plight. It had been a thorn in his side for well over a week, digging deeper into his skin the more he tried to ignore it. The pain was dull and easy to ignore, but there had been little to distract him the last few days and in the quiet, left alone with his thoughts, the dull ache grew into a throbbing sore that he could no longer ignore.
Lumine was acting differently ever since she had come back from a mission involving the Abyss.
As a man well-versed in disguising himself, Kaeya could see that her smiles weren’t genuine, that her eyes no longer sparkled when she laughed, and her attention was half-hearted at best. She did well hiding it from others, for the most part, but he had spent the better part of the last several months watching her — observing, always observing. Kaeya knew the little things that made a difference, the things that Lumine wouldn’t be able to hide from a discerning eye. She held tension in every line of her body and carried herself like a soldier coming home defeated.
Asking her anything was out of the question. Kaeya had a feeling that she would put on a brave face and insist that she was fine, but, more than that, it felt indescribably wrong to even think about prying into something that seemed so personal. Besides that, he preferred when information was freely given. He wanted Lumine to trust him, to rely on him. She wasn’t going to do that if he treated her so carelessly.
Even Angel’s Share was quiet. Then again, it was still early in the evening and the usual rabble likely hadn’t arrived yet. Kaeya reached for the door handle and paused. Silence. Then, a quiet, hitching sob. His hand dropped back to his side and he shifted to glance around toward the back of the building where he heard the noise come from. There was a soft, high-pitch voice accompanying the muffled crying, one that sounded familiar, but he couldn’t make out the words. Eavesdropping was, of course, considered rude. But secrets were like currency to Kaeya, guarding his own while collecting and trading in others’. He inched silently around the side of the building, stopping just below the balcony on the top floor of Angel’s Share.
“Paimon — ” Lumine’s voice broke with a shuddering breath. He guessed that she was on the balcony above him. “I don’t know what to do.” Her words shook and Kaeya could almost see the way that her body trembled with every broken syllable. His chest tightened. This was definitely not something he should have been listening to.
He should have left, pretend that he never stumbled across this intimate moment and forget that it had ever happened, but his feet were rooted to the ground.
“I promise that we’ll figure this out, Lumine,” Paimon’s voice soothed her above him, concern lacing every word.
Kaeya’s hands tightened into fists. His brows drew together and his heart thudded unsteadily in his chest.
Lumine shifted above him, the railing creaking as if she were now leaning against it. “I just . . . I just want my brother back — !”
Neither of them said anything else after that. The sun dipped lower into the horizon, the sky bruising as dusk settled in around them. Crickets and frogs sang in the distance, the quiet murmur of people heading back to their homes from work, and Lumine’s soft sobbing mingled in the air. Kaeya tipped his head back to stare at the falling twilight, one hand covering the painful throbbing over his heart.