Work Text:
You are Khaenri’ah’s last hope.
--
Khaenri’ah’s last hope was cursing himself under his breath. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” He groaned, throwing his head back in frustration as the embers of his small fire hissed and died under the deluge of water coming from the dark gray clouds.
So this was ‘rain’. Kaeya didn’t like it. He liked it less than the open blue sky that had greeted him and his father when they first reached the surface, which seemed to go on forever and made him feel small and exposed. At least the open sky didn’t drown Kaeya’s campfire and soak Kaeya’s clothes through so they clung to his skin.
Kaeya felt like a fool. He’d been taught about ‘weather’: how clouds brought wind, rain and sometimes even Electro strikes. He should have realized what was coming before it started and that it would soak his kindling before he could cook the fish he’d caught. He hadn’t paid enough attention and was only getting what he deserved, but Kaeya still felt the hot press of frustrated tears behind his eyes.
None of this would be happening if you just did what you were supposed to. The thought made Kaeya’s face grow warm.
He spun away from the remains of his campfire - no use in crying over it now - and pulled his cloak tight around himself, trudging through the mud in search of shelter. There had to be a shed or cave or something nearby he could hide in until the rain stopped. Afterwards, he could pick some tree fruit and see if that was safe to eat raw. He probably wouldn’t be able to make a fire for days after all the wood got so wet, so he really hoped at least some raw fruit in Mondstadt wasn’t poisonous.
The rain kept coming down harder until it felt like fists drumming his shoulders and the sound of it was thunderous. Kaeya could barely see a few feet in front of himself and he had to keep wiping water out of his eye. He hesitated when he saw he was near a house, but he really wanted to get under something that would stop the rain, so he took the risk and skirted around the back of the building in hope of finding–
“Thank Irmin,” Kaeya breathed when he saw the sturdy wooden lean-to attached to the back of the home. The door, which had scraped a dirt half-moon into the earth beneath it, was obligingly hanging half a foot open, stuck in the mud. Kaeya slid through and into the blessedly dry darkness with a sigh of relief.
His eye adjusted quickly. The lean-to was full of tools that Kaeya tried not to disturb; if he started rearranging things, it would bang against the house wall and then the owners would probably come out to see what was going on, rain or no rain. Luckily, there was an upturned bucket in an outer corner that Kaeya could sit on while leaning against the wall.
He struggled out of his sodden cloak, leaving it in a heap on the dirt floor, and sat heavily on the bucket. Walking around in the rain was exhausting. He leaned against the wooden wall, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore his empty stomach and clingy-wet clothes.
Stop wasting everyone’s time and go up to the main house.
Kaeya frowned without opening his eyes. I will , he promised himself again. I just need to make sure I’m ready.
It had only been one day. Kaeya had eaten the last of the rations left with him when his father dropped him off the night before and slept under a bush, using his cloak as a pillow. Today he had successfully piked a fish and even made a fire before the rain rolled in and ruined it. If he could figure out what fruit and fungi was safe to eat raw … after that, he’d be ready to start his mission, Kaeya told himself.
Or to run away and live in the dirt and ashes.
“I’m not running away,” Kaeya whispered. He said it again, this time in Mondstadtian: “I am not running away.” He wasn’t. He wasn’t! He was just … making sure he had an escape route. That he could survive in the wilds of Teyvat. Just in case.
Kaeya knew what his father would say to that: A man with a way out is a man already walking out the door. But Kaeya always felt safer if he knew he had an exit. He felt like he was always looking for an escape unless he found it ahead of time.
And this is how Khaenri’ah’s last hope behaves? Pathetic.
Kaeya sighed. Sometimes he wished he could just turn off his brain.
Maybe he was pathetic, but this was his mission now. Kaeya had to do it his own way. As long as he got himself settled into Mondstadt, the how and when wouldn’t matter anymore.
His stomach growled. It felt loud even though Kaeya knew he could only hear it because it was his own stomach.
They probably have warm, delicious food at the main house.
They probably did, but the thought just made Kaeya feel stubborn. He didn’t need warm, delicious food. He just needed food, and he could get that himself. After the rain, at least.
The sense of self-reliance smothered Kaeya’s inner critic, lulling Kaeya into physically relaxing. He listened to the rain, waiting for it to let up …
Kaeya startled himself awake by sneezing.
He jolted upright so suddenly that he overbalanced, crashing sideways into the tools leaning against the cottage wall. The resulting cacophony of wood and metal was as bad as tripping an alarm. Instantly wide awake, Kaeya scrambled free of the tools, scooped his sopping cloak off the ground, and bolted out of the shed as fast as his legs would take him. He didn’t even look back to see if anyone came out of the house to check on the noise.
It was both a blessing and a curse that the rain hadn’t stopped. At least it would cover up Kaeya’s tracks if anyone bothered to look for him.
It had gotten a lot darker since Kaeya fell asleep; he suspected the sun had gone down behind the clouds & it was nighttime again. The rain hadn’t stopped, but it had let up quite a bit. It came down steadily, but the drops were smaller. Kaeya leaned against the trunk of a large tree by the river bed, wracked by wet coughs from the sudden exertion, but he noticed as he caught his breath that hardly any of the rain could get through the leaves of the tree he was sheltering under. The ground was still soaked, of course, but it was better than getting rained on, too.
Kaeya peered up the tree trunk, wondering if he could climb into the branches and find a place to sleep that was drier, but decided that it wasn’t worth the risk of falling out. Instead, he wrung out his cloak as best he could, curled up at the base of the tree, and draped his cloak over his shoulders like a very damp blanket.
Kaeya knew it wasn’t a good idea to sleep in wet clothes, much less under a wet cloak. But it was wet everywhere, so there wasn’t much he could do about it, and he was just too tired to care.
Falling back asleep was surprisingly easy.
—
Kaeya knew he’d made a mistake before he even opened his eyes. His chest hurt. His neck ached. His head felt too heavy. His fingers and toes were numb. And when he breathed in, he had a coughing fit. He muffled it behind his palms, doubling over with the force of it.
Kaeya knew that being cold & wet couldn’t make a person sick on their own, so he hadn’t expected this. But he should have. People almost always got sick in new environments because of contact with new contaminants. Stupid, Kaeya thought, and gave a half-hearted, self-deprecating laugh-sigh into his hands.
It was still raining. Kaeya rested his head back against the tree trunk and wondered if it was his fault. Could the holy curse on Khaenri’ah break the weather if one dared to breach the surface? Kaeya didn’t know. If it could, there was nothing Kaeya could do about it now.
No point in putting it off any longer.
Kaeya grimaced, but the accusatory thought was right: he was in no shape to keep running away from his mission. No more excuses or fumbling around the valley practicing woodcraft. Kaeya needed a dry place and warm food before he got really sick, & he wasn’t going to get that out here.
Using the tree trunk as a brace, Kaeya staggered to his feet. His head spun. He thought the clouds looked a bit lighter than when he fell asleep, but it was still pretty dark. He wasn’t sure if the sun had risen yet, or if it was the last of the moon sisters shining through the clouds. Kaeya would need more practice at reading the sky.
Kaeya dragged his cloak out of the muddy grass where it had fallen and fastened it around his neck. Through the rain, he could make out the large manor at the top of the valley hillside. He pushed himself away from the tree and splashed into the dirt road - more a mud river from all the rain - that led up the hill towards the house.
That was where the master of the valley would live. If it was anything like before the Calamity, the clan living in that mansion would be one of the most powerful clans in Mondstadt.
Kaeya’s job was to ingratiate himself with them, getting as close as possible to the clan leader. He would then wait for contact from Khaenri’ah, gathering intelligence about Mondstadt’s defenses and weak points, and help Khaenri’ah bring down the Anemo Archon’s stronghold from the inside.
It was such a noble-sounding plan. Kaeya knew it wouldn’t be noble or glorious in practice - Father had warned him over and over again about that - but it still felt wrong that it would start this way, dragging himself to the clan head’s feet to beg for some shelter because he was so stupid he got himself sick.
“Oh well,” Kaeya panted out loud, struggling through the mud. He gasped for breath and said it again in Mondstadtian: “Ah, well.” He pushed his hair out of his face. “What a weird accent you have,” he breathlessly mocked himself in the same language. “Accent—on—the first—syllable.” He coughed.
The mansion’s windows shone with warm yellow light through thin curtains. Kaeya staggered to a halt in front of a wooden sign by the stone steps that led into a cobbled plaza and paused to catch his breath while reading the sign. Dawn Winery. Kaeya congratulated himself on his Monstadtian reading skills and wearily climbed the stairs.
He made himself walk all the way around the mansion, using the low outer courtyard wall as a support. Barrels and soaked stacks of hay were organized neatly or piled in wooden carts. One side of the building was covered in ivy vines, but it didn't seem to be corroding the house. There was an ‘employee area’ with lots of wooden tables on one side of the building. Kaeya didn’t really know what it all meant. What did they do here? It seemed more like a work site than a noble’s house.
Kaeya forgot to wonder about it when he saw a balcony overshadowing the front entrance. He gratefully hustled out of the rain at the end of his inspection, breathing on his fingers in a futile effort to warm them.
Did the clan master make his employees eat outside even in the rain?
The thought made Kaeya hesitate just as he was about to knock on the front door. What if the Dawn Winery master was cruel? Kaeya thought he could deal with that, but what if he was suspicious of outsiders? Honestly, Mondstadtians would be fools if they weren’t at least a little suspicious. Kaeya hadn’t seen any signs of weapons or an armory, but it was possible he just didn’t know what to look for in this unfamiliar environment; everyone inside could be armed. What if somebody opened the door, took one look at Kaeya, recognized him as a Khaenri’ahn, and killed him in the name of the Anemo Archon?
The whole point of integrating as a child is appearing helpless. Nobody had said that to Kaeya directly, but he had eavesdropped on one of Father’s conversations. (He didn’t even get caught. His father would have been proud if Kaeya had done it to anyone else.) But as Kaeya shivered in front of the heavy wooden doors, arm raised to knock, he felt actually helpless.
There was no way he could do this. He was sluggish and tired from being sick and wet and cold. Kaeya would be dead meat if they decided to kill him, and that would be the end of Khaenri’ah.
Kaeya pulled his hand back.
At the same time, the door opened.
“Ai!” Kaeya reared backwards, yelping in surprise, and stepped on his cloak. It instantly choked him, and Kaeya bent back, lost his balance, and collapsed on the cobblestone step.
Chaos. A kid was speaking excitedly in Mondstadtian, and a much lower adult voice was speaking in a calm tone, but Kaeya couldn’t understand what they were saying in his panic. He sat up and shoved himself backwards, trying to detangle himself from his cloak so he could get to his feet and run, but it turned out he had shoved himself back into a balcony support. Kaeya instinctively pressed himself against it and scrabbled his right hand at the small of his back. His concealed knife was caught in his wet clothes.
Now he could see the two figures silhouetted by the light from the doorway: a man with long, thick red hair, sinking to his knees and holding an empty hand out to Kaeya, and a boy with matching fiery hair, holding the door open and looking at Kaeya with wide, curious eyes.
The man was still talking calmly and carefully. Kaeya made himself focus and translate. “—okay. I didn’t mean to startle you. You’re okay. Calm down.”
Kaeya stopped trying to free his knife. He made himself go still before slowly moving his hands back where the man could see them. They were trembling, and Kaeya felt a flash of shame at his fear.
“That’s it. Everything is fine.” The man sighed, then smiled. As Kaeya’s eye adjusted to the light, he could see that the smile reached all the way to the man’s eyes. “Diluc, can you wake Adelinde for me?”
The boy tore his gaze from Kaeya for a moment to glance at the man. “Yes, sir,” he said, and darted away.
The man didn’t look away from Kaeya. “Thank you,” he said in a voice meant to carry, before bending his head forward. “My son saw you wander around the courtyard and come to the door. We decided to check when you didn’t knock.” He glanced past Kaeya at the ongoing rain. “Would you like to come inside? It’s been a wet couple of days, and you look soaked.”
Kaeya was flummoxed. Was this man just … inviting him in? He gave off the air of a person in charge. He had to be the clan head, or at least close to it.
Could it really be this easy?
Kaeya cleared his throat to answer, but it started a coughing fit. The man lunged forward; Kaeya cringed away, holding up a hand to ward him off, and he stopped, a helpless look on his face. “Let me help you up,” he said. Then the man actually waited for Kaeya to nod his permission before taking Kaeya’s hand, bracing his back, and lifting Kaeya to his feet in one smooth motion. “There you go.” His grip was firm but careful, and his hand was warm and calloused. “Come in?” He asked again.
It couldn’t be this easy.
Kaeya forced himself to nod anyway.
Of course it wouldn’t be this simple. This was just an offer of shelter from the rain; Kaeya would have to make it worth the master’s while to keep him around. Just because this first step had been easy didn’t mean he’d accidentally triggered the jaws of a trap.
Careful, careful. The canary still sings.
Kaeya thought of the nursery rhyme as the master guided him into the house, then shut the door behind them with a gentle, final click .
—-
Careful, careful. The canary still sings.
The death it fears has silent wings.Don’t stray too far. Don’t dig much deeper.
Birdsong protects you from The Reaper.He has no smell. He can’t be seen.
In silence he takes. At song, he flees.Careful, careful. The canary has died.
Flee down, to the Deep. May Death pass you by.
—Khaenri’ahn nursery rhyme. Words thought to be adapted from an ancient mining song.