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There are several things you do not know, so I will begin with something you do.
I love you. For the greater part of my life, I have loved you, and I know that you know. You are brilliant, after all, which I do not tell you often enough.
***
“You come to my tavern to pen poetry?”
“Apologies, Master Diluc. I wasn’t aware you would be tending tonight. Your appearances behind that counter are fickle, at best.”
The evening was quiet; weekdays at Angel’s Share were more often like this, which Kaeya knew Diluc preferred. He wasn’t so accustomed to idle chatter as Charles was. Kaeya would have called the way he tended almost clinical, had he not known Diluc’s skills outmatched even the finest bartenders in Fontaine.
Turning the quill pen in his hand, Kaeya observed Diluc from the calculated distance placed between them. It was always like this—careful, infuriatingly careful, for to trespass any further over the threshold they’d drawn long ago would beget disaster. This was something they both understood. It was difficult to keep himself from making attempts.
Diluc said, “Should I also apologize? For tending to my own business.”
“No,” said Kaeya, “and in fact, I must say that I’m glad to see you.”
This gave Diluc some pause. “Glad, you say.”
“Inspiration.” They regarded one another with a degree of uncertainty. Lines were not crossed; they still existed as separate things, when long ago they had been but one. “You provide me inspiration.”
***
This isn’t the first letter of its kind. I have spent years putting your countenance to paper, with my love the ink that shapes visions of you in my mind’s eye. Long have I looked at you and wondered after your beauty, whether you were a descendant of the sun itself—ethereal and grand.
Through this wondering, I would think. You might say I think too much, and you wouldn’t be incorrect. It is a pastime that has taken me from the quiet hours of evening to the small hours of morning—possessed me like a phantom seeking revenge. You would also say that I prattle, that I talk just to hear myself, but my silence would be yours if I knew it was what you wanted.
You enjoy my voice. I would read stories to you when we were children.
I wondered what you thought of me then, what you think of me now, and whether your honesty extends that far. Most would call you forthcoming and candid. They cannot swim your depths the way I can. Anyone else would suffocate; I breathe only because you do.
You don’t want that for me. Long ago you set me free, severed that which once bound us. What you failed to realize was that my wings were already clipped. I cannot take to the skies the way you did, not without someone to guide my hand.
No one but you has expressed a willingness. We both know that you know me better than anyone else in the whole of Teyvat. I love that, too, the way you have attuned yourself to me. In the absence of your beauty and favor, it is a part of you I still keep—your knowing.
So, in this, I ask—do you also know what comes next? I imagine you must. From the day I first set foot in this blessed land, from the day we first met—when our hands were still small and our minds smaller—this has been an inevitability. I have spent much time running, more than I’ve said.
***
“Inspiration,” said Diluc the next day, having made an appearance at a weekend market. His presence startled several, most of them accustomed to either seeing him behind the bar in Angel’s Share, or not at all.
Kaeya knew better; Diluc was the sort who enjoyed lurking, away from the public eye. It granted him the anonymity he both needed and desired. To see him here now, however, in the light of day and having purposefully approached Kaeya—something seemed different, off.
“How good to see you,” Kaeya greeted. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“I wanted to know what you meant last night.”
“Ah,” said Kaeya, “you’re saying you came all the way here to see me? How flattering.”
It sometimes seemed that Diluc was a man kissed by the Heavens, and for that, Kaeya envied the gods. Diluc flushed a richer color, not so vibrant that it yet matched his hair, but it nonetheless tickled Kaeya senseless. Diluc said, “I just hadn’t taken you for a purveyor of the arts. I can’t have you slandering my name in pursuit of your ‘inspiration’.”
He’d been made the subject of several stories throughout Mondstadt already; the notion of yet another by no means did anything in the way of impressing him. Kaeya saw the displeased tells in how his brow pinched and his mouth drew thin. By the Thousand Winds, Kaeya wanted so badly to kiss him—never mind that everyone would see, never mind that they were being watched already.
“Slander,” said Kaeya. “That’s your first thought? You’re terribly unromantic.”
“So it is poetry.”
“I never said that. It’s dangerous to make assumptions, Master Diluc.”
Kaeya stepped away, kneeling to brush fingers against the soft, fresh petals of Flora’s daily selection. She had a desirable array this time—some even hailing from Sumeru, per a recent caravan visit. Diluc watched him from a permissible distance and remained silent as Kaeya admired them.
“It isn’t poetry,” Kaeya eventually answered. “Calling it a confessional would be more apt.”
To Flora he handed a few coins, and from her he accepted a dainty yet fine bouquet of Sumeru roses; to Diluc, these were given. The exchange drew a few muted whispers and intrigued looks. Diluc, who always remained at his most attentive, seemed now to be caught off-guard.
He said, “I have no need for these.”
“They’re for Adelinde. Give her my regards.”
“Pass them to her yourself. You’re not barred from the manor.”
Kaeya said nothing—only smiled and bowed his head, departing once more for Favonius Headquarters. There were arrangements to be made.
***
I have met a man not too unlike myself. You already know him. He’s also like you, in that you are both terribly quiet and annoyingly brooding, but he lacks your sense of subtlety. It does not take a brilliant mind to look at him and ascertain he has seen Hell and survived it.
I admit to you something: he frightens me, yet he seeks answers I have long tried to pretend I do not wonder after, also. There is another truth written here—that I know very little about myself. Yours is a history penned in numerous records and lauded tales, a family name that begets celebration. I envy the Ragnvindr legacy. It is tangible; it exists in the mere fact of your presence.
The Alberichs should have been the same, and perhaps they once were. All that remains of them now is me. Pathetic, isn’t it? That history is as fickle as you, except you at least show yourself from time to time.
***
“You were speaking to him—that man from afar.”
“He has a name.”
They stood together outside Angel’s Share, evening having already fallen across Mondstadt. The moon didn’t illuminate the city as it would have usually; clouds gathered in front of it, blocking its soothing glow. Kaeya still turned his gaze there. The dark seemed a reflection of how he felt—uncertainty lurking in the corners of his person, of whatever heart he had left.
“Well,” said Diluc, “he’s not bothered telling me. He doesn’t seem one for conversation.”
“Says you?”
“I’m conversational,” Diluc argued, “when it serves a purpose.”
Kaeya breathed a laugh and leaned against the building, sparing Diluc a long, inquisitive look. “I seem to remember you once enjoyed rambling. Had it down to an art form. There were times I could hardly keep up with what you were saying.” Before Diluc could respond, Kaeya added, “I enjoyed every moment. Yours was a voice that seemed to me a song.”
From beside him Diluc made a sound—something that seemed both strangled and startled, a note that caught in his throat. When Kaeya looked, Diluc had turned from him, already heading back indoors. He denied Kaeya his face, but even through the dimness of the night Kaeya could see the change of color in him.
Diluc muttered, “You’re ridiculous,” and, “Whatever business you’re conducting with—”
“Dainsleif.”
“—with him, try and do so away from my tavern. I’ve no interest in incurring further trouble.”
“Oh, but Master Diluc, I thought you lived for the thrill of danger.”
The door shut; Kaeya stood alone, without even the moon as company.
***
You left, once, though you were here in that you remained with my mind as a constant. I think that is when I first understood what the fires you ignited in me meant. Long I had believed them to be the embers of admiration, respect, loyalty, and in a way they were, for those too are aspects of love, and my love for you isn’t some great, world-shattering thing, or the sort of love children would find in their fairytales—it is fact and not fiction. It merely is.
My turn has come. You need not worry about my position among the knights. Jean and I have already sorted through the paperwork, and she has marked it as a leave of absence. That may or may not be the truth. It isn’t my decision to make. The title was never mine to have, anyway. I don’t think Jean would deny you if you came to reclaim it. I know that you won’t, though I wish you would.
***
“You’ve not told him?”
“There hasn’t been an opportunity.”
Jean said, “Kaeya—”
“You act as though this will impact him in some terrible way. He wouldn’t keep me here. I’d sooner think he’d be glad to see me go.”
“—you must know that isn’t true.”
“His truth is his own. Who am I to say?”
***
I will return, one day, and I hope that when I do, it will be to favorable circumstances. Perhaps you will have taken the staff’s advice and married, and perhaps by then you will be the father to an heir that looks too much like you. Perhaps you and I both will be old, and you will humor me with a drink and we can exchange anecdotes the way old men do, and you will laugh when you remember this letter and chastise me for being so ridiculous. In these scenarios, I do not expect you to love me in return. In no scenario do I expect it. I know better than to want—wanting has accomplished me nothing.
Let’s, for a moment, consider the opposite. I’ve already instructed Dainsleif that, should I die, I am to be returned to you. It is imperative that he preserves my heart somehow. You will reduce what remains of me to ashes. I want to be burned by your fire, to be placed on a pyre of your making. Do what you will after that. I have never been anything more than yours.
And, on the chance that I live and return and find you dead before me, I will visit your tomb and tell you of my journey, then die with you, with my head leaned against your gravestone. It won’t please you to know I have envisioned us dying together—that I have envisioned death at all.
But upon all of this I digress. The point I aim to make is that, in some shape or form, in some expanse of time, I will return here, and it will be you that guides me back—a beacon cutting through the ink of night, a flame kindled when the sky is moonless.
***
“Have you finished? Your confessional.”
The quill in his hand was still wet with ink, his words drying into permanence. They were alone in the tavern tonight; an event was being held at the Cat’s Tail, and even Angel’s Share regulars wouldn’t miss an opportunity for unlimited drinks from Diona.
“I thought you would have forgotten about that,” Kaeya admitted after a few moments of dumbstruck silence. “It doesn’t concern you, after all.”
“Anything happening within Mondstadt concerns me.”
“How noble of you.” Kaeya placed the quill aside and gazed a while at Diluc, who watched him in return. “Not yet done, I’m afraid.”
“Then should I suppose that using me as inspiration wasn’t substantial?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Diluc set aside the glass he’d been polishing and re-polishing. He approached and leaned his hands on the counter, looming over Kaeya and his paper, and Kaeya tucked the paper beneath his arm, hiding from Diluc its contents. It wasn’t yet time for him to know—though the day was near.
Kaeya said, “No peeking. This isn’t a collaborative effort.”
“Perhaps that’s why you’ve not finished yet.”
“Oh, my, you’ve taken such an interest, Master Diluc. I’m flattered, I really am—”
“Kaeya,” said Diluc, in a tone Kaeya hadn’t heard from him in a staggeringly long time, “is something the matter?”
Silence thick like a frozen pond befell them; they looked at each other through it, and Kaeya felt his heart in his throat, love thick on his tongue, and before he could think better of it, he laid a hand across Diluc’s, rose from the barstool, and found Diluc’s mouth with his own—a gentle press that at first said nothing of his want, of the way he’d yearned for this opportunity since they were both small.
And then it became something else, with the same hastiness attributable more so to teenagers who didn’t yet understand the tenderness that could come from restraint. Diluc made a soft sound of surprise; Kaeya took that moment, that sweet parting of Diluc’s lips, and slipped his tongue in, tasting the warmth and the wetness he’d envisioned in his lowest, most private moments.
A hand seized Kaeya’s forearm. It was the only resistance Diluc attempted before he seemed to lean into what he’d been given, what he’d given Kaeya, and the two of them were kissing, lips and tongue and teeth—gnashing like the jaws of predators, and neither could hand control over to the other. Diluc’s touch was fire; Kaeya did not fear being burned.
“Something is wrong,” Diluc rasped when they had no other choice but to part. He held Kaeya firmly, preventing an escape he’d rightly predicted. He sounded so serious; Kaeya could only focus on the flush of red sitting deep beneath his skin. “Kaeya—you’re not usually—”
“Not usually like this?” Kaeya finished, having to draw a long breath before he could force laughter up through his throat. “But I am, Diluc—always, in my mind—and somehow your concern is still for me.” He said, “I kissed you.”
“—you did,” said Diluc, his hand falling to his side. “I know.”
“You should be angrier.”
“I know.” Diluc leveled him with a look—one that spoke to scrutiny, to what Kaeya almost mistook as remorse. “Is anger what you want from me?”
He didn’t know—he didn’t seem to know anything, not anymore. “Anger?” Kaeya said, sounding as desperate as he felt. “All I’ve ever wanted was your attention.”
“You have it now. Say your piece.”
***
Diluc—I have remained too long in the Cradle of the Thousand Winds; I am not its child. Lord Barbatos has already been generous in allowing my stay here. Do pass on my regards to him. He really is a fine, amiable fellow. I would have liked to have shared a few more pints with him.
The same goes for you. You’re not one for drinking, but I do wish you had humored me on occasion. Promises of my return mean very little to you, don’t they? You will find them bombast and disingenuous—the fantastical whimsies of a known romantic. Let me not bend your ear; I will not return for you, but for your brews instead. They would prove most welcoming.
I’ve already purchased a few bottles for the journey. Given I will not be in agreeable company, I think they will provide the comfort I seek, as well as glimpses of Mondstadt, of dandelions in the springtime, and of you, stood in your cecilia garden, looking as a rose among alabaster.
***
Dawn Winery was a dark, looming silhouette, this late into the night. Even the few who patrolled the grounds seemed to have gone off elsewhere, and Diluc—Kaeya couldn’t sense his presence, or whether he’d been there recently. It wasn’t impossible that he was back within Mondstadt’s gated perimeters, taking up post on the parapets to scout for possible threats.
If that was the case, he would have seen Kaeya leaving—would have seen that he wasn’t alone—and still hadn’t bothered to stop him. Kaeya knelt, slipped the folded parchment beneath the winery’s front doors, and then regarded his companion.
“Tell me something,” he said, garnering Dainsleif’s attention. “As one grows older, do they become more or less sentimental?”
“You learn to let go of things that couldn’t have lasted, anyway.”
It was a matter-of-fact response; Kaeya had been right, regarding Dainsleif and Diluc’s similarities. They hadn’t the time nor the energy for the usual propriety expected of society. Kaeya found himself smiling, humored and almost comforted that traveling with Dainsleif wouldn’t feel too far from traveling with Diluc. Dainsleif spoke again:
“But your heart does not forget how they made you feel.”
***
It was my hope I could remain here with Mondstadt—with you. I think that hope was childish whimsy, at best. There is no good thing that lasts forever. Even you are not eternal. I remember when I first understood death, how it was another form of departure. I stayed awake that night thinking of my father, and then of you, and how one day you would return to the earth.
I prayed that you would live forever. I prayed that love would keep you with me, that it would see us bound.
That, too, was childish whimsy.
I do not know where my journey leads me, other than away from you. I could not leave without first penning this. I’ve not vocalized love; I doubt I will ever find the chance. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to know, but even now I am a coward, Diluc, and love has made me so. It will be my burden to bear, not yours.
When you’ve read this, I will have already gone. May the Thousand Winds remain with you, in ways that I cannot.