Work Text:
“Look, I- I don’t want to hurt you,” Kaeya says, voice trembling almost as much as the sword he holds in shaking hands.
Diluc knows this. He knows this as well as he knows himself, after damn near ten years under the same roof. But his hands are still slippery with his father’s blood, no matter how many times he tries scrubbing it off, and he cannot bear it. His brother stands shivering, a cornered animal ready to flee. He is silent, though the light catches his tears as they fall. Here is the boy once too scared to eat all the food on his plate, the hopeful young squire without a training partner, the newly-made knight standing stock-still as he realises he was too late to help. A little sob escapes him, a small, pathetic sound that makes Diluc hesitate. He looks smaller than usual, curling in on himself like he always used to. He expects a fight. That much is clear.
What Diluc wants to do is forget his brother and let his actions do what words cannot. What he does instead is look away, ashamed of his sympathy. Kaeya’s good eye is full of pain, frustration, guilt. The other burns like liquid gold. He schools his expression, readies his sword. There is no time for apologies.
Crepus Ragnvindr was a good man. A loyal man. He will not let his father’s name be sullied in such a way.
Diluc does not remember reaching for a weapon. He does not remember the split-second decision to act against his brother, this traitor to their family and all they have built for him. He does not remember the way the way the tip of his blade rended flesh, nor the sudden heat coursing through it. What he recalls is a high, piercing scream, and the sound of Kaeya’s sword clattering to the floor as he claps a hand against his eye. Through the haze of white-hot rage he sees his brother reach for his weapon again, hand scrabbling against the floorboards as he searches blindly, desperately.
Kaeya raises that flimsy, standard-issue sword a final time.
The day Diluc received his Vision, the world burnt scarlet. Now everything is engulfed in freezing blue.
-
With his father’s blood roaring in his ears and his shirt smeared and sticky with Kaeya’s, Diluc does the first rational thing he can think of, and storms off somewhere secluded. He won’t go to the Gunnhildrs. That is Kaeya’s respite, and he will not disturb it. The unsteady peace he knows Jean will try and broker is worthless. Too much blood has been spilled tonight. Kaeya’s wounds can’t be healed with heartfelt conviction alone. No doubt it’ll do him some good, Archons know Kaeya needs that care, but Diluc saw what he’d done. The terrible burns, that gaping wound… It’ll be a miracle if he isn’t blinded. The feeling of Kaeya’s blood clinging to him mingles with the ghost of his father’s, that sensation of his hand steadily growing cold. He’s not sure what hurts more.
He runs not because he is scared but because he is guilty, damned by the rage that burns through him. His first instinct had been to reach for Kaeya. Kaeya, cowering, sobbing, the fear in his eyes (eye, he reminds himself, because look what he has done to the other one) more terrifying than the drake he'd fought no more than three or four hours ago. Kaeya with blood trickling down his wrist, seeping through the gaps in his fingers. Diluc hadn't trusted himself to look closer.
He hopes Kaeya will survive this. He cannot live with the guilt. To kill his father and then his brother would be an unforgiveable crime, regardless of circumstance.
Diluc stumbles through the undergrowth, carving a wayward path towards the city. There, perhaps, he will have time to think.
-
Kaeya sits on a bed that’s too pristine, in a room that isn’t his. Vision in bloody hand, eyepatch replaced by the bandages Jean so carefully wrapped, adamant to help him herself, he wonders whether this is his own fault. He never stood a chance against Diluc, with his captain's skill and his soldier's strength. What is he besides quick on his feet and too good a liar?
His hands are still trembling. Jean made him stay, though he is too numb to appreciate her concern. It’s the cold, surely. It has to be the cold. The alternative scares him - burns are tricky things, she had said, hard to heal and difficult to assess. They’re not so bad. He can hide them eventually.
It’s the eye that worries him. The irony almost made him laugh when he recounted the fight, as if there wasn’t blood running down his arm, congealed and sticky, and his clothes weren’t in tatters. He’d been more than a little delirious. She’d had to prise his hand away from the ruined socket and make sure he didn’t make a run for it. It had happened before, when he was small enough to be afraid.
She hadn’t let him look at it properly. He wasn’t so vain about his appearance, but then again, that final strike had cut deep. It wouldn’t do to let it fester. He understands that, in a twisted way, his brother (can he even be called that, now?) was grieving and angry and terrified, and he’d always preferred to burn away his fear one way or another. Kaeya had just been the unfortunate target. A drake, a dying man, his own brother. Diluc’s emotions, unfettered, unyielding. He supposes it’s only natural that things ended how they did.
He knows he’ll see Diluc again. He never was one for goodbyes. Or apologies, for that matter. Kaeya will bide his time, wait for his brother to come home. Whether Diluc returns a hardened soldier or another body to burn is anyone’s guess. He’ll be there when he does.
After all, they know each other too well to part for good.