Chapter Text
Kaeya’s first task that morning was to commune with the dead.
The man had probably been in his fifties. Skin tags on his neck, a spot of thinning hair scraped over a scalp the color of an overboiled egg. His mouth hung chapped and eternally open, lips purple-blue, and his clothes were simple. Kaeya figured he’d been a merchant, maybe—his fingers stained with black ink. Mostly what Kaeya noticed was the blood, painting the front of the lifeless body like a gruesome mural. The beast that had taken him down had known nothing of mercy.
Jean was grimacing in the way she always did when she was busy trying to convince herself it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. She lifted the end of the tarp and dragged it back over the corpse, coughing into her hand. “I’m afraid the church isn’t letting it slide this time.”
Kaeya exhaled into the cold, clinging air of the coroner’s office. Located underneath the Knights of Favonius headquarters, it was windowless and dim, like a cavern in the catacombs. “I figured,” he said, because of course they wouldn’t. Three deaths like this in one month wasn’t something anyone with the nation’s best interests at heart could afford to ignore. “What did they say?”
She was still grimacing, even as she met Kaeya’s eyes. “It’s something you tell Klee all the time. Never call out to the Wolf God unless you really, desperately need his help,” she said, the smile on her face rueful. “False prayers will drive him to madness.”
Kaeya glanced at the tarp, the edges already stained with blood. “This is pretty damn mad.”
“There’s a way to fix it,” Jean said. “A…purification ritual, they called it. If we return the Wolf God’s soul to the woods, he won’t go mad anymore. Mondstadt will be safe again.”
Kaeya raised an eyebrow, pushing himself off the wall, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “Why does that sound like a euphemism for something?” he said, and Jean looked away, caught. “Really, Acting Grand Master. I’m a detail-oriented man. Tell me exactly what you need me to do, lest I miss something.”
She pressed her mouth into a grim line, well aware that Kaeya already knew what she meant. But this was the game.
“Capture the Wolf God and bring it to the chapel, Kaeya,” she said. “For the sake of Mondstadt, we have no choice but to put the poor thing out of its misery.”
———
When Kaeya reached it, the lights above Diluc’s tavern were off, but the door remained unlocked.
Lit by a single floor lamp, Diluc stood behind the bar, scrubbing the lacquered wood in front of him in tight, rehearsed circles. The spot he cleaned had long since been buffed to perfection.
The air in the Angel’s Share was heavy and warm as a fever dream, decorated every now and then by the jarringly beautiful notes of a piano concerto singing out from the radio. As Kaeya entered, Diluc paused his cleaning long enough to look up. He sighed as if his worst nightmare had just come true. “We’re closed.”
“The sun’s barely set,” Kaeya said, sliding into the seat directly across from him. “Wouldn’t this be the best time to open, if anything?”
Diluc leaned his weight into the washcloth, boring down on it with his forearm. “Not tonight,” he said, and lifted his gaze, his eyes as intense as two boiling lava pools. “I’m going home.”
Grief stuck in Kaeya’s throat, forming a lump it was hard to breathe around. As much as Diluc tried to bury it, Kaeya knew it was the same for him. “It’s not going to hurt any less there than it does here,” Kaeya said, before he could think better of it. At the look on Diluc’s face, he backpedaled. “Look. Can we at least talk—”
“Talk? Talk about what?” Diluc snapped, and his arm skirted across the bar, knocking into a row of glasses and sending them rattling against each other, cacophonous enough to make Kaeya grimace. “What is there to talk about?”
Kaeya met Diluc’s eyes, trying to remember a time when they had regarded him with understanding instead of contempt—but wherever that memory was, it was far away from him now. He reached over, righting one of the wine glasses that had fallen and drawing it close to him. “At least share a drink with me,” he said, “to honor him. It’s what the old man would’ve wanted. You know that.”
“I don’t presume to know anything about what the dead want.”
“Please,” Kaeya said. “Just this once. At least—at least tonight.”
For an awful moment, Kaeya looked at Diluc—wound up tight as an iron coil, a pure, dark energy with nowhere productive to go—and accepted his defeat. Yet all at once, as if he’d decided right then, Diluc turned towards the wine racks. “I’ve spent all day trying not to think of it.”
Kaeya pointed out a particularly appetizing bottle of wine from Diluc’s selection; Diluc raised an eyebrow as if judging his choice, but pulled it down anyhow. “And how has that been working for you?”
He shot him a glare in response, and Kaeya released a hesitant laugh. “As I thought.”
He poured a glass of wine for Kaeya, grape juice for himself. Kaeya nudged his cup forward, and Diluc regarded the offer for a second before begrudgingly clinking their glasses together.
Kaeya sipped in silence, the wine faintly sweet, yet still dry enough to burn his throat on the way down. He gazed at Diluc, studying the way his brows pulled close over his eyes, the faint strain in the hand that bored down into the table. He asked, “Diluc?”
He looked up. Said nothing.
“What are you thinking right now?”
“That’s not important.”
“Because I’ve seen that look before,” Kaeya said, and couldn’t keep the rueful smile from his face. “It’s the same look you used to have when you had to admit to doing something Crepus told you not to do. Like—like you could never forgive yourself.”
Diluc said, “Would you?”
Kaeya blinked. “What?”
But the moment was gone before he could pry further, because in a breath Diluc threw his glass down with a violent clang and gripped the edge of the bar, as if he’d been struck by something. He hung his head, his breath leaving him in short bursts.
“Diluc!” Kaeya sprang to attention. “What is it?”
“Leave me,” Diluc insisted, the words coming out as mostly a growl. He kept his face low. “I’m...I’ll be fine.”
Kaeya watched him meander towards the back exit, all the while still holding onto the countertop as if he’d simply topple without it. “Asshole,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
“Good night, Kaeya,” Diluc said, and the door slammed after him.
———
If you bribed him with wolfhook berries and a freshly-baked loaf of rosemary bread, Wolvendom’s guide just might get you through the forest alive.
That was what the legends said, at least, the advice often accompanied by a pencil sketch of a cloaked old man holding a scepter twice his height. To be fair, Wolvendom’s guide did wear a hood over his head, but he was a far less imposing presence than the legends made him seem.
For starters, he was barely sixteen.
The next day before the sun had licked the last of the morning dew, Kaeya met Razor at the edge of Wolvendom beside an outcropping of oddly-shaped stones. As Kaeya looked on, an eyebrow raised in amusement, Razor tore through the bread’s wrappings and sniffed at the loaf, tearing a chunk from it with the same fervor he would a steak. He hummed in approval, devouring the wolfhooks as if the spikes were nonexistent.
The edge of his mouth still painted with ink-colored juice, at last he nodded his head. “This will do,” he said, and tucked away the rest for later. “Follow.”
Kaeya obeyed, setting off for the shadowy trees with considerably less confidence than the young man in front of him. It was early enough that the moon was still visible in the sky, faded as the imprint of a fossil. They walked for a while without speaking, the only noise the consistent chirping of crickets and the scuff of their shoes over the grass. Every once in a while Razor would stop, turn his nose to the sky, shift direction. All the while, Kaeya kept one hand on his sword. Not because he was frightened, of course. Just to make sure it didn’t slip free during his travels.
“You haven’t asked me any questions,” Kaeya said when he could no longer stand the silence, carefully sidestepping a sudden dip in the earth. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Razor jolted as if he had not been expecting to be spoken to. He glanced over his shoulder, then focused forward again. “No need,” he said, his voice raspy, as if the ends of it had been dragged through with sharp claws. “People have…many reasons to find Wolf God. None of my business, what they ask him.”
“And does he usually listen?” Kaeya asked, nodding his head at Razor in thanks as he held aside a brambly bush for him to pass through. “I mean. Does he give people what they ask?”
Razor stopped walking, turning to give Kaeya a look of genuine, profound confusion. “Wolf God is Mondstadt’s servant. Wolf God has no choice.”
The last word had scarcely left Razor’s mouth before a long, mournful howl split the early dawn. Kaeya jumped, grip tightening on his weapon, but Razor only closed his eyes and listened. As the howl dissipated on the wind he lowered to a crouch, yanking Kaeya down with him. “He is here.”
Kaeya frowned. “I don’t see—”
Razor shushed him, and then he saw. The wolf loped through the fog as though it had materialized from it, its coat a deep, smoky black—obsidian in the rising sun, its eyes like blood red rubies. It resembled a wolf, carried itself like a wolf, but in all ways was a god—towering over everything in its path, striking a strange double-sided emotion in the center of Kaeya’s chest. Awe, certainly. But a fair amount of terror.
The wolf’s mouth hung open just wide enough for Kaeya to confirm it had fangs the size of his index finger, glistening with hot drool. The beast released an eldritch noise deep from its throat. Kaeya didn’t understand why it almost sounded like an expression of surprise.
“He asks you, come closer,” Razor said, his wide eyes regarding Kaeya with only expectation, no suspicion.
Kaeya pretended not to be bothered. “Is it safe?”
Razor nodded. “If it’s true. Your prayer.”
Kaeya didn’t know if death could be a prayer. He stood anyway, and approached the Wolf God.
The wolf’s eyes remained steady on him as he did, and though its hackles rose, guarded, it didn’t move away. Kaeya watched its nostrils work; a low whine escaped the deity’s throat.
“Mondstadt is grateful for all you’ve done,” Kaeya said, keeping his voice low, “but we also know you’re tired. You’re not who you were before.”
The wolf’s lips pulled back. Kaeya heard movement behind him—Razor. He’d realized something was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Kaeya whispered, and as he implored the beast with his eyes he hesitated. Just for a second, the feeling that rose in his throat was familiarity. “Don’t take it personally.”
Kaeya pulled his blade free. There was a cry behind him—Razor came darting forward—but he’d already swung, arcing the weapon across the wolf’s fleshy flank. The wolf released an anguish howl, snapping his jaws, but Kaeya jumped backwards just in time.
The tip of a claymore nudged the center of his back. “Murderer,” Razor said from behind him. “I trust you. Bring you here. And you kill? Destroy Wolf God?”
Kaeya dropped his sword and half-turned to face him. “It’s not enough to kill him, just to knock him out for a while. I need to bring him into the city.”
Razor’s face contorted with disgust. “No. No city. Wolvendom is Wolf God’s home. You hurt Wolf God, you hurt…Mondstadt…”
At the look of utter disbelief on the boy’s face, Kaeya frowned, dropping his hands. “What?” he said, and when Razor still said nothing: “Archons, kid, what is it?”
Razor lowered his weapon, and with his eyebrows pulled close Kaeya turned, slowly.
The Wolf God was gone. A man lay in his place, blood spilling in a dark pool onto the grass beneath him.
The sight of his fire red hair, tumbling loose from its usual ponytail, nearly brought Kaeya to his knees.
———
Kaeya’s back was slick with Diluc’s blood, the metallic scent of it overwhelming his nostrils, enough that he tasted it in his mouth. By the time he reached Dawn Winery he was out of breath, his hair clinging to his forehead in sweaty clumps. The sun was up by then—birdsong, grapevines so glistening green they could have been painted. It was supposed to be a peaceful morning. It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this.
Kaeya burst through the doors, and the moment he was inside he toppled beneath Diluc’s weight on his shoulders, hitting the carpet. “Adelinde!” he called. “Someone!”
The head housemaid poked a timid head out from the mouth of the kitchen. Kaeya expected shock; the two of them were bloodied and weak, Diluc naked and unconscious. Instead, he watched a veil of resignation pull over the maid’s face, as if it were a moment she’d been waiting for for a long time.
She turned her head, snapping at the nearest staff. “Get Master Diluc’s medicine, and a blanket. Perhaps some warm towels?”
Kaeya stared at her in disbelief, slowly picking himself up from the floor. “Adelinde.”
“Master Kaeya,” she greeted, kneeling beside him. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, beginning to clean the streaks of dirt from Diluc’s face. “I would say it’s nice to see you but now doesn’t seem like the time. Can I ask how this happened?”
“Adelinde,” he said again. “You knew?”
The maids arrived with a woolen blanket, a rag, and a small pill bottle, and Adelinde accepted them all with a mutter of thanks. Sweeping the blanket around Diluc’s shoulders, she said, “Hold his mouth open for me.”
Kaeya blinked. “What?”
She shook the pill bottle at him. “The transformation takes quite the toll on Master Diluc, understandably. His body needs this to properly repair itself.”
Kaeya wanted to sink his head into his hands, at least to make it stop throbbing. Instead, he nodded, hinging forward and forcing Diluc’s mouth wide with his fingers. Adelinde dropped the pill down his throat, watching anxiously to make sure he swallowed. She released a low, tired exhale and lifted the warm rag, dragging it along Diluc’s hairline.
“If you’re worried about his wounds, don’t be,” she said. “They’ll heal.”
“Adelinde—”
“Yes, Master Kaeya. I knew,” she snapped, and cleared her throat, straightening her posture. “Try as he might to hide it from me, he couldn’t. I swore to protect this house and this family and that didn’t change when he became the Wolf God.”
“I don’t understand. How could he—how long has—?”
“They want to kill him, don’t they?” Adelinde interrupted. She sat back, the rag clutched so tightly in her fist that water trailed down her apron in a thin stream. Kaeya started to answer, but she interrupted him. “No, don’t call it something else. He’s losing control like he always knew he would, and they’re going to kill him for it. Are you going to let them?”
Adelinde’s gaze pinned him like a butterfly to a wall, holding him with nowhere else to go. He floundered, searching for something to say besides the truth. He sank.
“The Knights have taken enough from him,” Adelinde said. “It’s not fair. He doesn’t have a choice.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Kaeya repeated, frowning. “Everyone keeps telling me that. I don’t get it. What is that supposed to mean?”
For a second, it looked as though she might finally explain, but a harsh cough stole both of their attention. Diluc was stirring, struggling to push himself up from the floor. Instinctually, Kaeya reached for him, helping him upright, relieved and yet still in disbelief. “Diluc?” he said, one hand braced against Diluc’s shoulder. “Are you okay, tough guy?”
Diluc’s eyes were faraway, as if seeing into another plane beyond this one. At last, they focused, the swell of his pupils retracting as his consciousness swept back in. His voice coarse as sand, he said only one word: “No.”
Adelinde sighed, getting to her feet. “I’ll make hot chocolate,” she announced. “I think the two of you are due for a chat.”
—
“I’m sorry.”
Diluc didn’t look at him. He was too busy staring at the growling fireplace and contemplating throwing Kaeya into it. Or maybe himself.
“Obviously if I had known it was you—”
“And now that you know it’s me?” Diluc demanded, and though his voice rose it broke at the end, still a half-baked version of itself. Every transformation left him like this: both himself and not, like parts of him were still sleeping. “Now that you know I’m the one who’s made corpses of the people we’re supposed to protect?”
Silence.
Then: the slow rhythm of Kaeya’s boots on the rug, the muffled taps of their soles as he approached the mantel and leaned against it. “I know you don’t like to tell people things. Especially if people is me,” Kaeya said. “But please. How did this happen?”
Diluc glanced sideways at him, the sincerity in Kaeya’s face only worsening Diluc’s exhaustion. He left the mantel, sinking down onto the cushion and staring into the flames until white spots appeared in his vision. “I chose this,” he said. “Not with all the knowledge of what it would really be, but still I…I asked for it.”
In the moment, the monster looming before them, there was no thought of cost. There was nothing but a plea, maybe spoken out loud, maybe spoken in his heart, but heard nonetheless: Help me save him. Help me save my father. The power had rushed into him then, a tidal wave of pure magic so overwhelming he’d hit the ground. “I still don’t know why the magic chose to listen to me that day,” Diluc said, interlacing and unlacing his fingers, “but I remember knowing somehow that I had to…transform. But I also knew if I did that, there’d be no going back.”
Kaeya had begun to pace before the fireplace, slow and measured, with all the grace of a cat. “This…” He winced. “This was all to save Crepus?”
Diluc nodded. “I saw the direction the battle was going. There was nothing more I could do. Not on my own.”
Kaeya looked at him and away again, the guilt in his gaze palpable. He didn’t have to ask his next question; it was written all over his face, hanging heavy in the air between them.
“When I became a wolf, Father was horrified. Thought I’d awoken some curse—which in some ways, it might be,” Diluc said. He hesitated, the next words trembling as they left his mouth. “He got distracted, trying to help me. The monster—”
“Don’t,” Kaeya said, so Diluc didn’t.
“It was pointless. I accepted this power for one thing, and I couldn’t even do that,” Diluc said. “It’s my responsibility to face the consequences.”
At the window, Kaeya paused his pacing as if to watch the sun. It was high in the sky by now, painting the deep wood decor of the parlor in shades of gold. “Consequences?”
“The same way I first summoned the power is how it works. If someone in Mondstadt sends an urgent plea for help, spoken or not, it summons the wolf,” Diluc answered him. He added, his voice low, “Whether I want it or not.”
Kaeya turned, leaning back against the window. Something like realization crossed his face. “You have no choice.”
Diluc nodded. “It’ll destroy me eventually. It already has. But—”
“Please,” Kaeya said with a sigh, letting his forehead fall into his hand. “If you say another word about this being your penance, I might just burn this place down. You were a kid, Diluc. A kid who just wanted to save our father. That’s not a sin. If I had been there—”
“You weren’t,” Diluc snapped, his eyes hardening. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You weren’t there. No one was there.”
Kaeya set his jaw, his lips pressed together as if he was holding himself back. He exhaled a moment later, his shoulders visibly slumping. “There’s no way to free you from this?”
Diluc studied the floor, almost too tired to even continue this conversation. He’d had some version of it with Adelinde, several times before. It never went anywhere. “Just do what you do best and leave me alone, Kaeya.”
Kaeya scoffed. The edge surrounding his next words was anger and guilt and hurt, all wrapped up into one. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t,” he said. “Jean sent me out here to find the Wolf God. I have to report back to her before tonight.”
“I’m not going. My duty is to Mondstadt, not to the Knights,” Diluc said. He pushed himself up from his seat, ignoring the exhausted twinge in his muscles as he did. “So you can tell her whatever you want.”
“Diluc.” Kaeya’s hand caught his arm. “They’re going to kill you.”
Maybe that would’ve been enough to scare him once, but he’d been too close to death too many times to be wary of it now.
He shook his arm free and was halfway out into the hallway when his heart squeezed violently in his chest, jerking blood into his mouth. He grabbed for the wall and missed, sliding to the floor. Diluc. Whether the voice was inside or outside, he couldn’t be sure. Help me, Wolf God. I don’t wanna die. Help me! Wolf God. Diluc. Diluc—
Adelinde appeared at the end of the hallway, tray of hot chocolate balanced in her hands. At the sight of him writhing on the floor, her face fell. “Master Kaeya, the door,” she said matter-of-factly. “Or he’ll break the window again.”
It was the last Diluc heard before the Wolf God clawed himself free.