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The stars are not unkind—someone had once told him that.
He remembers the words as a fading echo as he steps into the balcony and sees Kaeya there, gazing at the constellations dotting the darkness above them.
Even as a child, there is grace in Kaeya's limbs that turned him into something not-quite human, as if for a moment he exists in between worlds, someplace Diluc cannot reach. As an adult, that grace becomes another weapon in his arsenal, something he doles out with casual carelessness, a cheap trick meant to obfuscate what lies beneath the frosted veneer of the life he has built and the lies he has spun.
Back when the stars have yet to show their hands; when fate has yet to catch up with them both.
Diluc joins him in silence, although it is not the night sky he is gazing at. Kaeya is so still beside him that he could be mistaken for a mirage, his hair spilling down his back like ink, his feet bare. The cloak he drapes across his shoulders to guard against the night chill is Diluc's, a dark and furred thing, blending out the edges of where his body ends and the night begins.
"You know," Kaeya says, turning to face Diluc at last. His eyepatch he has long discarded with the rest of his false front—when their eyes meet, the gold of his right eye gleams bright as a secret. "There are no stars in Khaenri'ah."
Even now the stories he shares about his homeland are few and far between—tales of hardship and survival, desperation and hope, told with such painful melancholy that nothing Diluc could have said in reply would be enough. He laces their fingers together instead, an offering of warmth.
"There is no moon, either, no sun," Kaeya continues, gazing up at the night once again. "No sky."
"I can't imagine what that must have felt like."
Kaeya squeezes their fingers together. "That's why," he says simply. In that moment he is not the Kaeya that Diluc thought he had lost and rediscovered, the sworn brother he grew up with—he is instead the last hope of Khaenri'ah, the progeny of the Alberich royal lineage that once was thought to have been reduced to rubble and dust. His smile, having lost its sharpness, is a bridge between two realms.
“I don't want anyone else to live someplace where the world has ended”, he once told Diluc in the beginning of this armistice. The stars had shone brightly that night, too, crowning Kaeya with their light.
"The stars will shine for Khaenri'ah soon," Diluc says, caressing the cold of the night away from Kaeya's cheek. "We will make sure of it."
Kaeya leans into the touch. "Together."
Together. The future built upon the sacrifices they have made and the blood of gods they have spilled, five hundred years in the making.
"I wonder how it would look like," Diluc muses out loud, his gaze pensive as he traces the stars which make up Pavo Ocellus with a finger. Noctua, he knows, is right by its side. "The night sky in Khaenri'ah."
Kaeya cups his face, puts his lips on Diluc's lips for a long, silent moment, and maybe that alone is an answer, one shaped like a promise and tasted of the sweetness that is entirely Kaeya's own. Their little fingers he intertwines in a gesture Diluc had once taught him in their childhood as he smiles, soft as diamond dust.
"Promise me we will see it together, Diluc."
Diluc's reply is a smile of his own as he brings Kaeya's hand to his lips, pressing a light kiss on his knuckles and the flat of his palm.
"I promise."
✦✦✦
There is no peace treaty, in the end.
It burns to ashes along with the future that Diluc had dreamed of, now blackened with grief. He's bleeding sluggishly from a long cut down his right arm but he cannot feel it, cannot focus on anything but Kaeya—the regret dimming the light in his eyes, the ghost of a mournful smile gracing his lips.
"Diluc," he gasps out, "don't let them ruin this. The sky—" A cough wrenches its way out of his throat, wet and violent. The inside of his mouth is dark with blood. He is getting paler by the second, the trembling of his fingers more prominent.
"Help is coming," Diluc says, urgently, as if his desperation alone is enough to manifest it into being. "We promised, remember? The night sky in Khaenri'ah, we're going to see it together, so please, Kaeya—"
He doesn’t realize that he has been crying until Kaeya lifts a hand to wipe the tears off his cheek, smearing red across the skin. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there."
"Don't say that." His vision is a blur of blue and gold and red; he cannot blink away his tears fast enough for it to clear. "You need to hold on, I—"
I need you to hold on.
Because all the stars in this shared sky, these grand ideals, the things they have fought for are the dreams Kaeya dreamed for his nation, but Diluc, too, had a small, private dream of his own—the dream he dreamed for the two of them. A gentler world to carve their own place in, away from the weight of their destinies; a starlit smile whose light is his alone to keep; an entire life ahead of them, filled with joy the magnitude of small galaxies.
Not this—anything but this.
"Everything will be okay, Diluc." Kaeya's voice is a thin rasp, as if it takes every bit of agonized strength left in him to make a sound. "The stars are still here, aren't they? Not all is lost."
"Kaeya." His voice splinters the way his heart does—into pieces too small for him to gather in his arms. "Please."
Kaeya shakes his head, sucks in a pained intake of breath. A smile graces his face still, and it's unfair how even now, even like this, it is still the most beautiful thing Diluc has ever known.
"Our promise—"
"Don't, please."
"—if I were to fall asleep and dream about it now, would I be able to make it happen in the future?"
Diluc does not answer.
He cannot make a single sound, for Kaeya can no longer hear him.
✦✦✦
The world burns.
✦✦✦
One constellation dims. Another sets itself on a path of collision against fate, a flame burning bright with rage and grief. In a voice bright as embers it pleads: please.
Poor thing, the stars whisper into the dark of the night. Their magic, ancient as it is, cannot change the past—nothing can bring back a life that has been snubbed out, severed from the path they have charted for it. Not even this all-consuming sorrow.
But there is no denying the willpower of this flickering flame, and on the night where the world ends and begins they descend upon the scorched land, caressing the flame with their light.
A blessing, a hope.
Another chance in another lifetime.
✦✦✦
—legends of the star-crossed lovers became part of the collective consciousness, most notably inspiring the Night of the Intertwined Fates festival held at the end of summer solstice in Mondstadt. The National Museum of Mondstadtian History is proud to feature its collection of artifacts depicting this iconic tale, faithfully curated to showcase its many facets—love and sacrifice, hope and tragedy...
"It's a wonderful story, isn't it?"
He startles despite himself. The exhibition is nearing its closing time—he had expected it to be deserted at an hour this late, the way it always had been. His friends had abandoned him a couple hours ago to head to the town square, where most of the festivities are, but he has no need for festival food and colorful trinkets. The sum of his interests are here, in this desolate room: the vast skylight stretched above him; the painting in its gilded frame and its magnetic solemnity.
It is how it's always been, years after years after years. Most do not understand this infatuation of his and he sees no point in trying to explain, because nothing can make them understand how the painting seems to pull him into its gravity. There is something about the determination in its subject's expression that turns it into an enigma, the unknowable center around which many legends orbit, but the feeling it evokes in him is not quite wonder, not quite reverence. Instead it is something he can only describe in the vaguest of terms: an ache in his chest for a promise unfulfilled and a fierce hope that beats in rhythm with his heart in spite of it.
Starcrowned, the placard next to the painting says. The stranger touches it softly, almost reverently.
"It's an awfully lonely painting," the stranger continues without looking at him. "Are you keeping it company for the meteor shower?"
He frowns. "I don't see how it is any of your concern."
The stranger shakes his head, as if in amusement. His dark hair obscures his expression as he takes a seat, his hands crossed primly on his lap. "Look," he says softly, tilting his chin up, "it's about to start."
Above them a trail of light streaks across the night sky—two stars falling together at once, as if into love, their halos intertwining. It fills him with longing so heavy he can feel the shape of it in his throat, a lump he cannot seem to swallow.
When the stranger opens his mouth once again, his voice is colored with the mischievousness of someone who is in on a secret. "The legend is true, you know?"
That makes him turn to face the stranger, only to find himself face to face with a pair of mismatched eyes the color of memories.
Words stutter in his throat; the world is holding its breath.
"Their love runs deep," the stranger begins. "So deep that it compels the stars to bend fate itself, over and over, until the day comes where they can fulfill their promise."
The stranger's smile is vivid as a waking dream, familiar as the recollection of all the lives he doesn't know he has lived. His eyes seem to gleam with the mirth of a star finding its way back to its orbit.
"Nice to meet you.”