Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

the soil – to which we all must return in the end.

“It’s not often you ask for leave,” Jean says, storm-grey eyes flicking down to the papers strewn across her desk and then back up to Kaeya.

“I’ve been told on many an occasion that I should change that,” he replies, smiling as sweetly as always back at her. “We have so much in common, don’t we?”

Jean sighs softly as she folds her hands across her lap and glances out the window. He can tell she’s holding back a roll of her eyes, never one for self-indulgence.

“It’s only for a week,” he says, allowing the corner of his lips and the pitch of his voice to lift ever so slightly. “That’s not too long, is it?”

She indulges herself this time, but only for a second before her expression turns solemn again.

“Jean?”

She doesn’t reply.

“Oh dear.” He forces his smile to stay in place. “I didn’t realise the Cavalry Captain was so indispensable that the Acting Grandmaster herself can’t imagine surviving for a mere week without–”

“Kaeya, are you okay?”

It takes an unreasonable amount of effort to stop his eye from going wide and his tongue from spluttering inelegantly at the absurd question.

“Never been better,” he says, grinning. “Knowing you have time off will do that–”

Despite his better judgement, he cuts himself off anyway at the shimmer of concern in Jean’s eyes.

Somehow this isn’t going quite as I planned.

“I promise I’ve done all the paperwork properly. Not like there was much to begin with, let’s be honest. And all my people know what needs to be done while I’m gone – hell, you probably won’t even notice I’m not around–”

Jean is still staring at him with a painfully soft expression and it’s making him sick. Sweet-talking her is usually so easy. What the hell is he doing wrong?

“Only a week,” he echoes, softer, doing everything he can to make his ever-so-charming smile seem genuine to one of the few people who can occasionally – very occasionally – see through it.

Please, please stop looking at me like that–

Jean sighs again and rests the tips of her fingers against her temple. “I want to see you first thing on Monday morning when you come back.”

“Yes, sir,” he says without missing a beat, lifting his hand in a lazy salute.

“And you’d better not get into any trouble while you’re gone.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Jean narrows her eyes. “I mean it, Kaeya.”

“You really shouldn’t worry so much. It’s terrible for your skin, or so Lisa says, and she’s quite the expert on those kinds of things.”

Jean purses her lips, and it’s so obvious she wants to say more – but, blessedly, she keeps whatever it is to herself.

Not like it makes a difference. Kaeya already knows exactly the sort of things she wants to say but is too afraid to, because kind people like her are really all the same at their core, and he’s had a lifetime of practice manipulating them.

Careful, Alberich. Let’s save the spiralling thoughts for when you get home.

Of course. Can’t give Jean more reason to be worried.

“Goodbye,” he says with a slight bow, the degree of it halfway between respectful and reluctant.

“See you later,” she says, a little too seriously for Kaeya’s liking.

But he doesn’t dwell on it, because he doesn’t have time for things like that anymore, and leaves without so much as a glance back at his oldest friend, swift as the wind. It’s easier to do than he thought it would be.

The question of why Jean cares so much about Kaeya haunts him all the way home, as it has for most of his life. She’s always thought too highly of him. Her kindness obscures her to the fact that he’s nowhere near as good of a person as she’s led herself to believe – as he’s allowed her to believe.

Good people don’t kill themselves, because good people don’t hurt others, and he knows this is going to hurt, but he simply can’t bring himself to care anymore.

He locks the door behind him and tosses the key aside, uncaring of where it lands. Somehow his apartment looks darker than ever despite it being the middle of the afternoon on a sunny spring day. Could be because he hasn’t really bothered cleaning it for the past few days. Could be something else entirely.

It doesn’t matter. He always spent far too much time contemplating the most insignificant details of the world around him, and it’s so freeing to have a good excuse to dismiss all of that now. Nothing matters in the end. All those hours he spent trying to make sense of things, to make sense of himself, the broken mess that he is – none of it ever mattered at all.

The first thing he reaches for is a bottle of pills sitting right where he left it in the middle of the kitchen table. Upon unscrewing the flimsy aluminium cap, a single pill falls out with surprising ease. He rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, admiring its perfectly round and perfectly unblemished shape, then tosses it up in the air like a coin and catches it in a single motion, before dropping it on the table. It bounces a little like it’s as excited about this as he is, and he caps the bottle with a flourish.

He can’t remember the last time he felt such pure… joy.

That light at the end of the tunnel that everyone talks about is finally within reach, and he’s so drunk on the hope of it all that he might just die right then and there.

“If only I’d thought of this earlier,” he sighs to himself, the barest hint of melancholy weighing down his voice. There’s no point lamenting about wasted time when that time is almost up.

He spares a glance for the wine bottles neatly lined up on the kitchen counter. Only the finest dandelion wine from Dawn Winery, of course. At least he can say he supported the family business to the very end.

Diluc won’t like that at all.

Well, Diluc doesn’t like anything to do with him anymore – not really, no matter how civil an act he’s capable of putting on in public – so what does it matter anyway?

Tonight is going to be the most peaceful night of his life. He’ll admire his last sunset, pop the pill, then drink himself to death. Literally.

“Can’t think of a better way to go.”

The pill bottle, emerald green and half-full, winks alluringly at him in the dimness of the apartment.

…What’s a few more pills, anyway? It’s not like it’ll kill him slower. Besides, no one else is going to get any use out of them, so he might as well make the most of his hard-earned Mora.

His hand reaches for the bottle, unscrews the cap, and tilts it just enough for the pills to start falling out once more–

Bang bang bang.

The bottle falls with a sharp clack against the table, sending pills flying in every direction. Kaeya watches dumbly as they clatter to the floor like some pathetic parody of a hailstorm.

Who the hell is knocking on my door, and why now of all times?

Gods, he can’t wait to die. He’ll never have to answer the door ever–

BANG BANG BANG.

This is easy. All he has to do is stay utterly still and pretend there’s no one home, and the unwelcome guest will surely take the hint and leave–

“Oi, Kaeya. I know you’re in there.”

…Rosaria?

Oh hell, what does she want with me?

“If you don’t open the door by the time I’m done counting, I’m breaking it down.”

She’s bluffing, surely. She’s not the ‘breaking down doors’ type. She’d sooner jack open a window and slip in through there under the cover of night than–

“Three.”

Oh fuck–

“Two.”

Kaeya clears the table with a brisk sweep of his arm, kicks whatever pills he can see on the floor out of sight, then scrambles out of the kitchen as fast as his legs will allow.

“One–”

“Rosaria,” he says with a gasp as he swings the front door open just in time.

She has one arm raised, her hand curled into a fist mere inches from his face.

As for her other arm–

…A plant?

He blinks once, just to be sure his eye isn’t deceiving him – but no. The deadliest, coldest, least nurturing woman he knows is cradling a potted lamp grass like it’s her child, and he distantly wonders if perhaps he’s already ingested the pills and this is just an elaborate hallucination he’s seeing as the last vestiges of life leave his body for good.

“You sure took your time,” Rosaria says dryly, lowering her free hand. Her eyes are narrowed, her eyebrows crossed. A classic Rosaria expression.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks, coating his words with as much sweetness as he can muster – a fruitless endeavour with Rosaria of all people, but it at least masks the scathing bitterness that might’ve instantly exposed his plans for the night.

Rosaria keeps staring at him with those same narrowed eyes. He does his best to keep his smile from warping under the pressure and leans against the doorframe, folding his arms casually across his chest. He’s cool. He’s calm. There’s absolutely nothing here for anyone to think too hard about–

She shoves the plant at him without another word. It’s a miracle of reflex that he uncrosses his arms fast enough to catch it, or else they’d be staring at broken terra cotta and clumps of damp soil all over their feet, and his consequent death at Rosaria’s hands would be far from the tranquil exit he’d planned.

“A gift?” he says, lightly, once he regains his balance and breath. “Aw, Rosa, you shouldn’t have. What’s the occasion?”

“Not a gift.” Rosaria’s hand comes to rest on her hip. “I need you to look after it while I’m gone.”

Gone? “Where are you–”

“None of your business.”

“Aren’t you sort of making it my business? Showing up here and all–”

She grits her teeth. “Can you do it or not?”

“…How long will you be gone?”

“A couple of days.” She forces him into a staring contest, before relenting with a sigh and adding, “Three days.”

That’s probably the most detail he can hope to get out of her. If there’s one thing he can’t stand about Rosaria, it’s her obsession with keeping the details of her activities under lock and key, even from him. He’s well aware that this is something they have in common – that’s it’s one of the reasons he’s always trusted her, and that it makes him a massive hypocrite to take issue with it – but he’s been a hypocrite his whole life, so this is nothing.

“You have the week off, right?”

Now it’s his turn to narrow his eye. “Who told you that?”

It’s a stupid question – he knows the answer before it leaves her lips. “Vile, obviously. Now can you do it, or do you have too much going on to water a plant once a day?”

There’s only a handful of people he can never say no to. Rosaria just so happens to be one of them and he knows she knows that damn well.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” he says, holding back a sigh.

Rosaria doesn’t smile, but her eyebrows relax just a fraction, which is as close to pleased as she ever gets. Then her eyebrows knit together again and she tilts her head to the side, deep in contemplation, before opening her mouth once more. “I’ll… buy you a drink when I’m back,” she says, making no attempt to disguise the fact that this reward was clearly an afterthought.

“Oh, there’s no need for that, don’t worry,” he says, smiling sincerely.

Along with being one of the only people he can’t say no to, she’s also one of the only people who ends up even more suspicious than before when he displays a modicum of sincerity.

Is he going to be subjected to another one of her interrogations right here on his doorstep? It seems inevitable, but after a long moment of tense silence, she straightens up and steps back. Until then, he hadn’t realised how close she’d gotten.

“Right. Well. I’ll pick it up from you when I get back,” she says, nodding towards the plant still nestled in his arms.

“Take your time.”

“See you soon,” she says, an awkward beat of hesitation in her voice that he’s not sure what to do with.

“Bye now,” he says as she turns on her heel and slips down the stairs as quietly as she must’ve come. She doesn’t look back for even a second.

Once her footsteps fade into the indistinct bustle of the city below, he slinks back into the shadows of his house like a wounded cat, setting the plant down on the floor beside him.

As far as final goodbyes go, that wasn’t half-bad.

Now all that remains is the question of what to do with this plant. How exactly is he supposed to keep it alive long enough to get it back to Rosaria after he dies tonight?

He picks it up again and stumbles towards the kitchen. With his free hand he opens the curtain just enough to take a peek at the outside world.

The sun is high in the sky, bearing down stiflingly on the world below. Still a few hours until it sets, then. Plenty of time for him to solve this little dilemma. He’s always worked better under pressure anyway.

In the meantime, a drink can’t hurt. At least, not more than anything else to come.

The trouble with death is that it leaves rather a lot of loose ends behind.

Or perhaps that’s just the trouble with life as a whole. One’s existence is never solely one’s own – it’s impossible to detach oneself from the countless other lives in the world, both those that came before and those that will continue after.

Some people would think that’s beautiful. That the nature of life is what gives it value and meaning, what makes it worth living–

“It’s a fucking inconvenience if you ask me,” Kaeya says to no one in particular.

The wine bottles are his only audience, some still upright, others lying on their sides like fallen soldiers in the aftermath of a tough battle, mirroring him.

And the plant. Can’t forget the damn plant.

Once upon a time, he used to be able to see the appeal of lamp grass. That soft luminescence in the woods on those nights with no moon, guiding lost souls home simply by existing – the number of times he and Diluc had only barely managed to make it home before dinner by the light of the flowers–

Don’t. Do not think about him.

The point: lamp grass holds exactly zero appeal to him now. If he’d wanted light in this godforsaken apartment, he would’ve lit a real lamp or even just left the curtains open. But he hadn’t, so now the lamp grass is nothing but a damn nuisance. An intrusion, a disruption, a stain on his perfect plan that laughs louder in his face the longer it sits there with its smug little gleam.

Just like you.

He laughs to himself, an empty, cracked sound that he barely recognises. He’s not wrong. Perhaps this is the gods’ idea of revenge. One last cruel joke for the sinner before his final sin.

Is it even a sin, to erase a sinner from the world?

It can’t be, or else Diluc wouldn’t have tried to do just that all those years ago–

What happened to not thinking about him?

He laughs to himself again. If it were that easy to stop thinking about him, the past four years would’ve been a hell of a lot less torturous. The lamp grass certainly isn’t helping – what else is he supposed to think about when his brother’s favourite flower is staring at him like that?

“Damn it, Rosa. You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you?”

Deep in the back of his mind, he knows the idea that Rosaria knows Diluc’s favourite flower – or anyone’s, for that matter – is patently absurd. But so is the idea of her suddenly growing a green thumb and caring about plants in the first place. He still hasn’t figured out what the hell that’s about. The alcohol hasn’t helped either. All he has to show for his hours of pondering are an empty bottle and a head as cloudy as the skies outside.

If only he didn’t care so much about Rosaria, this would all be so much simpler.

There are three conditions that need to be satisfied in the solution to this problem: Rosaria’s plant must be kept alive, he has to die before she returns to retrieve said plant, and she can’t be the one to find his body – at least, not with the expectation of finding him alive. Three conditions that only get in each other’s way, three contradicting signposts in a maze leading him back to a hopeless starting point every time.

He’d already expected that she would find him – just missing a night or two at the tavern is enough to have her asking questions that he has to brush off with a smile. She’s almost certainly going to be the first to go looking for him, assuming the Knights don’t somehow interrupt his leave and call upon him for some ‘urgent’ matter or another–

Wait. This is… perfect, isn’t it?

“Oh, I’m such a fool – but I’m so clever,” he cackles as the last piece of the puzzle slots into place.

What has he been agonising over this whole time? He should be thanking Rosaria for dropping this perfect opportunity right into his lap without him even asking for it.

If he can hold out for a couple of extra days, then Rosaria will come looking for her perfectly alive plant, find him perfectly dead, and then everything will resolve itself and he won’t have to lift a finger.

The third condition never mattered to begin with. Why should he care what she’ll feel when she finds him? That’s the crux of the problem – he’s still thinking like the living.

She was always going to be the first one to find him, no matter what. He might as well use that to his advantage. Her feelings won’t make a speck of difference to him.

She’ll know exactly what happened as soon as she sees you. She’ll hate you forever after that.

Good.

Then she won’t mourn him. It’ll be easier to let him go. That can be his final act of kindness. A real fairytale ending for everyone involved.

Look how well that worked out with Diluc–

“Gods, would you give it a rest already?” he groans, screwing his eye shut – anything to silence the voice in his head that has nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.

Alcohol is supposed to help him forget, but it seems like all it wants to do today is dredge up old memories instead.

“It’ll work this time.” He glares at the lamp grass, as if the chill of his gaze alone can somehow extinguish its light. “I’m not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.”

That’s what your entire life has been – a series of repeated mistakes, so many that they all just blend together into complete, abject failure.

He takes another swig to drown out the voice. Is it possible to drown while drinking alcohol? It’d be a little more unique than taking a measly pill. Mondstadt loves gossip; it’d be the talk of the town.

Why do you care so much about what happens after you die? Are you still that attached to your life?

…For once, the voice has a point. That’s the reason he’s committing to this whole thing at all, right? So he can stop caring about his life and all the people in it.

The ultimate freedom.

“Thank you, Mondstadt,” he sighs as he takes another sip. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

He hasn’t quite achieved freedom yet. He still has to look after this plant for a couple of days until this is all over. It can be an apology to Rosaria. A consolation prize. Not that he cares what happens to her after he dies – he’s definitely letting go of all those worthless attachments – but it’ll assuage a little of his guilt before he goes, and he’s hardly one to deny himself an excuse to feel less guilty.

Besides – he still has plenty of wine left.

Chapter Text

the root – that which digs itself deeper.

The trouble with death is that if one doesn’t die when one planned to, one has to drag oneself kicking and screaming through the mundane rituals of daily life once more, and there’s a unique sort of humiliation in trying to live when one’s heart and soul have already moved on.

The trouble with life is that it’s not self-sustaining. The human body is, frankly, utterly useless. It cries out for food even when the idea of swallowing anything other than alcohol makes one want to die even more than usual, and the instinct to live is so monstrously overpowering that it cannot be reasoned with. The heart and soul can lament as much as they want – it won’t change the fact that they are but slaves to these base instincts in the end.

Another point in his favour in the case for ending his life, if one asks Kaeya. How do people bear to live with this sheer, ugly desperation? Doesn’t it drive everyone mad? Aren’t they sick of it all?

That madness is why Kaeya finds himself trudging towards Blanche’s grocery store just minutes after sunrise.

Sure, Rosaria’s plant shenanigans have proven themselves the perfect accessory to his plan. But they’ve also set said plan back a few days, and up until that accursed woman and her doubly accursed lamp grass darkened (illuminated, technically, but damn if he doesn’t wish that flower didn’t glow) his doorstep, everything had been progressing on a very precise schedule.

Which is why when he’d opened every cupboard in his house that morning, he’d found nothing to eat. Because he’d been very careful not to let anything go to waste, and to only buy as much as he would need to sustain himself until his final day. Because he’d planned for it. He’s good at planning for things. Some might say it’s the only thing he’s good at.

And that damned instinct to live – the one that had voiced itself through his growling stomach and the general agony in every inch of his body – is the only reason he’s down here now instead of filling himself up with more liquor. Starving to death hurts. If that had been how he’d wanted to go, he wouldn’t have bothered buying all those pills.

“You’re here early, Sir Kaeya,” Blanche says, amused. “I’ve only just finished setting up for the day.”

Kaeya smiles back absently. He’s really, really not in the mood for conversation today, so he avoids her curious gaze in favour of gathering a reasonable amount of food into his arms instead. One unintentional benefit of shopping at this hour is that no one else is around to bother him, and the only person he might have to make any sort of small talk with is Blanche herself.

When he finally looks back up at her with Mora in his hand, her amusement morphs into something dangerously close to concern.

“Is that all?” she asks, slowly counting out the coins, her eyes flicking between the money and the goods in his arms. “You usually buy more than this–”

“Ha, is that your way of convincing me to spend more? Not a bad strategy, I must say.”

His retort must have come out a lot sharper and more cynical than he intended, because Blanche doesn’t laugh – instead her eyes grow wider with confusion.

“I jest,” he says quickly, flashing her a bright smile, the kind that’s bright enough to have people looking away before they’re blinded by it. “It’s– well, I’m leaving in a couple of days, so I don’t need as much this week, that’s all.”

Why are you explaining yourself to Blanche, of all people? Are you still drunk?

He might be. No killer hangover has assaulted his senses yet. Maybe he’s just high on the anticipation of death. Or maybe he didn’t even sleep last night. That would explain it. That also means he’s growing ever closer to passing out on his feet and he cannot allow that to happen in public or someone will drag him to the church and order bed rest for him for the rest of the week and his plan will be utterly ruined–

“Oh, I see,” Blanche says with a quiet little laugh, and Kaeya’s chest loosens up again. “Important Favonius business, I guess.”

“You know how it is.” He hoists the paper bag up into his arms to stop it from spilling everywhere. “I must be doing a pretty terrible job if ordinary citizens are worried about me.”

“Oh no, not at all, Sir Kaeya– it’s just– well–”

“It’s just…?”

“I– I’m being silly,” she stammers, rubbing at the back of her neck with a bashful smile. Kaeya doesn’t break eye contact until she does. “Of course there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Of course,” he echoes. But to him it sounds as dull as noise bouncing around the inside of a bell jar. “Well, I’d best be off then. Goodbye, Blanche.”

“Have a good day,” she calls after him. He can still feel her eyes following him as he makes his way out of the plaza.

He’ll be having an excellent day. It’s just that his idea of excellence might not line up so neatly with everyone else’s.

The trouble with life is that once one loses the will to live, one is left with rather a lot of free time and not a whole lot to do with it. It’s comical how up until now he’d always been plagued by the feeling of running out of time. Has escaping that agony always been this easy?

He still has to get through this day, but he has nothing to get through it with other than alcohol, and even the efficacy of that seems questionable. He can’t drain his wine supplies too quickly either, or else he’ll have to go outside again, and the overly concerned expression on Blanche’s face is not one that he needs to see ever again.

Going out for alcohol specifically also increases the odds of running into Diluc tenfold.

What would he say if he could see you right now?

…It hardly matters. Soon enough nothing Diluc has to say will ever reach him again.

Kaeya grudgingly rises from his seat beneath the windowsill – the most convenient spot to avoid looking at the lamp grass, still thriving despite his lack of attention to–

Oh. Did he water it yet today?

Every moment since Rosaria left blurs together like a fever dream. That’s probably just the sleep deprivation talking, but really, this is how it’s been ever since he filled out the leave request form for Jean and finalised his plan at last.

He pokes at the soil. The lamp grass sways a little with a cheerful chime, a sound that has him gritting his teeth. His fingertips brush across the soil again, more cautiously this time, and find nothing but desert-like dryness.

A long sigh escapes him. This damn plant is so much work.

His hands are clumsy as they scrounge around his cupboards only to turn up empty. Then he finally looks over at the sink and sees all two of his glasses sitting there, stained and half full of stale water.

Of course he hasn’t washed up in days. Dead men need no dishes. And an alcoholic certainly doesn’t need a glass when they can drink straight from the bottle.

Just a few days ago, reaching into the sink for a grimy glass would have had waves of disgust roiling beneath his skin, but as with most things, he can’t bring himself to care anymore. As he runs the dirty water into the drain and lets fresh tap water refill the glass, the dryness of his lips becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. They’re drier than the soil in that plant plot, rough and cracked under the tip of his tongue.

Before he even realises what he’s doing, he lifts the glass to his lips. The coolness of the water shocks him out of his alcohol-induced trance and back to unwelcome, unforgiving clarity.

He bites down on his lip. It doesn’t take much pressure to draw blood. He doesn’t dare look in a mirror, but he can picture the warm, metallic liquid running through the cracks upon his lips like a river upon a rocky mountainside. Is it possible to bleed to death like this? How long would he have to stand here with blood running down his chin, staining his clothes, seeping into the floorboards below until they rot–

He moves to the windowsill and tilts the glass just enough for a droplet of water to spill over the edge. It vanishes into the soil in the blink of an eye, so he tilts it further, watching his distorted reflection in the rush of water and the now-shiny leaves.

What would Rosaria think if she found her beloved plant drowned? Maybe she would appreciate the irony of finding him drowned in the bathtub just moments later. Well, no, he wouldn’t have drowned, but he could fill the tub before he drifts off and invoke the image of a drowned man anyway, just for art’s sake.

Goodness, maybe he did pick up a thing or two about aesthetics from his father.

You lost the right to call him that a long time ago.

Perhaps, but they’ll be reunited soon enough. He’ll have the chance to ask for that right to be reinstated again. Father was always too soft on him – it’s possible that death hasn’t changed him too much. Or maybe he’ll be so furious with everything Kaeya’s done since he died that he’ll simply double down on his real son’s decision. That’ll be a fun conversation either way.

Who knew that death opened the door to such an infinite array of possibilities?

He goes to pull the curtain closed to spare his eye the torment of sunlight before remembering that plants need sunlight for some reason and sighing. He compromises by closing them only halfway – lamp grass always grows in the shade, so surely that can’t hurt, right?

The slight darkness makes the flower grow brighter. How irritating. How arrogant of it to assume that its light is even wanted in the darkness. It should give up and wilt before it has the chance to impose itself upon anyone else.

There’s another soft chime, tinged with an imaginary sadness, as Kaeya leans on the windowsill and looks pointedly away from the flower, turning his attention to the streets below.

One thing he’s always liked about living in the city, in this apartment several storeys off the ground, is seeing how the world never stops moving even without him in it. Up here he can watch all the innocent people of his city go about their lives in peace, safe in the knowledge that he can’t hurt them from up here, not unless he really tries.

The thought that Mondstadt will continue to thrive long after he’s gone – that soon enough someone else will be standing at this very windowsill, watching the same world go by like clockwork as it always has – that simple thought brings him undeserved comfort.

The sun hits his eye just wrong, and he yanks the curtains fully shut. The kitchen takes on an appropriate bluish-grey hue as sunlight fights through the too-thin curtains anyway.

Staring out the window can only keep him distracted for so long. He needs to find something more meaningful to do before he kills himself and drags the plant down with him.

Suicide notes are so horribly trite.

At least, that’s what he’d thought before he’d known he would have all this free time on his hands. Now that he’s left to wallow in his own thoughts until he can finally escape into an eternal slumber, getting them all down on paper before they drive him mad seems like an increasingly good idea.

He taps the fountain pen languidly against his lips, eye flicking between his reflection in the pitch-black bottle of ink and the blinding white void of the page before him.

The only question remaining is who to address it to.

Jean? No way. She’d be devastated. She’s always taking responsibility for things that no sane person could ever find her at fault for – a note, no matter how absolutely it absolved her of any guilt, would only function as a stamp of approval on her self-condemnation. Knowing her, she’d hold on to the blasted thing until she was old and grey, until the paper crumbled to dust in her hands and settled on her grave.

He’s trying his best not to make any of this more difficult than it has to be.

How about Rosaria? Chances are she wouldn’t even stop to read it. She’d see it for what it is: a trite, pitiful thing worth less than the dirt on the soles of her shoes. She’d be offended by the mere implication that he thought she would want to read something so useless – she’d tear it to shreds in the blink of an eye and cast the scraps down on his grave before spitting on it and cursing him for being too much of a coward to say what he meant to her face.

Well. She might not do all of that – he wouldn’t be worth so much effort, not when he’s dead – but he’s sure she’ll think something along those lines. He knows her well.

Then… Diluc…?

Absolutely not.

Kaeya’s the last person Diluc ever wants to hear from, and even then he only tolerates it because of the intel that Kaeya alone can provide. If his note doesn’t contain at least some useful information, Diluc won’t give it a second glance. Fortunately for both of them, Kaeya’s already shared his most important secret, the one thing Diluc might actually stop to read – he even has the scar to prove it.

And when this is over, it’ll mean Diluc never has to worry about that secret coming back to bite him ever again.

If he doesn’t write a note, all Diluc will have to feel is relief. A note would only remind him of the past they can never return to, of everything he lost, everything Kaeya destroyed. Some sorrowful confession would only read as another betrayal. The last thing Kaeya wants to do is drag Diluc into his own misery on the way out. Diluc never asked to be saddled with such a burden for a brother. Without a note, he’ll forget all of this much quicker. That’s what’s best for all of them. That’s what Diluc would want–

Take better care of yourself.

Kaeya rubs his temple.

Diluc doesn’t really care whether he takes care of himself or not, or else he would’ve done more than send half a page for a letter. He was just being polite, acknowledging Kaeya with as few words as possible to save him from the humiliation of one-sided communication. Diluc never would’ve said anything of the sort if Kaeya hadn’t all but forced his hand with those stupid, clingy letters.

Diluc doesn’t care. Diluc doesn’t care. Diluc doesn’t care.

He hasn’t cared for a long time, and he won’t start caring any time soon. Once Kaeya’s gone, he’ll never have to pretend to care again, and that’s the kindest thing Kaeya will ever be able to do for him.

No note really is best. What’s life without a little mystery? A note would kill all speculation instantly. It’d be quite rude to ruin everyone’s fun like that.

There’s one other person who comes to mind that might appreciate a farewell of some sort–

…No, never mind. Klee’s still young. She’ll move on from his absence quickly and forget him completely once she’s grown. It’s not like a note will help even if she finds out the truth when she’s older.

Better to fade quietly from memory than to be conceited enough to assume one’s death warrants an explanation.

The fountain pen drops to the desk with a lifeless thud. He doesn’t flinch as it rolls along the unpolished mahogany and falls to the floor.

That was a gift from Father.

It’s not like Father’s here anymore to tut disapprovingly at his carelessness or give him that rare look of profound, heartfelt disappointment that always sent a stab of guilt right through his heart. What did Father even expect Kaeya to do with a goddamn fountain pen? Did he honestly believe that Kaeya, of all people, would ever write anything of value?

He’s good with a pen, but not in the way Father hoped for, he suspects. Nothing he’s written would make Father proud. He probably hoped Kaeya would turn out honest and honourable like his brother, somehow never noticing that he was growing into the diametrical opposite.

Diluc would have been a far better recipient for this thing. What with all the very important paperwork he busies himself with, keeping Father’s legacy alive, and all the secret missives he exchanges with that network he’s so guarded about – he’d do great with this pen.

Ah – that’s it.

He doesn’t need a suicide note. He needs a will.

The former is to maintain an attachment. The latter is to let everything go.

Why do people bother leaving notes anyway? It’s cowardly and hypocritical. It means they still aren’t truly prepared to let go of their attachment to this world – they’re still desperate to leave one last mark on it.

Now, cowardly and hypocritical may be perfectly apt descriptors of Kaeya, but maybe in his final moments he can prove – at least to himself – that he held the potential to be better. Even if he utterly wasted that potential in the end.

He pulls a fresh sheet of parchment from the drawer and smooths it out with a slow, deliberate hand, then bends down to pick up the fountain pen and wipes off the dust with the hem of his shirt. It’s a very ornate little thing, all gilded and embossed with the owls of the Ragnvindr family crest. He should be more careful with it, especially if Diluc’s going to inherit it.

Diluc can have everything he owns. It’s only fair after how much Kaeya has taken from him without remorse. It’s about as poetic an ending as he could’ve dreamed of. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Really, this is what’s best for Diluc too, even if it takes him a while to recognise that.

Kaeya allows himself the smallest of smiles, and begins to write his final words.

Chapter Text

the stem – the breaking point.

For the first time in rather a long time, the light of dawn fills him with relief rather than unfathomable dread.

This is the last sunrise he’ll ever see. Perhaps that’s why it looks particularly pleasant.

Somehow the lamp grass is still alive. He doesn’t know why that surprises him – he has been diligently watering it, but it still looks horribly out of place in his home, its cool glow never dimming. How long will that glow last after he’s gone?

He waters it for the last time. His reflection stares back at him from each droplet before they roll down the leaves and disappear into the soil without a whisper.

The flower’s quiet blue gleam actually looks rather pretty against the rosy hues of the dawn behind it in the window. No wonder Diluc always stopped to admire them–

He picks the pot up and sets it down on the table in the centre of the kitchen to make it easier for Rosaria to find after she breaks down his door. It can be a little experiment: will getting what she wanted so quickly deter her from venturing any further, sparing her the trouble of finding him? He hypothesises otherwise – it’d be wildly out of character for her, but so is suddenly developing an interest in plants, so nothing’s off the table anymore. A shame that he won’t be around to see his experiment through to the end.

He could just get it over with now. He’s free of all responsibility; there’s nothing holding him back anymore. But for some reason he wants to wait till sunset. Something about the last rays of light sinking beneath the horizon feels like the right sort of image to go out on.

It’s the middle of spring, so there’s still a while to go. The hours to the end stretch out before him to infinity, despite the end itself being closer and more fixed than ever. There’s not a whole lot to do but sit with his own thoughts and a little alcohol for company. It’s not so bad, though – this is the last time he’ll be able to appreciate either of those things.

The thought of his thoughts isn’t all that appealing. Alcohol, on the other hand…

He opens his wine cupboard. Just three bottles left. A little on the low side, but he can make it last to the end of his life.

His final meal is a brief, thoughtless affair – the last scraps of bread and chicken, bland and overcooked, because the taste might as well not exist when it’s overwhelmed so easily by the burning sting of wine. He’s never had much of an appetite, not even as a child. Maybe his body has been attuned to fine wine and nothing else from birth. There’s some irony in there somewhere, what with how he ended up at a winery of all places, only to betray everyone who cared for him there – but he chooses to dwell instead upon how delicious the next drop of wine will taste on his tongue.

Mondstadt’s most prized export has never tasted quite this sweet before. Knowing these are the last drops he’ll ever drink adds an invaluable spice to it. It’s a pity all the poor drunkards don’t know what an exquisite flavour they’re missing out on.

His gaze drifts over to the window and its undrawn curtains. The sun’s descent has begun.

He brings the bottle with him as he moves towards the window. There’s a little soil and dampness along the wood that he brushes off with his sleeve before resting his elbows on the windowsill, letting out a barely audible sigh as he drinks in the view and another sip of wine.

All of Mondstadt is dyed vivid gold and vermillion, like dying embers in a fireplace moments before their light is extinguished forever – or before they burst into one last desperate flame.

Wouldn’t that be funny, if the city burned down the second he dropped dead?

…What a foolish thought. This place will go on just fine without him, he knows that as well as anyone else. He knows all too well the danger he puts Mondstadt in simply by keeping himself alive. He knows that he’s making the right choice.

Beneath that false altruism, he’s just– so fucking tired. He’s tired of pretending he has worth, that life is worth living, that the world wouldn’t be infinitely better off without him in it.

He takes yet another sip to wash the last dregs of doubt away.

The clouds roll by above, the people stroll by below. The sun dips lower and lower and the sky grows darker and darker and the bottle in his hand grows lighter and lighter until he drinks the last drop and the world beyond his window goes dark.

“A spectacular finale,” he chuckles, clinking the bottle against the window with false cheer.

The enduring glow of the lamp grass is more than enough to illuminate his house as he goes to retrieve the last unopened bottle of wine and the all-important pills. The end is so close he can taste it; it’s as sweet as the finest wine he could ever imagine.

His fingers curl at a glacial pace around the pill bottle. It’s a small, inconspicuous thing, so light he can hardly register it, despite it being nearly full.

A flicker of doubt around the edges of his mind makes his breath stutter for a moment, but he dismisses it with a shake of his head. What room is there for doubt when he’s taking all these pills, when he’s prepared so thoroughly for the end? Even he, colossal fuck-up that he is, can’t mess this one up.

It has to work. He doesn’t have any choice but to die tonight.

There’s a heavy note of finality in each thudding footstep as he marches towards his bedroom.

He curls up on his bed and leans against the headboard with a sigh, clutching the bottles to his chest as he gathers the blanket around him, his bleary gaze wandering towards the window.

It’s a moonless night.

He tips the first pill into his hand, rolling it across his palm absently. He’s not hesitating – he’s just appreciating his final waking moments. Appreciating the tremor in his fingers, the numbness in his face, the tightness in his chest–

Truly, this is the happiest he’s ever been.

Once he swallows the pills, all he’ll have to do is lie back and sleep, and wait for death to catch up at last. Who wouldn’t be happy at the prospect of such an easy end?

It’s more than he deserves. But his whole life has been about taking more than he deserves at the expense of those who deserve everything. At least this one time, it’ll be at his expense alone, and it’ll be an expense he’s all too happy to cover.

He downs the last of the wine, and tosses the pill into his mouth. It goes down smooth as water.

He tips another pill into his shaking hand and swallows that too. Then another. And another, and another, and another, in handfuls of two and three and four now because he can’t get them down fast enough–

And before he knows it, the bottle is empty.

Well.

That’s that.

That was so much easier than he thought it would be.

A choked laugh breaks free from his lips, then another, and his vision blurs.

He’s not crying. This is the happiest he’s ever been.

These are tears of joy.

Tears that won’t stop even as he drowns himself in the threadbare covers and stares up at the peeling paint hanging off the ceiling. It’s suddenly impossible to breathe, as his chest heaves with happy sobs and broken laughs and other sounds he can’t explain, a cacophony of euphoria. But he doesn’t need to breathe anyway, not anymore. Doesn’t need to explain anything to himself or anyone else ever again.

This is the happiest he’s ever been.

And he’ll never be this happy again.

At first, the light of dawn prying his eye open doesn’t perturb him at all.

But it doesn’t take long for the realisation to strike, piercing and merciless as a falling icicle in the caves of Dragonspine.

I’m not dead.

Those three short words send a chill through his blood that runs deep and fast and yanks him firmly into the realm of consciousness, and the only thing stopping him from screaming in absolute terror is the fact that his lungs are entirely devoid of air.

For a moment all he can do is stare up at the ceiling with its peeling paint, reflecting the pinks and oranges of a sunrise he was never supposed to witness right into his eye–

And then he’s scrambling up and pressing himself as far back into the headboard as the laws of physics will allow, clutching the blanket like a child as if it can shield him from the nightmare he’s woken up in.

I’m not dead.

How am I not dead?

He’s going to be sick. If he were dead he wouldn’t feel sick, he wouldn’t feel anything at all–

This can’t be happening.

He can’t breathe, let alone speak – the closest thing to a sound that comes out of his mouth is a pitiful, desperate whimper, an aborted cry for help.

But who can help him now?

Perhaps this really is just a nightmare – some final hallucination before he dies, the price he has to pay before crossing into the afterlife, the punishment for a lifetime of sin–

No. No, all of this – this breathlessness, this paralysis, this absolute dread chilling him from head to toe–

This is pure, unrestrained panic – it’s a feeling he’s all too familiar with, and it’s damning proof that despite everything, he’s still–

He’s still–

“I can’t do this.”

He can’t still be here.

Air refuses to fill his lungs. All he can do is gasp and hyperventilate and smother himself with the blanket and hope that maybe he can suffocate himself instead except he can’t because every part of him is desperate to keep breathing for some reason even though he was sure he never wanted to breathe ever again and he’s helpless to prevent his hands from betraying him, letting the blanket fall and this time the air rushes in like the high tide and he can do nothing but drown in the sickening sensation of being viscerally, terribly, impossibly alive.

He kicks the blanket off and scrambles out of the bed, bracing himself against the wall as he tries to catch his breath.

He can’t stay alive. He needs to die, and quickly, before the agony of living drives him insane. And he needs to get it right this time before anyone has the chance to interfere.

Another pill–

No, he used all of them – the empty bottle is right there on the bedside table, lying on its side uselessly, proof of his insurmountable incompetence–

How did they not work–

But he can’t do anything about that now so he just has to figure something else out – there has to be something he can still do–

A noose.

How very fucking obvious – and if he hadn’t been such a coward maybe he would’ve tried that the first time–

Rope. He needs rope, quickly – except he doesn’t have any goddamn rope in his house because– because he’s stupid, so unbelievably stupid, how is it that he’s always prided himself on planning ahead and yet he’s ended up like this, pathetically scrambling for any way out–

He staggers over to the dresser with clumsy footsteps, dizzy with dread, and heaves the top drawer open with all his strength, nearly pulling it out of the frame entirely and sending it crashing to his feet in his adrenaline-fuelled haze.

There, among winter clothes he never touches – a single scarf.

His hands leap forth and close around it like the talons of a bird of prey around a snake slithering away into the desert sands. A laugh from well past the border of mania escapes him as he snatches it up and brings it close to his chest, the scent of death approaching once more, intoxicating and addicting as ever–

The laugh collapses into a hollow gasp and his knees give out as he breathes in the garment’s true scent.

It smells like–

Like Adelinde. Like the winery, like fresh bread baking in the oven before breakfast, like cups of hot chocolate shared after dinner – like home. The home he turned his back on.

His hands start to shake again. The scarf falls into his lap.

She’d knitted this for him long ago, back in those days when she never took no for an answer, even after all his insisting that he wasn’t cold enough to need it. He needs it even less now when he has the assistance of his Vision, and yet for some reason he’d packed it into the single box of things he’d taken with him when he left the old mansion for good.

And none of that fucking matters anymore, Alberich, so get your shit together and hurry the fuck up.

Right. Yes. He’s hesitating. He doesn’t have time for that.

His hands are still shaking as he attempts to wrangle the woollen thing into a noose, too much to tie a proper knot, all his training having jumped out the window, apparently–

Why doesn’t he just do that?

Who the hell thinks of making a noose out of a scarf, anyway? The wretched wool keeps stretching and twisting in his grip – it’ll just slip off his neck the moment he tries to put his head through it and he’ll have failed once again. Jumping out the window is so much more straightforward.

Stupid Kaeya, always overthinking everything–

It takes more effort than it should to drag himself over to the window. His legs are dead weight, wobbling like those of a newborn infant, barely able to hold himself up. He curses with every step. When he finally gets there his hands grip the windowsill tight enough to splinter it as he stares down at the city.

He just has to pry this thing open and climb out, stand on that flimsy wooden ledge and spread his arms and let himself fall–

It’s not high enough.

He can picture it with perfect clarity: his body sprawled out on the stone below, blood pooling beneath him, staining the ground for weeks to come – and yet, in spite of all that, he’ll still be fucking breathing, forced to live with the consequences of however mangled his traitorous body ends up after that futile attempt.

He needs to find someplace higher up. Another building – headquarters, the church, hell, maybe even the one of the goddamn windmills–

No, he can’t– someone will see him. Someone will find him, follow him, stop him, maybe they’ll even try to catch him before he hits the ground–

He can’t leave. He has to finish this right here and now by any means necessary.

He needs to do something he can’t walk away from.

His hands won’t stop fucking shaking as he hurries to the kitchen, his breaths coming out in shallow little gasps in between bursts of progressively more manic laughter. But it’s with those same hands that he holds the wooden knife block steady and pulls out the answer to all his problems.

The kitchen knife gleams even in the relative darkness, its silver blade stainless and pure, its edge sharp and honed despite him having never bothered to whet it in all the years he’s owned it.

He’s always overthinking things. He should’ve gone for a foolproof exit like this from the beginning instead of letting irrational fears about ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ cloud his judgement.

Pain means nothing to the dead.

His grip on the knife tightens. It’s as heavy as an executioner’s axe. Heavy with the promise of salvation.

He exhales laboriously through his nose, rests his arm on the counter’s edge and extends it over the sink still full of unwashed dishes, rolls the sleeve up past his elbow to bare his pallid flesh. A long, sickly green vein snakes down the length of his forearm from the wrist, and as his fingers curl into a tight fist, his tendon flexes and pushes up out of his skin beside it. His nails dig crescent-shaped marks into his palm, and his knuckles turn a diseased-looking yellow.

For all that he’d pretended to ignore them, Albedo’s ramblings on anatomy each time he sat Kaeya down for a painting session seem to have stuck. The eccentric alchemist had once spent a good few hours painting Kaeya’s hands alone, naming each visible artery and vein for him, tracing out all the invisible ones with the end of his paintbrush. That bristly sensation ghosts across his skin once more as his gaze wanders over the inviting canvas and his grip on the knife tightens even further.

The radial artery, Albedo had said, tapping his brush a little more forcefully, connects the forearm to the heart. It lies just under the surface of the skin. Then he’d given Kaeya a more stern look and said, It bleeds out extremely quickly if it’s cut, so you have to be careful.

Careful. Of course. Kaeya will be extra careful – careful to cut deep enough to make sure every drop of blood leaves his body and there’s no chance of him surviving this.

He lets out another strained exhale, this time through his mouth, and brings the knife close to his wrist. It hovers just a hair’s breadth away from his skin – his pale, smooth, unblemished skin, so ready to be sliced open, taunting him with its blankness, begging for it – all he has to do is bring down the knife.

It’s laughably easy.

His fingers are going to snap if he grips the handle any tighter.

All he has to do–

Is bring–

The knife–

Down–

“Fuck,” he hisses.

The flat of the blade chills his skin more than any amount of rime could. He breathes heavier, lungs clawing for air in his chest.

Come on, Alberich. What are you waiting for?

He turns the knife so that the blade sits perpendicular to the skin again.

That’s it. You know what you have to do.

He does know. He’s always known.

He presses on the knife–

It slips from his grip and into the sink, clashing discordantly against the stack of plates on the way down.

His skin is completely unscathed.

You can keep putting this off, but one day it’ll be too late. One day Khaenri’ah will come back for you. You’ll never be free of them as long as you’re alive. Shouldn’t you get out now while you can?

“Fuck.” His fingers are shaking enough to blur together in his vision as he scrambles for the handle again.

Do you really want to leave your life in their hands? Can’t you do this for Mondstadt? For this place that you’ve so brazenly claimed as your home without doing anything to deserve it?

He knows all of that. He doesn’t need another reminder.

The handle is wet now, slippery in his trembling grip, but he can’t let that stop him.

He readies the knife again–

And freezes.

Oh, I see. You’ve always been this selfish, haven’t you? Even when the lives of all the people you claim to love are at stake, you can’t do this one simple thing.

“No, no– I can– I swear I can–”

An inhuman, garbled cry escapes from the very back of his throat. He can feel the dampness around his eyes where disgraceful tears have started to leak out, he can feel the tremors in his arm as he strains to just push the damn knife into his skin–

And yet he can’t fucking move–

Everyone will hate you for it, you know. When they learn what you really are. They’ll curse you for eternity and wish that you’d killed yourself before they ever got to know you. Is that what you want?

“I want to die,” he whispers. Shouts. Screams. He can’t tell anymore. He can’t feel anything now except the gaping chasm between the knife’s edge and his flesh. It howls at him in all its emptiness, too vast to be crossed – but he has no choice, he has to cross it or else–

He grits his teeth, bone grinding against bone, a thousand screams trapped in his mouth.

It’s now or never.

He shuts his eye and pushes down on the knife with the last of his strength.

This time, it connects. It sinks in beautifully. His skin gives way to the unforgiving blade without resistance, and it’s the most blissful sensation he’s ever felt in his wretched life.

A rush of cold washes over him. That must be the blood spilling out at last, taking its revolting warmth with it.

I did it.

If he weren’t breathless and shivering uncontrollably, he’d be laughing with triumph, laughing at the world for ever doubting him, for thinking it could keep him here in spite of his greatest efforts.

I finally fucking did it–

And then he opens his eye and realises the truth behind that sudden coldness.

All across his skin– all the way up his arm–

Ice.

An opaque, sparkling sheet of ice, blindingly white in the darkness, thick enough to pass for a shield, cold enough to scald.

And embedded in it, the knife. The ice has wound itself around the handle, around the blade, holding it far enough above his skin that it can’t touch him.

There’s no cut at all. Not even a speck of red.

Helplessly he presses on the knife with the heel of his hand, but it doesn’t give. So he pulls on it instead with a pathetic sob. It still doesn’t budge – until it does, a few chunks of ice breaking off with it. And just as he lifts it to his face, holding his breath, taken aback by the never-ending frost glittering along that serrated edge–

It shatters.

Like a broken mirror, a dropped wineglass, a forgotten dream – hairline fractures spread across the metal like wildfire less than a second before the whole thing shatters into a million coruscating shards of steel that rain down into the sink, each collision a derisive laugh that rings louder than the bells of the church.

His throat burns. Everything burns. Diluc’s flames were nothing compared to this.

The meagre contents of his stomach end up in the sink too, or so he assumes – he can’t see anything anymore. His vision blurs to uselessness and his eyepatch clings disgustingly to his face, damp with tears. The caustic new stench burns his throat again and he keels over, clutching the edge of the counter as he continues to sob and heave and throw up whatever scraps of hope he had left, shaking so hard his knees give out.

He’s never tried harder at anything in his life and yet – it was all for nothing.

Is it really too much to ask for death?

Why won’t the world give him this one thing? He was never meant to be a part of it, so why now is it so desperate to keep him here?

Is this atonement for his sins, or just plain cruelty?

The only answer he gets is a violent sob tearing itself from his corroded throat as he crumples to the floor.

His nails scratch at the cupboards and then the floor, searching for anything that might still be worth holding onto, but they find nothing and all he can do is curse himself and cry as he surrenders to the world, the ice still biting at his skin. Each sob racks his body until he’s nothing but a convulsing mess in the shadows; each ragged breath is more choked and wet and pathetic than the last. He buries his face in his arms and cries even louder. His head’s about to explode, his skull pressing in on all sides and crushing him slowly, but that pain is nothing compared to the suffocating pressure in his chest. A wound that’ll never heal, a blight on his soul, a never-ending ache in the never-ending depths of his heart.

Only one point of light pierces through the distortion of tears. The lamp grass on the kitchen table has been glowing steadfastly all this time, indifferent to his plight.

There’s no humanity left in his voice. “If it wasn’t for you–!”

Before he even knows what he’s doing, the plant pot is in his hands. He grips it with all his power, imagining his own neck in place of the clay – then he shoves it off the table and smashes it against the floor with an animalistic yell, and crushes the plant beneath his heel without remorse. The stem splits neatly in half with a snap, the bulbous flower cracks and flattens like paper, the roots tear into flimsy shreds, and he greedily drinks up all the sounds of a death he couldn’t grant himself.

The flower’s light pulses, flickering once, twice, before it dies out completely.

He sits among the remains of his destruction, his heart emptier than ever, wishing the clumps of soil would band together and bury him for good.

His heart may be empty, but it won’t stop fucking beating.

Imagine being such a failure that you fuck up your own suicide.

Truly, there are fates worse than death. And maybe that’s all he’s ever deserved.

Chapter Text

the leaf – that which turns light into life.

That’s twice now that I’ve failed to die when I should have. Third time’s the charm?

That thought is washed away before he can really dwell on it. The water dripping down his back may be close to boiling, but it’s still too cold. Cold like the ice that always ‘saves’ him before he can be saved by death.

He should feel clean now that his hair is no longer a greasy mess and his body no longer stinks of sweat and sickness, but even in the steam-filled haze he just feels cold. He half-considers freezing himself in place here in the bathtub and waiting for someone to find him and tell him what to do with himself. But even that seems like too much effort.

His neck aches as he bows his head and presses his face against his knees, retreating into his own body like a tortoise into its shell. If he contorts himself enough, he might just be able to disappear–

It’s futile.

He can’t kill himself, and the world is too cruel to let him die anyway, so he’s stuck with no choice but to live.

Bile rises in his throat. As if he hasn’t thrown up enough today.

His whole body sags against the side of the tub, cold ceramic biting at his skin. He can’t bring himself to move. Somehow it’s a lot harder to bring himself to do anything at all without the deadline of death itself to motivate him.

Nevertheless, as the low growl of his stomach reminds him, he can’t sit here forever.

Everything is colder than usual as he drags himself to his feet and out of the bathroom. Everything is slower, too, the stagnant air as difficult to wade through as a sea of treacle. Each step forward is a hard-won but hollow victory.

It takes more effort than it should to pull on a shirt, but it doesn’t do much to stave off the cold. He rolls one sleeve up gingerly, hissing at the light contact – and sure enough, his forearm is still faintly red where the ice had bloomed over it just an hour or so ago.

He can’t die no matter how much he wants to. So perhaps he just has to stop wanting.

But who is Kaeya Alberich when he doesn’t want to die?

Does that version of him even exist? Has it ever existed? He’s been tired of living for as long as he can remember, and yet his body seems to want to live anyway, no matter how irrational and hopeless that prospect seems.

There isn’t a single advantage to having a corporeal form. I’d rather wander Mondstadt as a ghost for eternity than live like this.

But the world doesn’t care about what he wants at all. It’s proven that time and time again.

He finds himself wishing even harder for incorporeality as soon as he sets foot in the kitchen, because it reeks. With two fingers pinching his nose and his gag reflex working overtime, he makes his way over to what is indubitably the source of the stench.

The sink is– nope, he’s not even going to try to describe it, because all the metaphors coming to mind only make him want to throw up all over again. He hastily turns on the tap with his free hand, only allowing himself to breathe through his mouth once the first bits of dried vomit run down the drain.

Gross. You’re gross. You did that, you disgusting freak, and you just let it sit there and stink up the place while you went and had a cry in the bath. Was it worth it?

At least the voice in his head seems to have realised dying is out of the question. It’s pivoted to simply berating him for every facet of his existence instead. Not like it wasn’t doing that before, but it’s more enthusiastic now. It might be the only part of him that’s enthusiastic about anything.

The vomit washes away quicker than he thought it would, though the air around him is still stale and slightly pungent. Now if only a bit of running water was all it took to wash the dishes.

It’s not like you’ve got anything else to do.

His arms are leaden, and he nearly spills all the dish soap right down the drain, but he does manage to pour out just enough onto the topmost plate as he reaches for the shrivelled-up sponge.

People always say cleaning is meditative, relaxing. Adelinde always seemed relaxed, at least, effortlessly minding the two of them with a hawk’s eye while leaving every dish spotless and sparkling. And here he is, barely able to scrub a single plate clean. Pathetic. But he pushes on anyway because he’s the one who’s going to have to eat off these things for the foreseeable future and not wanting to throw up ever again is enough incentive to clean them to Adelinde’s uncompromising standards.

There’s no sense of accomplishment when he dries off the last bit of cutlery and returns it to the drawer, just the low hum of emptiness under his skin. He’d come here to eat, but he doesn’t even have any food left, so he could’ve put all this off until he bought more groceries. Damn it.

Ugh. Groceries. After that humiliating encounter with Blanche the other day, he’s supposed to go back to her so soon like nothing’s wrong? Who knows what kind of rumours she’ll spread if he gives her enough to work with. Maybe this is an excuse to live off Good Hunter’s takeaway for the next few days. Sara won’t say anything about it. Sara’s nice. Too nice. She won’t even question it if he heads down now and asks for a full week of food to be delivered to his doorstep. Sara is the backbone of this city–

His stomach growls again, more aggressively than before. Ugh. Whatever. He’ll drag himself down to eat in a minute. There’s something else he needs to take care of.

With the question of food settled, he finally turns his attention to the thing he’s been avoiding the hardest.

The shattered remains of Rosaria’s lamp grass are still lying there on the floor where he left them, dead and defeated. He never thought he’d miss its perpetual glow, but life’s been fond of subverting his expectations lately.

He picks up one of the shards of the pot and clumsily connects it with another one, clay grinding softly against clay. But the deep crack in between them doesn’t get any less prominent no matter how flawlessly he manages to align their jagged edges, so he drops his hands with a sigh. Even if he could put this thing back together, it’s not like he can bring back the plant – if he had that much control over the forces of life and death, he wouldn’t be here, would he? He’ll have to buy her a new one.

How the hell is he supposed to explain this to her? Because she will notice, and unless she’s feeling merciful when she returns, she will demand an explanation.

Sorry, I had a breakdown and took it out on your innocent plant. Please don’t ask.

‘Don’t ask’. Right. Rosaria of all people will just let an excuse like that slide without pressing any further. Sure. Who is he kidding?

Sorry, someone broke in and tried to kill me and I ended up destroying the plant while trying to defend myself.

Ha. If someone had broken in and tried to kill him, he can’t pretend he would’ve even tried to stop them. And why hasn’t anyone tried that yet? He’s made more than his fair share of enemies. Surely there must be at least one among them who’s decent enough to make an attempt on his life.

…And then some force of nature would intervene and ‘save’ him again, wouldn’t it? Fuck. He’s never felt so fucking useless in his life.

Sorry, I just couldn’t do the one thing you asked of me because I’m not as reliable as I’ve led you to believe.

Honesty. It’s what he owes her. Maybe she’ll learn her lesson and leave him alone. Maybe everyone will learn to leave him alone from now on, and that’ll be as close to death as he can get. Maybe he can learn to live with that.

The sun is shining in full force today, its light breaking through the drawn curtains like they’re not even there. He should move quickly before the city starts getting busy, lest he end up in more awkward interactions than necessary. Just because he’s accepted that he isn’t going to die this week doesn’t mean he’s all that keen on rejoining the world of the living.

He rises slowly to his feet again, brushing the dust and soil on his hands against his trousers as he makes his way to the front door. With a heavy sigh and a heavier heart, he unlocks the door and steps outside.

Sara is too nice, which is why she’s on the list of people he can’t say no to, and why he’s been sitting at one of Good Hunter’s tables for the past thirty minutes instead of doing literally anything else. It’s not his fault that she’d sat him down with a six-inch stack of pancakes when he’d only asked for a box of chicken-mushroom skewers, insisting it was on the house for reasons unknown to him. It’s not his fault that she hadn’t heeded his protests and had simply given him a very Adelinde-like smile before leaving him to eat. And it’s not his fault that her food tastes better than anything he’s eaten in ages.

Despite how loud his stomach had been earlier, he only manages to eat a single pancake. Sara doesn’t seem bothered by that at all, neatly boxing up the leftovers along with the skewers he’d ordered and presenting the takeaway bag to him with another smile he can’t make sense of. And making sense of people’s expressions is supposed to be his forte, so that’s not a good sign.

He steals a glance towards Blanche hard at work on the opposite side of the plaza, chatting away with a customer in a queue that’s stretched out all the way to the fountain. Maybe she’d said something to Sara. Maybe the people of Mondstadt are even more talkative that he’d given them credit for. Or maybe Sara had taken one look at him and seen exactly the same things that had sparked concern in Blanche the other day, which means nothing’s changed and everything’s exactly the same as before except worse because he doesn’t have any hope of escaping this existence any time soon.

The takeaway bag is heavy as an anchor, dragging him down to the bottom of the ocean he’s been drowning in for a lifetime.

Someone else deserves this kindness. Not him.

As fast as he can and without drawing too much attention, he descends the stairs leading away from the plaza and stops at the Adventurer’s Guild kiosk. Katheryne recites her usual greeting and graciously doesn’t comment on how he presses himself up against the wall instead of standing in front of her like a normal person, or how he keeps looking over his shoulder instead of at her.

“What can I do for you, Captain Kaeya?” she says in her usual polite tone. There’s something to be said for how reassuring Katheryne’s unnaturally unchanging demeanour is.

He places the bag on the counter, throwing one last glance over his shoulder to make sure Sara doesn’t somehow see him. “This is for Bennett,” he says, sliding the bag a little closer to her. “If you could pass it on to him when he comes back today, that’d be great.”

“Of course,” Katheryne says with a nod. “Should I tell him who it’s from?”

Absolutely not–

He coughs. “No,” he says, slowly, smiling. “If he asks, you can just say it’s a bonus reward for one of his commissions.” He tries for a wink. He’s not sure if he succeeds – Katheryne’s unchanging demeanour doesn’t give anything away.

She nods again. “As you wish. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No, that’s all. Thanks as always,” he says, giving her a quick wave before finally heading to the place he’s been silently dreading all morning.

Flora’s fussing over one of the flowers on display as he approaches her little shop, and doesn’t look up until he’s right in front of her.

“Oh!” She clears her throat and stands tall again, bouncing on her tiptoes and folding her hands behind her back. “Hi, Sir Kaeya. How can I help you?”

Her enthusiasm is infectious – or it would be if he weren’t utterly immune to any kind of positivity right now. Regardless, he smiles as brightly as he can back at her and points to one of the potted lamp grasses. “How much for one of these?”

She gives him a curious look, tilting her head for a moment and searching his face too intently, but she grins back at him just as he’s about to ask her what’s wrong. “That’ll be one thousand Mora,” she says, eyes twinkling as she presses the plant into his hands before he can even reach for his wallet.

That’s going to put a real dent in his ‘apology drinks for Rosaria’ fund. But this is also an apology to her, so technically it balances out, but still… With a drink he at least gets the gift of her company. Though her company doesn’t sound much like a gift at all right now, and even drinking is a completely unappealing prospect thanks to the stench lingering in his nostrils – the aroma of the flowers can only mask so much.

Nope, don’t you dare – don’t think about it – you definitely do not want to throw up all over Flora’s lovely display–

And then, of course, because his luck is off the charts today, another scent joins the fray, an unmistakeable and unbearably familiar one that nearly has him retching on the spot.

Diluc always brings with him the most peculiar blend of ash and wine, sweetness and smokiness, a fragrance that stings and soothes simultaneously. It’s because he insists on wearing that ludicrously heavy coat wherever he goes – it makes it so easy for the smell of the destruction he leaves in his wake to cling to him, and it’s only thanks to living at a literal winery that there’s anything stronger to cover it up, given that he deems himself above wasting time or money on ‘trivial’ things like cologne.

Kaeya doesn’t dare move, doesn’t even turn his head the half-degree that’s needed to look at Diluc out of the corner of his eye. At least Diluc makes it easier for him by not forcing any small talk – he doesn’t utter a single word of acknowledgement, and Kaeya couldn’t be more grateful for that.

Diluc doesn’t say a word to Flora either. It seems he doesn’t need to – as soon as she’s done pocketing Kaeya’s payment, she glances at Diluc for less than a second before running to the other end of her stall and gathering up a handful of cecilias along with a strip of white ribbon to tie them together. Her small hands work quickly, but the bouquet is no less delicately arranged when she presents it to Diluc, who’d already left a neat stack of coins on the table and who’s already turning to leave again.

All of that without exchanging a single word. It’d be impressive if Kaeya weren’t too busy being terribly confused by it.

“What?”

Both Diluc and Flora turn to stare at him, their expressions perfect mirrors of his own internal reaction, because why the fuck did he have to go and open his stupid mouth when he was this close to not having to interact with Diluc at all?

Maybe the one thing those pills killed was your goddamn filter. Idiot.

“Who are those for?” he says quickly, cocking his head to the side and placing a hand on his hip, playing off the inelegant outburst as innocent curiosity laced with a hint of derision, to make sure Diluc knows he doesn’t actually care about whatever weird unspoken deal his brother has going on here, that he just thinks it’s funny Diluc thinks he can keep anything a secret from him for long.

Flora’s eyes grow wide and she fidgets with her skirt as her gaze darts between him and his brother. “Um– Sir Kaeya, that’s– they’re–”

“For Father,” Diluc says.

Kaeya recoils from that last word, hard. He can only hope Diluc doesn’t notice.

Diluc raises one eyebrow just enough for Kaeya to notice, though, like that was something he should’ve deduced instantly. Then Diluc’s mask of stoicism slots back in place like it never left and he turns stiffly towards the steps – heading to the cemetery, no doubt.

“Can I come with you?”

Filter. Filter! Where is your goddamn–

Diluc freezes as if he’s just been stabbed in the back, tightens his grip on the bouquet enough for even the well-worn leather of his gloves to squeak. Kaeya holds his breath; the voice in his head does anything but.

What possessed you to ask something as stupid as that?! What, did you actually want to talk to him all this time? Liar. Weren’t you just having a meltdown out over the mere thought of it? Be honest with yourself for once. What the hell’s gotten into you? What the hell makes you think this is even remotely a good idea? What could you possibly want to do at Father’s fucking grave? Go back to your room and die already–

“Do what you want,” Diluc murmurs right as Kaeya’s about to run out of air, and starts up the steps once more without so much as a glance in his direction.

It wasn’t an invitation. It was hardly even permission.

And Kaeya can’t even claim to know what he wants anymore.

But in spite of all logic and reason screaming at him to drop this farce and go home–

Kaeya follows.

Chapter Text

the flower – the culmination of growth, the reward for struggling to live.

Diluc doesn’t say a word on the way to the cemetery.

It’s probably for the best, because Kaeya doesn’t have a clue what he could say in response that won’t give away how severely unwell he is. It’s a good thing Diluc doesn’t look back either, because he’s always been frustratingly observant when it comes to Kaeya, and there’s nothing here that Kaeya would want him to observe in a million years.

Their footsteps are half a beat out of sync as they ascend the stairs to the church, the syncopated clicks of leather heels on limestone rattling in Kaeya’s ears and making him dizzy. His gaze is unsteady – it darts between Diluc’s high ponytail bouncing with each step forward, the slight concavity of the centuries-old stone beneath them, the lamp grass swaying back and forth in his arms and ringing all the while – he doesn’t know where to look or what to think of any of it. In his daze he trips on the last step but catches himself right as Diluc glances over his shoulder, his face still as impassive as it was when they began their little journey.

Normally by now Kaeya would’ve done something to knock that mask off and have his brother growling in irritation, but nothing about any of this is normal.

He’s deliberately staying a step behind Diluc, but Diluc’s pace keeps stuttering – as if he actually wants to walk side-by-side with Kaeya. It’s an absurd thought that only makes him even dizzier, and makes the moment they finally stop at Father’s grave all the more relieving.

A fig tree in full bloom generously shades them from the too-bright sunlight. There’s no one else around so early in the day, leaving the two of them with nothing but rustling leaves and the occasional gust of wind for company. And the damned plant, which he hugs a little closer to his chest lest he somehow manage to destroy this one too.

Diluc kneels after a moment’s hesitation and carefully arranges the bouquet in front of the headstone. He stays there for a moment, and his hand starts to inch towards the stone, but he quickly pulls it back and clenches his fist as he stands again. The mask is still there, perfectly intact.

Kaeya doesn’t do a thing.

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here at all, in this mortal plane of existence – but he certainly shouldn’t be here. At Father’s grave.

Why the hell did I come here?

After how much Father gave him, after how much Kaeya’s wasted it all, does he really deserve to stand here beside Father’s only real son like nothing’s wrong? Kaeya only has everything that he has right now because of Father – because of all them, everyone at the winery who’d worked to raise him into someone worthy of the Ragnvindr name, without whom he wouldn’t be alive right now.

It’s their fault. It’s all their fault. If only they’d seen through me sooner and left me to–

No. His failure to die is his alone. He can’t blame them for being good people, for being better than he deserved.

And what has he done to repay them for any of it?

How much longer do they all expect him to keep this lie going–

“What’s up with you today?”

Kaeya nearly jumps at the sudden question – no, he definitely jumps, jostling the plant in his arms enough to send out a frenetic cascade of chimes, and Diluc’s eyes sharpen in an instant. As if they weren’t already honed to a razor’s edge.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t need my permission to visit Father’s grave, and it’s not like you ever care about getting my permission for anything to begin with – so what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Kaeya stands up straighter. If only Diluc was standing on his other side, he could turn away without completely losing sight of him, but the damn bastard still hasn’t kicked the habit of covering Kaeya’s blind spot at all times. “Nothing at all. Why? Does it look like something’s going on?”

Stupid– you know better than to taunt him, you idiot, now you’ve gone and done it–

But Diluc drops his gaze back to the headstone and purses his lips, giving up the fight quicker than Kaeya expected. He doesn’t know whether to be disappointed by that or not.

“What’s with the plant, then?”

Kaeya looks blankly between it and Diluc. “Something wrong with it?”

Diluc narrows his eyes but looks away at the last second. “I thought you liked calla lilies,” he says, almost a mumble. But that would be unbecoming of such a gentleman.

“Who says I don’t also like lamp grass?” Kaeya shrugs as nonchalantly as he can when Diluc looks back at him out of the corner of his eye. “People can like more than one thing at a time, you know.”

Diluc’s jaw clenches, but his mouth remains firmly shut, not even a hiss of air escaping from that stern, flat line.

Father is probably rolling beneath their feet right now. If he were here he’d drag each of them by the ear in opposite directions to give them personalised lectures on Being Nice to Your Brother, then he’d drag them back and declare that no one was going home until they hugged it out.

Conflict resolution was so much easier with Father around.

Everything was easier with Father around.

Why do good people who make the world a better place always die before their time, while a rotten parasite like Kaeya somehow survives against all odds? How is that fair?

And if life is so unfair then why–

Why does his body cling to it so desperately–

“I haven’t seen you at the tavern lately.”

Kaeya has to fight not to laugh manically in his brother’s face. “What, don’t tell me you missed me. I’m surprised you even noticed, given how busy you always are. Is the Cavalry Captain’s patronage that important? I didn’t realise my absence would hurt your bottom line so much–”

There’s a hand on his forehead – a gloved hand, covered in smooth, worn leather, yet it radiates as much warmth as a fireplace. The glove comes off just a moment later and Diluc’s bare skin is fire itself.

“You look tired,” Diluc says before Kaeya has the chance to swat his hand away and ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing. The unalloyed worry blazing in those deep crimson eyes is enough to demolish any rebuttals Kaeya might have had.

“Sorry,” he says instead, a feeble whisper. Diluc’s hand is burning right through him, and yet he can’t move away.

Diluc tenses. The fire abates for a single heartbeat. “What for?”

He can’t answer.

His eyes start to sting. He didn’t know he still had tears left to shed.

He shakes his head, pulling back from Diluc’s hand and rubbing at his eye with his sleeve. “Nothing. I’m not sorry for anything.”

“Kaeya?”

Stop that. Stop saying my name like that. Stop giving me things to hold on to when I’ve been trying so hard to let go–

“It’s the wind,” he says, his voice growing as wet as his eyes, but he hides it between scathing laughs, bitter sounds that scald his tongue. “Something in my eye, that’s all.” Nothing you need to worry about.

Diluc’s hand is still there, hovering just inches from his face like a ghost that hasn’t figured out how to move on yet.

“Sorry,” Kaeya echoes, wiping at his eye once more.

Diluc hesitates, his mouth opening and closing a couple of times before settling into a minute frown. “You shouldn’t be,” he says at last, a note of irritation buried in his voice deep beneath the stolid surface.

He doesn’t mean that. He doesn’t even know what you’re apologising for. And he should know better than anyone else how much you have to be sorry for–

“Kaeya, you know–” Diluc stumbles over his words, glances over at the gravestone, then reaches for Kaeya’s hand as if Kaeya’s the one with the power to keep him steady instead of the other way round. “You should know Father would be proud of you.”

Kaeya can’t even manage to squeak out a confused ‘What?’ in response. His hand goes numb, nerves burnt to cinders by Diluc’s fire.

“So you– you should be proud of yourself too.”

…Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?

“Luc–”

The nickname slips out involuntarily, and Diluc freezes up before Kaeya even registers his mistake.

“Diluc,” he presses on before his brother can point it out, before his voice can tremble too much, “thanks, but… you don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine to me.”

He looks down. “Sorry–”

“Why do you keep apologising? What are– what do you think you have to be sorry for?”

Does it matter?

Kaeya wrenches his hand out of his brother’s grip. “I shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t mean to waste your time–”

“It’s not a waste.”

Diluc’s hand curls around Kaeya’s wrist like a vice.

“It’s not a waste,” he repeats, his eyes harder and more resolute than before. “And I– I’m sorry if I made you feel otherwise.”

Why are you doing all of this?

Why did you let me come here? Why haven’t you told me to leave already?

Then Diluc’s hand settles on Kaeya’s shoulder, solid and real and nothing like the ghost he wishes for, and that simple touch is all it takes for his facade to fall apart beyond repair.

He rubs at his eye faster and faster, but he can’t keep up with the new deluge of tears no matter how hard he tries. His cheeks grow damp and his head spins and his mouth contorts into that ugly shape he’s so painfully familiar with as a gasping breath escapes him. He presses his lips together, trying to imitate that stern line Diluc is so well-versed in, but every muscle in his face is shaking and he can’t stop himself from letting out another pathetic, squeaking sob, no matter how sick and tired he is of hearing himself cry like a helpless child–

“Kaeya,” Diluc says, gripping his shoulder tight. He sounds lost, confused, but the sound of that name in his voice has always been a good enough compass for Kaeya. That compass is the only reason he hasn’t tried to run away yet.

Because he realises now, his heart sinking like a stone, that he was always going to end up here, like this. All his vulnerabilities out in the open for the judgement of Diluc alone. This is where his path always leads him, however twisted it gets along the way. There was never any point in fighting this fate.

Diluc lets go of his shoulder and takes the plant instead. Kaeya’s now-empty arms lurch after it in a feeble attempt to stop him, but Diluc holds him back with little effort as he kneels and sets it down by the bouquet, by the headstone, before rising and placing both hands on Kaeya’s shoulders this time.

And before he knows it, Diluc’s arms are surrounding him like the walls of the city they both call home and he’s being pulled into an embrace he knows he won’t ever be able to pull away from.

Why do good things make me want to die even more?

Kaeya doesn’t return the hug. He doesn’t do anything but stand there and let Diluc continue to hold him close. If he stands here long enough, maybe Diluc’s fire will burn him away for good. Maybe he’ll die right here in Diluc’s arms like he should have four years ago and the world will finally right itself.

But the fire he envisions never comes.

The searing flame is there, running all around him through Diluc’s unwavering arms, but it never lashes out. Diluc doesn’t shift or flinch in the slightest, still as a statue, and yet Kaeya is being drawn ever closer, ever further into that warmth. It’s like Diluc is melting down his own existence and reforging it with Kaeya at the core, hammering it into perfect form with the strength of his own conviction, soldering all the joints with Kaeya’s infernal tears.

He shouldn’t feel so safe in Diluc’s arms. He shouldn’t use that safety as an excuse to keep crying his heart out, he shouldn’t let Diluc make the mistake of getting so close to him again–

But he can’t say no to Diluc. Not really, not when it matters. And right now, even though his lips are sewn shut, with each gentle press against Kaeya’s back and each quiet breath against his ear, Diluc is only saying one thing:

You’re not alone.

When Diluc finally steps back, his arms gradually falling away like autumn leaves, Kaeya realises he isn’t shaking anymore. His vision is clear, and the only traces of tears left are in the dried tracks on his cheeks and the damp spot in the fabric just under the collar of Diluc’s coat.

The warmth he’d almost grown accustomed to is gone as well. Its absence only makes the everlasting chill that’s taken hold of his heart all the more pronounced. He shouldn’t complain – Diluc doesn’t owe him warmth, or kindness, or anything even remotely synonymous with those words. He should be grateful that Diluc is tolerating his graceless presence at all right now.

He almost lets another apology slip out. Humiliating. Diluc doesn’t need more reasons to be annoyed with him.

“Kaeya?”

Don’t ask too many questions or I’ll start crying again. “What?”

“Why did you decide to come here today?”

Kaeya’s head spins as the answer rushes forth and crashes down on him like a tsunami, an answer he’s been holding at bay and wilfully ignoring all this time.

I wanted to be with you.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles instead. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Even if only in a place like this, even if you didn’t say a word to me, even if only for a moment – I just wanted to be with you.

But I know I can’t be with you without hurting you – nothing good has ever come from me being with you–

“Oh. Well.” Diluc rubs at the back of his neck. “I’m… it’s good that you’re here.” He shakes his head and sucks in a sharp breath. “I mean– I’m glad that you’re here. With me.”

With me.

“I always will be,” Kaeya murmurs.

Because, luckily for Diluc, Kaeya isn’t going anywhere. He can’t seem to die, he’s stuck being alive for the foreseeable future – and even if he attempted to run away and live out the rest of his life in solitude in some remote and desolate place, Diluc would somehow defy the odds and manage to track him down anyway, wouldn’t he? Kaeya can’t fathom why he would do such a thing, but the fact that he would seems like an incontrovertible truth.

His shoulders sag in defeat as he looks over at his brother, unsure of what he hopes to find there, only to tense right back up again when their gazes meet.

Diluc… is smiling.

Not the way he used to – ear to ear, bright and warm enough to compete with the sun itself, so much so that even a blind man would know what expression it was – but simply with an infinitesimal upwards turn of the lips, like the slight bend of a sword being pushed to its limit, just enough for Kaeya to tell. Maybe Kaeya’s the only one who can tell.

Maybe there’s still a smile that’s reserved for him alone.

Kaeya looks away before that clement light can blind him.

“Kae?”

Oh, don’t start– not that nickname, not now, this is too much all at once– “Yeah?”

“Are you free right now?” When Kaeya only blinks at him in confusion, Diluc continues, “I have other business to attend to, but– if you wanted to join me, I…”

His heart leaps out of his chest and an overly enthusiastic ‘yes’ nearly leaves his lips – but the glow of the lamp grass in the corner of his eye stops him. While he’s here he should probably drop that off for Rosaria before she gets back, shouldn’t he? And he shouldn’t rush straight into pretending things are normal with Diluc. His brother looks and sounds far too optimistic about this whole mess – that always was his weakness, being too damn optimistic when Kaeya was involved. One would think he’d have learned his lesson by now.

Whatever it is they seem to be planting the seeds of here – forgiveness, understanding, sympathy, a whole catalogue of things Kaeya doesn’t deserve – it’s happening too quickly. He needs… time. Time to make sure he doesn’t sabotage it in one fell swoop like he has before. And Diluc needs that time more than he does to reconsider all of this and turn back before he falls into the trap of caring too much about Kaeya again.

“Sorry. Got some things to take care of,” he says, picking the plant up again. He hesitates for a moment just like Diluc had, and lets his fingers brush over their father’s engraved name before standing.

“Oh.” Diluc’s face falls, but only slightly. “Will you be at the tavern tonight, then?”

Tonight still seems far too soon. But he doesn’t want to make his brother regret asking at all, doesn’t want to burn those seeds to a crisp before they have the chance to sprout, so he forces himself to nod silently.

“Okay,” Diluc says, nodding back. “Then – I’ll see you later.”

Such simple words, yet they carry the weight of an unbreakable oath. Nothing Kaeya’s said has ever had that level of resolve. He’s so very different from his brother.

Diluc gives Kaeya a pat on the shoulder. Kaeya keeps his eye on the grave and doesn’t check if his brother looks back at him or not as he finally leaves – either outcome will terrify him.

Only when the footsteps have completely receded into silence does he dare look up, the brightness of the sun and sky overwhelming him. He hugs the plant tighter against his chest until he can hardly breathe.

Well. He needs as much time as he can get to prepare for whatever ordeal awaits him at the tavern tonight, so he’d better drop this accursed thing off quickly so he can go break down somewhere for a few hours before the sun sets.

Rosaria’s room sits at the very back of the convent, its door completely hidden in the shadows. He’s never actually been here before, but the cough-inducing scent of cigarettes is strong enough to guide him straight to it. There’s no locks on any of these doors, so all he does is scan the corridor behind him for any witnesses before pushing it open.

As expected, there’s nothing of note on display – no decorations, no personal items of any kind. He’s not sure if the Church allows that sort of thing, but even if it did, Rosaria wouldn’t bother. There’s likely cigarettes and journals of intel hidden away in one of the drawers – maybe even under the bed or floorboards – but it’s otherwise empty.

“No wonder you wanted a plant,” Kaeya mutters, stepping into the room as quietly as he can, suddenly guilty about technically trespassing. “You needed something to liven the place up before it drove you mad.” The desk in the corner is situated such that all the light from the window falls upon it, so he clears out a space in the middle of its polished walnut surface and sets the plant down with a sigh.

The whole thing is over too quickly – after all the torment this thing put him through, there isn’t even a climactic sense of relief? No cheers, no applause, nothing? He doesn’t even get to feel like all the weight has lifted off his shoulders, because in reality the weight of this little plant was nothing compared to–

“Sir Kaeya? What are you doing in here?”

Barbara’s tone is innocent and unassuming, but it still makes him flinch.

“My dear deaconess,” he says, turning quickly to face her, hiding the plant behind his back for reasons unknown to even himself, “I think I should be the one asking you that.” Even though it’s perfectly within your prerogative to be here and perfectly not within mine…

But Barbara, bless her heart, doesn’t question him for a second and yields far too easily to his authority. “I heard some noise and thought Sister Rosaria might have returned,” she says, wringing her hands. “Um, Sir Kaeya, you wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”

“I’m afraid not, Barbara,” he says with genuine sympathy. “But she did tell me she would be back today, so there’s no need to worry just yet.”

“Oh,” is all she says in return before sighing deeply, not quite relieved. “I wish she wouldn’t disappear so often without saying anything. Everyone worries about her…” She sighs again and looks up at Kaeya with wide, almost pleading eyes. “I don’t know if she knows that, though. I think sometimes she thinks that no one cares, and that’s why she– oh, that’s why you got her that, isn’t it? To show her you care?” Now she’s almost blushing. “That’s so sweet of you, Sir Kaeya.”

Kaeya hadn’t even realised he’d stepped away from the plant, too distracted by Barbara’s sudden ramblings about Rosaria. The girl really worries about her, more than he expected anyone other than himself to worry. Rosaria acts so tough and indifferent that he figured most people would simply… not care. Then again, Barbara’s hardly like most people. She cares too much about too many people. Cut from the same cloth as her sister.

He lifts a finger to his lips and smiles. “Keep it a secret for me, would you? I want it to be a surprise.”

She copies the gesture with a soft giggle. “Of course, Sir Kaeya. My lips are sealed.”

Just as he’s about to thank her, a sharp and bitter smell invades his nose and he doubles over with a violent cough that wracks his entire body. The smell is strangely familiar, almost medicinal, and yet it makes him sick. His throat burns and the smell grows even sharper and he slumps against the nearest wall and tries to keep from emptying his stomach right onto this spotless floor.

“Kaeya– Sir Kaeya, what’s wrong?” Barbara’s hand burns against his clammy skin. “What happened?”

I’ve never thrown up this much in one day. I never want to throw up again. I swear I’ll even stop drinking if I have to–

The memory of where that smell came from hits him like a bag of bricks. A green and glinting pill bottle comes to mind. He clamps a hand over his mouth.

“Sir Kaeya–!”

He forces himself to take a deep breath, leaning into Barbara’s weight when she clings to his shoulder. “I don’t suppose your healing powers work on… poison, do they?”

“You’ve been poisoned?!” She clings even tighter, nails digging into his skin. “By who? Why didn’t you say anything sooner? Oh, Barbatos–”

He tries to say something more then, but the stench is just too much and he sinks to the floor completely, burying his face between his knees as he heaves.

“Don’t worry,” she says, dropping down to his side, already sending out a pulse of healing Hydro, “you’ll be just fine – I’ll fix you up right away – and then you’ll take care of whoever did this to you, alright?”

…Yeah. I’ll take care of them, alright.

Chapter Text

the seed – from which life begins anew.

“Didn’t I tell you not to get yourself into trouble?”

If Jean weren’t so disciplined, the grip she has on his hand would have crushed Kaeya’s bones to dust long ago. But she’s perfectly aware of her own strength, of his weakness, and she’s always had too much self-restraint for her own good, so she easily maintains a hold that’s tight enough to make him feel completely trapped without hurting him the way he almost wishes she would.

Kaeya laughs weakly. “Never been good at following orders, have I?”

Jean is so much like Diluc, sometimes, the way their eyes burn bright with indignation whenever he tries to deflect their concern. At least his brother’s gotten better at hiding it; that spark still makes Jean look like she’s about to cry, and he’s the last person she should ever be crying over.

She squeezes his hand between both of hers. “At least tell me what happened.” She leans a little closer to him, the rickety seat by his cot creaking loudly as she does, the sound reverberating throughout the empty infirmary and making him wince.

“Just had a bit too much to drink,” he says with a shrug, though even that little movement takes monumental effort. “You know me–”

“Barbara said you were poisoned.”

Of course she did. Of course her sister told her that, because siblings telling each other things is normal to most people–

“Alcohol poisoning,” he says, before realising exactly how bad that sounds.

Jean gasps, her face twisting even further with worry. “Kaeya–”

“Isn’t it too early for you to be here?” He glances over at the small window on the opposite side of the infirmary. The sky is still dark outside, not a hint of pink or orange on the horizon.

“I had to make sure you were alright,” she says, her voice catching on the determined set of her teeth. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“I’ll be fine, Jean. Just a few more hours of bedrest and I’ll be back on my feet, good as new. It’s really not as bad as you think.”

Jean chews on her lip, then shakes her head. “I should give you some more time off.”

No. No, no, that’s the last thing he needs, he really just wants everything to return to normal, for him to go back to work and start relearning how to live–

“I’ll handle the paperwork, so you just need to make sure you–”

“Jean, really, you’re being dramatic – I’m quite alright–”

“You always say that.” Jean’s frustration overflows and her grip on his hand turns vicelike. “Always, every time I show the slightest bit of concern you act like I’m crazy – don’t pretend I don’t know you, Kaeya. Do you know how worried Barbara was when she told me?”

“She worries about everyone.”

“With good reason.”

“With all due respect, she’s still a child – you can’t expect her to assess my condition so objectively.”

“Given your history, I expect she’d be more objective about it than you–”

“Please don’t fight, you two.”

Barbara’s quietly desperate plea silences both of them in an instant. She hovers in the shadow of the doorway for a moment, medical supplies cradled in her arms, before taking a deep breath and hurrying over to them, her heels click-clacking piercingly upon the tiled floor.

“Sorry, Barbara,” Jean says softly, bowing her head in shame.

“Barbara, tell your sister that I’ll be fit for combat in no time and that she doesn’t need to worry so much.”

Jean all but glares at him while her sister only gives him an apologetic look, yet somehow the latter is a thousand times harder to live with.

“He’s not wrong,” Barbara says as she sets the medical supplies down. “He’ll be fine – but he should still take it easy for a while.”

“Barbara, you don’t have to do as he says.”

“I’m not – I healed him myself, I–” She clutches her skirt before looking Jean in the eye. “I know what I’m doing.”

Jean looks thoroughly apologetic. It’s a rare thing for her to come into any sort of conflict with her sister – so very different from him and his brother.

Well. That might not be the case anymore.

Too early to tell.

“I should leave you to your rest then, shouldn’t I?” Jean murmurs with an almost defeated sigh.

He can’t bring himself to tell her to leave. He wants her to leave, but her face would scrunch up in a quietly helpless way if he actually said that out loud, and he doesn’t want to live with having caused her pain.

“I’ll be okay, Jean. Really.” He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses the back of it softly – or as softly as he can when those lips are dry and cracked as long-dead leaves. “Sorry for worrying you.” He keeps her hand there for a few more moments, forcing himself to look her in the eyes, forcing himself to quietly say, “Thank you for worrying about me.” He can’t convince himself that he means it – he doubts he can even convince her, in his current state – but she worries about him to an unhealthy extent, so if he can’t offer her reassurance then he at least owes her gratitude.

There are so many debts he has to pay. He has no idea where to begin with any of them. Death had seemed like such an easy way out–

Give it up, Alberich. This is your life now. This is the life you’ve made for yourself.

Now all you can do is live it.

She squeezes his hand back more gently than she has this whole time, even as her voice assumes a level of authority befitting of a Grandmaster. “We’re going to talk about this when you’re back to work. No excuses.”

“Yes, sir.”

She sighs again, and starts to stand – but just as she’s about to turn to Barbara and say her goodbyes, she leans forward and wraps her arms around him.

“Kaeya, you have always been, and will always be, one of my dearest friends. So if something’s wrong – please, just tell me. You’re not alone.” She hugs him like her life depends on it, her voice whittled down to a strained whisper as she crushes the air out of him. “I love you so much. You’ll never be alone as long as I’m around.”

If he says anything in response, he’s too dazed to remember it. By the time he comes back to his senses, Jean has completely vanished, and only Barbara is at his side, humming softly as she continues to work her magic.

She notices him staring, a faint blush dusting her cheeks, and says, “I’m sorry for telling her about you without asking, Sir Kaeya. But I thought – well, she’s the Grandmaster, and you’re her captain, so it seemed important for her to know…” She trails off back into her quiet humming, but it seems slightly off-key now.

They both know damn well that’s not the real reason she said anything, but Kaeya lets it slide. Of all the people to find out from, Barbara was probably the best.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

Barbara’s blush intensifies. “Um… Sister Rosaria, and… Master Diluc…” She drops her head with a muffled whine.

Diluc and Rosaria?

“I really didn’t mean to – but Rosaria – you know how she is, and I was just so surprised that she was back – and then she brought Diluc with her too… But I didn’t tell them what happened and I didn’t say anything to anyone else, I promise!”

Archons. How much were those pills again? Maybe it’s time for a second shot. Rosaria finding out was probably inevitable, but he really doesn’t need Diluc worrying after that pitiful display yesterday. How is he supposed to face him again after this?

“I’m terrible at keeping secrets, aren’t I? I really am sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He shakes his head and reaches out to pat her on the forearm, halting the flow of magic into his system for a second. “Keeping secrets isn’t good for you. They always come back to bite you in the end.”

Barbara purses her lips, her eyes shining too bright in the darkness, but she keeps whatever she’s thinking to herself and instead coaxes him back to sleep with a lullaby.

Somehow he’d convinced the deaconess to let him go that same day. He’d been ready to give up after the third round of excuses, but she’d suddenly relented and sent him off with a reminder to rest as much as possible before going back to work, and an unspoken warning of what she’ll do if she finds out he didn’t heed her advice.

So naturally the first place he’s headed is the tavern.

He certainly doesn’t intend to drink – the mere idea of it has him retching all over again, and that’s surely a sign of an imminent apocalypse – but he had told Diluc he would be there the night before, and his brother had apparently taken the effort to visit him while he was sick, so… he doesn’t have a choice, really. And he has the best chance of finding Rosaria there, too – no one at the cathedral knew where she was, but didn’t she say she’d buy him a drink when she got back? She’s not one to let a debt go unpaid if she can help it. Two birds with one stone.

With so many people filtering in and out of the Angel’s Share tonight, he doesn’t need to open the door himself and can slip in amongst the crowd. He stands there by the doorway for a moment, letting himself be jostled by patron after patron, as the sensation of being surrounded by so many other people for the first time in forever washes over him and leaves him disoriented. Diluc isn’t behind the bar right now – but Kaeya’s eye quickly finds Rosaria in her usual spot at end of the counter, standing out from the crowd as always, and his feet drag him over to her before he has time to process what’s happening.

His usual seat beside her is unoccupied despite the rush – definitely Rosaria’s doing, that glare of hers could scare even the most dishonourable of bandits away – and he sinks into it without as much gratitude as he should probably feel. He looks straight ahead at the countless bottles of liquor on the shelves instead of at her.

“Welcome back, Rosa,” he says when Rosaria elects to stay silent. “I hope you had a good trip.” Maybe now you’d like to tell me what the hell it was even about?

Instead of literally any of the things he’d anticipated she would say, the first words out of her mouth are, “You killed Alberich.”

Those three little words have his ears ringing like mad. “What?” he whispers feebly.

She turns to face him, resting her elbow on the counter and leaning in a bit too close for comfort. “The plant. Alberich. You killed it and replaced it with a different one. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“…You named your plant after me?”

“No.”

“What– then–”

“It was just a coincidence.” She shrugs, but it’s not at all casual like a shrug should be. She’s never been a good actor and she knows he can see right through even the best of actors, so why on earth she’s trying this with him, now of all times, is beyond his comprehension. “I read it in a fairytale or something.”

“What kind of… huh?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs again. It’s a terrible act of nonchalance. She’s always been someone he can count on to make sense, but everything about her lately has been so strange.

“Rosa–”

“I found some weird letters on the roof of Favonius Headquarters that didn’t make any sense. Something about ancient noble clans and fallen kingdoms, or whatever. Sounded like fairytale nonsense to me.” She leans back, dropping her gaze to fuss over her claw rings. “But I’m sure those had nothing to do with you. Right?”

Even amidst the endless warmth of the bustling tavern, his blood freezes over faster than a lake on Dragonspine.

She knows.

She knows something that only Diluc was ever supposed to know.

She knows and now I’m going to die just as I was coming round to the idea of staying alive–

But she’s looking back up at him now, the mask of nonchalance gone – yet her eyes are calm and steady as ever, her lips held in an unwavering, unshakeable line, her face radiating nothing but silent understanding. No threats, no suspicion, not even a hint of aggression.

Somehow, impossibly, everything is the same as before. Even though everything has changed irreversibly, this time without him even realising it.

It can’t be that simple.

“Rosa, I–”

“It’s fine. Lamp grass can be finicky, I guess. You made it up to me in the end so it’s fine.”

“No, I– what? Not that– Rosa, listen, just give me a chance and I swear I can explain–”

She presses one of her claws to his lips, its icy touch shutting him up quicker than a blade against his throat. “No need. We’ll talk about it some other time. It’s not like I care that much. But I think you’ve got something more important to deal with right now,” she says, nodding towards something behind him.

What the fuck could be more important than this–

Kaeya turns his head, and suddenly Diluc is there, mixing drinks at a steady pace as if he’s been there the whole time – though his eyes are fixed squarely on Kaeya and burning through him like always. It’s a miracle Kaeya didn’t feel his presence before he saw it. Or maybe it’s a sign that Barbara let him go too soon, if his senses are this dull.

He turns back to Rosaria only to find her shuffling off of her seat.

“Where are you going?”

“Got a plant to take care of,” she says with a faint smirk, then nods at Diluc again. “Tell him you’ve got a Death After Noon from me. I’ll see you around when he doesn’t have a monopoly on your attention.”

Without giving him even a fraction of a second to respond, she vanishes into the crowd as if she’d never been there at all, leaving Kaeya with nothing but confusion and a slight lightheadedness for company.

The next time he sees Rosaria he’s not going to let her get away that easily. He lets her get away with too much as it is, and she’s not supposed to be the cryptic one between the two of them. Showing up on his doorstep like that out of nowhere – it’s like she’d–

Had she… known?

Ugh. Not long ago he’d been so certain there would never be a next time, and now…

He doesn’t have time to ruminate on that when Diluc is standing right in front of him.

Without thinking, he says, “I’ve got a Death After Noon on Rosa’s tab.”

Diluc squints. “Should you really be drinking right now?”

“Not– not now,” Kaeya says, shrinking away from his brother’s pointed gaze. “I’m saving it for some other time.”

Diluc’s eyes flick up for a moment, searching for something in the distance, before returning to him. “She left pretty suddenly. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He swallows the anxious laugh catching in his throat. “Uh – did you want something?”

Diluc blinks as if he’d forgotten that he’d been staring daggers into Kaeya before Rosaria had left, then says, “Are you sure you should be here?”

Kaeya’s heart misses a beat. “Did you not want–”

“You were sick. Badly sick.” Diluc rubs at the glass in his hands more vigorously. Kaeya half-expects it to break. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner. But are you sure you’ve fully recovered? You shouldn’t push yourself–”

“I’m fine. Just need to rest for a while.” He clutches at his arm. “I was already on leave anyway.”

“Why?”

Kaeya bristles. Going on leave shouldn’t rouse so much suspicion – but Diluc, just like Jean, can apparently see right through it. Even if they can’t quite understand what it is they’re seeing. He doesn’t want them to ever understand.

“Just because,” Kaeya says.

Diluc seems willing to let that flimsy non-answer slide, but he’s not done with his… interrogation? Intervention? Whatever this is, it’s too much. He puts down the now-spotless glass, and nods towards the backroom. “I have something for you.”

When he refuses to elaborate and simply walks off, apparently knowing full well his brother will give in soon enough, Kaeya shrugs off his apprehension and follows him into the dimly lit room. Diluc doesn’t usually say anything that necessitates this level of privacy, content to converse solely in vague phrases and codewords that only hold significance to the two of them. The apprehension creeps back up again as the door shuts behind him.

Kaeya glances around at the shelves and shelves of bottles extending well into the dark. “You didn’t drag me back here to give me some limited-edition wine, did you?”

Diluc starts to say something but closes his mouth before Kaeya can even guess what it might have been, then folds his arms across his chest like he doesn’t know what else to do with them. Then, after a long staring match, he says, “Something happened with Rosaria, didn’t it.”

Well. If there’s anyone he can talk to about this, it’s Diluc. “She knows,” he mumbles, looking down. “Seems she’s known for a while.”

“Knows what?”

Kaeya taps at his eyepatch.

Diluc catches on instantly, as expected, and draws in a sharp breath. “She found out without you telling her?”

“…I was careless.” He shakes his head. “But it won’t happen again. I swear.”

Diluc is watching him carefully. There must be all sorts of things he wants to say, all sorts of reprimands boiling in his blood for how downright stupid and reckless Kaeya has been – but in the end he settles for, “Are you okay with it?”

“Trying to be,” Kaeya says quietly.

“You trust her, right?”

Kaeya nods, albeit hesitantly. The idea that he could trust anyone other than Diluc with this life-changing secret hadn’t even occurred to him before tonight. He’s still trying to get used to it all. It’s a bit much to ask of someone who has yet to get used to the idea of staying alive.

“Then it’s fine.” Diluc exhales. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

He sounds more like he’s trying to reassure himself. Idiot. Always worrying too much about other people’s problems. Everyone in Kaeya’s life is like this. One would think that some of it would’ve rubbed off on him eventually, but alas. The only person he’s ever cared about is–

Is–

Diluc is staring at him so intensely he can’t fucking think.

“I guess that explains why she suddenly started asking about Dainsleif,” Diluc says, looking thoughtfully into the distance. His expression grows serious. “I should’ve realised something was up.”

Kaeya blinks. Several times. “Sorry? Dainsleif? That Dainsleif?”

“The one and only, unless you know something I don’t.” Now Diluc grimaces. “I assumed she was simply being suspicious of outsiders as usual. I didn’t even have much to tell her. It’s not like he was here for long.”

That’s what her trip was for? That’s what all this was about?

His secrets can come back to bite him as much as they want, but can they at least leave the people unfortunate enough to be acquainted with him out of it?

“That’s why she left,” Kaeya mutters to himself, pieces slotting into place yet not granting him an ounce of satisfaction. “Because of him.” Because of me.

“I suppose so.”

“But– why didn’t she just tell me before?” Kaeya’s heart rate picks up again, even though he can still picture her perfectly placid expression from not even five minutes ago, an expression that had told him there was no need to worry about where she stood, that his secrets are safer with her than ever. “Why would she pretend she didn’t know anything?”

“Maybe…” Diluc’s lips press tightly together, back into their usual stern line. “Maybe she was afraid you’d push her away.”

“But she ended up telling me anyway.”

“Then she must not be afraid of that anymore.” The stern line slips just a bit. “Or she’s more afraid of the alternative.”

She’s never afraid of anything, is all he can think as he slumps against a shelf behind him. Wine bottles rattle quietly at his back.

“She really worries about you, you know.”

Kaeya goes completely still.

“A long time ago she told me to keep an eye out for you whenever she’s not around. Not like I needed the reminder,” he adds under his breath. “And then,” he continues, sharper, “when you didn’t show up again last night I was going to go looking for you, but she found me and told me where you were before I had the chance.”

Rosa, you always have to get too involved, don’t you–

“You know there are lots of people who care about you, right?”

Kaeya doesn’t dare move. Even his shallow half-breaths are too loud under Diluc’s painfully soft words.

“Not just Rosaria – there’s Jean, and Barbara, and your friends in the Ordo, and… and me.” Diluc chews on his lip, turning them so red Kaeya would swear he drew blood. “I know I’m not the best at showing it, but I– I do care. And I’m here for you. Just as you always have been for me.”

What should’ve been a shocking, world-shaking revelation – and maybe a day or two ago it would’ve been – simply washes over him like a low tide upon the shore. There’s no revelation though, just confirmation of a painfully obvious truth, one that he’s known all along. It’s so overwhelmingly true that it doesn’t register as anything worth saying aloud in the first place.

He’d spent so, so long trying to fool himself into believing the opposite. With Diluc looking at him like that, nothing but regret and sincerity in his eyes, Kaeya can’t even remember why anymore.

How much time have I wasted being a fool?

“Yeah, you are pretty terrible at showing it.”

Diluc laughs. When was the last time he heard that? Brief though it may have been – barely long enough to fill the silence between one heartbeat and the next – it’s a sound so soft and sweet that even with all the heaviness in the air around them, Kaeya can’t help but crack a smile.

Maybe his filter dying wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

“You don’t really give me the chance,” Diluc says, the smile fading. “But you scared all of us last night.”

Diluc’s never scared of anything either. Not anymore. Not for me.

…Have I been fooling myself about that, too?

“What really happened yesterday, Kae?”

That nickname almost shatters his self-restraint entirely – but the thought of putting any of it into words while his brother is watching him like that, wide eyes pleading for answers, quickly pulls him back to his senses. It’s still too soon. Too delicate. The shame and regret still linger on his tongue. He can still smell the godforsaken pills when he breathes.

No matter how much Diluc cares, or thinks he cares, Kaeya can’t push this onto him. It’s too much to ask anyone to bear. Kaeya’s already burdened him enough for a lifetime.

He clutches his arm and ducks his head. “I… I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Some other time, then.”

Kaeya looks back up.

“I’ll be here whenever you’re ready,” Diluc says softly.

“…Sure. Some other time,” Kaeya echoes, even though he’s secretly wishing that time never comes. But this is Diluc they’re talking about. The time will come sooner than he thinks no matter how much he avoids it, and he won’t be prepared for it.

But – maybe that’s reason enough to not be afraid. There’s no sense in fearing the inevitable.

Diluc’s arms are suddenly around him. Is this part of the inevitable? Is this something he’ll have to get used to again? It’d been difficult enough the first time round, killing the instinct to flinch away from eight-year-old Diluc’s unprompted and unabashed displays of affection, but it’s even more difficult to believe that the man who can barely muster up a smile these days would want to display that same affection once more. To Kaeya, of all people.

I don’t know if I can get used to it.

But I think–

I think I really want to.

“Don’t scare me like that again,” Diluc says quietly into Kaeya’s shoulder. “You have no idea–”

“I do,” Kaeya whispers, trembling, his vision blurring until all that’s in front of him is lamplit crimson. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.” Diluc cradles the back of his head. “Just promise it won’t happen again.”

“Okay,” he says, and it comes out easier than he thought it would. His hand curls in the back of Diluc’s coat. He shuts his eye, breathes in the scent of wine and smoke until it’s the only thing he can smell. “I promise.”

Diluc noticeably sags in relief against him, his weight pushing them both back against the shelf and rattling the bottles again, and he buries his face in Kaeya’s shoulder for an achingly long and frighteningly tender moment before stepping back.

“I meant to give you something,” Diluc says, and Kaeya suddenly remembers how he was lured here in the first place. “Stay.”

Even if I wanted to leave, I don’t think you’d let me. “I was joking about the wine,” Kaeya calls out as Diluc disappears behind a row of shelves.

He doesn’t answer, but he returns soon enough – and in his hands…

A calla lily.

It’s in an ornate little pot, embossed with an intricate floral pattern and painted with the colours of the dawn. Diluc doesn’t give Kaeya an opportunity to admire it before pushing it towards him. He takes it hesitantly. It feels far too heavy in his hold.

“You want me to take care of it for you?”

“It’s… for you, Kae.” Diluc’s head tilts to the side. “A gift.”

Oh. Obviously. Why would he need me of all people to take care of his plants?

“Do you know how to take care of one?”

Kaeya mirrors the tilt of his head. “Just– water it every day, right?”

Diluc sighs. “Calla lilies are more fickle than that. You need to pay attention to…”

Kaeya nods along as Diluc starts rambling through instruction after instruction, though it’s all going in one ear and right out the other. The cool glossiness of the lacquered ceramic beneath his fingers and the sunset orange along the edges of the petals are too distracting.

Diluc notices his inattentiveness soon enough and sighs again. “Never mind. I’ll write all that down for you.” He stands up a little straighter. “You’re sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kaeya says quickly. “Honestly. I’m just– I’m not very good with plants.” He laughs awkwardly, bitterly, looking away before he can see Diluc’s expression shift. “I really fucked up with the last one I had.”

“You’ll do better with this one.”

There’s no basis for the unwavering certainty in his voice – and yet it’s there. Diluc has always been too certain of things when it comes to Kaeya. Some days that certainty was the only thing that kept Kaeya from giving up entirely when he was younger. Today… well, it seems like nothing has changed, has it?

“Thanks, Luc,” he says, hugging the plant close. The calla lily’s petals tickle his face, and he smiles despite himself.

In the lamplight it’s harder to tell, but Diluc’s face turns as red as his hair; the indiscreet cough and turn of his head do nothing to hide it. “Sure.” He sniffs loudly, then puts both hands on Kaeya’s shoulders and turns him towards the door fast enough to make him dizzy. “I’ve got things to do in here, so you should– go and do whatever it was you were doing before. See you.”

Before Kaeya can respond he’s pushed out of the storeroom and the door slams shut behind him. And right as he reaches for the doorknob the lock clicks loudly into place.

Diluc was always fond of bold entrances into a battle. Apparently seamless exits elude him to this day.

Kaeya laughs to himself, much less bitterly than before. All of this is a bit much for you too, huh?

He wanders back to his seat in a trance. Charles comes over and asks if he wants a drink but he shakes his head, too lost in his own thoughts to do anything except stare at his new gift. Everything feels like a dream. Maybe he’s one blink away from waking up. It’s all too good to be true, isn’t it?

Rosaria’s seat next to him is still miraculously unoccupied. But thinking about her just makes his head spin even more. There’s way too much to think about – and he has to think about it before she finds him again or else he’ll just break down as soon as he tries to open his mouth and hasn’t he already embarrassed himself in front of her enough already?

Diluc said it would be fine, he reminds himself.

Maybe… maybe Diluc can help, even. Maybe part of the inevitable is relying on Diluc again.

He wants to bury his face in the soil and stop thinking already.

But even that won’t stop him from thinking – he only has this plant because of Rosaria in the first place. It’s an endless cycle.

If it hadn’t been for her… would he even be here right now?

Would he have gotten to talk to Diluc? To be held by him – to simply be with him?

Hadn’t he only reached his lowest point because he’d thought all those things were completely out of reach forever?

His eyes start to water. A teardrop falls and lands right on one of the petals, but his vision is too blurry to see where it ends up.

Maybe he’s rubbed off on her, a little bit. He never thought of her as the type to pull off a roundabout scheme like this. Are there other people she would go so far out of her way for? Or is it just him?

“Damn it, Rosa,” he mumbles, burying his face in his hands.

He’s going to be buying her drinks for the rest of his damn life. And if she has any say in the matter, that life is going to be long indeed–

Damn it. Fuck. I can’t do this–

But I have to.

He loves her so much.

He loves all of them so much. More than they could ever possibly know. They keep showing up for him when he’s sure he doesn’t deserve them. Staying with him when he’s sure they’d be better off leaving him alone. How is he supposed to repay them for all of that?

I’m sorry for being so stupid. So selfish. So stubborn.

So undeserving of your love.

But you’ve all given me a second chance, so–

He wipes his tears with his gloves, laughing weakly as he pulls the plant close, staring into the centre of that defiantly blooming flower with a determination that won’t make sense to anyone but himself.

So I’ll do better this time. I promise.

I owe you all that much.

“That’s a pretty flower you’ve got there, Captain.”

Venti’s suddenly in Rosaria’s seat, a bottle of wine in one hand and his lyre in the other. He leans in close, humming appreciatively as he admires the calla lily from every angle.

“I think I’m more partial to cecilias myself, but all of Mondstadt’s flowers have their own unique charm, don’t you think?” He giggles. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many arguments about which one of them is the real Windblume.”

Kaeya doesn’t want to say a thing, afraid of how weak and wet his voice will sound, but the bard flashes him a contagious smile so he coughs to clear his throat and simply says, “I think you might be right about that.”

If he does sound less like himself than usual, Venti doesn’t point it out. “Some people say that music helps plants grow,” he says instead, strumming his lyre, a soft breeze blowing around him as he does. “Would you like me to sing a song?”

“I have a feeling you’re about to anyway.”

Venti laughs brightly and climbs up to stand on the barstool, and with just a handful of notes he’s got the whole tavern’s eyes on him. They’re lucky Diluc isn’t here to put a stop to it just yet.

Instead of watching the bard’s enthusiastic performance, Kaeya’s gaze is drawn to the calla lily as it sways gently in time with the music. Such a well-choreographed scene is almost certainly a figment of his imagination, a trick of the light – but nevertheless, Kaeya finds himself wearing an indelible little smile.

Even though he hadn’t drunk a single drop of alcohol, there’s a distinctly pleasant buzz all throughout his body when he finally makes it home. Perhaps this is what happiness feels like? It’s not familiar in the slightest. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this, if ever – and yet he has a strange feeling that this sensation won’t be alien for long. That there’s a chance this could become a new normal for him.

Somehow that doesn’t seem like too much to hope for anymore.

He’s even humming to himself as he unlocks the door, a bizarre spring in his step and a smile on his face as he hugs his new calla lily and searches for the perfect spot to place it–

He sees the window, and freezes.

Apparently he’d left it open, but that’s not what matters – what matters is that there’s a perfectly intact pot of lamp grass on the windowsill, just as there had been only a couple of days ago. Before he’d smashed the thing to pieces in a drunken, drugged haze.

He runs over without stopping to breathe.

The floor is spotless. That can’t be right, because he vividly remembers telling himself that he would clean the mess he’d made when he got back, but now there isn’t anything to clean. He sets the calla lily down on the other end of the windowsill and picks up the lamp grass in a panic – and there, interlacing and intersecting all across that plain terra cotta surface, are countless cracks. Thin and light as strands of hair, barely visible, but very much there.

The lamp grass isn’t standing up completely straight, as if the bulb is weighing it down, and it glows dimly, not quite back to its full brightness, and its chimes are quiet when he moves it, like they’re being muffled by some invisible force – but it does still stand, glow, and chime.

It’s impossibly alive.

The breeze flowing in through the open window carries with it the overpowering scent of cecilias, even though there isn’t a single cecilia in the vicinity. That scent drags his mind back to the cemetery, where he’d witnessed Diluc place a bouquet of those delicate white flowers in front of Father’s headstone – to the fact that it’s a miracle he’d been allowed to witness such a scene at all, after everything that had happened.

…Maybe some things are just miracles, and I should learn to be grateful for a change.

He sets the lamp grass back in its original position and steps away.

The two flowers don’t look so bad, side by side under the moonlight. A complete mismatch in every way, but it works. The lamp grass even seems to glow a little brighter with the calla lily next to it.

They look like they belong together.

Diluc’s instructions had sounded like a real hassle. Exhaustion is setting in at the mere thought of going to all that trouble, the crumpled note in his pocket weighing him down already. He’s pretty sure he’s had enough of trying to take care of plants for a lifetime – hell, he can barely take care of himself.

But for a sight like this…

Maybe it’ll be worth it.