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She had never been one to celebrate birthdays. She had only ever celebrated it a small number of times, and if only she had cared enough to remember, she would be able to count the exact amount on one hand. The birthday celebrations she had witnessed from her basking spots on the city’s rooftops back when she had just been taken into Mondstadt were far from her ideal setting, anyway: loud and boisterous, filled with cheer and useless things like balloons and party food.
The idea of it being her birthday barely even crosses her mind through the day—she hides in the shadows by the back of the Church in the golden sunlight of afternoon to shirk her duties and the incessant calling of her name by one of the other Sisters, smoke filtering thinly out past her lips and the cigarette between her fingers; and then she exits through the city gates once the sun has sunken away beyond the horizon, the sky colouring a watery shade of lilac-blue. Just the same old, just like every other day.
The blood on her weapon is not a sight unfamiliar to her, and she thinks nothing of it as she dips it in the lake and watches as the current carries the crimson away in wisps and flickers of moonlit-brushed aquamarine. She has spent more birthdays killing than not; it was on her birthday, too, that she had fled from the gang that had taken her, after all.
She remembers the day as clearly as the reflection of herself in the waters of the lake, although thinking back she is not sure as to whether or not she should be grateful for the memory. She had been young then, and the wind biting: she had watched the shape of the moon shift in the night sky until the day that marked her birth arrived, and she had thought then that perhaps her birthday present to herself should be some food and a little warmth.
(Little did she know that that would be the day the dagger in her palms would be stained red with the blood of the closest person to home to her. A home with a false roof and a missing welcome mat, maybe, but a home nonetheless.)
They say a child’s birth is a blessing of the Gods: but if anything, hers reminds her only of the life she shouldn’t have been allowed to live, smelling of smoke and blood that’s not her own, heart made of ice and shattering around the edges with the weight it’s been made to bear.
She cleans her weapon until the metal is silver again before sheathing it, standing from her crouched position to head back to the city. The thoughts in her mind bring a crude smile to her lips, half-bitter and half-sweet, and she spares a look up at the hazy-dark sky as she makes her way back towards Mondstadt’s gates.
And maybe you’re up there somewhere, God, she thinks, mirthless laughter playing on her tongue and red-kissed memories playing on her mind, but I needed you down here.
She steers clear of the Church when she returns, not even opting to head to her usual spot by the back for a cigarette or two just in case Barbara (or, God forbid, Sister Victoria) catches a whiff of the smoke. Her footsteps instead carry her to the back door of the tavern; it’s rare that anyone uses it save Charles or Diluc, but the former is used to her hanging around and she doubts the latter cares much for her.
Resting herself against the wall, she brings the cigarette to her lips and exhales a gentle plume of smoke, eyeing the moon in the sky as it shifts out of its spot behind the clouds and casts silver across the empty cobblestone. Coupled with the glow of the after-dark street lights in the city street, it makes her feel a little exposed, almost, and it brings a helpless smile to her features.
The moon had seen what she had done that night, too, and then many others after that, a world painted red with grime and smelling of metal and crime. And what is justice, she wonders, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs, but a sinner punishing one’s sins with their own?
She’s broken out of her reverie by the sound of the door opening; she turns, eyebrow raised and cigarette hanging loosely against her lips, eyes the colour of frozen rose quartz melting into indifferent crimson.
“... What?”
The Ragnvindr tycoon nods his head towards her cigarette, looking far from impressed. “It stinks. Put it out.”
Her response comes in the form of a laugh, the clink of her lighter following her scoff as she relights the cigarette instead. Diluc scowls, but doesn’t bother changing her mind. “You wouldn’t be able to smell the smoke from the inside with the door closed.”
Diluc grunts in response. “It was getting annoying inside.”
She chuckles, casting her gaze back to the moon in the sky. “And that gives you an excuse to shirk responsibility? It’s your own business.”
She supposes that makes two of them.
Diluc doesn’t bother to reply, and she’s saved from having to figure out a way to get him to leave her alone when the door swings open for the second time.
“Rosaria! There you are!”
Diluc’s scowl deepens, and Rosaria blinks for a moment as she takes in the person who’s gesturing at her to enter the tavern a little too vigorously.
Ah. So there’s the source of the Ragnvindr’s annoyance. She can’t say she’s surprised.
“Kaeya,” she greets, a little flatly. “You’re here.”
If he’s put off by her lack of enthusiasm, he doesn’t show it. “I’ve been looking for you,” he enthuses, “come in and have a drink on me. My treat, since it’s your birthday.”
“I don’t celebrate—” Rosaria pauses, the words catching halfway up her throat and then changing their course. “How did you know?”
“That it’s your birthday? You told me,” Kaeya responds like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, a grin playing on his expression. “When we were out drinking one night. Maybe you forgot because you were too drunk.”
She stubs the cigarette out against the wall, ignoring the look Diluc shoots her. “Me getting drunk before you? Keep dreaming. I reckon my conversations with you just weren’t memorable enough for me to remember.”
Kaeya lets out a good-humoured laugh at her words, and when he holds the tavern door open, she doesn’t argue. The tavern is busy, as always, but the din is not unfamiliar to her as she takes her usual seat by Kaeya. Diluc follows them in, too, and sets about making her usual choice of drink (albeit somewhat grudgingly, but business is business).
“So how did your birthday go? Any special plans you carried out?” Kaeya asks by way of conversation, taking a sip of his drink.
“Just the usual.” Diluc lowers her drink before her and she takes a long sip, the taste of the alcohol mixing with the lingering smoke on her tongue. “You know, running away from Church, tailing people, murder. The usual.”
Kaeya chuckles. “Thought it was supposed to be a secret. You know, the whole tailing people and murder part.”
“What’s the point in hiding it from you? You know most of what others don’t.” The smirk that plays on her lips is a wry one, and her words pointed. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I play fair when it comes to allies.”
The Knight falls into a contemplative silence, his laughter quiet around the rim of his wine glass. Long gone are the days of half-lies and barely-uncovered secrets; their long acquaintanceship had eroded most of the veil they’d kept over themselves, and tavern nights spent with lips coated with alcohol had gotten their mouths to spill the rest of what time together could not.
A friend—Rosaria supposes that if she had to call someone a friend, Kaeya would come closest to fitting the bill.
And, she realises distantly, in some part of her subconscious, it’s the first time she’s celebrating her birthday with a friend.
“I don’t know your birthday,” she finds herself saying, surprising even herself. She hadn’t expected herself to ask. Or care, for that matter.
Kaeya shoots her a sideways glance, downing the last of his drink and asking Diluc for more. The Ragnvindr doesn’t bother to hide his unimpressed expression as he refills the glass. “The thirtieth of November. Quite a while from now.” His tone is teasing as he speaks. “Why? Are you going to treat me to a drink too?”
She scoffs. “As if I’ll remember.”
The corner of his eyes crinkle as he holds up his glass. She raises her own and the two glasses meet with a soft clink, shimmering crystalline-gold under the warm glow of the chandelier lights. “See you then.”
“They say birthdays are blessings from the divine.” Another voice pipes up by her side, and she startles, her fingers creeping to her weapon out of pure reflex before her senses kick in and she relaxes. The bard who’s a familiar sight around the tavern takes a seat beside her, a languid smile playing on his face, and she eyes him curiously.
There’s something different about him that’s intrigued her since the day she’d taken notice of him and the songs he sang amidst the voices in the tavern; something about his smile that never seemed to sit quite right, and something about his songs that reeked more of sin and tragedy and heartbreak than any other bards’ she’s heard before.
There is something about him, Rosaria thinks, that reminds her of herself; and there is something about him, at the same time, that feels like the most absolute of strangers to her.
“Blessings from the divine?” She chuckles, taking a sip from her glass. The alcohol melts against her tongue and burns her throat like liquid fire. “I suppose my birth must have been a mistake in the eyes of Celestia, then.”
The bard—Venti, she thinks his name is—offers a light smile in return. “Your attitude isn’t one one would expect to see from a Sister of the Church.”
She shrugs. If he had been expecting his words to have any sort of effect on her, they have none. “My work doesn’t equate to my beliefs. There are fishermen who don’t eat fish and hunters who don’t eat pork. So why should I worship a God just because I am a Sister?”
The alcohol tastes a little more bitter than usual on her tongue as she raises the glass to her lips. “One who did nothing for me, at that.”
Behind the counter, Diluc clears his throat, the sound louder than normal, and when he lowers the glass he had been polishing with a cloth it rattles against the table enough that Rosaria is half-afraid it might shatter.
“Interesting,” Venti muses, and there’s a glint to his gaze that she can’t seem to place. Perhaps it’s the familiarity of the tavern and her company for the night, or perhaps it’s the alcohol already in her system, but this time she doesn’t turn away, doesn’t classify him as a danger warning to be avoided. This time he is in the mood for questioning and this time she is in the mood for answering. “Why do you feel that way? In a nation where everyone worships Barbatos, you stand out a fair amount.”
“I’m not from this nation, and I have no obligation to her Archon.” She gestures to Diluc for a refill; he obliges, but pins her with a look she can’t understand, his red gaze flickering between her and Venti. “I see no need to bow to a faceless God; he was not there for me when I prayed for him, and he was not there for his people when criminals tried to harm the nation. So why should I praise him? For creating the city? Blacksmiths create weapons, but it is the weapon itself which takes the life.”
Venti is listening intently, and she laughs half-amusedly. In the back of her mind she sees it all again: the blood on her dagger, her rough, shaking hands, her widened eyes reflecting the face of the life she had taken. She had only been so young then.
“What saved me back then was my dagger, not my prayer—and what is keeping the people of the nation safe is not their prayers, but the blood we’ve spilt.” She dips her head towards Kaeya, and then Diluc. “And it’s funny, don’t you think, the job I do? A sinner, carrying the name of a sinless God. But out of the murderer and the one who made me the murderer, who is the bigger sinner of the two?”
Diluc slams a glass on the table. She jerks slightly, and Venti clears his throat.
“Be careful of the words you say in public,” the Ragnvindr says, and his tone holds a hint of warning. “No matter your beliefs, you must not forget that you are in a nation that worships Lord Barbatos.”
She scoffs, waving dismissively at him. The frown etched across his face deepens into a scowl. “I don’t hate the Archon, nor do I have anything against him. But there is little he has done for me—and as such little I am obliged to do for him. That is all.”
“But still—”
“I agree with you,” Venti says suddenly, and Diluc falls silent. There is an odd smile across the bard’s face, kind almost, as though he understands, somehow. “There are times when you realise something you’re supposed to look up to isn’t what it seems at all. Shattered beliefs, false realities, disillusionment… In the moments when you have nothing left to hold on to and your prayers have turned to dust and rot there is no one to turn to but yourself. And I think—”
“—You and I are alike in that sense?” The words fall out past her lips half-unknowingly, and as her gaze scans the bard’s she knows she stole the statement right out of his mouth. “Maybe we are after all.”
There are still many stories the bard has yet to tell; but in the gleam of the chandelier lights and the taste of the alcohol on their lips, there is something about him that reeks of loss and heartbreak, of days spent praying to a heaven that wouldn’t reply and of days crafting prayers into realities by his own two hands, the same two hands that strum at lyre strings to accompany songs of truth and goodbyes.
“Then,” Venti says, unexpectedly, “let’s be friends.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Let’s be friends!” The note of sentimentality that had been in the bard’s tone only moments earlier is entirely gone, so abruptly that Rosaria wonders if she had been imagining things. “We can get to know each other’s stories. We’re all tavern-goers anyway, aren’t we? This way we’ll have more company each time we grab a drink.”
She clears her throat, taking a sip of the alcohol and letting it sit on her tongue before swallowing. She doesn’t know what to say.
“We should,” Kaeya mumbles by her ear. His cheeks are tinted pink and his breath is warm with the scent of alcohol. He’d been drinking the entire time she was conversing with Venti; it’s a wonder he isn’t completely drunk yet. “And then we’ll be celebrating more birthdays too, like this one. We don’t have anyone to celebrate with, do we? So we’ll celebrate with each other, just like this.”
Venti grins wide, responding by raising his glass in cheer. Kaeya responds with a laugh of his own, raising his own. Venti pins the bartender with a stare, emerald eyes round and insistent, while Kaeya nudges at her shoulder until she ends up shaking him off.
There is a moment of silence that flits between them. And then—grudgingly—Diluc puts down the cloth he’s been holding, his eyes boring into hers as he holds up a clean glass, the motion half-hearted.
(But he holds it up nevertheless.)
Rosaria swallows, hearing Kaeya’s carefree laughter by her ear and feeling Venti’s expectant gaze wide against her expression.
And she’s never been one to celebrate birthdays, but this time maybe—just maybe, she thinks—she can make an exception.
She lifts her glass, and the four meet in a loud clink, chandelier light catching across their surfaces and scattering crystalline-gold across the tabletops.
“Happy birthday!” Kaeya cheers, and she raises the glass to her lips to hide the rush of embarrassment that courses through her, passing off the flush on her cheeks to the alcohol in her system.
“Happy birthday,” Diluc echoes, and next to her, Venti grins wider as he takes a sip from his drink, repeating the greeting in a lilting tone.
“And,” Kaeya says, too loud and too cheery to pass off as sober, but genuine nonetheless, “here’s to many more birthdays together.”
She raises her glass to her lips, drowning her whispered thank you behind a long sip, but they hear her anyway.
The alcohol tastes a little sweeter tonight.