Work Text:
1576
The wheat is being gathered for a third day in the row, crops having grown well this year in comparison to the last harvest. Ajax rolls a stalk of wheat between forefinger and thumb, watching it come apart all too easily. His father wouldn’t be too happy seeing him playing about with even the one stalk, but luckily it’s just him and his sisters out here today, working the fields.
However, his sisters aren’t the only important thing with him—in his inner breast pocket, tucked away and folded twice, is a letter. The ink is smudged in places from times he’s reread it with dirtied fingers, but he knows the contents by heart these days.
My Polar Star,
My candle wick is getting dangerously shorter as I continue to write this, but with the household asleep, now is when I can write this safely.
Today the wine harvest started. Despite both my brother and I being grown, we still went out to play between the grape vines, and later to help squash the grapes themselves with the others. We’ve been doing it since we were children, every year. Tradition it has become.
Yet, through it all, I could not help but think about anything other than how much I would love doing this with you; how much you would shriek at the sensation of smashed grapes underfoot; how much you would enjoy picking the vine leaves out of my hair; how much we would simply love to be in one another’s company.
I so often imagine the life we would lead together, despite how dangerous it might be to do so. I cannot help myself. I dream about you so often your face is etched in my mind, carved by the sculptors of old. In these dreams, I give you my name: Ajax Ragnvindr.
Perhaps one day, when this world is not so cruel to the dreamers and the lovers, I will be able to wear a matching band on my finger with you, and I will be able to hold you in bed before we wake up in tangled sheets together. In another life I will be able to give you everything I cannot give you now. I will proclaim my love from the hilltops without fearing repercussions for having a heart that beats for another man.
With love,
Your Crimson Knight
Ajax has more of these letters, hidden under the floorboards of the room he shares with Anthon and Teucer, who are thankfully still too young to read them. His three older sisters, Sofia, Katerina, and Anya, learned to read from the letters Diluc has sent him since their fateful meeting, and have even helped him with his responses.
Tonia often wonders what her older siblings are up to, not liking being left out, but at ten she’s still easy to distract with stories of foreign lands and magic and all that is mystical. Every now and then, the four of them will put on a show for their three youngest siblings.
In his letters back to Diluc he writes about these plays, tells them what is new with his big family, and Diluc never fails to ask about them in his own letters. He wishes he could share his family more than through written word. He wishes they could bond over dinner or run around during the harvest or simply be together.
But he knows that his dreams will forever be dreams, and that all he can do is take out a letter each night, read it under flickering candlelight and then fall asleep with the letter under his pillow, quickly tucking it into his clothes before his father comes around in the morning and carrying it with him throughout the day. It may not be much, but it is more than others might have.
Katerina yells at him from across the field, waving her arms up high above her head. He grabs the bundles he’s made and starts running over with them, imaging Diluc running right beside him, holding his own share of bundles.
Clinging onto what they have may be a show of hope he should have let go of by now, but he can’t do it. It’s the sort of love you find once in a lifetime, the sort you don’t put down.
Dinner is a quiet affair. Even with nine of them at the table, the only thing to be heard is the scraping of knives and forks against plates.
They know by now that when Father comes home from the market with a dejected expression and doesn’t kiss Mother on her cheek that not only will money be scarce for a while, but so will joy.
Father does not sour the mood purposefully. Grain is fetching less money each year, and despite all the bargains he strikes and promises buyers make him. Their family is big, even if not bigger than most, but feeding one is still difficult.
Ajax’s plate is nearly cleared when Father grabs Mother’s hand and sighs heavily. “I was hoping I could keep you all under my roof for a little longer than this.”
No.
His throat constricts as Father looks at each and every one of his eldest children, and he knows.
“Sofia, Katerina, Anya.” All three sisters are holding hands now. “I’ve made marriage arrangements with some suitable gentlemen willing to look past a feeble dowry. I grew up with their fathers.”
The three of them bow their heads, muttering thanks that are half-hearted at best, before excusing themselves from the table. Tonia tries to follow them, only to be pushed back down into her seat by Mother’s gentle—and shaking—hand.
Ajax could try to leave. He could hurriedly put his plate by the wash basin and make up an excuse about forgetting something in the fields, but.
But he can’t. In the blink of an eye, it is only him and Father at the table, silence stewing as dinner was earlier. There is no escape; not from this conversation, nor from the future that awaits him.
I so often imagine the life we would lead together, despite how dangerous it might be to do so.
“Her name is Tecmessa,” Father begins, unable to look his son in the eye. “A foreign girl, whose family is more than willing to provide a sizable dowry for, and thus ensure your siblings to be fed for a while.
“You’ll become man of the house, of course, and will be taking care of the business I have. You know your way around most of it already, so no trouble there. I was thinking of making an investment with some of the dowry, to have some other source of income other than our fields, though that is up to you.”
Ajax is also unable to look Father in the eye. Whatever words he has left to say float past his ears and land where the ashes of the fireplace do. His hand itches for the letter still on his person, though he knows better than to take it out in front of Father.
Finally, when the sound of his voice dies down, Ajax stands abruptly and makes his way upstairs. The room he shares with his brothers is empty, which means Mother must have taken them to bathe.
Father hasn’t followed him up, and he doesn’t waste a single minute—he pulls up the floorboard hiding his letters and drops them all onto the mat he sleeps on, looking around for a bag to stuff them all in. The one he used to take to the market with Father finds him easily enough, and in go the letters, not a single one left behind.
He will not, however, go without a final goodbye to the girls that have kept his dreams alive for so long, girls who do not have the same luxury of running away as he does.
Parchment, ink, quill. He scribbles quickly, hastily, forever worried that his brothers will come running or that Father will have even more to say to him. His name is barely recognisable at the end of the page, but it’s there, and he places it carefully into Anya’s apron.
The stairs don’t even creak as he makes his way downstairs again, Father at the table nursing a drink. He has not been bad to him. But Ajax cannot let this happen to him.
He swipes a couple of coin from the pouch by the door, just in case. Ajax tiptoes out through the back door, spying his elder sisters out in the fields, under the shadiest tree, comforting each other.
They do not see him, and he is glad. He needs all the strength to run away that he can muster, and the offer of an embrace from any one of them is not one he could refuse.
With one final look at his childhood home, Ajax begins to run.
The journey to Diluc’s home is not a short one by any means, but it is one he remembers very well.
Very few times has Father’s business taken them all the way to Mondstadt; despite it, Ajax has forced himself to remember every detail of the road that leads to Dawn Winery, every painstaking breadcrumb to follow.
He has wondered, in his journey, if Father raced after him the moment he found out he was gone, or if he thinks Ajax will still come back. Or perhaps Father is glad he will have one less mouth to feed, even if the cost is Tecmessa’s dowry. Still, in spite of all the scenarios he might dream up, Ajax knows deep down that no parent wishes to lose a child, no matter the circumstances.
His feet are beginning to hurt even after managing to secure passage through Fontaine with a very kind doctor, who refused to take any sort of payment for the shared use of his carriage. Really, the first thing he should have done was use the coin he stole to secure some shoes that wouldn’t give him quite so many blisters.
It’s fine. He’ll be past the outskirts of Mondstadt soon, and then Dawn Winery will only be a few winding slopes away. Ajax has made worse treks before, in the freezing cold hours before sunrise, going ice-fishing.
He doesn’t even remember the last time it was just him and Father ice-fishing before dawn was even on the horizon. Once Teucer learned to talk, all three brothers would be out there on the ice, learning how to hold a rod properly and what bait is the right bait to use.
Morepesok was small, yes, but it was quaint, in the positive definition of the word. Ajax knew every crevice, knew which month which fruit trees bloomed in, knew the things easily missed by other villagers.
He didn’t want to leave that behind. He still doesn’t want to leave it behind, but he has to do the brave thing. He has to choose love.
And at last, when he is sure all of his breath has left him and there is blood soaking the insides of his shoes, over a hill he spies the outline of Dawn Winery in the blistering sun—once more, Ajax begins to run.
Tightly he holds onto the bag that has never left his side, the letters having kept him company during the days it has taken him to reach the very thing he has been running towards.
Flaming red hair is visible in the vineyard, talking to a maid, and Ajax’s breath returns to him. His heart thunders as he continues to run, overwhelmingly able to make out the shape of the bones in his legs and where in those bones does it exactly ache.
He cannot bring himself to care. He is here, having chosen love, and as he gets closer, that flaming red hair turns around to face him. Straight into the grapevines he hurtles, until he is throwing himself into Diluc’s arms, branches snapping around them and leaves flying into the air as they land on the cold ground.
“I’m here, I’m yours,” Ajax begins, before Diluc might even have a chance to ask what is happening. “I’m choosing you in this life, no matter the risk. Please choose me.”
Diluc readjusts their position so he can actually see his love. He is somewhat battered and bruised, like an apple that has fallen out of a seller’s cart on the way to the market, but still devastatingly sweet.
In haste, Ajax takes out all of the letters he has with him, tens and tens tumbling onto the ground. Diluc can’t help but reach out for them, whispering, “You kept them.”
“Under my floorboards. Every single one,” he breathes, their legs tangled up uncomfortably.
They share a spur-of-the-moment kiss, hungry but short, hoping any onlooking servants have turned their heads by now.
Diluc takes his hand. “Why don’t you come inside? We have much to talk about.”