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Kaeya saw the blue flower for the first time on a stormy night.
Abandoned in an unfamiliar land where the cliffs rose to the sky and the winds blew so harshly he could hardly take one step in front of himself, he might never have made it had he not caught a glimpse of its brilliant color blooming beyond the gray mist. Because Kaeya never knew such a beautiful shade of blue could grow out of the cold, dead earth, he followed the trail of them all the way to the doorstep of a grand manor, where he was quickly met with a warm bath, a table of more food than he’d had ever seen at once, and countless questions he had not a single answer for.
The people of this land were kind, Kaeya quickly understood. They cared for strangers, wanted for nothing, and grew hair so red it was like staring into a fire. Later that night, as Kaeya laid awake, he wondered why he couldn’t have been born here to begin with.
“Can’t sleep?” asked the boy on the other side of the bed that was much too big for two.
Not feeling like answering, Kaeya rose from the covers and went to stand by the window, where he remained for a long time.
“What are you looking at?” the boy tried again.
As the rain continued to pound down over the sturdy roofs overhead, Kaeya didn’t look back or respond, but only quietly stared at those blue flowers in the grass, thinking of home where there were no flowers quite as blue, or hair quite as red.
It wasn’t until much later, during a day in the sun, that he learned that flower’s name.
“A what?” Kaeya asked, wrinkling his nose.
The flame-haired boy beside him sighed with exaggeration. “A blaue-blume. Say it slowly.”
“. . . Blaw-blom? Blau-bla?
Diluc laughed so hard he fell backwards into the grass. Rolling over, he plucked a blue flower and twirled it between his fingers. “You know what they say about the blaue-blume, Kaeya?”
“No. What?”
“Really, you don’t know?”
“. . .”
With a secretive smile, Diluc abruptly sat up. “They say that when a man is in love, he should wear a blaue-blume on his chest. If the flower fades too fast, it means that he’s not loved back, and so he should move on as soon as he can.”
Kaeya frowned. “Is that true?”
“It’s just a story.” Diluc pinned the blue flower to the front of Kaeya’s shirt, right over his heart that was beating so fast Kaeya was afraid Diluc might hear it.
“I can’t believe you’ve never heard of these before,” said Diluc, shaking his head. “Just where are you from, Kaeya?”
Don’t ask me that, Kaeya wanted to say, but what he said instead was “I don’t remember.”
Some years later, there was a celebration at the winery, attended by all the Knights of Favonius to officially welcome the youngest-ever Cavalry Captain to their ranks.
“Congratulations on your promotion,” Kaeya murmured to Diluc at some point in the evening when he’d finally gotten the chance to pull him away from the crowds. “I hope you won’t forget about me in your inevitable rise to fame and influence. I intend to ride your coattails, you know.”
Diluc sniffed. “Have you been drinking?”
“It’s a special occasion. Don’t tell your father.”
Laughing, Diluc nudged Kaeya on his chest, where he wore a blue flower on his lapel. “Oh,” Diluc observed when he felt it, “a blaue-blume. What for?”
“Just trying to see something,” Kaeya beamed.
Ever-quick to catch the meaning of things, Diluc narrowed his eyes. “Are you in love, Kaeya?”
“Don’t you think you’d know if I was?” asked Kaeya with a knowing smirk.
Diluc blushed, affronted. “Anyways,” he snorted, “To answer your concern, I don’t intend on forgetting you anytime soon. I’ll need you by my side, after all.”
“Oh, but you’ll find someone better soon enough, and then you’ll cast me aside and wonder why you ever bothered keeping me around.”
“What are you saying? It can’t be anyone but you. Stop talking like that.”
“Sure.”
“. . . Kaeya?!”
“Sorry, sorry. Just you and me, forever and ever, okay? Until you’re Grand Master, and I’m your right-hand man, and we shall both grow old together and never marry out. Sounds good?”
“Don’t joke. I need you, and I mean it.”
“Of course. I’ll be there; I promise it.” And even though Kaeya’s heart hurt as he said it, the smile on Diluc’s face made all the pain worth it.
Years after that, there came another night in the rain.
Just like that first night, Kaeya was alone in the cold, only this time he didn’t follow the blue flowers, but merely lay on the ground, unmoving. As if to taunt him, out of the corner of his eye he spotted the hint of a blue bloom, stubbornly peeking out from a puddle of ice, delicate and alone but nonetheless alive.
Laughing bitterly, Kaeya plucked the flower and held it close to his face. It was still the most beautiful shade of blue he’d ever seen, but it brought him no joy to look at it. What did it matter, to dream of things like love and the future, when he’d known all along that it would only amount to this in the end?
His heart froze over, and the pain Kaeya had carried in his chest for the past few years finally turned numb and ceased to hurt. Accepting for perhaps the first time in his life what fate had wrought him, Kaeya let his new powers flow through his fingers and into the flower in his hand, freezing it dead from the inside out until it was only a cold husk of a once-beautiful thing. Seeing that its color remained ever-brilliant despite what he’d done, Kaeya snapped it in half in his hand, vowing to never again follow the blue flower for whatever good it led him to was sure to never last.
Kaeya was alone that night, and he remained alone for the next three years.
He worked, drank often, and paid little mind to anything temporary. Sometimes, he wrote letters, but sent them to no-one. By his bed, he kept a red Vision that no longer glowed.
Every night for three years, Kaeya dreamed of a blue flower in his sleep. Sometimes there was one, sometimes a dozen, sometimes there were so many that they stretched as far as they eye could see, in every direction he looked, an endless, perpetual reminder of his own inescapable sin. And sometimes there was a glimpse of something red and warm, only briefly for a moment, as if to tease him with hope before disappearing completely into a sea of miserable blue.
On the fourth year, the dreams stopped.
At the same time, whispers began to circulate that Master Diluc had at long last returned.
Kaeya spent a week locked in his office, insisting to all who came knocking that he was much too busy with his work to pay any attention to idle rumors. After a week, he bought a bouquet of red roses, paced aimlessly for an hour, then went to discard them into the garbage just beyond the city walls where nobody would see.
And yet there was one person there to see. A figure shrouded in black with a head of red hair like flames, skulking in the shadows as if he’d been loitering there for quite some time.
“Sir Kaeya,” he acknowledged with a cool nod of the head. There was no surprise in his face, but no affection, either.
An endless moment passed as Kaeya froze in place, unable to summon the words he’d held in heart for four, long years. When Diluc saw that Kaeya had nothing to say, he did not push the matter further, but merely turned his face away, staring silently at the distant hills beyond the gates.
Kaeya’s heart dropped like he’d fallen off a cliff. Of course Diluc didn’t want to talk to him. It had been foolish to expect otherwise.
He smiled, although Diluc wasn’t looking to see it, then turned right around and left, thinking it for the best that their paths did not cross again.
Months passed. They did not speak. Kaeya no longer dreamed of the blue flower, because he hardly slept at all. Instead, he laid awake in bed, imagining a hundred thousand futures where they could possibly be happy, and not a single one that could ever hope to last. There was a window in his apartment flat that overlooked the city. He spent much time staring out of it, late at night when the only lights that glittered were from the stars overhead, stretching eternally into the darkness, as if to mock him of his own, ceaseless longing.
Then, one night, there was the distinct glow of red against the ever-black horizon.
Fire.
Fire far away from the city, in the direction of the place he once called home, glowing brilliantly for a brief moment, then dimming once more into nothing.
At the sight of fire, Kaeya always thought of him, but Diluc no longer carried a Vision, and Kaeya knew this.
Where, then, did the fire come from?
Still in his night clothes, Kaeya ran out into the streets, delirious with the nightmares of countless sleepless nights, cursing that of all the things infinite in this world, time was not one of them, and that one never knew when they had run out of it.
All his yearning, his heartache, his hopes and dreams, what was it all for? If something happened to Diluc, there would be no purpose.
Like a madman, Kaeya stumbled into the wilderness, not knowing where he was headed, only that he must not be too late. Out of the darkness, he spotted that color he knew so well and hated so deeply, but because he was desperate, Kaeya once again followed the trail of blue flowers. Like a path had been laid out for him expressly for this purpose, blue flowers appeared one after the other, guiding Kaeya in a direction he trusted implicitly against all logic. As he ran, he wondered if he had simply lost his mind, or if the gods who had damned him all his life might have been so kind as to send him a sign such as this.
When he found Diluc sitting under a tree by the water, dressed rather oddly in a black cape and mask, nursing a bloody cut on his leg but appearing fine by all other means, Kaeya hadn’t even the breath to question his ridiculous getup before collapsing to the ground in relief.
“Kaeya?” Diluc called, any potential trace of hostility masked by the confusion in his voice.
Keeling over with exhaustion, Kaeya’s voice cracked as months of carefully pent-up emotion threatened to spill over. “W-Why won’t you talk to me?”
“. . . Huh?” Diluc stared, dumbstruck.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kaeya accused, unable to stop himself after he’d started. “Since you came back. You won’t even look me in the eye; I-I don't know what to do. Look at me. I can’t sleep. I’m going crazy, Diluc, I c-can’t take it, I-I’ll—” Kaeya cut himself off abruptly because his throat grew so tight he didn’t trust his voice.
Hearing how Kaeya choked over his words that usually came out so smoothly, Diluc’s face softened. “Control yourself, Kaeya. I can’t stand you like this.”
“I’m sorry.” Kaeya wiped his eye furiously. “I’ve been seeing things. Don’t listen to me if you know what’s good for you.”
“Too late; I’m listening. What’s wrong with you?”
“I've been thinking, round and round, of all the places I've gone wrong, and how there's no going back, ever in this life, and of all the futures I'll never know or have when all this is done, and how I regret, I resent so bitterly what I can't have. But—” Kaeya placed a hand right over Diluc’s knee, squeezing as if every important thing in the world laid upon that knee. “I want . . . so much. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t help it.”
Kaeya’s voice cracked, and he hung his head, overwhelmed. When he finally collected himself again, his next words came out barely above a whisper.
“. . . I am always asleep, Diluc. I live in dreams because I can’t bear to face what’s real.”
“. . .”
Diluc didn't embrace him, nor did he murmur any meaningless words of comfort, but he didn't scowl or turn away, either. He only listened quietly until Kaeya was finished, then placed one hand over Kaeya’s and kept it there, a gentle, reassuring weight. With his other hand, he fiddled with a blue flower that bloomed out of the ground beside him.
“This little flower always reminds me of a poem,” Diluc said in a soft voice. “O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst; oh love, as long as love you can.”
He plucked the flower from the ground, and twirled it between his fingers.
“My father always told me that nothing lasts forever, and once something’s lost, it won’t ever go back to the way it was before,” Diluc said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “But time is always moving forwards, and the inevitable is always ahead. To do what good we can, while we’re still here . . . That’s how we live with ourselves.”
They were simple words, but it was enough.
Kaeya swallowed. Diluc’s hand was warm over his. Somehow, that small comfort meant more than any good that had come out of the past few years.
“Hah,” he laughed under his breath, feeling strangely as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “You've matured.”
Diluc crossed his arms. “Perhaps, compared to you.”
“I’ve matured plenty.”
“I don’t doubt it, by the way you still run out of bed, crying from nightmares.”
“Apparently, you’ve gotten meaner, too.”
“You were always too sensitive.”
“You’re still a bully.”
“You make it easy.”
“I’m taller now.”
“Enough, Kaeya. I’m heading back.”
“Can you walk?”
“Dawn Winery isn’t far.”
“But you’re injured.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Ridiculous. You’ve bled so much you’ve gone pale. Or have you always looked like that? Either way, you're in no condition to travel alone. Here, grab onto my shoulder. I'm much stronger now, after all.”
“. . .”
Side by side, leaning against each other, they walked slowly, heedless of time. Kaeya didn't ask Diluc what he was out doing at this hour of the night, and Diluc didn't mention it when Kaeya’s arm slipped down to his waist, squeezing on to him just a bit too tightly to pass off as anything other than a senseless desire to hold him close.
Under the moonlight, a trail of blue flowers grew out of the grass, as brilliant and endless as the stars, but Kaeya either didn’t notice or didn’t care as he stepped over their blooms beneath his feet.