Work Text:
When Kaeya was young, he grew up on stories about the Fatui - the shadows crawling along the cracks of the Mondstadt Walls, the icy reverence they beheld for their Tsaritsa, the unwavering loyalty of foot soldiers who marched away from the motherland into the great unknown. When he was younger, he’d lived it.
—
Kaeya is a Khaenriahn by blood, Mondstadtian raised, Snezhnayan born by the hearth of a blazing flame. There was a doctor, a prospective Akademiya dropout, and a callous bedside attendant.
(How many doctors does it take to deliver an infant? Answer: the pregnant one.)
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Is this the juncture to be doubting me?” Scaramouche scoffed. “I was a midwife in Tartarasuna. Dottore, fucking - breathe.”
Zandik muttered, “Sounded like you were a lot of things in Tartarasuna.”
“I’m a machine. It would have been a waste of resources if I wasn’t put to work.” Scaramouche rolled his eyes. “An efficiency model also appreciated by your creator. Always in a hurry for instant results, this one.” He patted one of Dottore’s propped-up knees.
Dottore heaved, “Why isn’t it coming out?!”
“Chill. You’re not dilated enough. You have a…” Scaramouche checks. “Quite a while to go, actually. You started contractions an hour ago.”
“How long…” Dottore gritted his teeth, “Is this… supposed to take.”
“Anywhere between some hours to even more hours.” Scaramouche said unsympathetically. To Zandik, “give him one of those painkiller things to shut him up.”
Zandik worried at his lip. “Feels too early for that.”
Scaramouche shrugged. “Your call.” Dottore’s breathing was ragged, but he didn’t protest. He had thrown his hand over his eyes. Scaramouche sat back like he was lounging on a chaise with a book in his hand, and Zandik crawled over on his hands and knees to where Dottore was writhing into a pillow, and cautiously stroked his hair.
“Soon,” Scaramouche said, although it remained unclear if Dottore still had the mental faculties to process that.
Eventually they reach the tipping point - it was coming out. Scaramouche barked, “Get ready. Grab that.”
Zandik began to hyperventilate. “I don’t even know what to do with a baby!”
“Which is why you’re the one least likely to run off with it,” Scaramouche said. “I don’t need you to know what to do with the baby. I just need you to hold this pail of water.”
Zandik remained nervous and useless (no different from usual) until the baby popped out like a grotesque fruit. Because he was no different from the infant, he cried when it did, too. Dottore took shuddering breaths and tried to lift his head but quickly collapsed back into the sweaty pillow.
“He looks…” Zandik looked uncertainly at Dottore. “He looks like…”
Dottore was breathless. “He looks like Pierro.”
“Does he?” Zandik said. “I’ve never seen that guy before.” He stroked the baby’s head. “He’s so small.” A giggle. “His hair is blue, like ours.”
Silence. Dottore had slumped over.
“Oh my god he’s DEAD!”
“He’s fine,” Scaramouche said. “It’s just exhaustion. Why were you so skittish as a child? You grow up to be a mad scientist. Act like one.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never made a baby before,” Zandik said. He made a face. “Not like-”
“I get it,” Scaramouche said.
“You were made too, right? What was it like?”
“How would I know?” Scaramouche said boredly. “I wasn’t made yet when it was happening.”
—
Pierro heard the news much later, because Scaramouche didn’t bother to tell him, and then none of Dottore’s subordinates dared to, until the man himself woke fully to pen a letter with his stamp and seal.
In it, the letter wrote: he has your eyes. Congratulations.
Upon receiving the missive, Pierro called swiftly for the child’s other parent. Inexplicably, Scaramouche appeared instead, a bored expression on his face. He had only with him a photograph, which he waved in front of Pierro’s face with a callous smugness. Pierro snatched it from his hands.
Tan skin, cheeks rosy from the cold, the Khaenrihan diamond in his eyes. A wisp of blue hair. Pierro’s lip twisted with disgust, unexplainable to himself. To think he wagered the continuation of his bloodline with the Second, only to find the result abhorrent - a half-breed abomination (seemingly, the only thing Dottore can create.)
“The mission parameters have changed. Abort it.”
Scaramouche narrowed his eyes. “The baby is, in fact, birthed and alive.”
“Oh,” Pierro said, and examined harder at the picture. The infant is swaddled in a blanket with the Fatui emblem.
“Good luck taking that thing away from his mother,” Scaramouche said, and Pierro stared blankly at him.
—
Amongst the Dottore segments, Kaeya remembered Zandik, who remained the closest to his age for the entirety of the time that Kaeya lived with them.
From Zandik, he tried to piece together an outline of Prime - frequently absent, and careless in his disregard for Kaeya’s well-being, but still omniscient and inescapable. Kaeya resented him the same way he missed him. What good was a friend? He thought sometimes, because he wanted a parent, but then he felt guilty, because Zandik played with him; and, it's not as if Zandik had parents who liked him, either.
Kaeya's other parent, though…
“What’s Pierro like?”
“Er, I don’t know,” Zandik said. “You’re my only frame of reference for him. You should ask-” His eyes glanced furtively over the laboratory. “Erm… Beta! Beta!!!”
Beta chided them, “Children shouldn’t be running in the labs.” He was always smiling.
Zandik was always shy around Beta, so he just nodded and said nothing. Kaeya was the one who asked, “Can you tell us about Pierro?”
Beta raised an eyebrow. “Is the wh- ahem - the one who carried his child not available?”
This time, Zandik answered. “Er… He’s always weird about it.”
“Fair enough. There’s no love between them, lost or otherwise, but sleeping with your superior always makes things a little messy. You kids shouldn’t have to worry about that.” Beta made a vague gesture in the air, and laughed, and patted the top of Kaeya’s head.
Kaeya scrunched up his nose. “But why did they-”
“Run along now.” Beta turned away from them.
—
“You are our last hope.” Father’s voice was unyielding, his words clipped, practiced. His hand gripped Kaeya’s tight. The grass was soft and prickly under Kaeya’s naked feet. The dirt was warm. The embrace of Father’s cape was sweltering and yet Kaeya didn’t want to let go.
Kaeya began to cry, and beg, and said he didn’t want to go (which was funny, because he never wanted to stay by Dottore’s side before; he had been so steel and confident, when he had learnt that this was Father Pierro’s plan - finally, a Khaenriahn legacy).
He grabbed at Dottore’s pant leg, little claws digging into the cloth, pinching the thermals underneath. Dottore felt it, and later he looked for the little crescents of his fingernails.
Dottore pried him off. He picked his pen back up and reminded himself of his instructions. He kept his head down, writing - his handwriting begins to get messier, for a moment, as he penned his observations: the subject is crying. The subject is asking to go home.
—
Dottore reviews his notes later, and notices the shake in the lines of his notes. How strange, his handwriting was always so consistent, even with his gait. There, too, was the splotch of water smudging the ink ever so slightly. It was raining on the night Dottore left Kaeya in Mondstadt, he was sure of it.
—
The Fatui was involved in Crepus’s death, Kaeya knew it. The wrong family member came for him - it was raining, he was sure of it.
Dottore breathed, “The Tsaritsa has finally acknowledged you.” His voice held no relief. His hands trembled over Kaeya’s shoulders. “Come back to Snezhnaya with me.”
“I don’t want to,” Kaeya blubbered. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to.”
“You are hurt,” Dottore said evenly, “and feverish, and delirious-”
Kaeya tried to push him away. “My father just died! I have to arrange his funeral!”
“...Fascinating,” Dottore murmured, and Kaeya sobbed harder.
Dottore did not move away and eventually Kaeya curled up into himself enough that his forehead landed on Dottore’s shoulder. When he regained his senses again, he grit his teeth and pushed the man away and said, “I never want to see you again!”
“As you wish,” Dottore said, and Kaeya realized he could not tell (his vision was blurry) which one of them they were, but they stood up, and left him there, and this time the Dawn Winery’s doors were shut to him.
—
“I remember when you were that wee lil thing!” He exclaimed. “Could tuck ya all up in my arms like a rotisserie chicken.”
Kaeya groaned. “I’m not in the mood.”
Eta slung an arm around his shoulder. “Never in the mood to hang with ya old man?”
The lot of his father’s segments - even the younger ones - had seemed much impossibly older (too unreachable) to a young Kaeya. It seemed ludicrous, now, knowing that some of them are stuck in their time and that Kaeya has caught up to them. “...Why do you talk like that?”
“Had a brief stint in Natlan. Funny guys. Terrible place. Dry heat, at least, none of that rainforest humidity, good riddance. I like Mondstadt, temperate. It’s a shame, the people are so boring. What’s with the redhead that’s been tailing me?”
Kaeya glared half-heartedly at Eta. “That’s my brother.”
Eta waved a hand in his face. “I’d have remembered that.”
“No, the family that Prime dropped me off to live with.”
Eta flashed him a partially concealed row of sharp teeth. “Is he nice?” When Kaeya didn’t reply, he put a hand by Kaeya’s cheek and caressed it down his neck until it snuck behind his fur collar, and brushed his burn scars. Kaeya batted him away.
“He’s nice.”
“I’m sure,” Eta said.
“Leave him alone. I’m sure you guys have had worse infighting between yourselves.”
That made Eta snicker. “Truth! We’ll kill each other, one of these days. Want to bet on who the winner would be?”
“Not you, that’s for sure,” Kaeya sniped, and Eta laughed in his face.
“You’re bitey! I can hardly believe you popped outta Prime sometimes. He’s still so bitchy but you’re now so big.”
“Does…” Kaeya chewed on his lip. “Does he ask about me?”
Eta blinked at him. “Was that ever a doubt?”
Kaeya shook his head. “He never comes to visit.”
“Of course not,” Eta said, and explained nothing more.
—
Omega arrived under the shade of Celestia’s shadow in the outskirts of Mondstadt City, and Kaeya pitied the waste of the Knights’ resources, for having sent the night patrol company on a wild goose chase West; so they didn’t go East and have to be murdered for intruding.
“I won,” Omega said, apropos of nothing, and Kaeya recalled the Traveler heading Sumeru-ward. Omega looked a little tan.
“Congratulations,” Kaeya said, and Omega smiled at him, from under the mask. Kaeya wanted to ask him to remove it, but he didn’t. “So, what now?”
“I’ll make another one,” Dottore said, and Kaeya thought about saying, of course. Dottore always did what he wanted. It was a wonder he only had one biological child, and Kaeya wasn’t sure if this was the sort of thing he felt hurt or relieved over.
“I’ll make you a playmate, how about that?” Omega offered, and Kaeya felt something in his heart twist, that he could neither call good or bad. “Delta would have been about your age.”
“...That’s weird,” Kaeya said. “I mean, most people don’t really want their fathers to be… their age.”
Omega shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He wandered off again, less comprehensible than Kaeya ever found him.