Work Text:
Reading people is not so different from reading books, Kaeya thinks, as he gazes across the table with his hands steepled in front of his mouth and, exceptional though she is, Lumine is no exception to this. For all her mysteries and secrets, the Traveler has a glass face when it comes to calling people on their nonsense, and anyone who has ever stood in her presence will tell you she is not ashamed of that, either. She is as straightforward and unpretentious as he is shrewd and cynical and, honestly, were he illiterate he would be able to read the incredulity in her eyes.
"Really?" she asks, though it's hardly a question. "Both lawachurls?"
"Cross my heart," he replies, dragging his thumb over the left side of his chest. She blows a raspberry.
"Then I think you haven't one," she laughs with a shake of her head. "I'm calling shenanigans on this one, Captain."
"You wound me, Traveler," he says with mock injury. "I'm telling the truth! I defeated two Stonehide Lawachurls at the same time when last I visited Liyue!"
"Why were you alone in another nation anyway?" she asks, the soft lighting of the sconces on the wall reflecting red and gold in her eyes. "You shouldn't be going on dangerous missions by yourself, and Minlin isn't even in your jurisdiction."
"Can't a man take a vacation without being interrogated?"
"Kaeya, you are allergic to taking time off."
"It's true, I break out in hives."
She hides a snort of laughter behind one hand.
"One day I'll get a straight answer out of you," she says, and he rests his chin in his palm, his elbow on the table.
"Keep telling yourself that."
He polishes off the last of his drink and then gestures to hers, which is now mostly melted ice.
"Can I buy you another round?"
"It's getting a bit late, isn't it?" she says. "Paimon abandoned us to go crash in the teapot an hour ago." Her eyes narrow playfully. "Besides, I think you've had enough."
"I am not as think as you drunk I am," he says with very clear and deliberate articulation, having had only one Death After Noon and two hard ciders, a much lighter tab than he might have partaken of, say, three years ago. "Diluc will be making last call any minute now," he reminds her, "so if you do want something else, speak now or forever hold your peace."
She hems and haws for a moment. She had only had one drink in the first place, nursing the same glass of cider for nearly two hours now, but he knows she doesn't really drink much, anyway. The fact that she'd ordered something alcoholic at all speaks to how things have changed over the past few years; she used to always insist she didn't imbibe, but the last several times she's made a stop in Mondstadt and deigned to join him for a drink, she's actually joined him for a drink and, while he's delighted to have her share in this pastime, he'd be lying if he said it didn't worry him that she'd very abruptly decided she imbibes after all. She hasn't said anything about it, but that straightforward unpretentiousness gives away, sometimes, that she is not so unflappable as she appears.
"Did you know that there was once a Mondstadter of great renown," he says with affected pomp, getting to his feet and gesturing with one hand, "a brilliant scholar who, despite all his knowledge, was still so dissatisfied with his life that he made a pact with a demon to trade his soul for infinite knowledge and all the pleasures of the world?"
"Then it's a good thing I am neither a scholar nor inclined to negotiate with demons," Lumine replies matter of factly, giving him a dubious look. "Though I fail to see what brought that to the table."
Kaeya shakes his head. "I'm saying," he says, "that a man was willing to sell his soul to enjoy the good things life has to offer, and you're turning down a free refill?"
"Fine, fine, I'll have a refill," she laughs, wadding up a napkin and throwing it at him. "You are ridiculous."
"Atta girl," he says, swiping up her glass and heading to the bar counter, where Diluc pointedly ignores him for twelve seconds, wiping out the inside of a stein, before lifting his eyes and then his eyebrows in inquiry.
"Back again?" he asks, glancing at the clock. "You have sixteen seconds to order befo--"
"One Fruits of the Festival and one Sparkling Berry Juice, if you would be so kind."
Diluc stares at Kaeya for a moment, then cranes his neck to look at Lumine where she's still seated, currently attempting to fold one of the napkins she hadn't thrown at Kaeya into a bird of some sort.
"Did you lose a bet?" Diluc asks, deadpan, and Kaeya's eye wings toward the ceiling.
"Really? Here I thought you'd be proud of me for abstaining somewhat." Kaeya crinkles his nose. "Or are you just afraid you'll lose your best customer?"
"I could serve nothing but water and you'd still be in here every night giving me hell," Diluc says plainly, mixing the two soft drinks. He slips a slice of lemon to the rim of the berry juice and then frowns at Kaeya as he pushes both drinks toward him. "I'm out of the little pinwheels."
It's so impassive and so serious that Kaeya just laughs, taking the beverages back to the table and sitting down across from Lumine once more, sliding the red drink toward her. She looks puzzled at first, then looks at Kaeya's drink and waves a hand.
"I didn't mean you had to actually stop," she says sheepishly, and he shakes his head, taking a sip of the sweet, fruity drink.
"Gotta keep Diluc on his toes somehow."
Her smile fades as she drops the slice of lemon into her drink, twisting the straw between her fingers, and Kaeya knows that look.
"Mora for your thoughts?" he asks mildly.
"I wonder if it was worth it," she says after a pause, and Kaeya arches one eyebrow. "Ah, I mean... I wonder if that scholar who sold his soul for earthly pleasures was happy with how the arrangement panned out," she says, her expression grim. "I don't think a soul is something that should be bartered, I guess."
"It's just a fable, you know?" Kaeya chuckles. "I'm pretty sure the only valid currency in most transactions throughout history has been mora." He hesitates, taking in the severity of her posture as she swirls her drink again, and then nudges her foot beneath the table with his own. "What's really on your mind?" he asks.
She glowers, shaking her head again.
He waits.
After a moment, Lumine hefts a sigh and looks up before her eyes focus on the middle distance between them.
"There's a fable about souls where I grew up, too," she says, and he smiles with rare sincerity. She doesn't talk about her past much, so he's always touched when she deigns to share part of it with him. "When the world was new, and the gods created the first humans," she says, "they all had two faces, four arms, and four legs, and were whole and happy and content."
Kaeya looks down at one hand, wondering if four arms would be more useful in combat or if he would just end up slicing one of them off trying to hold multiple blades at a time.
"After a time, however, the gods began to fear what they had created," she continues. "They feared the strength and hope that people had, that with no strife or unfulfillment in their lives, humanity would rise up and overthrow them."
"To be fair," Kaeya says, lifting one finger, "I, too, would be rather intimidated if everyone had two faces and eight limbs."
She throws another napkin at him.
"Overcome by this fear of their creations, the gods decided to split everyone in half," she says then, "creating humans as we know them now, with one face, two arms, and two legs." She sighs again. "And only half a soul."
"Half?" he echoes, taking a sip of his drink.
"Thus did humans from then on spend their lives in search of that which would complete them," she says, and it sounds rote, like the repetition of a story told many times at a bedside, "their souls never at peace until they found the part they had lost when halved."
"Surely you don't actually believe we've all only half a soul," Kaeya says after a beat. "The concept of a 'soul mate' is something that exists in most sentient cultures, I think, but I hadn't pegged you for the sort to subscribe to that kind of romanticism. Or inherent despair, for that matter."
"I don't know that romance has anything to do with it," she says, "but I think there's merit to the idea that a person can feel incomplete without someone else."
"Well, sure," Kaeya says, "but isn't the violent sundering of the spirit going a bit overboard to describe the loneliness of the human condition?"
Even as he says it, the bitterness of hypocrisy overpowers the taste of his drink. As if he himself hasn't wondered, many times, how many lost and lonely pieces the souls of his people have been shattered into over the centuries of their unnaturally long lives.
Lumine falls silent, folding her arms at the edge of the table, frowning into that middle distance again, and Kaeya feels a pang of compunction. Impulsively, he reaches across the table and lays a hand on her forearm.
"Forgive me," he says, "I didn't mean to invalidate your thoughts." Really, he had only meant that the idea of going through any part of your life with only half a soul felt far too sad, but it may be a bit late for clarification now.
She stares at his hand on her arm, or maybe she's staring at the table, but she's so quiet for so long that he's worried for a moment that he's actually upset her; despite a reputation for being unflaggingly fearless, Kaeya is genuinely frightened by the thought of losing the confidence and trust of the people he has come to care for. He opens his mouth to say something more, to reassure her that he never intended to trample her feelings with his own, but he finds words have suddenly failed him. Before he can regroup to try again, though, Lumine lifts her hand to place it gently over his.
"For centuries," she says quietly, without lifting her eyes to look at him, "I was certain that my brother was the other half of my soul. I thought I had really lucked out, being born a twin. I thought, 'I'll never be that lost and alone,' because how could the piece that completes me be anyone but him, you know?" She pauses for a beat, then shakes her head. "What if I've been wrong this whole time?"
"L-Lumine, I didn't--"
"What if I'm wrong?" she says again, interrupting him, though her voice is still quiet. "The whole point is that your other half knows you better than anyone, lifts up your strengths and compensates for your weaknesses in a way no one else can, right? But how could he be, when we're separated this way? When we've failed to even understand one another for this long? If he was truly the other half of me, we would be working together to save this world from whatever is coming for it, not facing one another down from opposing sides."
Her voice catches in her throat, and her fingers squeeze around Kaeya's hand, and when she does finally look up at him, there's a shadow of such lightless doubt in her gaze that it steals his breath from him, her eyes shining now with tears she can never seem to let herself shed.
For all the well-scripted pontification and cavalier off-the-cuff extempore that has so often saved his hide in a pinch, Kaeya suddenly can't find the words he desperately needs to comfort his friend, and this vexes him, because he understands far more than he thinks she realizes. There had been a time when he could start a sentence and Diluc would finish it, when he could think something and Diluc would somehow voice it, when he was so certain that Diluc would have crossed the Abyss itself to find him if he needed him. There had been a time when Kaeya had been so certain that his connection with Diluc was utterly unbreakable, until the night it had shattered like glass into so many pieces he's not sure it will ever be whole again.
He wants to tell her this, to promise her that his apparent lack of faith in the idea of that kind of connection has further context and no bearing on the indelible link she has with her kin, and he just can't find the words. When she blinks and the tears finally spill onto her cheeks, leaving her scrambling to swipe them away with the heel of one hand, he quickly slides out of his seat to move to her side of the table, sitting beside her in the hopes of hiding the despondency on her face from onlookers. He recognizes this grief all too well, knowing exactly how quickly it can rip you from your mooring, leave you stumbling as if expecting there to be one more step at the top of the staircase. He's been aware all along they have this wound in common and never brought it to the table, because it never felt like his place to do so, but when she drops her forehead against his shoulder and quakes like her very foundation is cracked and crumbling beneath her, he thinks maybe he should have mentioned it long ago.
"What if it's you...?" she asks, her voice barely audible, and he startles a bit.
"Me?" Him? An exile from Khaenri'ah? The missing piece of the illustrious Traveler from a distant star?
"We've lived such very different lives," she says softly then, "and yet so many of the broken pieces of yours seem to be the same shape as the broken pieces of mine."
Maybe he never actually needed to bring up how their stories have overlapping themes, only to allow her an avenue to do it herself. And maybe that's the only prerequisite this sort of fabled thing really requires, anyway.
"You're right, of course," he says, draping his arm carefully around her shoulders, "and really, I hate that we have this in common. I hate that you know what it feels like to believe that someone knows you better than anyone, only to have one tragic moment leave you doubting they ever knew you at all. I hate that you've probably spent as many sleepless nights as I have wondering if that person is even still alive, if they're suffering, if they ever wonder about you in turn... wondering if the gap that's grown between you can ever be bridged again." He hefts a sigh and stares at the dark red juice in her glass, at the way the lemon looks stained orange against the ice. "Grief is an unbearable burden, but as much as I hate that you know the weight of trying to shoulder it alone the way I do, I'm relieved and humbled by every ounce that you deign to let me help you carry." Maybe the words he was scrambling to find aren't really so deep and complicated as he'd thought. "What I meant before was that maybe the idea of only being half of anything in the first place is a cruel and flawed mythology anyway."
She sniffles sharply and lifts her head, and he meets her puzzled gaze with a gentle look.
"Basing your own cardinal integrity on the presence of another person," he says, "sanding yourself down to try and fit into the spaces someone else has left empty, that's a bit of a disservice to you both, isn't it?" He reaches to brush a stray lock of hair away from her cheek, swiping his thumb over the dampness left on her skin. "If the gods are so afraid of a life lived undivided and with agency that they have to instill in their people a constant fear of being only half of who and what they truly are... is that not proof positive that the strongest thing anyone can be is whole by their own admission?"
Lumine stares at him like she's looking for the meaning of everything in the star of his eye, and then her shoulders square and she gives a sigh, sitting up straight again and gingerly sweeping her fingertips over her cheekbones.
"Only you could find fault with the origin myth of someone else's world and make it inspiring, Kaeya Alberich," she chuckles hoarsely.
She reaches for his hand, threading her fingers between his, and he marvels a moment at how these hands that have saved so many people, saved entire nations, brought down primordial monsters and ancient idols alike, are small enough to be eclipsed by his own, by the hands of the abandoned hope of a fallen kingdom that died more than half a millennium ago.
"Whether I'm wrong about my brother or not," she says then, "whether it's a fallacy to believe I'm anything less than complete without him or not... I do think that there are fragments of me that have been lost to time, fragments of all of us that get worn away as we struggle to find meaning in what we do, in the things that happen around us." She looks up at him again, and that straightforward and unpretentious light has returned to her eyes, assuring him that there is no ambiguity to her words. "So maybe we're whole, maybe we're not, and maybe the human condition is inherently kind of lonely, but either way, I know I'm stronger with you beside me to shore me up when I falter."
Kaeya smiles and leans back a little, lifting his chin to give her a wise look as he reaches across the table for his drink and gently knocks the rim of it against her glass.
"I think," he says, squeezing her fingers still threaded between his own, "that being the other whole in something greater than the sum of broken halves doesn't sound so bad at all."
