Archive of Our Own

He can't breathe.

Everything is muffled, distorted, like the sound of thunder rumbling through his palms pressed over his ears when he was a child, like lightning flashing through the glass, rippled by the rain. Where... where is he? He can't remember.

He can't breathe.

There had been heat (unfamiliar, sharp, acrid--Electro, not Pyro), the smell of citrus and ozone, a loud pop and a feeling of weightlessness. There had been a strange sensation in his limbs, not quite pain, but not not pain, like every muscle in his body had contracted simultaneously, like every synapse in his brain had fired all at once.

Where is he? He can't see, everything is white and blue. He tries to lift his hand to push the distracting whiteness aside, but his arm won't cooperate. He can't move. Bubbles. Water. It's water. That's why he can't breathe... he can't breathe--where is he?

He's back in Snezhnaya, and the ground has just fallen out from under him. He hadn't even realized the battle had moved from solid ground to frozen laketop until the blood-black chains of the Delusion on his hand had sent a web of cracks radiating outward from the point of impact. In retrospect, he supposes that had been the point.

"Come to play?" the Cryo Cicin Mage had giggled, her steps meandering backward, beckoning him to follow.

"Amuse us, then!" her Electro companion had added, her smile hungry as she swung her lantern.

The image of crackling purple light playing jagged shadows across her face is burned into his mind as the ice shatters and he plummets into the frigid depths. The water thrums with Electro, sending his body twisting into itself, his hands clenching into involuntary fists, his lungs already burning as his arms and legs pull toward his core, as if the water itself were squeezing him from all sides. He can hear the mages laughing above him, their voices warbling eerily through the thrashing water, taunting him as they take turns sending bolts of Electro through the water and then re-freezing it with Cryo to keep him trapped.

He can't breathe--he has to escape, he has to breathe, how is he going to get out of this?

Before his panicked mind can recall just how he had gotten out of that situation all those years ago, before he's even been able to recognize that that had been years ago at all, there's a sharp pull between his shoulder blades, yanking him fiercely upward. He breaks the surface of the water with a strangled gasp, and then he's coughing, and there's water in his mouth, and every frantic inhale pulls it right back into his throat and he's choking, he can't breathe--

"--uc! Diluc?"

This voice is... familiar, clear, undistorted by water or the haze of old memories, urgent and sharp but nonthreatening, a blade turned away from him, to defend him, not toward him to draw his blood. Everything is blue and white—not water, not bubbles... sky? Clouds? He's being dragged, and then the water is gone, and the Electro is gone and the Cryo is gone but there's still water in his mouth, running in streams down his hair plastered against his face, and he just can't seem to draw a full breath before he's choking again and the white of the clouds has once more become snow and ice.

He can't focus, can't get his head out of that moment, drenched in that bone-chilling lake water, surrounded by snow for miles and miles, he'll never get to safety before freezing to death--

"Diluc, quit panicking!" the voice comes again, but it sounds so far away.

His body has gone rigid--he's being dragged, did they get him? The Fatui? Where are they taking him? Why do they have this voice? That's wrong, they can't sound like that, this is a trick. They're trying to trick him, trick him so they can drag him away and kill him. He can't let that happen. He can't die now, he's barely nineteen, he's only been here a year, he hasn't done enough, he hasn't done enough, they all have to pay they're all gonna fucking pay, he has to find shelter he has to make a fire he has to dry off he can't die here he has to--

"Diluc."

Ice-cold hands cradle his face suddenly, gently, and he's so shocked that they're so cold when he's been freezing this whole time (hasn't he? Isn't he freezing to death?) that his eyes snap open wide and he sucks in a sharp breath, resulting in another fit of coughing as the hands sweep his wet hair away from his face, out of his mouth. He knows this voice, he knows these hands. Not the Fatui. Not Snezhnaya. No snow, no frozen lake. He's not nineteen anymore, and he's not dying.

He looks up, gasping, like there's just not enough air, and his gaze finally focuses: dark hair, one pale blue eye, an unusually sincere expression of concern.

"There you are," the voice says, the sound echoing strangely as the phantasm of a nightmare long over fades at last. "Man, are you heavy when you're sopping wet."

"Kaeya."

Kaeya looks relieved, like he'd been genuinely concerned for a moment that he didn't recognize him, and then gives a weak smile.

"That's me," he says, and the smile fades. "Are you hurt?"

Diluc lowers his head again, glowering at the ground, at the sand of the lakeshore at the southern edge of the vineyards, which is now sticking to his wet clothes. "I'm fine."

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

Clearing his throat, Diluc wipes at the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand, then groans when his wet glove deposits sand on his face. "Maybe," he says.

Kaeya's eye wings skyward. "I guess I'll take maybe," he says. "What happened?"

Diluc goes to rub at his eye before remembering the sand and stopping himself. As Kaeya's question registers, though, he startles visibly and snaps his head up, shifting to push himself to one knee. How could he have forgotten? He'd been so wrapped up in not drowning that he'd completely forgotten how he'd ended up in the water in the first place!

"Wait, where's the--"

"Easy, there," Kaeya scolds, catching Diluc by the shoulder when he pitches sideways, dizzy. "Maybe get a little more oxygen back to your trigger-happy brain before you do that, okay?" Kaeya reaches out and picks up a thin, white twig, wagging it in the air. "I got the Abyss Mage," he says. "Saw it before I realized you were here at all, until the slimes gave away your location."

"You got them, too?" Diluc asks, staring at the dead Ley Line branch before fixing Kaeya with a look of surprise.

Kaeya looks indignant. "Yes, I got the slimes, too," he says. "What do you take me for?"

"A Cryo?" Diluc ventures. They'd been Cryo slimes, after all.

Kaeya's expression leans into keenly offended.

"I know this will be difficult for you to believe, D, but some of us didn't draw the attention of the gods at ten years old, and instead had to hone our combat skills utilizing primitive hand tools, such as sharpened bits of metal."

Diluc looks away abruptly, embarrassed for some reason. "S-sorry," he stammers. "I should have known that; you're the better swordsman, anyway."

"I don't know that I'd go that far," Kaeya says. "Showier, surely, but better?"

Peeling his wet, sandy gloves off, Diluc rubs his face with both hands.

"You always had speed and dexterity on me," he says. "That's why I switched to claymore, remember? No need to aim."

"Ah, but there's something to be said for how masterfully you hit the broad side of a barn," Kaeya says. "What you lack in precision you more than make up for in blunt force trauma."

Diluc gives him a withering look, and Kaeya raises both palms in placation.

"Come on, I'm teasing," he says. "I do that, remember?"

Heaving a sigh, Diluc cracks the barest hint of a smile. "Yes, yes, I remember," he says, shoving his wet gloves into the pocket of his coat

He hikes himself up on one knee again, pauses to make sure his balance won't betray him this time, and stands carefully. Kaeya reaches for his arm, but then seems to change his mind, withdrawing his hand, and Diluc can't decide if he's... disappointed? That wouldn't make much sense, would it? He notes absently that, even all these years later, Kaeya still wears sincerity the same way he did when they were children: a crinkle between his eyebrows when he's concerned, a slightly clenched jaw when he's upset, posture tilted gently forward when he's incensed. He forgets sometimes that despite how different they both are now, despite how awkward it's been trying to get to know one another all over again, maybe some things don't change much, if you know where to look.

"Odd, though," Kaeya says after a moment, frowning at the Ley Line branch before tucking it behind one ear, as if it were a flower.

"What?"

"I've never seen an Electro Abyss Mage in Mondstadt," Kaeya says, "have you?"

Diluc shakes his head. "No," he says. "That's how it got the drop on me, really--those slimes are there fairly regularly, but I've never seen an Abyss Mage with them before, let alone an Electro one." Cryo Abyss Mages are a common sight in Mondstadt, and Hydro and Pyro aren't terribly unusual either, but he can't recall if he's ever encountered an Electro Mage within Mondstadt's borders, though he's been told there's been one spotted up near the Port.

"The Traveler has told me she's seen an Electro mage or two in Sumeru," Kaeya says, "and in the Chasm, if I remember correctly, but as far as I know, they're rarely found outside of Inazuma." He presses a knuckle to his chin. "Which is a little strange anyway, all things considered. If it was all Electro-aligned creatures, that'd be one thing, but..."

Diluc ponders this for a moment, then posits, "I wonder sometimes why there's only the four of them."

"I do, too," Kaeya says, "and then I consider the ramifications of a Geo Abyss Mage and I stop wondering and find a few blessings to count, instead."

"I suppose that's a compelling point," Diluc says, then shakes his head. “I’m... sure it means nothing,” he adds. At least, he hopes it means nothing. The last thing Mondstadt needs is a wave of new monsters; the ghoulish rifthounds that have cropped up in Wolvendom have been bad enough. "Still... slimes come in all elemental varieties. Fungi... I think specters do as well, and those are also found almost exclusively in Inazuma, but aren't they the only creatures that come in all seven?"

"Hypostases," Kaeya says, and Diluc grimaces.

"Well, thank the archons there's only one of each of those."

"Inazuma has two of them, for that matter." Kaeya gives an exaggeratedly dramatic gasp. "Is Inazuma hoarding monsters?" he asks in a stage whisper, and then tilts his head. "Though... ironically, the Electro one isn't in Inazuma."

"Yeah, Mondstadt has the singular pleasure of housing The Hellish High-Voltage Cube of Cubes," Diluc says dryly.

"Have you ever even taken it on?" Kaeya asks, giving him a skeptical look.

"I did, once," Diluc says, a bit defensive, wondering why they're even talking about this. "Fischl said she needed one of its lightning crystals--or... well, that's what her bird said she'd said; I never can tell what that girl is actually saying. But seeing as how it's immune to Electro, she caught me on my way out of the city one afternoon and asked if I'd give her a hand." He fixes Kaeya with a contemplative look. "I wonder if any of my birds speak Kaeya," he says then, cupping an elbow in his palm. "Could be useful to determine if you're pulling legs."

"I'm afraid the only bird who truly understands me is the mockingbird," Kaeya says, far more seriously than the conversation warrants, "though, you could try your luck with a jackdaw, I'm told they're quite the quick study."

"And here I figured it would be peafowl," Diluc says.

"Nah, too easy," he says, waving a hand. "Besides, you haven't any, have you?"

"Sumeru has very strict regulations about their being exported," he says, and then rubs his face. "I asked the General Mahamatra, when he was here for Windblume, why the rigidity with peafowl specifically." He sighs in the brief pause, then continues, "And he said they'd had too many problems with... 'fowl play'."

Kaeya only barely bothers to hide a snort of laughter.

Well, this hasn't changed, Kaeya is much less shy now than he was when they were boys growing up, but that rapier wit and impeccable sarcastic timing of his haven't dulled at all.

"However did we get so lucky as to deserve three terrible cube monsters within the borders of our simple nation, anyway?" Kaeya asks woefully then, a hand over his heart.

"Is the Cryo one actually ours?" Diluc asks. Despite how inane the conversation has become, he's actually curious, and the border between Mondstadt and Liyue has never really been especially firmly drawn. "It's technically on the Liyue side, isn't it?"

"Mm, but the whole mountain geographically belongs to Mondstadt," Kaeya says with a sigh and a shake of his head. "Alas, we have to claim The Temper Tantrum Projectile-Throwing Cube of Ice Cubes as our own."

"In which case, perhaps we're the ones hoarding monsters," Diluc deadpans, "what, with our having... 14% more Hypostases than any other nation."

"A conspiracy of the highest order, clearly," Kaeya says, nodding, "I'll have to talk to Steve about it right away."

"Steve?" Diluc echoes, and Kaeya purses his lips.

"No one you know," he says, waving a hand. "Not important."

Diluc has a feeling it's a good bit more important than Kaeya's letting on, but... well, whatever. Kaeya can keep his secret sources; Diluc will surely track them all down eventually anyway.

There's a moment's quiet, and Diluc clears his throat awkwardly, suddenly not certain what to say. It isn't even that he finds it especially difficult to talk to Kaeya specifically these days, he just finds it difficult to keep talking whenever any given line of conversation concludes. Ugh, he used to be so good at this. He'd been so charming and eloquent, he'd carried high-class conversation and wielded those oh so important social graces as well as his father had, though he'd hated those stuffy parties, and now? Now he gets barely three sentences into a conversation with someone who by all means should still be considered his partner, for most intents and purposes, and he's already struggling to not feel utterly maladroit.

"So," Kaeya says slowly, and Diluc only now notices that Kaeya is also rather wet after this unsolicited rescue: the front of his uniform is stuck to his skin and the feathery white stole over his shoulder is sagging, heavy as it drips. His hair is wet, too, as is his right sleeve all the way up to the shoulder. Diluc figures Kaeya must have determined that he was trapped under the ice, and actually laid down at the edge of the shelf to submerge his head and entire arm to be able to reach him and pull him out of the water. Shame rives the edges of his soul--he's supposed to be the older brother, he's supposed to be the one doing the rescuing. And yet, even when they were children, it had so often been Kaeya, with his perceptive eye and silver tongue, who had saved the both of them from the trouble his own impulsivity and pride had gotten them into.

"So?" he prompts, trying with little success to brush the sand off his trousers.

"So what happened?" Kaeya asks, and Diluc pauses in his mostly futile efforts, looking at Kaeya sternly. So they're back to this, again. He thinks he preferred the frivolous monster-hoarding discussion.

"You're a smart man, Sir Kaeya," he says, his tone clipped, "I'm sure you can work it out yourself using evidence from the scene of the incident."

Kaeya sighs in that particular way he does when he knows Diluc is being difficult on purpose.

"Yes, using my keen deductive reasoning skills I was able to determine that the Overloaded reaction from your Pyro-wrapped claymore meeting the unexpectedly Electro shield of the mage is what got you thrown in the drink," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What I can't quite figure out is why you stayed there." The crinkle between his eyebrows is back, and Diluc has to lower his eyes; he can't quite bring himself to hold Kaeya's gaze when he looks like this, like the careful, hesitant boy he'd been once. "The ice shelf wasn't that big, nor was it especially thick," Kaeya continues; "Cryo slimes are barely even aware they've trapped anyone at all, they make the ice to traverse it, but you could have broken it if you'd tried. I had to reinforce it significantly to make sure it would hold both our weight when I pulled you up. You've always been a strong swimmer, Diluc, you just as easily could have swum around it, so what happened?"

Diluc just shakes his head. How is he supposed to tell him? How could he possibly tell anyone about what he'd gone through in Snezhnaya? Diluc had stopped caring about the altitude of anyone else's opinion of him the instant he had understood what Eroch had done--he had cast aside his rank and all of the work he'd put into attaining it, because in that moment he had come to the realization that it didn't matter how hard you worked or how much you tried, it didn't matter if your heart was in the right place, or if your heart was in it at all. All that mattered, in the long run, were results, and how those results benefited the narrative that people in power had decided was correct. He had told himself that he was never going to bend the knee to that narrative ever again, and if that meant breaking every hand that was putting it to paper, then so be it. He would become strong enough to rewrite the status quo if he had to write it in his own blood, and he didn't care if Mondstadt didn't like the new, stoic, standoffish Master Diluc, because it didn't matter. All that matters are results, and so long as Mondstadt is safe, he doesn't care if people think he's aloof and unapproachable.

He doesn't need to be Mondstadt's golden boy anymore.

But he can't bear the thought of Mondstadt knowing just how scratched and tarnished the gold he once was is now.

Some things... some things change far too much, and become unrecognizable, he thinks.

"Forget it," he says, shaking one arm and then the other and grimacing at the wet, heavy sleeves. "It's nothing."

"Don't." Kaeya's voice is low and clear as he meets Diluc's eye and shakes his head just once. "Don't say it's nothing. Say it's stupid, say it was a catastrophic failure of your fine motor skills, say, 'It's none of your business, Sir Kaeya, as we are neither friends nor business colleagues'." Kaeya pauses, like he's waiting for Diluc to choose which option he likes best, and he shakes his head again. "But don't say it's nothing," he says then, "because it's pretty clearly something."

Diluc looks at him uncomfortably, hefts a sigh, and looks away again. Kaeya is silent for a moment longer than Diluc expects him to be, and when he can't stand it anymore and lifts his eyes, he finds himself on the receiving end of a scathing glower.

"You don't have to tell me what this was all about," Kaeya says finally, and there's a tinge of injury to his tone that Diluc dislikes, "but... tell me this: will it happen again?"

"N-no!" he stammers reflexively, bristling like a startled cat. "I mean..." He huffs and purses his lips. "How am I supposed to know?" he asks then. "It required a very specific convergence of variables that would be unlikely to exist in the same quantities necessary to replicate the scenario in the future."

"I see you've been hanging out with Albedo again." Kaeya rubs his face. "You know damn well that isn't what I mean."

Clenching his hands at his sides, Diluc feels his face flush with a strange mixture of shame and some infuriatingly awkward emotion he doesn't want to think about. There's no reason for Kaeya to be this worried about him, but he can't attempt to properly explain why there's nothing worth worrying about unless he explains what happened, which he isn't willing to do.

"I don't know," he says finally. "I wasn't expecting it to happen this time."

"Has it happened before?"

Diluc shrugs noncommittally. "Once or twice."

(It's happened several times, just never with such dire consequences.)

"Does Adelinde know?" Kaeya asks, and Diluc makes a face.

"Of course not," he says. "I can't... There's no way I could tell her, or Elzer, or any of the staff, are you out of your mind? They have enough things to worry about."

"Yeah, and you're one of those things, you know?" Kaeya says. "Don't you think they might actually worry less if they knew you were struggling with this? If they knew what to even look for when you needed help?"

"I don't need anyone's help," Diluc snaps, teeth bared, and Kaeya just rolls his eye.

"Right, okay, I'll just go put you back in the lake, then."

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Diluc asks. He's not sure if it's the shame or whatever that other feeling is that has him so agitated, or maybe it's just the clammy heaviness of his wet clothes, but whatever it is he would really like it to stop.

Kaeya's face squinches briefly. "Would you believe me if I said I was just in the area?" he asks.

"No."

"Wow, you didn't have to be that fast," Kaeya says, folding his arms with a harrumph. "Too bad, though, because I did just so happen to be in the area."

"Really."

"Mmhm."

"You were 'just in the area'."

"Yup."

"You, with all your mountains of paperwork that I know for a fact come with your job at your desk in the city," Diluc says, his gaze lidded with dubiety, "just happened to be all the way out here, at the southernmost point of winery property."

Kaeya's lips press into a pout. "Well, sort of."

"Uh huh."

"Ignatz took a personal day," Kaeya explains, folding his arms. "His daughter is sick, so I said I'd cover his patrol route."

"Ignatz's patrol route is the north quadrant of the foot of Dragonspine," Diluc says accusingly, and then stops short. "Wait, Ignatz still has the same patrol route? That was his route back..."

Back before I quit the Knights...

"He's good at his job, D, plus he's got a lot of seniority now," Kaeya says, apparently having no trouble hearing Diluc's unfinished thought. He shrugs his shoulders. "Besides, he actually likes the cold; it's not like a lot of knights are chomping at the bit for the assignment."

"Typical Cryo," Diluc says with a wry chuckle. "I didn't realize he had a kid. I didn't even know he got married."

Kaeya's expression softens. "He married a nice girl from Fontaine about a year after you resigned," he says after a beat, and the very careful phrasing isn't lost on Diluc, "and their daughter Liesl just turned five a few weeks ago."

"I guess a lot changes in the better part of ten years," Diluc says.

"I suppose." Kaeya folds his arms again, arching one eyebrow. "Others change hardly at all, I'd say."

"Indeed." Diluc also folds his arms, then makes a noise of disgust when he's reminded just how cold and wet his sleeves are and puts his hands on his hips instead. "Ignatz's route doesn't even actually come onto winery grounds," he says, fixing Kaeya with a stern look. "You abandoned your post."

"I did n--!" Kaeya starts to rebut, looking comically offended. "I saved your life!" he amends, and the corner of Diluc's mouth pulls up sharply in amusement.

"By abandoning your post."

"Listen, I saw a situation that clearly required knightly intervention," Kaeya huffs. "I strayed from my post in the line of duty."

Diluc might actually be smiling, just a little. "You can't even see this part of the lake from Ignatz's route, Kaeya," he says. "You strayed from your post looking for a reason to happen to be in the area."

"And aren't you lucky I did?" Kaeya asks, lifting his chin, and Diluc balks, then exhales audibly, supposing he can't really refute him on that. Kaeya has always had something of a knack for turning up in the right place at the right time.

"Very well," Diluc concedes. "I guess this time your predilection for knightly inefficiency did, in fact, work in my favor."

"Apology accepted."

Diluc starts to ask where he got an apology out of that, but opts to just let it go. Ultimately Kaeya is right: Diluc can't say with certainty that he would have gotten his head together in time to avoid drowning in the lake in his own backyard, which would have been absolutely mortifying on top of being incredibly inconvenient. Kaeya may well have saved his life today, and there's something sobering about it. It'd hardly be the first time either of them had snatched the other away from the jaws of death at the opportune moment, but the greater ratio of those times had been years ago, when Kaeya had been his lieutenant and they'd been nigh inseparable. It's been a long time since Diluc had found himself in such an imminently perilous predicament in the first place, but the idea that their penchant for seamlessly playing counterpoint to one another had never actually suffered for the distance that had come between them leaves a strange--though not unpleasant--taste in his mouth. Maybe some things don't change so drastically with time after all.

Kaeya seems to have mistaken Diluc's pensive silence for annoyance, however, clearing his throat and awkwardly shuffling his feet.

"Ah, well..." He exhales in a protracted sigh, his cheeks puffing outward. "I should get back to that post I allegedly abandoned, I suppose."

"We... we are," Diluc says then, suddenly, and Kaeya's expression tilts with confusion.

"'Are'?"

"We may not be professional colleagues anymore," Diluc says, "but..."

Kaeya's eye skirts away as he rewinds through their conversation, and it takes every ounce of strength Diluc has to stop himself from grimacing at the very idea of clarifying aloud. Thankfully, it seems Kaeya's memory is as sharp as ever, and it only takes him a moment to retrieve the missing word 'friends', mercifully saving Diluc from spontaneously bursting into flames at the thought of having to outwardly express a single emotion other than austerity.

"O... oh!" Kaeya plants his hand against the back of his neck the way he does when he's flustered. "I... 'm happy to hear that."

"You should come have lunch at the house," Diluc blurts then before he sabotages himself into thinking he shouldn't.

Kaeya looks at him as though he's gone out of focus.

"Huh?"

Squaring his shoulders, Diluc gestures up the hill. "Adelinde was making lunch when I left for a walk," he says, committed to the invitation now. It's the least he can do, right? "She's always lamenting how you never visit."

Kaeya's pouting again. "I visit," he insists petulantly, shaking his head. "I... I couldn't impose, though," he says, "not when she wasn't expecting to set an extra place."

"Because Adelinde has famously never prepared too much food before," Diluc says dryly.

Kaeya fidgets, looking like maybe he's thinking about it, so Diluc just goes in for the kill.

"She was making Spätzle mit Pilzen."

Kaeya's eye widens and he looks up at Diluc, pressing his lips together. "With the...?"

"With the carrot fries," Diluc says, watching Kaeya's resolve deteriorate with each word he says, "and grilled brats." He waits for him to exhibit his foolproof 'hungry' tell and, when Kaeya's hand involuntarily moves to cover his abdomen, Diluc nods toward the road up the hill again. "I bet you didn't even eat breakfast, did you?"

"I had breakfast!" Kaeya insists.

"A handful of candied almonds and a cup of coffee isn't breakfast."

"I had Rote Grütze!" he says, glowering again. "And a fried egg!"

"Together?" Diluc makes a face.

"Well I didn't top the Grütze with the egg, if that's what you mean."

"Rote Grütze is a dessert, anyway," Diluc says. "Why are you eating that for breakfast?"

"Oh, like you're one to talk, Mister 'I Subsist On Grape Juice And Perturbation'."

"Today for breakfast I enjoyed Adelinde's smoked salmon on whole wheat bread with mustard sauce, fresh cucumber and tomato slices, and a rather nice Fontainian tea she's recently grown fond of."

Kaeya sighs heavily and turns his head as if he were exchanging a nettled glance with someone before looking back at Diluc. "How nice for you, not having to cook your own meals," he says, and Diluc grunts in frustration.

"I'm literally offering you lunch cooked by someone else," he says. "But perhaps you'd rather have another dessert cup instead."

"Gimme a break, it's still fruit and... sort-of yogurt, it's close enough!"

"Adelinde would give you hell for the lack of protein in that meal," Diluc says.

Kaeya stands up as tall as he's able, frowning deeply. "I said I had an egg!"

"Kaeya, I'm not gonna twist your arm," Diluc says then, flapping his arms a bit uselessly at his sides and giving him a somewhat bewildered look, "but I think you're protesting a bit more than is entirely necessary."

Kaeya's posture deflates a little. This hasn't changed much with time, either, really. They're both too stubborn and proud for their own good, and they've always had a tendency to try and one-up the other, but Diluc wonders, now, if Kaeya's only digging his heels in so hard for his benefit. He thinks Kaeya doesn't realize that he knows he keeps his distance on certain anniversaries on purpose, that he knows Kaeya only visits The Ragnvindr cemetery plot in the wee hours of the morning when those anniversaries come around, once he's confident any other guests have long gone. He knows Kaeya still blames himself for what happened all those years ago, and he knows he... hasn't done as much as he could, to absolve him of that blame. Diluc doesn't blame him, but he can't deny that he hasn't really gone out of his way to express as much.

He isn't quite sure how to, honestly, but he thinks that isn't really a valid excuse anymore.

Diluc shakes his head and bears the cold clammy feeling of putting his hands in his wet pockets so he can start up the path over the hill as nonchalantly as possible.

"Come on," he says. "I want to change out of these wet clothes already. There'll be plenty of food, and Adelinde will be delighted to see you. You've still got half a day of patrolling to do, haven't you? How many lives do you think you can possibly save when all you've eaten is parfait and an egg?"

Kaeya puts his hands on his hips and gives Diluc a grin imbued with playful defiance. "It was enough to save your cranky behind, wasn't it?"

"Be that as it may, your rather pathetic interpretation of what constitutes breakfast won't hold you on Dragonspine all day, not even in the foothills." Diluc sighs, and then ventures a smile. "Come have lunch with us. With... me." He falters, makes something of a face, and averts his eyes. "... Please."

The defiance in Kaeya's bearing eases, and he closes his eye briefly before puffing a soft laugh.

"Well, who am I to turn down such a heartfelt invitation from Master Diluc himself?"

"Just..." Diluc purses his lips. "Don't tell Adelinde about this, okay?" he says.

"Are you planning to tell her?" Kaeya asks, and Diluc shakes his head vehemently.

"Of course not!"

"Then how exactly do you plan on responding when she inevitably asks why you're soaked to the skin?"

Diluc frowns. "I hadn't planned that far out yet."

"You always did defer the strategizing to me," Kaeya says, and though Diluc tries to be offended, it's difficult to argue against this claim. Kaeya exhales audibly. "I suppose there's only one solution, then."

"And what's that?"

Kaeya doesn't answer, instead turning to walk back toward the lake. Watching with puzzled interest as Kaeya flicks one hand out to freeze a patch of the surface of the water about two meters long, Diluc doesn't realize what he's about to do until he reaches the end of the path, turns on his heel, and gives him a crisp, perfect Favonian salute.

"Kaeya, wait--"

Without being reinforced with additional Cryo energy, the ice melts quickly in the warmth of the spring afternoon, and with an audible crrrak! it breaks beneath Kaeya's feet.

Kaeya vanishes.

Diluc sprints to the water's edge before he's even fully processed the scene. He knows Kaeya is just as strong a swimmer as he is, and that the water isn't even that deep this close to the shore, but a palpable relief washes over him when Kaeya breaks the surface and tosses his head to get his wet hair out of his face.

"What the hell, Kaeya?" Diluc demands, wading into the water up to his shins and thrusting one hand out once Kaeya swims close enough to stand.

Taking Diluc's offered help with one hand and sweeping his wet bangs away from his eye with the other, Kaeya looks at Diluc and beams.

"Now you can tell Adelinde you pushed me in the lake," he says, looking very pleased with himself as they trudge through the shallows, "and that I dramatically shouted, 'if I go down, I'm taking you with me!' before grabbing you by the lapels and pulling you along."

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're not twelve anymore," Diluc says, shaking his head and releasing Kaeya's hand once they step out of the water. "I'm not telling Adelinde we were roughhousing and fell in the damn lake."

"Oh, come on," Kaeya says, reaching back to wring out his capelet, seeming remarkably indifferent to how closely he now resembles one of Margaret's cats after a bath. "Adelinde would figure out in six seconds flat that I'd pulled you out of the water for some reason if we'd gone into the house as we were before," he says, now wringing out his ponytail, "and you'd have had to come up with something on the spot, and you'd have failed, and you know it." He bends forward, balancing on one foot to pull off a boot and upend it, a stream of water spilling out of the top. "One of us hurling the other into the lake, however, is entirely believable," Kaeya continues, repeating the action with the other boot and then standing up straight, "and, in fact, there is precedent."

"That was one time!" Diluc protests, but he's actually visibly fighting not to laugh. The juxtaposition of the genuine pride on Kaeya's face against the decidedly pitiful soggy mop of his hair and the limp twist of white fluff that now looks more like a wet rabbit desperately clinging to his shoulder than a deliberate fashion choice is just too ridiculous. "You... I can't believe you did that," he says, unsuccessfully trying to hide his amusement behind one hand.

Except he can believe he did that. Kaeya had spent most of their shared youth doing something equal parts clever and absurd to either get Diluc out of trouble, or to join him in it, and he supposes, in the end, that he really shouldn't have expected that, of all things, to have changed over the years.

"Adelinde's never going to let you go back to Dragonspine in wet clothes, you know," Diluc says then, stepping to one side and shoving Kaeya toward the road.

Kaeya pauses, seeming not to have thought of that, and looks at him sheepishly.

"Think Jean will write me up for abandoning my post?" he asks.

"For abandoning your post to assault an ex-professional-colleague, no less," Diluc says with mock severity, and Kaeya glowers.

"Oh, now we're just ex-colleagues again, I see how it is. And you shoved me in the lake, remember?" he says, smacking Diluc's shoulder with the back of one hand. "We'd better get our stories straight." And then Kaeya is giggling, and Diluc just shakes his head as an involuntary laugh tumbles out of him in return.

He's not in Snezhnaya anymore, he's not dying at nineteen, and there's no snow and no frozen lake, only the pale glow of a Cryo Vision, blue and white in the corner of his eye, and in Kaeya's hands he has found that there is utility and refuge in ice that he never would have considered in the past. Kaeya may have received his Vision later than most, but he has fully mastered his element, more so than some manage in a lifetime. Master of his blade, Master of Cryo, Quartermaster and Captain of the Cavalry, diligent and tireless and never afraid to get his hands dirty for a good cause, Diluc thinks Kaeya is much more the knight their father had yearned to be than he himself could have ever become. He wishes he knew how to say that, to tell him he's proud of him, to just close the chapter on the painful mistakes of so many yesterdays and move forward, together, as they'd always done... But he can't find the words, can't get the timing right, and every time he tries, he just ends up with his heart in his throat and his foot in his mouth.

For today, maybe lunch is enough. There's always tomorrow, right?

He falls in step alongside him, up the hill, toward the house, and Kaeya is yapping away again already, as he does, and Diluc acts as if it's annoying, as he does, but really, it hasn't actually been annoying in months, and it seems today is one more plank added to the rebuilding of this bridge. Diluc isn't sure it'll ever be as strong as it once was, but so long as it manages to let them cross the remaining distance between them, until the canyon erodes away and the bridge is no longer needed, then it's strong enough. So long as it holds until tomorrow, it's strong enough for today.

Today, he is in Mondstadt. Today, he is home.

And he can finally breathe.