Chapter Text
It was a simple enough plan: Wait for nightfall, climb the roof of the castle undetected, drop in through the ceiling, grab the Lost Prince’s crown, and escape via their gliders. Then, it was off to Liyue to sell the thing and then they would be rich for the rest of their lives. Or, Kaeya would be, after he double-crossed them and left them for dead somewhere in the wilds of Liyue. A 33-33-33 split of the spoils was definitely not as good as 100%.
It was a simple plan, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise to Kaeya when it went horribly wrong. They got onto the roof no problem, in the dead of night with no one able to see them, and even pulled the panels off the roof easily. They dropped into the attic of the castle and started working away at the wooden ceiling to create a hole big enough to drop down through. But as soon as the hole was made they realized something - the crown was already gone. Kaeya had leaned down to look through the hole just as the guards rushed into the room. Then, obviously, they assumed that he had stolen the crown and alerted all the other castle guards. As soon as Kaeya and the other two men he’d been working with had glided down from the roof, barely dodging arrows and elemental attacks over their shoulders, the treasure hoarders ran off and told him he was on his own.
So now, Kaeya was sitting in the hull of Captain Beidou’s ship, hiding amongst the wine while they prepared to embark on their way to Liyue. There was no way he could stay in Mondstadt after everything that happened, even if he was being wrongfully accused. Posters with his face on them were already all over the place. They never did look quite like him, but the eye patch was a dead giveaway and it wasn’t like he could take that off. All he could do now was wait for Beidou and her crew to finish up with the port guards and he would be on his way to freedom. Ironic that he would be fleeing from the Country of Freedom in order to be free himself, but what could he do? March into the castle and declare he’s been framed? He already had a reputation as a thief and a liar, there was no way they would believe him.
“We just have to check your cargo for stowaways and then you’ll be cleared to leave port,” the guard said, and Kaeya cursed to himself.
“No issue at all, go right ahead,” Beidou said. It sounded like she was smiling. She knew that either they wouldn’t find a stowaway, or that Kaeya was about to be found.
Kaeya got up from behind the barrels of wine and crept to the small window that barely looked out above the water. The guards were boarding the ship and Beidou was standing tall and confident on the dock, waiting for them to carry out their search. Perfect, he cursed to himself, just perfect. He moved to the doorway of the cargo cabin and stood next to it, waiting for the guards to enter the room.
Just as the door opened and he saw the foot of the first guard, Kaeya drew his sword and swung around the door, knocking out the first guard with his elbow and pointing his sword at the other’s throat.
“What in the-?!” the man sputtered, reaching for his own sword, but Kaeya was a step ahead of him, stepping over the unconscious guard to shove the other out of his way and bolt for the deck of the ship.
The crew all exclaimed confusion as he ran onto the docks, startling even Beidou as she was pushed aside.
“After him!” the lone guard shouted, alerting the guards on the dock. “He’s wanted for the theft of the Crown of the Lost Prince!”
“Are you kidding?!” Captain Beidou exclaimed, drawing her own sword and running after him. “On my ship?!”
“Capture him!” the dock guards yelled, drawing their swords and running for him.
Kaeya shot ice across the moist deck, causing the guards to slip and some to fall into the water. Used to the ice, he danced around them and hopped over the last, running for the literal hills. Captain Beidou was still on his tail though, her heavy footfalls not letting up. He turned to run through the close-by village, knowing that Beidou couldn’t electrocute him without putting others in danger that way.
He heard her gaining on him, not daring to look back, when he finally saw his way out. The Enchanted Forest. For years, the forest had been impossible to navigate. Many citizens and adventurers alike had gotten lost forever in the Enchanted Forest. Kaeya was willing to risk getting lost if the alternative was having to face Captain Beidou in battle. Or worse, being hanged for stealing something he didn’t steal.
“Damn!” she shouted from behind him as he sprinted into the trees. She had stopped herself just short of the tree line. He finally peeked back to see her, feeling safe finally. “You’ll die in there!”
“Better than being killed by you,” he said, finding his confidence again.
“At least leave us the crown before you go off to die!”
“I don’t have it!” he shouted back, frowning. “You won’t find it with me, I wasn’t the one who took it!”
“Likely story from a thief and a liar!” she growled. Her sword glinted in the setting sun. She was still contemplating following him, it seemed.
“Exactly why I’m running instead of trying to state my case, Captain,” he explained with a sigh. “If you do wish to get lost with me, be my guest!”
With that, he turned back around and ran into the woods. He heard her make a noise of frustration, but ultimately he found himself alone amongst the trees. Well, he thought, maybe wandering around in the Enchanted Forest would be an interesting way to die.
The first day was a lot better than the second, but nothing could beat the third. The first day was alright, he just walked in any direction and made a camp for the night once the sun went down. The second day was bad, he was hungry and tired from running from the law for so long, and he didn’t trust his foraging skills to find something to eat. The third day, he assumed the Anemo Archon must have taken pity on him, because he found a fucking tavern.
“Welcome to the Angel’s Share,” the bartender said as he stumbled in. He was a tall man with bright red hair that looked a little too familiar. As soon as he saw him, Kaeya was thrown into a memory.
“Don’t go far,” their father said, watching his sons play by the forest’s edge. “People have been getting lost in there lately.”
“We won’t go too far in, we promise!” one of his sons shouted to him, his deep blue hair getting in his eyes.
“Promise,” the other son called. Kaeya grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him along into the trees. “Hey- be careful!”
“I am careful,” Kaeya said. He released his brother’s wrist and turned around to hold up his small wooden sword. “Alright, this is a perfect place to practice!”
“I don’t know why you think that,” Diluc sighed. He held up his own wooden sword despite his reluctance.
“Because, having trees around makes it harder to fight!” Kaeya motioned to the trees around them. “In a clearing, you can run wherever you need to, but there’s no cover. In a forest, you can’t really run around, but there are places to take cover behind.”
“I guess,” Diluc said with a sigh. “How come you know all this stuff?”
“Because, I’m going to be an adventurer!” Kaeya proudly proclaimed. “Just like mom!”
Diluc smiled at his brother. “You’ll probably be a really great one.”
Kaeya’s smile fell, his cheeks burning with the praise. “Y-yeah, well…”
“Come on,” Diluc said, tapping Kaeya’s sword with his own. “Let’s spar.”
The two boys fought together in the forest for a short while. They were only seven, and they’d already spent the day playing, so their energy ran out quickly. Just as the boys were about to call it quits, a loud ringing of a bell made them both perk up.
“Dinner time!” Kaeya exclaimed excitedly, sprinting toward home.
“Wait-!” Diluc shouted, tripping as he tried to catch up to his brother.
Kaeya ran through the trees, following his heart where he knew home was. He burst through the tree line and saw his parents’ relieved faces. He stood a moment, turning back to wait for Diluc. But he never came. Kaeya stared into the trees. He had been right behind him, hadn’t he? Kaeya had been just ahead of him, he had heard his footsteps in the brush.
“Diluc?” he called. “Come on, dinner time!”
No response came. His parents started looking worried.
“Diluc, come on, mom and dad aren’t kidding!” Kaeya tried again, stepping toward the tree line.
Still, silence.
“Diluc!” Kaeya shouted. Where was his brother? He had just been with him! “Diluc, where did you go?!”
“Kaeya-!” His father stopped him from going back into the forest, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away. “Don’t!”
“But- but Diluc is still in there!” he cried. He was crying, tears streaming down his face and making the forest look blurry.
“We can’t look for him ourselves!” his father insisted, pulling him up into his arms. “We will call the Royal Guard, they will find him, I promise!”
“But I was- I was just with him!” Kaeya sobbed, searching the trees fruitlessly as he was taken inside. “I was just with him!”
“Do you need any-?” the bartender said, turning around. He froze when he saw Kaeya standing there. “K-Kaeya?”
“Diluc?” Kaeya breathed, unable to process what he was seeing. Diluc had stayed seven years old in his mind, a young, scared boy who got lost forever in the Enchanted Forest. But the man before him was definitely not seven anymore. He was twenty-five like Kaeya, standing about an inch taller than him, with muscle that obviously came from years of chopping wood, whereas Kaeya was lean from years of running. His bright red hair was long, barely held back in a ponytail. He dressed in mostly black, like he was dressed for a funeral. “You’re alive!”
“And you’re in the forest,” Diluc said, eyebrows drawing together. “What are you doing here? And your eye-?”
Kaeya couldn’t answer him immediately, running to the bar and vaulting over it to give his long lost brother a hug. “Holy shit, you’re alive!”
“I-I am,” Diluc sighed, finally returning his hug. “I… I can’t believe how much you’ve grown.”
“You’re saying that to me?!” Kaeya exclaimed, pulling back from their hug. “You’re all muscle! And you’re taller than me now!”
“Ah, well, you know,” he said sheepishly. “I spend a lot of time chopping trees out here. Not much else to do.”
“I can imagine.” Kaeya stuck himself back to Diluc’s chest, squeezing him. “I missed you so much, I can’t believe it…”
Diluc’s grip on him tightened. “Neither can I… Kaeya, what are you doing here?”
Kaeya took one last moment to relish in knowing his brother was alive and safe before stepping back and sighing. “It’s a long story.”
Kaeya had told him the whole story, about how he’d been about to steal the Crown of the Lost Prince, and how it had already been stolen, and about how it could’ve only been stolen within the hour before he had gotten there. The guards, he had recalled, checked the chamber every hour on the hour. By the time Kaeya had poked his head in, the guards were doing their routine check and noticed both the empty glass case and the strange man in the ceiling. Diluc found this intriguing, which was slightly confusing to Kaeya. Most people got hung up on the stealing part and didn’t really listen to much else. Diluc seemed to have no problems with stealing, even such a high-profile item. The prince had disappeared just months before Diluc went missing, so it wasn’t surprising that Diluc knew about it. Though he did seem surprised that the poor prince still hadn’t been found. They talked about everything over a hot meal and chilled wine, both things that Diluc made himself.
“You make everything here?” Kaeya asked, half jokingly.
“Yes, actually.” Diluc’s response came with a sigh. “I came upon this place a few days after getting lost, thankfully. It’s a wonder I lasted that long so young.”
“No kidding,” Kaeya said quietly, hiding slightly behind his wine.
“The man who ran this place, Angel’s Share, took me in and treated me like a son. He taught me how to do all kinds of things, from chopping wood to carving it to growing food and making meals to tracking animals to hunt.” Diluc turned to look at a large painting on the wall. “Even painting.”
Kaeya choked on his wine and sputtered. “D-did you paint that?!”
“No, of course not,” Diluc laughed, turning back to him. “Though that expression is priceless, I wonder what you’d have done if I’d said yes.”
Kaeya wiped his face and flipped his brother off.
“Anyway, when he died I realized that there was no one else capable of running the place. I felt indebted to him for keeping me alive, not to mention teaching me everything I now know. I decided to run the place myself, and since then that’s how it’s been. This is the only safe place in the forest.”
“Sounds more like an inn than a tavern,” Kaeya noted, looking around the room at the myriad of people hanging around. One such person, a short, young-looking bard, was asleep in the corner surrounded by empty mugs.
“I guess it is,” Diluc said, shrugging. “But it’s not like I charge anyone to stay here or eat here.”
“What? That’s no way to run a business.”
“It’s not a business, it’s a necessity. No one can find their way out of the forest, so even finding this tavern is a miracle in itself. What asshole would then require you to pay for food and lodging?” Diluc sighed. “The man before me never charged after he realized the forest had been cursed. Story after story of people getting hopelessly lost came in, and soon he couldn’t find his way to town to sell wares and buy fire wood.”
“That sounds like a nightmare,” Kaeya said.
“Not much less of a nightmare than we both lived through, right?”
Kaeya swallowed. “You were right behind me…”
“I really was,” Diluc said, meeting his pained gaze with a sympathetic one. “You walked behind a tree and then you were gone.”
Kaeya’s eyes widened. How terrifying.
“I spun around to see if you’d gone somewhere else, but that just made me lose my bearings even more,” Diluc recalled. “I called out to you.”
“I-I did too,” Kaeya said, his voice wavering. “I shouted and shouted, but you were just…”
“Gone.” Diluc closed his eyes and sighed. They sat in silence for a moment before Diluc opened his eyes again to fix Kaeya with a determined gaze. “What about mom and dad?”
Kaeya had to bite his tongue to keep from crying. He composed himself before speaking again. “Dad… Dad died not long after you went missing.”
Diluc’s determined look faltered.
“The healers said he likely died from… From a broken heart, after losing one of his sons.” Kaeya drowned the lump in his throat in wine before going on. “Mom got sick a few years ago. Took her fast.”
Diluc pressed a hand against his mouth, breathing in slowly.
“I… I wasn’t left with much after they were gone.” Kaeya folded his hands together on the table. “Hence the… Thievery.”
Diluc nodded.
“I’m sorry, Diluc.”
Shaking his head, Diluc reached over to put his hand on both of Kaeya’s. “It’s not your fault.”
Kaeya nodded, then looked up at his brother’s pinched expression. “It’s not yours either, you know?”
Surprised, Diluc looked back up at him.
“It’s not your fault you got lost. It’s not your fault that mom and dad died.” Kaeya could’ve been- no, should’ve been speaking into a mirror. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
Diluc stared at him until he finally nodded slightly.
“Captain Beidou?” Diluc repeated slowly.
“Oh, she’s a Naval Captain from Liyue- which is a country we’ve started to trade with,” Kaeya explained, slurring some words together. “Man, you’ve missed a lot of shit, huh?”
“Apparently,” Diluc sighed. “So, you were trying to stow away on her ship?”
“Yes, but the fucking guard just had to check for stowaways,” Kaeya groaned.
“Well, if the ship was bound for a different country, of course they would have to check for stowaways,” Diluc said, as if it was obvious. And so what if it was. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to stowaway on a ship going to someplace close to Liyue and then travel on foot into the country?”
Kaeya stared at him. “You think I’m smart enough to have thought of that myself?”
“Clearly not.”
Kaeya frowned. “Well, I’m not.”
“Clearly.”
Kaeya kicked him under the table before going back to downing his wine. Across the tavern, the bard that had been sleeping in the corner was now standing on a table, lyre in hand. He seemed extremely drunk, and apparently annoying to Diluc.
“Please don’t stand on the tables,” he called, getting utterly ignored by the twanging notes of the lyre.
“Who wants to hear a song?” the bard asked the room, smiling at the surrounding patrons. “I call this one, ‘you’re not the boss of me!’”
Diluc rolled his eyes and turned back around as the bard began to sing off key and nearly stumble off the table.
“He always-?”
“Yes, he’s always like this,” Diluc finished for him. “Venti, traveling bard. Though, he hasn’t done much traveling after getting lost in the forest.”
“Poor guy,” Kaeya sighed. “That’s his whole shtick!”
“Yes well, apparently his shtick is also getting drunk off his ass at any chance he gets. Hence-”
A crash from behind them punctuated Diluc’s words.
“I’m okay!” Venti called from the floor.
“Thank the Archons,” Diluc muttered.
Kaeya couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve got a lively place here. It’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” Diluc said, suddenly very genuine. “I’ve worked hard to get it like this. A break from the curse, as I like to call it.”
“Would be nice if we could break the curse,” Kaeya said with a sigh. “Wouldn’t have to be getting cabin fever with the same crowd all the time.”
Diluc hummed, crossing his arms.
“There any place to sleep?” Kaeya asked, finding himself with his eyes closed. “I’m beat.”
“I can certainly imagine why,” Diluc said, getting up. “You can sleep in the back, there’s a room I used to use as a child.”
“Any room is good,” Kaeya yawned.