Chapter Text
forty-two days ago
“It seems you might not have to worry about that promise after all,” Crepus says, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling, swirling the wine in his glass. Wine that Adelinde really shouldn’t be letting him have, but considering the occasion… a single glass can’t hurt too much.
With that justification in mind, she takes a sip of her own wine and curls up in the armchair next to his. “What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow Diluc comes of age, and in just a few months Kaeya will too.” The soft glow of candlelight adds extra warmth to his smile. “There won’t be any children for you to look after even if something does happen to me.”
She pauses, resting the glass against her lips, before saying, “They’ll always be children to me. I’ll always be there for them, no matter what.”
He chuckles. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He lifts his glass to her in a mock toast. “Congratulations, you passed the test.”
She doesn’t lift her glass in return and instead takes another sip to avoid scowling at him. “Was that truly something you needed to test?”
“Of course not. I’ve never doubted you for a second, my dear.” He chuckles again. “But your sincerity is terribly endearing. I can’t help it sometimes.”
“I suppose that’s why you never test Elzer like this.”
“If anything, that boy is the one testing me.”
A laugh threatens to escape against her will – she tries to hide it behind her hand, but Crepus has already seen right through her and is smirking in a manner entirely unbecoming of a nobleman.
Ironically enough, her next sip of wine sobers her up a bit. “I do wish you wouldn’t speak like that, Master. Nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s worrying that you keep bringing it up out of the blue. Especially when something auspicious is on the horizon.”
He’s still smiling, but he doesn’t ignore the seriousness in her voice. “I always took you for more of a realist.”
“Well, I don’t see any real reason to expect that anything would happen. Unless” – she raises an eyebrow – “there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
“No, of course not,” he says easily, setting his glass down for a moment to flash her a more reassuring smile. “But even when the odds of success are nine to one–”
“You must never lower your guard,” she sighs as she finishes his seemingly favourite adage, one that he’s repeated to her a hundred times before. She gives her wineglass a shake. “Does this not count as lowering your guard?”
“Why, but I have the best guard of all right here to protect me.” He grins at her impishly, the same grin that Kaeya had picked up from him far too quickly. “I don’t see any problem, do you?”
The heat that rises to her cheeks is due to the wine in her system and absolutely nothing else. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Master.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll realise it’s not flattery in the slightest.” He rests his head against his palm, his smile softening into something sincere again with a mellowness he only seems to find when drinking. “I never have to worry about a thing when you’re around, Adelinde. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’ll never have to do without me,” she huffs. How many times does she have to reassure him of that? “I’m always going to be here.”
“And for that I will forever be in your debt.”
The time has finally come. It’s been weeks of avoiding this one simple task, weeks of praying that no one will say anything to her about it. She can’t feasibly put it off any longer.
With a sharp intake of breath, Adelinde pushes open the door to the master bedroom of the winery manor.
She doesn’t know what she expected – she’s been shutting down any thought of this place ever since that day – but her grip on the broom tightens nonetheless.
The curtains are open and rays of summer sunlight filter unabashedly into the room, illuminating each speck of dust in their path. But other than the dust that’s gathered on every visible surface, everything looks exactly as she remembered.
Of course it does, you fool. How could anything possibly have changed when no one’s been in here since–
She takes another step inside, soundless and soft, and becomes uncomfortably aware of the fact that she’s holding her breath. Somehow the simple act of breathing isn’t coming naturally to her right now. It’s a room she’s seen a thousand times. Nothing to get so anxious about.
This shouldn’t be so difficult.
“Get over yourself,” she mutters, yanking the broom forward to give the once-polished floorboards an aggressive and highly inefficient sweep, only to narrow her eyes as dust flies up into the air and lands on her shoes instead.
…Perhaps she should’ve waited. Or left this to someone else. Or given up on this endeavour entirely–
“Get over yourself,” she repeats under her breath, and sets the broom down so she can roll up her sleeves – but then edge of a scar shows itself when she rolls one sleeve up too far, so she hastily tugs it back down again even though no one’s around to see any of it.
She strides forward, sweeping all unwelcome thoughts of the past under the proverbial rug in her mind. The only things she needs to think about are the things that need to be done – opening the windows to air out the room, clearing away all the clutter on the desk, stripping the bed and changing the sheets–
And what purpose would that serve? It’s not as if someone will be sleeping in this bed any time soon.
Her fingertips come to rest upon the brushed cotton sheets, tracing along a dip in the fabric – the vaguest of indentations, like the bed’s usual occupant only got up a few minutes ago.
Just a trick of the light, surely.
It’s not like she can distinctly remember the way Crepus would lie here in the early hours of morning, his children on either side clinging to him like the world would end if they were apart, or the way his eyes would open just a fraction as soon as she entered and he would give her the faintest smile, a silent request to allow him a few more minutes with his sons, a request she would always oblige without hesitation–
The way he’ll never do that again.
She shakes her head. It’s the air – yes, it’s the air in this room, all musty and stagnant and stale, that must be what’s muddling her mind. A little fresh air and she’ll be right back to normal.
With a deep breath, she pulls down the handles and pushes open the window with both hands. The iron hinges creak from disuse, a discordant sound that has her grimacing – she’ll have to bring up some oil later to lubricate them – but with a firm enough push it finally snaps open completely and air rushes in at last, cooler than she expected for a summer morning.
She takes in the new view, oddly proud of herself for a moment, before her gaze drops down.
There, precariously balanced on the thin wooden ledge outside and barely an inch from the bottom edge of the window, is… a nest. A tiny nest within which two even tinier chicks are huddling close together.
Why on earth does such a small thing like that make her chest feel like it’s about to explode?
She moves closer to the window without thinking and curls her fingers around the windowsill loosely as she peers down. Her breathing slows and stills, wary of the possibility that her looming presence might startle them awake and send them toppling off that minuscule ledge and plummeting several feet to their doom.
They’re absolutely tiny. There’s no other word for it. She could hold both of them in one hand effortlessly. They probably don’t have a clue how to fly yet. Her avian knowledge might begin and end with falcons – Crepus had been quick to remedy that little gap in her skills – but even she can tell that these chicks are far too young to be left alone. They’ve hardly got any feathers to speak of.
Where is their mother?
She doesn’t realise how far she’s leaning until the nest starts to slip and she quickly throws her arms out to scoop it back up – not quickly enough to stop the chicks from waking up and squealing in panic, though.
“Shh, it’s alright,” she whispers frantically, each distressed chirp cutting right through to her heart, “it’s alright, you’re safe–”
“Adelinde? What are you doing in here?”
Whichever god gives her the strength not to jump at the unexpected voice behind her deserves a thousand years of reverence, because it certainly didn’t come from her, and without it she certainly would’ve knocked those baby birds right off again and had to live with the consequent horror.
It takes entirely too long to identify the voice as Elzer, long enough for him to cross the room and stand at her side. He doesn’t wait for her to answer before peering over her shoulder.
“Would you look at that,” Elzer says, chuckling to himself. “Cute, aren’t they?”
“Be careful.” She withdraws her hands and pulls the window halfway shut, stepping back and forcing him back with her. “If you get too close you’ll disturb them.”
“But just now you were–”
One sharp look out of the corner of her eye is all it takes to cut him off, thankfully. But her gaze snaps back to the now-quiet chicks like iron to a magnet, and her chest tightens even further at the sight of them huddling closer together.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Elzer prods her arm. “What are you doing in here?”
She wipes the dust off her fingers with her apron before folding her arms across her stomach, still watching the birds instead of him. “What does it look like? Cleaning, obviously.”
“Cleaning in here?” Disbelief oozes out of his voice.
“Is there something wrong with that?”
A beat of silence, and then his hand settles over the crook of her elbow, fingers pressing gently into her skin. “Linde–”
The sheer softness of his touch, his voice, has her pulling away in an instant and folding her arms tighter, clutching at her own sleeves to relieve some of the tension in her hands. “You have better things to do than get in the way of my work, I’m sure,” she huffs, taking another step to the side.
He takes hold of her elbow again.
“Elzer–”
And his other hand reaches across, grabs her shoulder, and slowly but surely turns her to face him at last. The look in his eyes is as heartbreakingly soft as the rest of him.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he says, squeezing her shoulder.
“Pretend?” she scoffs, but it’s flimsy and devoid of resolve. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m fine.”
He lets go of her at that, only to cup her face in both hands, tilting it ever so slightly up to meet his gaze head on.
“Elzer,” she says, trying to look stern even while her voice fails her so miserably, “I’m fine. You needn’t worry about me. I’m not a little girl.”
It’s like he’s seeing right through her with that distant, mournful expression. “No, you’re not,” he murmurs.
His hands linger for a few more moments, one thumb brushing absently across her cheek, before they descend to her shoulders. But just when she thinks she’s finally gotten him off her case, he pulls her impossibly close and envelops her in a crushing hug.
Her arms drop and dangle uselessly at her sides, the warmth of Elzer’s embrace more effective than any tranquilliser. She can’t find it in her to resist when he presses her head against his shoulder, close enough for his collarbone to dig in, or when he runs his fingers through her hair and messes up the precise placement of her headband.
“Elz,” she says through trembling lips, barely louder than his heartbeat, “I really am fine.”
“Then why are you shaking so much?”
I’m not–
Except she is – now that Elzer’s pointed it out, each little tremor in her body is like its own earthquake, and the only thing keeping her remotely still is his enduring embrace.
She sucks in a breath to steady herself and turns her head, only to find herself staring out the window again – staring at the two helpless chicks in their nest, and the mother that’s now returned to them, her wing spread like a shield around them.
Something as small as that shouldn’t make her cry.
She buries her face in Elzer’s chest and tries not to let out anything more than a single choked gasp – but the rhythmic motion of his hand against the back of her head is apparently all it takes to destroy the dam and usher forth a surge of stinging tears. Soon enough his steadying arms aren’t enough, so her own arms wrap around his waist and cling to his back in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.
“Cry as much as you need to. It’s okay.”
I’ve already cried too much–
But her body betrays her and her crying grows louder, choked gasps turning into whimpers that turn into full-blown sobs, and all the while she continues to tremble like a leaf while Elzer stands tall and sturdy as the oak trees that surround the winery grounds. The sweet and all-too-familiar scent of wine on his clothes doesn’t help.
Elzer walks them backwards, step by step, and gently pulls her to sit next to him on the bed, never faltering in his hold. Without solid ground beneath her feet it’s even easier to slump against him and let him shoulder all her weight. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t utter a word, not even a whisper; even his breaths against her hair are frighteningly silent. For all that he teases her, he’s always known how to give her space.
When the tears finally stop flowing and her breathing evens out again, she doesn’t pull away or try to meet his eyes – she just squeezes even tighter, a wordless expression of gratitude, and presses her cheek further against his chest, each pulse of his steadily beating heart reverberating through her tear-stained skin. Elzer keeps quiet, only rubbing a hand along her scarred back and soothing the growing ache there. He’s surely waiting for her to say something, to reassure him that he’s done quite enough and that she’s perfectly alright now, but her mouth is dry and her attempts to summon up even a single word only end in reminders of how tight her throat is and how hoarse her voice would be.
“You know I’m always going to be here for you,” Elzer says, almost pitying, perhaps a little patronising.
She knows – of course she knows, he’s proven as much countless times over the years, she’d be a fool to doubt him now – but the words still make her tear up again.
She doesn’t let them fall, though – she squeezes tight again, eliciting a muffled grunt from him, and says with a conviction both achingly false and desperately true, “Of course you’ll always be here. I would never let you leave.”
“I’d never dream of leaving you.” The words fall from his lips like they’ve been rehearsed.
“I’m sure you’ve dreamt of it at least once or twice.”
He chuckles, a deep sound that mixes so soothingly with his heartbeat. “Perhaps when I was younger and less wise.”
“You think you’ve grown wiser?”
“Alright, I see how it is.” He chuckles again and it’s almost enough to tug her lips into a proper smile of their own. “Go on. If mocking me makes you feel better, then you’d better get it out of your system now while I still have some sympathy for you.”
That makes her laugh – a watery, pathetic little sound, but indisputably a laugh nonetheless – and she pulls away at last to see Elzer smiling faintly down at her.
“That’s more like it,” he says, patting her cheek as he flashes her an affectionate smirk.
She huffs and pulls away from him fully, sitting up straight and fussing with her hair, muttering that he messed it up like he always does, but in mere moments she’s leaning against him again, her head settling on his shoulder like it belongs there.
“I think this is the point where you tell me what’s on your mind,” he says, reaching down between them to clasp her hand.
She looks down at their interlaced fingers and stays silent.
“Perhaps I can take a guess–”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Without having to look at him she knows he’s frowning – she can feel it in the new tension of his hand. “Of course there’s something to talk about, you don’t cry like this over nothing–”
“It’s nothing you don’t already know,” she murmurs. “It’s not like talking will fix any of it.”
Elzer’s hand is still tense, brimming with the urge to repair the irreparable, but she looks stubbornly away and towards the window. The nest isn’t visible from here, but if she strains her ears she can imagine the peaceful chirping of those two little birds, safe and sound with their mother to protect them from the world.
“Oh, Linde.” Elzer’s lips ghost over her temple with a sigh. “You know what those boys are like. Once they’ve made up their minds about something, nothing in the world can stop them. Who do you think they learned that from?”
His fond quip does nothing to distract from how precisely he managed to verbalise her distress when she’d scarcely been able to admit it to herself. Everyone else seems to think that she’s simply been grieving Crepus’s sudden passing, her loyalty getting the best of her – Elzer’s the only one who understands the full extent of her grief.
“Master Crepus would have.”
If Crepus had been there, he would never in a thousand years have let his sons leave just like that – and yet that’s exactly what Adelinde had done. She hadn’t been able to stop Diluc from storming off in search of answers to questions only he was privy to, and she hadn’t been able to stop Kaeya from leaving for the Knights and all but officially renouncing his ties to the family. To her.
“Listen to yourself,” Elzer says, the first notes of frustration creeping into his tone. “You’re being so hard on yourself when you didn’t even do anything wrong–”
“I promised him I’d look after them, and– and now they’re– and I–”
“He wouldn’t blame you.” He reaches around her back to take hold of her shoulder, pulling her tightly against his side, punctuating his words with a gentle shake. “There’s nothing to blame you for. He wouldn’t be even the least bit upset with you.”
“You can’t speak on his behalf like–”
“As if you aren’t doing the same,” he scoffs, “presuming what he would think and punishing yourself for it without a second thought.”
She inhales sharply. “That’s not–”
“I knew him longer than you, don’t forget. I know he would never want you to torture yourself with guilt like this.”
“…You’re being far too dramatic,” she mutters weakly. “That’s not what’s happening.”
“Then what do you call all this?
“I…”
Elzer doesn’t get it. How could he? He’s not the one who would’ve surely died if not for Crepus taking him in without question all those years ago. He’s not the one who had no way of repaying Crepus for his generosity other than to look after his children, the only duty Crepus felt he couldn’t handle alone. He’s not the one–
“I miss them too, you know.”
Elzer’s quiet confession derails her train of thought in an instant, and the guilt from thinking for even a moment that he didn’t share her pain comes crashing down upon her all at once.
“But we didn’t do anything wrong. And we’re doing what Crepus would’ve wanted – protecting everything he left behind.” He shrugs. “Until they return, there’s nothing else we can really do.”
Somehow it feels more like he’s reassuring himself than her.
“Aren’t you worried about them?”
A flash of doubt in his sky-blue eyes. “Worrying won’t change anything.” Doubt gives way to a flicker of resolve hidden beneath a wavering smile. “They’ll be back.”
She wishes she could believe it. She wishes that flicker was enough to light up the darkness stretching out before them, on and on and on through the days, months, years. But she and Elzer are proof positive that some runaways never return home. Sometimes home is too painful a place to even think of returning to. Some runaways will simply start a new life far, far away without ever looking back–
“They’ll come back for you.” Elzer presses a kiss into her hair. “When the time is right, when they’ve accomplished whatever it is they set out to accomplish, they’ll come back. We have to trust them.” We don’t have a choice goes unspoken.
But the right time is now.
Now, or yesterday, or the first of May, the day everything had gone from bad to worse.
What if whatever they experience out there changes them so much that this home isn’t enough for them anymore?
What if she isn’t enough?
“Adelinde?”
“I do trust them. I’m just– scared,” she whispers. “I’m scared for them every single day.”
Elzer hugs her tighter. “I know. We all are. But it’ll be alright.”
It’ll be alright. An easy, empty reassurance, but it’s all they have left anymore.
She sniffs and wipes the last of the tears from her eyes and pulls away for good this time. “Why were you even looking for me?” she asks, her voice still shaking slightly.
“Ah, well – I was going to ask if you wanted to stop working early today and join me for lunch outside, considering the lovely weather and all, but” – he glances around the room – “I suppose there’s no chance of that happening, is there.”
“Some of us have our priorities in order,” she retorts weakly.
“If only you were one of them.” He’s suddenly on his feet again and hurrying to the corner where she’d abandoned the broom. “But perhaps I can help you take care of those priorities anyway?”
“I don’t think cleaning is in your job description,” she says, watching unimpressed as he attempts to twirl the broom like it’s one of those ceremonial swords he used to spend too much time practising tricks with.
“Anything to do with maintaining order in the household is within the butler’s purview. I think.”
She stands up and takes the broom from him before he can somehow hurt himself with it. “I can clean a room on my own. You don’t need to help with such a simple thing.”
“If it was that simple you would’ve done it by now.” He reaches for the broom again, their hands overlapping. “You don’t need to force yourself to do difficult things on your own. Not when you have people here to help you.”
She really wants to say no. The mere thought of needing to split such a basic task with another person is more humiliating than she cares to quantify – but he’s looking at her with boundless certainty in his eyes like he’s sure that’ll be all it takes to make everything better, so perhaps she owes it to him to try.
“Fine.” She acquiesces, sighing, and shoves a dust rag towards his face. “You can start by sorting out the desk, then.”
“With pleasure,” he says with a mock salute before taking the rag and sitting at Crepus’s desk, shuffling around the miscellany of items scattered on top of it without hesitation.
I wish someone would tell me what I’m supposed to do as well, she thinks bitterly for a moment, but she shakes off the thought before Elzer has a chance to notice.
It’ll be alright. The seasons will pass, and time will dull the bite of this gnawing dread. It has to.
Because she’s really not sure how much longer she can live like this.