Archive of Our Own

. . .

Kaeya cannot be older than eight, but he’s already saddled with the weight of a nation on his shoulders, and although his father won’t tell him the full truth about it, he knows it’s there. He knows it from hushed conversations and private glances—ones his father taught him to observe yet still tries to use around him, and that could only mean his father wants him to know, but cannot just tell him. He knows it from the traveler who comes to the door, bundled in bloody clothes, and she’s clutching her arm against her chest while it sits at a strange angle, and there are tears in her eyes.

She’s rattling off something about needing help, about being attacked by rifthounds a way’s off, but then she looks down and sees that he’s a child and she says, “Oh.” And he looks up and she sees his face and she says, “Oh.”

He feels his father’s presence behind him, and then a sturdy hand on his shoulder. He says, “Can I help you?”

It takes the traveler a moment to finally take her eyes off of Kaeya, and even when she does, they blink between the two of them, her mouth agape and speech stalled, until his father clears his throat and she launches back into her story about rifthounds.

His father’s face is twisted in a way he has seen many times, eyebrows dark and lips pinched tightly. He looks at the woman, and then at Kaeya, and shuts his eyes tightly before inviting her inside.

“Love, get the medical kit,” he tells Kaeya, guiding the woman to sit against a bolster and gently walking her through removing some of her gear so he can see the break. “You’ll need to get to the city for proper help,” he explains to her as Kaeya brings him the medical kit. It has not gotten much use, because his father is a careful man. “You can’t stay here.”

But the woman is looking past him, at Kaeya, who hovers in the doorway, watching and listening. Few travelers come here, because rifthounds are dangerous and unavoidable unless one knows the land. Still, they’re so close to the surface that sometimes a stray breeze makes its way down, so they take the risk anyway.

She begins, “Your son—”

“I’m aware,” his father interrupts. He moves her arm a bit and asks, “Does this hurt?”

“Yes,” she says, but she doesn’t flinch, and she’s still staring at Kaeya, her gaze so eagerly examining. His father looks at him like that a lot, but he is much more hesitant with his excitement. “Let him try.”

“No,” he responds quickly. Then he switches to Teyvat’s common tongue, “Go to your room.” The woman raises a sly eyebrow and gives him a grin. Kaeya shrinks back.

His eyebrows knit together. “Why?” His father turns when he hears his voice; he has always been soft on his son.

“You’re not in trouble,” he says. “I will explain soon.”

Kaeya steps back into the shadows, but he doesn’t leave, because his father has always taught him to stay quiet, stay hidden, and most importantly, get as much information as he can. 

“He’s no healer,” his father says.

“Does the Bough Keeper know about him?”

Kaeya’s father hesitates before nodding. He cannot see the look she gives him in return, if it is sympathetic or angry, because her face is blocked from view by his father’s figure.

She says, “Why do you have him all the way out here?”

Again, his father takes a long time to respond. He is as careful with his words as he is with his health; he says this is a lesson Kaeya will need to take with him. “He’s still a child,” he answers. “He’s my child.”

The woman is very quiet. “I understand,” she says, kindly. Then her voice turns more serious. “Are you preparing him?”

“Every day,” his father says. His voice is flat with this stranger in their house, but Kaeya knows this causes him great despair, because he tells Kaeya as much. He knows that the day he leaves his home, he will leave his father along with it.

“You’ll want to remember something to shield him from the sun,” she advises. “It will burn him if he’s never seen it before.” Most of the people Kaeya has met have given his father quiet, urgent reminders like this—to work on his accent, to teach him the name of plants, to remind him that he loves him. “I don’t have much on me, but—”

“Keep whatever you have,” his father says. “And love,” he continues, switching back to the common tongue and angling his head so he can see Kaeya out of the corner of his eye, “go to bed.”

Later in the night, as Kaeya’s father brushes the tangles out of his hair, as he tucks him into bed under a blanket that smells like home, as he plants an extra kiss on his forehead, his lips are pinched in a tiny circle.

“Is something on your mind, beloved?” his father asks, in Mondstadtian this time.

“Who is—” he begins, but his father makes a sound in the back of his throat and taps his nose gently.

“Practice,” he commands.

Kaeya exhales through his nose, but otherwise acquiesces, “Who is that woman?”

His father pinches his chin in his hand. He says, “She is a wounded traveler.”

“How does she know me?”

“She doesn’t.”

“She talks like she does.”

His father narrows his eyes. He switches to Khaenri’ahn when he says, “I don’t want you speaking to her. Is that understood, Kaeya?”

“Yes, Father,” Kaeya answers.

He looks at him for a long moment, and then he closes his eyes. “I’ll sleep in here with you tonight. Is that okay?”

When Kaeya nods, his father disappears for a moment and returns with a blanket in hand. He sets himself up a small area to sleep and presses the back of his hand to Kaeya’s cheek before laying down for the night.

His father stays awake for hours after that, keeping watch with half his attention on the door and the other half on Kaeya. He keeps his breathing slow and rhythmic so it sounds like sleep, and eventually, his father falls asleep, too. Kaeya casts his blankets to the side and stands from the bed, creeping across the floor, around and over his father’s sleeping form, to open the door.

It is fortunate for his curiosity that his father is not a light sleeper, and he sneaks away easily, wide-eyed with eagerness.

The traveler is asleep in their front room, arm bandaged now, and she’s using one of their blankets. He creeps over on his toes and stands by her head.

“Are you awake?” he whispers. He watches one of her eyes flick open and trace around the darkness to find him. As her gaze settles upon him, she relaxes and gives him a lazy smile.

“I assumed your father wouldn’t want you talking to me,” she answers. She’s speaking in Khaenri’ahn, and he’s glad for it. Sometimes he misses it, but his father says he must learn to miss the things he is familiar with. He also says he needs to practice. “What’s your name?”

“Kaeya,” he says. She closes her eyes and nods. “Are you and my father friends?” 

The woman opens one eye again and looks out at him from it. “No.”

Kaeya frowns. “Do you know him?”

“No.”

He thinks for a long moment. “Do you know me?”

Her smile grows wide and frightening. “You’re sharp,” she responds leisurely. “Did your father teach you that?”

Instead of answering, Kaeya asks, “How? I’ve never met you before.”

The traveler moves her good arm out from under her and pokes right on his cheek. “Do you know what this means?” He presses his hand to his eyelid. She gently grabs his wrist and guides it away. 

He shakes his head. 

She hums. “You will save us,” she says.

“From what?”

“From this,” she answers. He doesn’t know what that means. He’s too scared to ask.

“Why were you out there?” he asks. “There are rifthounds.”

She laughs silently at him; he doesn’t frown, because his father says that’s no way to get information out of someone. “I wanted to see the stars,” she answers with a deep breath. “Have you seen them before?”

Kaeya shakes his head. “My father won’t let me.”

“Ah.” The woman nods thoughtfully. “You’ll have plenty of time when you’re older.”

“Did you get to see them?”

“Not this time,” she answers. “It was raining. But I’ve seen them before.”

“What do they look like?”

She presses her fingers below her own eyes this time. “Like this.”

“Like eyes?” he gasps. “Gross.”

She chuckles loudly, and Kaeya knows his time is nearly up. “No, not like eyes. Like diamonds. And they flicker like tiny lanterns in the sky.”

“Oh,” he says.

“Do you know the legend about it?” she asks.

“No,” he answers.

“There are millions of them,” she says. “And they shine all night and sometimes, they fall out of the sky and grant wishes.”

“Oh,” Kaeya repeats, and he’s a bit more excited this time. “Is that the legend? About the wishes? It’s short.”

“No,” she says. “That’s real.” Her face is soft and teasing. “Ask your father about it.”

All of the sudden, his mind is filled with a hundred questions, but none of them will be answered, because his father stomps into the room, hoists him up by the armpits, and gives him a very angry look.

“I told you to stay in the room,” he says in the common tongue again. “I told you not to talk to her.”

Kaeya finds her in the darkness, face relaxed and content and slightly mischievous. It doesn’t seem like she knows what he’s saying, but he knows his father’s voice is harsh and angry and frightened, regardless of the language.

“I wanted to know who she was,” he says. It doesn’t make his father any happier, and he marches them back to Kaeya’s room. 

He tucks Kaeya back into bed, making the sheets extra tight this time, even when he complains it’s too tight. 

“You’re suffocating me,” he protests.

“You need to breathe to speak,” his father answers. 

Kaeya frowns. 

“Kaeya,” he sighs after a moment. “I asked you to stay away from that woman because she is a stranger. She could be dangerous.”

“Then why did you invite her into the house?”

He taps Kaeya’s forehead with his knuckle. “She has dangerous ideas.”

“She told me about the stars,” Kaeya says. “I want to see them.”

“I know,” his father says, and his voice shakes a little bit in a way Kaeya has only heard a few times. “You have a lifetime of stars ahead of you. There’s no need to rush.”

Kaeya blinks up to him. “That’s what she said,” he says. “You said her ideas were dangerous but they’re the same as yours.” Kaeya’s father purses his lips. “If you hate her so much, why are you letting her stay here?”

His voice has become wet and high now, and his father brushes a thumb over his cheek. “Language,” he chides weakly.

“Father, ” Kaeya whines.

“All right,” he says. “I am letting her stay here because she is injured and she needs our help.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Even if I distrust her,” he says, “she needed help.” He pulls Kaeya’s head up from the chin. “We have a responsibility to help people.” He ducks away. His father sighs. “Don’t forget that.” It sounds like he is talking about something bigger, something Kaeya doesn’t have the full answers to. 

“I won’t,” he answers. 

. . .

“Are you afraid?” Crepus asks. He’s not his father yet, but he will be someday. 

Diluc isn’t looking at either of them; his gaze is focused down on the ground below them, and his arms are extended to either end of a wind glider, not yet unfurled, and he’s shaking. Crepus’ hand is gentle on his shoulder and he’s bent down to speak more directly to him.

They’re over by Barbatos’ statue behind the winery. Crystalflies flutter around, bobbing up close to Kaeya because he is unmoving, except for the way his hair and clothes shudder in the wind, and because they aren’t used to the way his body has yet to be touched by their elements; he idly shoos them away. He can see the orange-shingled roof from here. The fall isn’t large, maybe ten feet at most, but there’s another, larger cliff further down by the winery, and Diluc is eying it warily.

Kaeya watches them from a few feet away. He wonders if he should say something, cut in and remind Diluc that he’s meant to respond in conversations. 

There is a knowing smile on the stone Barbatos’ face, a glowing red vision hooked to Diluc’s chest, a whisper in the wind. Kaeya remembers a distant reminder from his father that the gods are watching his every move and a dozen lessons about the importance of his words. 

So instead he sits there, gaze wide and unblinking.

Ten minutes ago, Diluc had excitedly volunteered to go first. Three hours ago, he’d exclaimed something about how shocked he was that Kaeya had never used a wind glider before. One hour ago, he learned that Diluc had also never used a wind glider before, because this happens every time.

“Diluc?” Crepus says softly. Diluc nods. “Okay.” He moves onto his knees now, so he’s just a bit shorter than the both of them, and he’s pressing a hand to his son’s cheek. Kaeya absently scratches at his face, but at least he remembers to not look annoyed. “It’s okay to be afraid. The wind will catch you.”

Diluc moves his gaze off of the jump and onto his father. His eyebrows are all scrunched up and tears prick the corner of his eyes. Crepus purses his lips.

“Do you want to hold off? We can do this another day,” he offers. Diluc looks to Kaeya and bites his lip.

“But Kaeya hasn’t had a turn.”

“Kaeya can take a turn regardless of whether you take one first,” he says, impossibly patient. The answer does not satisfy him.

Diluc thinks for a very long minute. He looks at Kaeya, and then at the path. “No, I’ll do it,” he says resolutely.

After a few minutes more of waiting, he does. He runs and jumps off the side, then extends his arms along the glider and sinks slowly down to Elzer waiting nearer to the other drop. As soon as he touches the ground, he jumps and waves his arms in the air, and Elzer lifts him up and they run around together. If Kaeya strains his ears, he can hear them shouting from here.

Then Crepus extends an arm and Kaeya moves the hand off his cheek and takes it.

“Are you ready?” he asks. Kaeya looks down to see what made Diluc so scared, but he doesn’t see it. It’s barely a ten-foot drop, with lush grass and plenty of room to land safely. He might get hurt if he forgets to deploy the wind glider, but he doesn’t think that’s likely. “Is everything okay?”

Kaeya nods. He looks harder, searching furiously to find what Diluc found so scary he couldn’t move, but he can’t.

“If it’s too scary,” Crepus says, “we can walk back down together.”

Kaeya blinks up at him. “It’s not scary,” he says. And it’s not. 

He has seen much bigger drops than this, down into deep pockets of the Abyss, churning dark and loud in the back of his head. Those go on forever and ever. If he falls into one, he’ll never stop. 

Everything in Mondstadt is so wonderfully, gloriously tiny. It’s all human-sized, like it was meticulously crafted to fit them in here comfortably. He thought he would hate that, but he doesn’t. 

“You’re allowed to be afraid,” Crepus says. 

Kaeya frowns. Crepus talks about fear in a funny way, he thinks. His father always told him that fear was good, that it keeps him safe and smart. But Crepus insists upon this just like he insists that it’s okay to miss his father, and Kaeya doesn’t know how he expects him to respond to that. Of course he misses his father; of course he’s not afraid of this. 

“I’m not afraid,” Kaeya says. “That’s the ground.”

“Indeed,” Crepus returns. “It’s not as high as it looks.”

Kaeya shakes his head. “If I fall, I’ll land right there,” he explains. He looks to Crepus, who studies his face carefully.

“You won’t fall,” he says. 

“But if I do—”

“You won’t,” Crepus insists. Kaeya blinks. 

“I’m not afraid,” he reminds him.

Five weeks later, Kaeya is afraid.

It’s the two of them, sitting outside the winery, in the staff’s break area. Crepus has given Kaeya a cup of juice to match his, and it’s still summer, so the glass is covered in a thin layer of water on the outside. Crepus smiles when Kaeya tries to wipe it off with his shirt.

“What’s this?” he asks. “The water on the sides?”

“Condensation,” Crepus answers easily. He mouths the word silently to himself. “It happens sometimes when it’s hot out and something is cold. It’s supposed to be there.”

Kaeya makes a vague noise of understanding.

He loves the sun already, but he’s not yet a fan of its heat—it’s sticky and heavy and it makes him want to spend all day in the river, even though it makes his clothes and eyepatch sag with the weight of the water. 

But Diluc says it’s not that hot and he wants to spend all day playing, so they come home sweaty and tired every day. It’s horrible because that means the only reprieve from the heat is the gentle breeze. 

He misses the cool walls of his home that have been replaced by hot openness, the stagnant water instead of the loud, rushing river, the way the wind was so weak and infrequent that he never paid it any mind. 

“The end of the season is coming up,” Crepus tells him. He glances down at Kaeya, his forehead beaded with sweat and his eye drooping in fatigue. “The harvest, that is. I’m afraid the heat will stick around for a few more weeks.”

“How many?” Kaeya asks, and that also makes Crepus laugh. He does not let his eyebrows draw down, even when he chuckles for so long that he forgets Kaeya asked a question.

“I’m enjoying having you here,” he says. “And Diluc is as well.”

“Thank you,” he answers, even though he’s not sure that’s the right thing to say, especially when Crepus’ easy smile wavers for a moment.

“Typically,” he explains, swallowing down a cough, “we stay in our home in the city for the colder months.”

“Oh.” Kaeya sits up straighter than before and neatly folds his hands on the table. 

“I was curious how you felt about coming with us.”

“Oh,” he repeats. He considers Crepus’ face for a moment. It doesn’t leave much room for argument. “I like the winery,” he answers.

“I’m glad,” Crepus says. “It seems to like you, too.” Kaeya scrunches his nose. “But we’d love for you to come with us.”

Kaeya looks at his glass of juice. If it spills, it will make this table just as sticky as everything else in the summer. But it doesn’t, because he’s not even holding it.

He doesn’t know what to say. “Don’t you like it here?” he asks.

Crepus considers this earnestly. He strokes his chin before tucking his hands together on the table. “Very much,” he says. “But I’m afraid it’s less fun here in the cooler months.” Kaeya makes a vague noise of attention, but otherwise directs his gaze out at the trees. “What’s on your mind?” 

Kaeya puffs up his cheeks. There are many things on his mind, all the time. For now, he says, “Is the house in the city like this one?”

Crepus’ face relaxes a lot at that, like suddenly everything makes sense, and he takes a sip of his drink. “It is very similar,” he answers. “The biggest change will be adjusting to the city.”

Kaeya draws a design in the condensation on his cup, and then he wipes it away.

“The food at the manor will be the same,” he begins. “Adelinde and Elzer will both come with us, along with most of the household staff. Most people will still speak in the common tongue. And there will be a lot more people, but they won’t know you personally like they do out here.”

He means to make Kaeya feel better, but Kaeya’s not quite sure that it works. He’s still alert with the sour feeling that whatever they find in the city will be just as unfamiliar as the winery once was—as it still is, because he’s still adjusting to Mondstadt—and at least everything here is small and contained. Diluc has told him that the city is huge and crowded with people and animals and buildings, and Kaeya doesn’t know how much he’ll like that. 

It’s not like he has much of a choice, though, because he’s meant to stay with Crepus, to make him love him and trust him, but he’s being selfish in this.

“It sounds like fun,” he answers, finally, but Crepus’ mouth ticks into a frown. 

He clears his throat. “Kaeya, if something is bothering you, I’d like to help.” 

But there’s nothing Crepus can do to help him, because Kaeya has to change to fit in here like he’s supposed to, no matter how difficult it is or how much he hates it. 

“You know,” he says, “things have to change if you want them to last longer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be afraid.”

And oh, that sort of makes sense now—why he says it and why he believes it. 

Because Mondstadt is so different from his home, and even though it is friendly, it demands that he adapt so quickly, that he forget everything he relied on until this point and use its things instead. 

More than anything, it’s confusing—because he doesn’t want things to change more when he’s already struggling to acclimate. But maybe he can settle for the same language and food and people.

“I’m not afraid,” Kaeya says, but this time it is a lie.

. . .

Before Kaeya’s father finally tells him the whole truth, he brings him out on a rowboat, stocked with enough food to picnic on the water and enough bait to keep them busy. He rows them far enough into the water that they can no longer see any land, yet they cannot escape the cavern ceiling tall above them. At times, it grows so high it is hard to see, but at others, it drops low enough that the two of them have to lay down in the boat so they don’t hit their heads and scuff their shoulders. Now, it stretches far enough that they can only see the ore locked in the rock that sparkles down on them, vast in the permanent clear weather of the underground but not enough to truly light up their vision.

His father pulls the lanterns from either side of the boat and blows them out so they are sitting in darkness.

“My parents used to take me out here like this because they said in the right conditions, the ore looks like stars,” he explains. 

Kaeya blinks up to the roof. His father does not often discuss his youth unprompted, or the world outside theirs.

“Does it?” Kaeya asks.

He can hear a smile in his father’s voice, “A little bit. I think you will be more impressed by them than this.” He sounds more determined than assured when he continues, “You will like the surface.”

Kaeya makes a tiny, disbelieving noise. 

“It is a big place. There are a lot of things to see.”

“You said the Abyss was the biggest thing there is,” Kaeya says.

“It is,” he affirms. “But in Teyvat, there is light all day and night. You can see everything.”

“We have lanterns,” he argues. 

“Lanterns don’t compare.”

“I like the dark.”

His father sighs. “You will learn to love it there.”

Kaeya purses his lips; he doesn’t like how distant his father sounds. He reaches out his hands to find him in the darkness, and when he does, pulls himself into his arms. He curls up on his father’s lap, and for that, he is squeezed close and a kiss is pressed gently onto the crown of his head.

“Kaeya,” the lips say into his hair. “You must learn to love it there.”

“Why?”

Instead of answering, he says, “Can you do that for me?” Kaeya nods against him. “Can you say it? Can you promise?”

“I promise.”

“In Khaenri’ahn?”

Kaeya’s breath stops for a moment, but he does.

And then his father pulls Kaeya away from him, just barely, and only to free his mouth, but it’s enough to feel a difference. 

Kaeya does not curl back into him. In return, his father finally tells him the full truth.

It’s a familiar story—in part a history and in another, a premonition—one he has heard bits of many times but suddenly Kaeya is the main character, suddenly he is important not only to his father, but to everyone . It scares him like nothing else, and halfway through, when he tries to pull closer to his father again, he lifts Kaeya up and puts him back in his seat. He can’t see, but it sounds like his father is kneeling in front of him, and they are only touching where their hands connect.

The story is long and it hurts, more because his father pushes him away, but Kaeya is quiet and still through all of it. He is used to his father’s stories, to strangers and to him.

In his father’s many tales to excitable locals, he has been promised to the Eclipse Dynasty, the Bough Keeper, and the gods themselves. They all know, somehow, that he will be forced to leave his homeland—in the stories, he goes for sabotage or information or to make a better life. He has not known which is true until now. 

His father is a cautious man, and he has instilled that in Kaeya so much that he is brimming with it, so every story is carefully crafted for the listener. And now Kaeya understands why he couldn’t tell those people the truth.

It’s nothing and everything like the stories his father used to tell him before bed, full of heroes and tragedy and loss. Those stories were for him—to teach him lessons and remind him to have hope in something, even if he was never sure what he was supposed to have hope in—and so is this one, but he doesn’t want this one. 

Now he knows, and he doesn’t know how he’s meant to inspire hope in himself, much less anyone else. But he also knows that people have always looked at him like he will save them, they have told him as much. He doesn’t want to have to be the one to save them. 

“Do you understand what this means, my love?” his father asks. 

Kaeya pulls his hand from his father’s. For a brief moment, he chases it, but he gives up before he finds it again.

“Kaeya?” he says gently. 

“I understand.”

His father is quiet for a very long time. “Please say something more,” he says finally.

“I don’t want to.”

After another pause, his father shifts in the boat, so he’s back in his spot from before. “You don’t want to say something or you don’t want to go?” 

Kaeya doesn’t reach back for him like he wants to. He waits for a long moment before falling onto his back hard enough to rock the boat. He stares at the twinkling lights above them, bright enough to pierce the darkness from so high up but not bright enough to let them see each other.

“I realize how difficult this is, but—”

“No you don’t,” Kaeya says finally. “You don’t have to leave.” His father is quiet, and Kaeya sighs. “Why me?”

“I don’t know, my love,” he says softly. “This is not what I wished for you.”

“Then don’t make me go. We can stay together and—”

“We can’t. You have to go.”

“But you said you don’t want—”

“No.” It is strict and sharp, and Kaeya can tell it hurts him to be asked this, but it hurts him worse to hear it. 

His father shifts his weight and the boat takes a moment to settle back into stillness. Around them, he knows the water is as unmoving as anything else down here. He’s heard tales that everything above is loud and active. It sounds miserable. 

He tells Kaeya, “In Teyvat, they build boats with sails.” He says it in Khaenri’ahn, and even though Kaeya knows it’s just meant to make him feel better, and he’s angrier than he’s ever been with his father, it does.

“I know,” Kaeya says. “I’ve read about it.”

“They can capture the wind for their use,” he explains. “But we never did that, because we didn’t get wind down here, even then.” 

Kaeya turns away from his father’s voice and toward the inky vastness beyond them. It stretches so far out that if he were to fall in, he doesn’t know that he could find his way back up. According to all the legends, he might not want to. Sometimes, that vastness scares him, but right now he can't imagine anything else. 

“We made them with motors, to move on their own.”

Kaeya turns back towards him, disbelieving. “Like field tillers?”

He makes an affirming noise. “We didn’t need the gods’ assistance,” he explains. “We have always lived underground, outside their gaze.” 

“But it’s different now,” Kaeya recites. 

His father pauses before answering, “That is what you are here for, Kaeya.”

Kaeya runs his tongue over his teeth. He sighs, and then says, “Teyvat is under the gods’ gaze.”

His father says, “It is.”

“They’ll be watching me,” he returns.

“They will.” 

He doesn’t like the sound of that, even if he is meant to be watching them back. 

He asks, “Will you?”

His father sighs, long and sad. “I will come back for you, Kaeya. I promise. I will see you again.”

“What if you forget me?” He wants to hold his father’s hand.

He doesn’t reach out. “I can’t.”

“What if I forget you?” He wants his father to hold him close and kiss his head again.

His father is too far away for that. “You won’t.”

“What if I hate it?”

“That’s okay. You just need to find a few things to love.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You will.” Kaeya exhales, and it’s shaky and wet and cold and alone. His father says, “There are so many things for you there.”

“But you just told me everything they did,” he protests. “I don’t want to love them.”

“My love,” his father says. “You will have to.”

There is no space for argument in his tone. He doesn’t know how to do that—to find love for them somewhere deep in him after everything his father just told him, to remain hopeful and open when everything is so dismal and mean. But his father has told him he must, must find love and must bring them hope, so he has to find a way. 

“What if I fail?” he asks. His father is silent. “Father?”

He’s about to open his mouth to speak again when his father says, “You won’t.” He doesn’t sound as sure as the other times; it makes him doubt those, too.

“But what if—”

“Kaeya,” his father says sharply, but not cruelly, “you will not fail.” Kaeya tucks his legs under him. “Do you know what it means if you do?”

“Yes,” he answers.

“So you understand why you cannot fail?”

“Yes.”

His father sighs and finally finds his hands again. They are light and shaking against his. “I am sorry it has to be you, my love.” He presses one to Kaeya’s cheek. “But when all this is over, I swear I will find you.”

“How will you recognize me,” Kaeya asks softly, “if I’m older?” His father’s hand stalls against his face.

“I know what you look like,” he answers, and Kaeya can hear the smile in his voice.

“I’m serious,” he protests. “If I’m older, I’ll look different.”

“I would know you in the dark, love.”

Kaeya groans, “But you said it’s bright there.”

His father exhales gently through his nose. “I did,” he agrees, and then concedes, “I would know you in the light as well.”

. . .

“I was hoping,” Crepus says a long minute after Kaeya settles into the desk across from him, “to wait for you to come to me. But I suppose if I were to do that, we would both remain disappointed.”

Kaeya knows what this is about because Crepus has been acting nervous and excited since last night, when Diluc offhandedly referred to him as their father, instead of his own, during some story or other about their brief trip into the city. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, but it was the first time Crepus was there to hear it, and even though Kaeya had ducked his head into his shoulders and quickly excused himself for the rest of the evening, he knew this conversation was coming.

“I have no idea where he got that from,” Kaeya says. And it is absolutely a lie, because he does. 

It was just once, but he’d let himself slip and refer to Crepus as his father in front of Diluc, and his stupid brother with that horrifying, characteristic clumsiness in his words had latched onto the idea fervently. He’d mostly been good about shepherding Diluc to avoid mentioning it around Crepus, but it was a reveal waiting to happen, one he’d been dreading. 

He wishes he could say that he’s worried about Crepus knowing, that he’s scared he’ll say no and what will happen to them after that. But that’s not it, because he knows Crepus would never tell him no. 

“If Diluc notices, of all people,” he continues easily and with no malice towards his son, “then perhaps our respective desires are not as subtle as we seem to think, hm?”

“Our,” he breathes out, a quiet confirmation of his fears. He turns his gaze away from Crepus, whose hands are folded reverently and patiently, down at the cedar desk between them.

“Ah. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous.”

“You’re not,” Kaeya answers quickly. 

“Well, good. I would be disappointed if your answer was no before I’d even asked,” he says. “Then I will just say it directly.” Kaeya blinks and Crepus takes a deep breath. “Would you like to be more than my ward?”

Kaeya’s lips are pressed closely together. He swallows back an immediate yes and lets Crepus continue. 

“If you would be willing, I have to say that is something I would like quite a bit.”

“You want me to be your son,” he clarifies.

“I do,” he confirms. “Do you want that?”

Kaeya looks away and presses his hands together tightly. “I—” he begins, his tongue betraying him. After a moment, he continues with more control, “I can’t.”

“Why?” he prompts gently. 

But Kaeya doesn’t have anything more to say than that. 

“My dear,” Crepus says sternly. “You are allowed to want to be a part of this family.” Kaeya bows his head and focuses on the stacks of paper here and there on the desk. There are invoices and projections and ideas for seasonal blends, scattered around in easily discernible piles, even just at a glance. “You are a part of it, but you are allowed to want it, too.” He clears his throat and Kaeya blinks up to him. “I don’t claim to know your mind, but I’ve seen you wanting this for a long time.”

“Crepus,” Kaeya insists softly, willing him to understand. Because he needs him to understand that he isn’t saying no because he doesn’t want it. Because he wants him to know that even though his father is coming back for him, he still wants this. Because there are too many things that make the answer so easy when it shouldn’t be. 

He purses his lips. “Kaeya,” he says. “You aren’t betraying anyone by saying yes.”

“I am,” he says, with as much conviction as he can. He knows Crepus won’t understand, even if he were to try, but still, he wants him to. He wants him to know without saying anything—like he knew how Kaeya wanted this, so obvious in it that it didn’t even need to be spoken to be known—even though he knows how unfair it is for him to want.

“Of course, I… respect your perspective on this. You knew the man better than I ever will,” Crepus says. He pauses for a breath. “But I can’t imagine your father expected you to be alone for the rest of your life.”

Kaeya squeezes his eye shut. 

How to tell Crepus, who loves him more than anything, that he doesn’t deserve their love. That they’re wrong—wrong and wounded, or will be—for loving him like this. That despite his guilt about that, he’s gotten the taste for it and couldn’t imagine giving it up.

How to tell Crepus, who he loves more than anything, that he wants this—all of this—so overwhelmingly badly. For all his father tried to inspire it in him, Kaeya doesn’t hope so much as he wants, wants everything, desperate and greedy. He has all of their love, and yet he has been humiliatingly lonely here, because that desire is not something that can be filled in him.

How to tell Crepus, who worries over his ability to want, who doesn’t realize Kaeya has never done anything except want, that it is not a privilege he can have. Because he has responsibilities he has to fulfill, because it is wrong to lie to them like this, because his people were cursed and killed for their wanting. 

How to tell Crepus, who looks at him with expectant and nervous lines on his face, who he knows from the way his eyes focus steadily on him is praying to Barbatos now for encouragement but would never fathom bringing Kaeya’s will into question, who would do anything to give Kaeya what he wants but what he wants is too big. 

“My dear,” Crepus says gently when Kaeya is hesitant without explanation. “You’re not replacing anyone by saying yes. There is always room enough for more love in your life.” He shifts slightly in his seat. “And you don’t need my—or anyone else’s—permission to want this.”

There are a million reasons he should not agree to this, starting with the fact that he can’t even tell Crepus what bothers him so much and ending with a promise made against him. Kaeya doesn’t know how he can say yes to this if he can’t even tell him why he hesitates.

And he says Kaeya doesn’t need his permission, but there it is, telling him he has the room to be selfish. 

“If that is asking too much of you, I entirely understand,” Crepus says. “I admit, I am perhaps only giving you one side of this.”

Kaeya thins his lips into a long line. “What do you mean?”

“There is,” he says, “a trade of sorts. Some responsibilities you would be expected to take on if something were to happen to me and Diluc was— indisposed.”

Kaeya runs his tongue over his teeth. “Like what?”

“In that event—which I highly doubt will come to pass for many, many years—you would be asked to take over as sole head of the clan and winery.” 

“I see.”

Crepus continues, “I know that is a lot to ask of you, but I trust in your abilities.”

He sinks back into his chair for a moment. The promise of more responsibilities is not something Kaeya ever thought he would agree to, but in comparison to everything that has been asked of him before this moment, this is nothing. 

More importantly, this is something he would be willing to take on for Crepus.

“It’s not asking too much,” he answers. 

Crepus cracks a wide grin. “I’m glad to hear that.” 

And he does sound glad—which makes it worse when he knows the next question he needs to ask.

“What is it?” Crepus prompts. 

“Do—” he begins, before gently placing a hand over his lips. Crepus nods for him to continue, and he pauses for a moment longer before letting the words tumble out without another second of deliberation. “Would I have to call you ‘Father?’” Kaeya bites his lip at the indelicate delivery, but Crepus reaches over and places a gentle hand on his.

“Not if you don’t want to,” he says easily. 

“Do I have to change my name?”

“Not at all,” he answers. 

He swallows, but then goes all in, “Can I?” 

Crepus pinches his lips together, an admirable attempt at keeping his face neutral. “You are more than welcome to use Ragnvindr, yes.”

Kaeya’s mouth draws into a thin line, the subtle doubt creeping back in. “What if I used both?” 

“I think that would be lovely,” he says. “I would be glad to see it.”

When he sees that Kaeya is still rooted in hesitation, he holds out both hands across the desk until Kaeya finds them.

“What’s bothering you?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Kaeya lies. Crepus considers him seriously; he clicks his tongue. 

“Not much would change,” he reassures him. “Your guardianship, your inheritance—all of that would stay the same. But this would make it permanent, under the eyes of the law. No one could take it from you.” Kaeya furrows his eyebrows. “How does that sound?”

“Good,” he says breathily. 

And it’s unfair of him to say, to admit how badly he wants permanence—permanence with them—when there might be a limit and they just don’t have the perspective to see it. When he is promising him the rest of his life and he doesn’t have the power to give him all of that. When it’s not just his to give away.

But he does it anyway. He promises it anyway.

“Crepus,” he says, and his voice shakes like he is afraid. 

“Yes?”

He is afraid. He thinks maybe that’s okay. “I want that so badly I don’t know what to do with myself.” 

Crepus breathes out a heavy sigh and flicks his eyes up in silent thanks and focuses back on Kaeya so quickly that the prayer might as well have been for him.

“My dear,” he says warmly. “I will give you everything you want.”

“Then yes,” he answers, “I want to be your son.”

. . .

His father only takes him to see it once, and it’s only for a little while. 

It is, aside from the expansive, dark ceilings dotted with shining ore he is used to or the massive black sea he’s sailed on since he was a child, the largest thing he’s ever seen. It stretches up to the very top of the cavern roof here, so high he can’t see the top, the branches stretching out to make a canopy that covers the ceiling for miles out. To his inexperienced eye, the blue and white leaves look so much like flower petals that he might just be able to trick himself into thinking he smells something sweet like he’s heard about in many stories about Teyvat’s flora. 

Streaks of bright, colorful lights pulse along the bark, and Kaeya thinks they look just like the long lines of ore that sometimes stretch across the ceiling. 

Even though it is big, it does not leave the same creeping dread in his veins or goosebumps pricking down his skin that so much of the Abyss does. Something about the bright glow of this tree and its flower-petal leaves and its bark tinted with every color he knows and then some, is quieting. 

Still, it is not comforting. It whispers promises about home into his head—that this is home, that it wants him here more than anything, that he will come back. They’re more placating than they are friendly. 

He feels a sharp pain in his chest and for a moment, he feels like he is dying. But the pain becomes as familiar as this sight before him after a few minutes, so he doesn’t mention it.

They are supposed to be traveling, technically, along the old road up to Teyvat, but his father insists they detour to see it before Kaeya leaves. It adds two days to their trip, and his father spends one of them telling a well-worn story about its history. Kaeya knows the story better than he knows any other, but he tells it again anyway, and he brushes his fingers through Kaeya’s hair as he does.

“What are you thinking about?” Kaeya’s father asks him.

“It’s really bright,” Kaeya says with a frown. His father hides a small smile behind his hand and looks away from him. “It hurts.”

His father purses his lips. “It does, doesn’t it?” He has them sit there for a little bit, just looking at it. The light reaches even way out here, casting them in a fluorescent glow. 

It reminds him a lot of the way the lanterns cast their soft light into the caverns around them, but it’s less restrained than them. It’s so bright that Kaeya has to avert his gaze. 

“Is this what the sun is like?” There’s no real reason for him to ask, because he knows he will learn the answer for himself in a matter of days. 

His father sweeps his gaze over their surroundings. He says, “It’s… similar.”

“Have you seen it before?”

“Yes.” 

Kaeya doesn’t understand why, if everyone he’s ever met gets to see the sky, he has to wait to see it until he leaves. His father tells him that not everyone has, he’s just gotten lucky in who he’s asked about it, but he doesn’t know if that’s true. 

“Are you excited to see it again?” he asks.

“Yes,” his father says, and he hasn’t heard it from him much before, but he thinks he sounds wistful. “It’s warmer,” he explains, “in color and heat.” 

“In color?” Kaeya echoes. 

“It’s more like gold than silver,” he explains. “And it’s not colorful like this, except for when it makes rainbows.”

“Mm,” Kaeya says. 

“That’s— rainbow,” he says, giving Kaeya the word in Teyvat’s common tongue. It doesn’t sound much different from how he said it in Khaenri’ahn, but that’s not surprising because a lot of words originally from the surface sound like that. He points to the side of the tree. “Do you see how that part of the bark has every color?”

Kaeya nods.

“Imagine them in a big arch in the sky,” he explains, and Kaeya tries to imagine it. “It’s made when light refracts and reflects with water, like sunlight and rain.”

“I thought you said the sun is covered when it rains.”

His father purses his lips. “It doesn’t have to be rain,” he says. “It can be a waterfall or glass, too. It depends on the angle you see it from.”

“I don’t get it,” Kaeya says. “What do they feel like?”

“Nothing. They’re just tricks of the light.”

“Oh,” he answers, because he doesn’t think he understands. “Okay.” He tucks his head under his father’s shoulder. “Are the trees in Teyvat like this?”

“No, they are…” he begins, then waves his hand around for a moment, “quieter than this.” 

Kaeya strains his ears. He knows the legends say it sings beautiful, sad songs for those who know how to listen. But he just hears ugly whispers and it is only the constant quietness of the underground that allows it. 

“There are many different kinds,” he continues, “with different shapes and smells and colors.”

“With different names?” he guesses.

“Mm,” his father confirms. 

Kaeya purses his lips. He doesn’t know how he will learn it all, Teyvat’s everything. It seems like too much. 

He asks, “Are they alive, too?” 

His father thinks for a moment. “Yes,” he says, “but differently.”

“How?”

His father takes his hands and guides them to either of their necks. “Do you feel that?” he says. Kaeya nods. “They are different like we are different.”

“I understand,” Kaeya says, and he does this time. 

He looks back up now, and he sees it in a new light but it is not one he likes more. 

“Are you done looking?” his father asks after a few more minutes. Kaeya scrunches his nose because he’s been done looking since they got here, when he looked at it and its strange, intimidating familiarity settled on his skin. 

He can feel its breath from here. It sends a shiver down his spine.

“Yes,” he says, not bothering to hide his discomfort. His father nods and takes his hand and they continue their journey. 

In Kaeya’s earliest memories, his father is always by his side. He’s lifting Kaeya, giggling and cheering the whole way, to the ceiling so he can touch it so high up. He’s coaching him through the fear and numbness of losing a tooth. He’s helping him into a bed too tall for a child’s legs, tucking in next to him and falling asleep while telling him a story. He’s showing him how to read in several different alphabets and calculate mathematical equations and start a fire and tie his shoes and braid his hair.

He looks at him with hope and sadness and pride and loneliness. It is a look that makes too many promises for a future Kaeya is not ready for. 

He knows the day his father will not be there anymore because it has been promised and planned and he has told him dozens of times. And when it comes— it comes. It takes him by surprise. 

In an ugly spot of irony, it rains every day they are in Teyvat together. When he looks back on this moment in the future, because the storm feels significant in its length, he will remember separating from his father exactly halfway through the downpour, and he will wonder if it was a cruel trick of the gods that meant his father didn’t get to see their sky again. 

He doesn’t know—in this blasphemous wondering that will not happen for many years, until he is comfortable enough to hate them a little louder—if the welcome is meant to be friendly or not, raining for a week straight as a gift for a boy who has never seen the sky, to block off things that are too big to meet right now or turn him away with cold, unfamiliar things called raindrops. 

When he feels the air rumble and buzz around him for the first time, he grabs tightly onto his father’s cloak and doesn’t let go. 

He holds a hand around Kaeya’s shoulder and reminds him of the words for this. 

His father has told him many times how big it is here, but he’s still shocked by how much there is to see, how many things there are to know. 

From the beginning, though, from the very moment they fall up into Teyvat and catch themselves running on the softest ground Kaeya has touched, he is never mistaken about their observation of him. With each step forward in the grass, with each curl and lick of flame around a campfire in tucked-away caves, with every tiny flinch because everything here feels so new and different, he knows he is being watched as keenly as any of Teyvat’s children, and it terrifies him. 

When his father looks at him for the last time before they part, his face is almost entirely obscured, by thick clumps of soaking wet hair, by an eyepatch, by the hood of a cloak, by the darkness of a rainy night. He doesn’t need to see him, because he has committed his face to memory as much as he has everything else, but he wants to. He presses everything away from his vision to view his father more clearly.

“Kaeya,” his father scolds softly. But he’s looking at Kaeya’s face in the same way Kaeya is looking at his. 

“I don’t know everything yet,” Kaeya responds, his voice rising in a way that makes his father’s eyebrows knit together. 

His father’s mouth opens and closes in a way he hasn’t seen before. “You don’t need to know everything,” his father decides after a moment. 

“But if—”

“No one knows everything,” he says, smoothing a hand over Kaeya’s hair. He’d braided it that morning, slowly and gently. And he’d held Kaeya’s hand the whole way here. None of it is enough, because in a few minutes, he will be gone. “No one will expect you to know everything.”

Kaeya frowns.

“You know exactly as much as you need to.” 

“I don’t know when you’re coming back for me,” he argues.

“No,” he agrees, “but you know that I am.” Kaeya can feel wet on his face that is too warm to be rain. “I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for you.”

He wipes away the tears with his free hand. 

“Are your pockets empty?” He nods. His father had made him leave everything he had back at their house. He wants to take it all with him, but he knows he has to leave it behind. 

The only mementos he has are his father’s face, reflected back in time on his own, and his memory and tongue, both transient and fallible, even if he doesn’t know it yet. 

“Do you remember what you will say?” 

Kaeya nods. “But Father, I—” he begins. More words try to burst forward in his mouth—angry accusations and pleas to stay together and laments over their separation. But he’s said everything there is to say already, and every time, his father has insisted upon this. He presses his lips into a thin line and looks down at their feet.

“What are you trying to say?” his father asks gently. 

“I will miss you,” Kaeya says. It’s not all he wants to say to him. He pretends like it is. 

“Oh, love,” he sighs. “I will not stop thinking about you until I see you again.”

“Father,” he tries, but he barely speaks above a whisper and his father cannot hear him over the rain. 

His father pinches his lips together and wraps his arms around Kaeya’s shoulders. He is shaking from the cold and maybe something else; they both are. He holds Kaeya’s head and back more tightly than he ever has before. He is tiny in his father’s arms. 

“I love you,” he says near his ear. “I love you, Kaeya.”

When his father finally leaves him, a promise nearly a dozen years in the making, after terse parting words, it is too quick. He is there, kissing his head and clutching his form, and then he is gone. For the first time in his life, Kaeya is alone. 

. . .

It is perhaps ironic that Crepus is the one who teaches him about dishonesty. From him, Kaeya learns that lying is more concealed truths than it is outright falsehoods, that contracts are merely a battle of wits, and that deception is hardly a shameful skill to have. 

He teaches him all the different ways to be a liar, and more importantly, to not let the lies ruin him like they threaten to. 

“Sorry, my dear” Crepus says quietly as Kaeya pulls himself up from where he’s wedged between Diluc and the wall. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

The moon, as full as it always is, pours silver light into the room, catching on panes of glass between expensive latticework and resting on every available surface. Even at night, Teyvat is ten times as bright as Khaenri’ah ever was, even with all their lanterns and lights keeping them from darkness.

Sometimes, Kaeya worries he’ll ruin his vision like this. Even after so much time here, he still has to sleep with a blanket over his head, just so it’s dark enough to fall asleep.

“I wasn’t asleep,” he says softly. He rubs at his face, his eyepatch lost in the bed somewhere because Diluc decided before he went unconscious that it would give him a headache tomorrow if he had it tied on so tightly all night. 

Crepus shifts in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

“We waited all night,” Kaeya says. He looks down at Diluc beside him, his face soft in a dream even when his fists are clenched around the blanket, keeping Kaeya from using it, paranoid about him suffocating himself. “Diluc fell asleep in his clothes.” 

He doesn’t mention that those clothes were worn in the dirt earlier in the day and they’re in his bed, but he doesn’t need to, because Crepus already knows and smiles kindly.

“That’s fine,” he says, as patient as he always is. “He can change them in the morning.”

Kaeya flicks a lock of hair off Diluc’s cheek, away from his open, snoring mouth, and lets out a little sigh.

“What’s the matter?”

“We wanted to play board games tonight,” he says, and even though this is true, it is a lie. “You promised you’d be home in time.”

“I had to work late at the bar,” Crepus says. He sounds genuinely apologetic, but Kaeya can recognize the lie in conversation with his own with ease.

He turns his gaze out the window, watching the well-groomed foliage around the property shudder gently in the wind. It lost all novelty a while ago.

“I’m sorry. I know I promised, and I didn’t follow through. I’ll make it up to you two.” 

Kaeya thinks idly, while staring outside, that he doesn’t really understand the need for sun if there’s already so much light during the nighttime. But he likes the sunshine more than this, so he files the thought away for later. 

“Why don’t you come downstairs with me? I still have a few things I need to finish up and I could use the company.”

Finally, he looks to Crepus and considers him for a moment. His clothes are slightly disheveled, his posture is bent funny from fatigue, and if he looks closely enough, he can see the way age has touched him even just in the few years Kaeya has been here. 

Kaeya is gentle as he pulls himself out of the tiny cell Diluc made for him against the wall, but is much less so when he clambers over him; the other boy doesn’t even stumble in his snoring.

Crepus leads them downstairs and into the kitchen, where he pulls a plate of Adelinde’s cookies off the counter and sets them out to share.

“You said you had work,” Kaeya says.

“I said I had something to finish up,” Crepus answers, and gestures at the plate between them. “Cookies,” he explains. 

Kaeya sighs, but takes a seat; Crepus smiles at his victory and grabs a cookie while he sinks into the chair beside him.

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” Crepus says easily.

“You smell like alcohol.”

“I should hope,” he laughs. “I’d be worried if I didn’t.”

Kaeya frowns. “You don’t smell like wine.”

Crepus’ smile fades, just a bit. “Someone spilled on me at the bar. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“You weren’t at the bar.” Crepus raises an eyebrow. “You were in Liyue.”

He asks very tentatively, but not suspiciously, “How do you know that?”

Kaeya stares at him for a bit. He doesn’t mention the color of the soil on his boots by the door they passed on the way here or the sweet scent of the box of glaze lilies on the counter hidden for tomorrow by a thin sheet of fabric and brought in with Crepus himself. He says, “I heard the carriage coming from the southwest road.”

“You’re right,” Crepus says. “I was in Liyue.” He pulls another cookie off the plate, and Kaeya watches his hand. When Crepus sees this, he pulls his other one around to rub it. Kaeya still sees the ink stains.

“You were signing contracts,” he informs him. And then he echoes, “In Liyue…”

Crepus lets him think for a moment and answer his own question. Kaeya is no fool to what that means—Crepus deliberately left Mondstadt’s soil for this, somewhere politically neutral for what he would otherwise assume to be a trade contract.

“Were you doing something illegal?”

“No,” he answers, drawing his eyebrows down and taking another bite.

“Were you meeting with someone dangerous?”

Crepus purses his lips and offers him a cookie. “Why do you ask?”

He does not say, You’re being dishonest or You won’t answer my questions. He shrugs. He takes the cookie. 

“I wasn’t,” he answers. Kaeya fixes his face into a glare, but he takes a bite instead of saying more. “It was just business, Kaeya. Nothing to worry about.”

Kaeya studies him briefly. He says, “You said most of business is lying.”

“I would not use those particular words,” Crepus says charitably.

“And you said most of lying is well-placed truths.”

“Hmm,” he says, rubbing a hand on his chin and chuckling humorlessly to himself. “I’m not sure you should take all of my lessons to heart. They don’t sound as nice when you say them.”

Kaeya is a better liar than Crepus, at least when he’s been drinking, and he sees when Crepus starts becoming suspicious, his face twisting in that special way it does even as he tries to hide it. He says, “Are you leaving?”

It is an unkind thing to ask, because he knows exactly how it will affect Crepus to hear it and because he knows like he knows nothing else that Crepus will never abandon him—that he’s never really been abandoned, anyway—and even if he had been, they’re different men, with different lives and different priorities.

It is not, however, a lie in the way he wants it to be—his voice is too vulnerable and needy and he doesn’t even realize it until the words are already out of his mouth. But that’s fine; he can fix this. 

Crepus sucks a sharp breath in and the expression fades into something softer. “No, absolutely not.”

He says, “Adelinde said you have a business trip coming up.”

He drops his head into his hands, takes a deep breath, and looks back at Kaeya. “Ah, excuse me. I misunderstood your question,” he says with a sigh. “I do. It’s only a few days and I will come back as soon as I’m done.”

“Can I come with you?” 

Crepus purses his lips. “This particular trip will be of no interest to you, I’m afraid.” Kaeya blinks down to his hands, neatly folded in his lap. Crepus lifts his chin. “Which is not to say I don’t want you there.”

Something briefly sentimental in Kaeya makes him say, “I don’t want you to go.” It’s not that serious, he knows that, but he says it anyway, and this time, he knows it’s true. 

He feels like he’s a child again, begging and begging to stay together, furious and futile because the world doesn’t stop for little boys who want their fathers. 

“I have to,” he says. 

It’s an obvious answer, because he can’t put his life on hold for Kaeya, who hates that he even asked it, knowing the answer already, knowing how much it will hurt him to hear it again. 

He doesn’t know why he feels so caught off guard, especially because the last time he heard this was a million times more real, and it was a conversation in his native tongue, even just partially, to prove it. His mind reaches back without prompting to recall it and—

He feels briefly weightless as he realizes that doesn’t know if he’d even recognize the words he and his father exchanged anymore, then nearly forgets to breathe as he strains his memory to find the last time his thoughts were in Khaenri’ahn. 

There is a vague bitterness at his father for insisting he give so much of himself away, at the same time there is total understanding. He doesn’t know how all of that can belong to him at once. 

It affects him more than he means for it to. He grips onto the end of his shirt and focuses all his attention on twisting it into neat little clumps in his fists.

“Kaeya,” Crepus says meaningfully. “I’m not leaving you two forever. I’m going to be back. I promise.” He’s impossibly soft when he wraps his hands around Kaeya’s, squeezing and resting for a moment before gently pulling them away from the fabric. “I promise.”

Kaeya lets out a shaky breath and pushes back nervous thoughts about how that is hardly on his mind anymore and draws his hands back into his lap. “Okay,” he says, and then he meets Crepus’ eyes. “I’m sorry for being difficult.”

“You’re not being difficult,” Crepus says, simple and easy. “It’s all right to be worried.”

He bites down on his lip. 

“Kaeya, I promise that I will never leave you.” It scares him a little bit, how intensely truthful it is. But it also creates a pit in his stomach at how little he feels comforted by it, how it barely means anything to him, because he knows it already but also because his mind is a million miles away. 

He hates how small his voice sounds when he asks, “Can you— can you at least tell me if you’re going to be home late?” He doesn’t even know why he says it, because that has nothing to do with the sudden, overwhelming panic  electrifying his skin right now. 

“Of course,” he says. Crepus places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and Kaeya leans into the touch as far as he can, and then some. 

He hooks his arms under Crepus’, pressing his head into his chest, an awkward, halfway hug, because they’re both still sitting in chairs beside each other. Crepus’ arm remains on his shoulder, squeezing it just enough to let Kaeya know he’s there. There are tears on his face, and he knows he should wipe them away, pretend they were never there, because he’s old enough now to hold all of this in his chest without complaint, but he doesn’t. 

After a long moment, Crepus asks him, so impossibly kindly, like he knows it’s not really about him at all, like there’s no wrong answer, nothing that can hurt him or surprise him, “What’s wrong?” 

Kaeya wants so badly to answer. He wants nothing more than to share every burden with Crepus, who he knows will help him in whatever ways he can, to ask him for support in a way he must, with all his kindness and experience, know how to give.

“Tell me if this is something I can fix.”

“I miss it,” he says, but that’s not it. At least not all of it. 

He misses the dark and the cold and the food and the language and the quiet and the clothes, but most of all he misses the people. Maybe Crepus wasn’t wrong to comfort him how he did; he purses his lips. 

Kaeya knows that he shouldn’t, because he will see his father again someday, and because Crepus is doing all he can to be there for him, to be something for him, but still he says, “I miss my father.”

He breaks an unspoken promise between them in speaking of him, an oath of silence and secrecy Crepus never asked him to make—would never ask him to make, and would probably scold him if he’d admitted to it. 

And for that broken promise, he feels Crepus’ breath stutter in his chest against his ear, and then gentle hands coming off of him and pulling his head away from his chest. Crepus just looks at him for a long moment, silent and intensely focused. His hands are on either side of Kaeya’s face, thumbs pressed into his temples. He plants a kiss on his forehead and then draws him in closer, a real hug this time. 

He readjusts his position to more fully accept Kaeya into his arms, so that Kaeya’s head is wedged between Crepus’ neck and shoulder, his chin propped up neatly and undoubtedly uncomfortably on blue hair. Crepus has his hands on the back of his head, his back. They’re so sturdy. Nothing like Kaeya’s grasp, hungry and hasty. 

“I know, my dear,” he says gently. “I know.”

There are a thousand words on the tip of his tongue, most of them the messy drafts of an apology for how he asks too much of Crepus in this, asks him to fill a role he doesn’t have to—a role he accepts, a role Kaeya wants him to take, but something about it is still wrong. 

Of course, he knows what’s wrong about it—there’s not a day he doesn’t think about that. But he tells him he doesn’t, tells himself he doesn’t, too. 

Some of them are shy requests to make things more like home—because no matter what, he will always call it home—to play his card games or add curtains to his bedroom window, that die on his lips because he has always kept his promises. 

Gratitude is locked in his mouth somewhere, too, but it does not find its way out.

Crepus is a liar through his lies, but Kaeya is one in his silence, and he is worse for it. He does it to protect his sons from things he doesn’t know Kaeya already knows, and Kaeya does it because he is selfish and wants them too badly to mess things up.

If he’s feeling generous, then he thinks that perhaps they understand each other in this uncomfortable, unaddressed place. Where they know of each other’s lies—even if something deep and ignored in him tells him that no matter what he wants, Crepus doesn’t know—but not the content, where they trade them back and forth with practiced ease, and maybe that is something akin to truth. Something similar enough to be mistaken for it. And maybe he can find a way to be content in that. 

But there are moments like this, when he lets Crepus see him for who he is—or at least most of it, as much as he can bring himself to—and even though it hurts so badly, he thinks he might like this better. 

. . .

Two young men stand on opposite sides of a bar that should be shared between them. Two young men who look like their fathers and who learned very different things from them, even the one they shared. Two young men who have hurt and hated each other as much as they have loved each other, and who have changed and grown without each other. 

“It’s my father’s birthday today,” Kaeya says after most of the patrons have filed out for the night. A few remain upstairs, chatting loudly at one or two of the tables, too drunk to remember anything they might overhear. He does not speak loudly enough that his voice will carry. 

Diluc opens his mouth to argue, but then his face shifts in realization, and instead he says, “I don’t want to hear about this.”

Kaeya sighs. Years ago, Diluc would’ve held the weight of the world with him—for him—without a second thought. That changed after Kaeya asked him to.

He would’ve been shocked and eager to hear Kaeya finally talk about it, as stingy as he was with information about his life before them. But now that he has a taste, he understands the burden with a new perspective. He rejects anything more, so ardently that Kaeya is left alone with it again.

They love each other less now, and it’s difficult more than just because Kaeya misses it. He had spent so much time and effort building up his love so he could love them back with the same fervor with which they did him. And then they left him, in life or in the same place that is not home—that is more home than it should be—they found him in, and he had all that love leftover with nothing to do with it. So he extends a little bit out to everyone he meets, and they give it back because the people here are so free with their love, so generous and trusting with it, just like they were.

And then he came back after leaving Kaeya alone and still in this place that is not really his, and somehow, he has made it his, at least a little; he has redirected that love that was once for his brother and made himself into someone appreciated, into someone who can’t feel the same focused guilt that led him to be so loose with his words. 

Diluc hates him for it. He’s so guarded with it now, so stingy and hesitant with his love. He travels abroad and learns to keep it close and Kaeya stays here and pushes it away. It’s so unfair, because Kaeya just wants to be rid of it, but there it is: all shared between everyone he meets, and Diluc hates him for it.

“Who else could I tell?” Kaeya asks. It’s not quite honest, because it’s not like he doesn’t have anyone else. 

There’s Jean, who would listen without complaint if she could spare a minute, who he trusts enough to be willing to talk around the more sensitive parts. There’s Albedo, who might agree only after a lot of pestering, and even then he would demand that Kaeya explain every political nuance and detail. There’s even the bard, if he’s really desperate, who is always drunk enough to forget that he knows it all already. 

And perhaps out of some ancient loyalty or preference or something else entirely, he chooses to go to Diluc—who now hates him as much, or maybe even more, than he used to hate his father. 

“You’re a paying customer,” he acquiesces. If he squints, he can pretend he sees Diluc’s face soften, and if he stretches, he can act like his indifference isn’t hateful. “Don’t expect anything special.”

Even now, even though he is so accustomed to it, Diluc still hurts him. But Kaeya keeps reaching out; he can’t see him as anything except for a more battered version of a boy he loved like family.

“We kept time differently,” he explains. He thinks Diluc might know that already. “But he always made sure to count the days so when I came here I could remember everything—birthdays and holidays and all that.”

“You never celebrated.”

Kaeya doesn’t answer. He says, “He was a fisherman, you know. Before I was born.” He doesn’t mention how he gave up his life then because they suddenly had a greater purpose than they knew what to do with.

“I didn’t,” Diluc admits after a moment.

“That was the family trade,” he says. He’d never been under the assumption that he’d participate in either of his families’ trades, but something in him always liked to pretend. “He liked to take me out in a little boat every so often. It was a journey every time, because we lived much farther inland. But he always did it for special occasions.”

“There’s… water?” Diluc asks, his voice a bit strained in the way it gets when he’s worried he’s asking a stupid question.

“A lot of it,” Kaeya answers. “It’s so dark, you can’t see through it at all, even if you bring all the light you have.”

Diluc says, with all the weight in the world, “Can the fish see in it?”

Kaeya blinks, and then he lets out a frothy little laugh that tells him he’s had enough to drink. “I have no idea.”

He frowns. “You know what they look like, don’t you? And how to capture them? Can’t you guess?”

Kaeya raises an eyebrow at him before letting his face soften after a moment. “You always wanted my memory to be better than it is.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

There is no care for him in Diluc’s voice. It is a far cry from the affection he used to carry for him, the same intensity turned from something friendly into something mean, still as unhidden to Kaeya by the flatness of his voice as it always was. 

He remembers what it was like to be loved, of course. He remembers that, of the three people who have ever known him enough to truly care for him, Diluc was the only one who ever gave him as much as he needed. 

His fathers, as much as they loved him, and he knows they did, were always restrained about it; Crepus because he worried about scaring Kaeya away, and his father—he thinks, since he has no way to know now—because he was cautious about being hurt and hurting him. 

But Diluc was never delicate in his love or his words. It was everything Kaeya wanted, still wants. To be loved freely and loudly. But now that it’s not quite love, it hurts.

There is a loud noise from the second floor as someone drags a chair across the floor. Diluc rolls his eyes and stalks upstairs to sort that out. In the meantime, Kaeya finishes his drink.

“I did celebrate,” he admits, when Diluc returns in a slightly better mood than when he left and wordlessly passes Kaeya a glass of water.

“Okay,” he says. He doesn’t ask how. 

They stare at each other for a long moment. 

The silence between them never used to be so vast. Kaeya, who has acclimated to every other aspect of Mondstadt’s culture—the wine, the weather, the idleness—like he never knew anything different, cannot acclimate to this. Mondstadt’s winds demand change and he has suffered to adapt, morphed himself as much as he can to accept it, but it is not in Kaeya’s nature to embrace this. He resists it with everything he has. He will never grow into it like he has everything else.

He knows now why his father was so insistent he love it here. 

“What do you expect from me?” Diluc asks. 

Kaeya exhales softly. “Nothing at all.” 

“I don’t want to hear about him,” he insists again. The worst part is that Kaeya thinks he knows what Diluc is trying to get at. 

Because his brother was never quiet, even when he tried to be, about hating his father for what he did to Kaeya—not that he ever really knew why, and when he did, there were much more pressing things to deal with. 

But how could he, when now he knew the truth? How could he, when he’d done the same thing?

His eyebrows draw down.

“Fine,” he says, and stands to leave. 

“Wait. Kaeya— wait,” Diluc says. 

Against his better judgement, Kaeya turns to face him. “Spit it out, Diluc.”

He looks briefly constipated. “You need to pay your tab,” he says. “It’s the end of the month.” 

Kaeya fishes a bag of mora out of his pocket to dump on the bar. “That enough?” Diluc doesn’t even look down, but he nods.

He turns to leave again, but Diluc calls for him once more. 

There is a brief moment where Kaeya is tempted to ignore him, but this is the most Diluc has asked of him in a long time, and some lonely part of himself latches onto it. 

“Oh, Archons, Diluc. What?”

“I don’t understand you,” he says unhelpfully. 

Kaeya was always so jealous of him for this, for how unbearably clumsy he could be with his words, when he had to be so impossibly careful with his own.

He still wants that—to be able to be clumsy and inelegant and awkward. He makes a little gesture with his hands to prompt Diluc to continue talking. 

“You always hated fishing.”

All the temptation to leave is gone when that constant, piercing loneliness in his chest and at his hip disappears, even for just a moment. He shouldn’t say yes to this, because Diluc isn’t someone he loves anymore. But he wants to. 

“That’s because it’s horrible in Teyvat,” he answers mildly. “There are birds and weather and a million types of bait. The fish are so picky here.” Neither of them mention that Kaeya likes birds and the weather and never had a problem with tedious details like which fish like which bait. 

“Father always tried to get you to come with us,” he says, ignoring everything Kaeya just said. “Is that why you didn’t?” He doesn’t say it kindly, but for once, it’s not meant to be insulting. 

Kaeya frowns. He wants to snap at him that Crepus isn’t here anymore, that he died a long time ago so it doesn’t matter why he wouldn’t go with them. But that would hurt Diluc, and he doesn’t need to do that tonight. 

“Kaeya?” Diluc prompts, and it is too gentle for the two of them and all they have done to each other. Somehow, even though his is far away from their father’s gentleness, Diluc reminds him of Crepus. 

Kaeya sees him in everything. He sees him in this bar, a small piece of the massive Ragnvindr legacy, full of life and liveliness and traded information. He sees him in Diluc, the spitting image, in his heart and his care, however clumsily his brother dons them. He sees him in himself, too, if he looks hard enough.

And isn’t that all he is—a messy conglomeration of both of his fathers and all that they wanted him to be. A savior and a knight, cautious and cunning. Maybe not happy. Maybe not loved. Maybe a little of both.

He says, “It’s just fishing, Diluc.”

The look Diluc gives him is complicated. In another world, he might take it as an invitation to admit to how much he misses them—his fathers and his brother. But in this world, he can only miss them in the quietest crevices of his heart.

Diluc clears his throat. “If I wanted to,” he asks, “would you introduce me to him?”

Kaeya blinks at him. “Oh,” he says. 

“You said he’s coming back,” he explains. “I’m assuming that hasn’t changed.”

It sounds as ridiculously childish in Diluc’s voice as he was always so worried it would in his own. If he didn’t know better—if he was any less naively hopeful—he wouldn’t believe it anymore.

“No, I— If you wanted to, I would, yeah.” Diluc’s face twists a bit. “Is that something you would want?”

His answer is short and blunt, “No.” Diluc was never very good at lying, so Kaeya believes him when he says it. 

“You’re a chore,” he returns after a minute. 

“I don’t appreciate that he left you,” Diluc explains curtly. 

Kaeya bites back a comment about how Diluc knows why he had to leave him, because he’d always let Diluc express his anger for him. And he had been angry, for the first few years, even if he never told anyone that, even if he told himself he wasn’t, before all the feelings about it just stopped. 

Then he bites back a much meaner comment about the irony of Diluc saying that, when he’d done twice as much with half the reason, when he didn’t even have the decency to tell him he was going, much less why, when he killed the only family Kaeya had who never left him.

“I’ll take that under consideration,” he answers mildly. 

“I realize that is unfair of me,” Diluc begins. It doesn’t sound quite as apologetic as the words demand. 

“You’re right,” Kaeya interrupts. “It is.”

“But I—”

“Consider your next words carefully,” he advises coldly. “Are you sure this is what you want to be saying tonight?”

Diluc meets his gaze, light and mean, with a serious glare of his own. He does not finish whatever he planned to say.

Kaeya says, “I will see you tomorrow night, Master Diluc.”

“Goodnight, Kaeya,” he returns as Kaeya spins on his heel toward the door. And then he adds, stunted and awkward, “May the wind guide you home safely.”

Kaeya clicks his tongue and forces his pursed lips into something a little softer before saying, “You as well.” 

He lets the door close behind him. 

. . .