Chapter Text
“Watch out!”
“Kaeya!”
. . .
He’s repeating days.
He’s repeating days, and he’s the only one who remembers it. He has to be.
He thinks he understands the breaking of those Knights’ minds a little better, now.
It’s more than simple déjà vu. Everything remains the same, unless Diluc himself sets out to change it.
Absently, he watches the same finch flutter away from his window in a blur of orange feathers. He wonders if it remembers, if this is perhaps just a very odd Tuesday for it.
He knows without looking at the clock he has half an hour before Kaeya arrives, one minute early as always. It's the fourth time he’s lived this same morning, after all, and patterns were always easy for him to find.
Still, he feels he needs some form of proof. Proof that this is actually happening, and he hasn’t just finally gone mad.
It’s as he ties his hair back that he sees the teacup.
It’s an old thing; one of his father’s, no doubt. It’s stained and chipped already, probably from years of love and use.
Diluc only hesitates a moment before picking it up and dropping it unceremoniously to the floor.
Predictably, it shatters, dozens of tiny shards scattering every which way across the hardwood. Diluc stares at the pieces, suddenly feeling a tad stupid.
It’s just a cup, after all. Replaceable. Inconsequential.
And, if he’s right, it’ll be perfectly whole when he wakes.
. . .
“Ready for an adventure?” Kaeya asks in lieu of a good morning, signature smirk already in place.
Diluc stares at him for a moment, scanning his face for anything that would point to Kaeya remembering, to Diluc not actually being alone in this endless loop.
But there isn’t, just as he suspected.
It’s just him.
. . .
He accepts the offer of a sunsettia.
Its sweet juice offers little comfort for what’s to come.
. . .
This time, he doesn’t ask Kaeya about the letters lining the walls, or ponder about his lost accent. Instead, he follows him closely down the damp old stones, and when he hears the mitachurl charge at them, he’s ready.
Diluc grabs Kaeya by the elbow and yanks before he can even protest, and for the first time the beast simply charges into the wall instead of one of their bodies.
The stone crumbles at the impact, a plume of dust falling atop the mitachurl’s head as it tries to readjust its shield.
“Nice save,” Kaeya says breathily, and when Diluc turns to look at him his eye is a bit wide.
“Let’s just deal with it before any others show up,” he hisses out, summoning his blade.
“My thoughts exactly,” Kaeya returns, smirk already curling at his lips as he summons his sword.
The temperature of the room drops several degrees.
It shouldn’t surprise Diluc how easy it is to fall into step alongside Kaeya, but it does. Even with the added variable of Kaeya’s vision, it’s as simple as breathing to fight with him at his side.
Even if time has made his own memories fuzzy at the edges, his muscles remember where to go, how to slot himself on Kaeya’s right side, how to take the openings Kaeya so effortlessly carves out for him.
Where Kaeya goes high, Diluc goes low, where Kaeya strikes with cryo, Diluc is there to follow with a searing onslaught of flame. Where Diluc hits with a heavy strike of fire, Kaeya is there with a biting spray of ice.
They’re puzzle pieces on the battlefield, always have been, clicking together neatly and efficiently no matter how much time has passed.
When Diluc hears the second mitachurl charge in, he doesn’t even need to react before Kaeya is moving, a graceful spin and his back is pressed against his. A well timed spray of cryo freezes the monster in its tracks the second its foot touches a puddle, just as Diluc delivers the final blow to the first.
Kaeya casts his elemental burst, pushing the four icicles circling him just a bit wider so it surrounds them both.
Hillichurls start to pour into the room, some charging straight for them while others prepare their crossbows, and it’s only a handful of breaths before they’re surrounded.
“Well, this has certainly taken an interesting turn,” Kaeya quips with a huff of a laugh.
“That’s one way to put it,” Diluc grumbles back, pulse already rising in his ears.
He’s never made it this far, he realizes.
Something always happens before this point. He always gets knocked out, stopped, and then he’s back on that cot upstairs with the finch and—
He wants to take a moment, just a second to analyze this, to breathe and think, but Kaeya’s already on the move, and Diluc can’t let him go alone so he is too.
They make the most of Kaeya’s burst time, Diluc taking advantage of all the cryo as they move. The hilichurls go down, dominos in a neat little line, but they keep coming; for every one they kill, two more come back.
Kaeya looks at him out of the corner of his eye, and with a grunt he casts a large spray of cryo, hitting as many as he can.
Diluc takes the opening for what it is.
“Burn!” he shouts, and burn they do, the ashes of them all glittering along the wings of his phoenix.
He hears Kaeya laugh beside him, but there’s little time for banter, because the mitachurl Diluc had forgotten is heading right for them and—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest. He heaves in air, trying to catch his bearings as the adrenaline fades from his veins.
It takes him a moment, but he realizes just where he is and spins to face his bedside table.
The teacup is whole, with not even a crack.
Diluc’s hands shake as he picks it up, delicately spinning it between his fingers.
It’s whole.
He was right.
He was right, but he has no idea how to stop it. He has no idea how to get out, how to break free, how to—
Diluc swallows his fear and drops the teacup.
. . .
At 7:29 am, Diluc opens the back door.
Kaeya, with his fist still raised in the air to knock, blinks back at him.
Immediately, Diluc can see the gears turning in his head, can see in the furrow of his brow that Kaeya knows something is up.
Diluc merely steps aside to invite him in.
Kaeya frowns, but comes in, crossing his arms as Diluc locks the door behind him.
“We’re not going,” Diluc announces, marching over to the bar to make coffee.
He’s going to need it.
Kaeya tilts his head, calculating, then walks over himself, smoothly sitting on his regular stool. “Oh? Why ever not?”
Diluc forces his hands to stop shaking as he grinds the coffee beans and puts them into the press. He doesn’t quite feel like waiting for water to boil in the traditional way, so instead simply places his hand on the side of the kettle and heats it.
“We’re just not. It’s too dangerous; we’re staying here.”
The kettle whistles.
“Too dangerous? Well, that’s something I never thought I’d hear come out of your mouth, Diluc,” Kaeya teases, a curious lilt to his voice. “It must truly be something terrible if it’s making you drink coffee.”
Diluc grunts, staring at the press as he waits for the coffee to steep. He blinks at the silver metal for a few extra moments, before busying his hands by fetching the milk from the icebox and honey from the cupboard.
Should he tell Kaeya? It’s clear he doesn’t remember anything, and Diluc has little hope that telling Kaeya will change that. Having Kaeya’s admittedly brilliant mind in the loop would undoubtedly be helpful, yes, but…
Diluc presses the coffee grinds down, and pours two cups.
Kaeya always laughed at him for the amount of milk and honey he puts in his cup, but he can’t bring himself to care today.
Dutifully, he dumps a scant teaspoon of honey and a light splash of milk into Kaeya’s cup. Diluc has no idea how he manages to swallow the bitter drink down.
“Just take my word for it,” he says, stirring the coffees until he can’t feel the pull of honey against the spoon anymore. “We’re staying here.”
Kaeya accepts his cup, and Diluc doesn’t miss the blink of surprise when he finds it to be just to his liking as he takes his first sip.
“You want us both to stay here,” Kaeya asks, eyebrow already rising to his hairline, “instead of going to the domain? All day?”
“Precisely.” Diluc takes a big gulp from his cup and barely suppresses a grimace. Even with all the milk and honey, the coffee is still terribly bitter. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
Kaeya squints at him over his cup. “And I don’t suppose you’re particularly inclined to share why you’ve come to this decision, hmm?”
“No.”
For some reason, he feels deep in the pit of his stomach that telling Kaeya will amount to nothing.
That is, if he even believes him in the first place.
(For some reason, in that same deep pit, he knows Kaeya would.
And that alone is enough to terrify him down to the marrow of his bones.)
Diluc is careful to keep his face neutral as Kaeya scrutinizes him for several long moments, instead focusing on taking small sips of his coffee. The bitter taste helps ground him, in a way.
Eventually, Kaeya sighs, much like a teenager would when told to do chores. “Very well, I’ll play along. Far be it from me to disparage you for keeping secrets.”
The words themselves are teasing, but Diluc doesn’t miss the undercurrent of bitter melancholy in his voice. Diluc swallows against it as Kaeya gets up and rounds the counter himself, obviously looking for something.
“But,” he eventually says, honey-sweet tone suddenly back in place as if it never left, “I’ll be taking this.” At that, Kaeya plucks a bottle of dandelion wine from the top shelf, holding it carefully by the neck.
Diluc stares at him. “It’s not even eight in the morning.”
Kaeya laughs. “Oh, come now, Diluc. I didn’t say I would be drinking it now, did I? I’m not quite so irresponsible.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he mumbles, turning to clean up the coffee press.
“You wound me, Master Diluc!” Kaeya complains, and out of the corner of his eye Diluc can see him put a hand to his chest theatrically. “I thought you knew me better than that!”
Diluc rolls his eyes.
. . .
For the first hour, everything seems fine.
Kaeya sticks to a table in the back by the window, seemingly happy to take advantage of his sudden day off to read and relax.
Diluc makes himself busy checking over the stocks for the tavern, signing contracts he’s been putting off, and cleaning. He finds it relaxing, and doesn’t even mind when Kaeya puts down his borrowed book to help sweep and wipe down tables.
The silence as they work is… oddly comfortable, heavy though it might be with nostalgia. There’s something warm and familiar about them cleaning up the tavern together, though it’s not something they’ve done since—
Well, since before.
Diluc, for nothing else to do, allows himself to enjoy it.
And he does, at least until he starts to feel dizzy around hour two.
He doesn’t think much of it; his body hasn’t always been a great fan of caffeine and he probably just drank too much coffee.
He pushes away the thought that he only had one cup of very diluted coffee, and instead focuses on scrubbing out the wine stain on the table he’s cleaning.
The headache that follows doesn’t surprise him, necessarily, but it’s enough for the hairs on the back of his neck to rise in alarm.
Something is wrong.
By hour three, Diluc finds he can barely stand. He descends the stairs with great care, gripping the railing all too tight as he goes one step at a time. Kaeya looks up when he hears him come down, and even through his swimming vision, Diluc can spot the immediate frown of concern on his face.
“Diluc? Are you alright?”
Diluc opens his mouth to answer, but finds he has trouble forming any words. It feels as though his mouth has been stuffed with cotton, words stuck in a river of molasses.
Black starts to bleed into his vision around the edges, and it’s only Kaeya’s quick hands that stop him from collapsing onto the steps.
“Diluc!”
Before Kaeya can ease him down to the floor, everything goes dark.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest. Panting, it takes him a moment to figure out just what happened, and when he does, Diluc whirls around to look at his bedside table.
The teacup is whole.
It didn’t work.
Diluc drags a hand down his face and groans. He’s still stuck.
Without much ceremony, Diluc reaches over and swats the teacup off the table.
The porcelain shatters.
. . .
“I’m repeating days.”
Kaeya, with his hand still raised to knock, blinks at him.
“Why good morning to you too, Master Diluc. Would you care to repeat that?”
Diluc sighs, hauling Kaeya into the tavern and locking the door behind him. Kaeya, on his part, lets him before crossing his arms and raising his brow.
“I’ve been repeating days. This day, in particular. We’ve already gone to the domain.” It feels ridiculous saying it out loud, especially when Kaeya is looking at him with such a blank expression, but he powers on.
He has to.
Kaeya is… surprisingly attentive (or, perhaps not, if he’s being honest with himself) as Diluc explains, from the odd miasma to the letters on the wall to the mitachurl to the teacup. Diluc knows he’s not as composed as he usually is, but really, it’s just Kaeya here to see him, and Kaeya has seen him in far worse states.
(Very blatantly, Diluc shoves the image of Kaeya cowering away from his flaming blade away, shoves the memory of the burning smell and the feel of the rain—
He shoves it all away and down, to a place he pretends doesn’t exist.)
“And what day is this? Of the loop?” Kaeya asks, and just from the tone of his voice Diluc knows he believes him.
A coil of anxiety he didn’t know he had unravels from behind his sternum.
“This is the sixth day.”
Archons, has it almost been a week already?
“And you haven’t told me before this time?”
Diluc shakes his head. “It took a few days to figure out what was happening; it all felt like… waking up from a vivid dream, I suppose. Once I figured out how to prove it was a loop, I kept us here. You seemed… suspicious, but agreed. At first it seemed fine, but then I started to feel dizzy and, well…”
‘Here we are,’ goes unsaid.
“Fascinating,” Kaeya muses, and Diluc sees the sparkle of interest in his eye. It usually means trouble for someone; he just hopes that this time it isn’t him. “I have no memory of any of it… if what you say is correct, and we both went in the domain, then why are you the only one affected?”
Diluc shrugs helplessly, “I have no idea. I don’t have any memory of touching anything you didn’t—not that there was even much to touch in the first place—and on the first day, you got knocked out before me.”
“By that logic, I should be the one stuck in the loop, not you,” Kaeya concludes, frowning a bit in thought.
“My thoughts exactly,” Diluc huffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wishes he understood more of what was happening.
He wishes it would stop.
Just… stop.
“Well,” Kaeya says suddenly, clapping his hands and giving him a smirk that sets off all of his ‘Kaeya is up to something’ alarm bells, “I suppose we’ll just have to do some investigating then.”
Diluc raises a brow. “Investigating?”
“Why of course! How else are we going to figure it out, hm?” Kaeya gently slaps him on the shoulder twice, moving to the door before Diluc can truly protest.
With little else to offer, Diluc grabs the keys and follows him.
. . .
Kaeya tries, that much is obvious.
They take their time, looking over every stone, every glowing letter. Kaeya mumbles to himself in a language Diluc doesn’t understand as he looks at the letters, occasionally shaking his head and visibly erasing the thought.
The language sounds… natural, coming out of Kaeya’s mouth.
Diluc swallows against some bitter emotion, throat clicking with the thickness of it. Just how much does Kaeya hide of himself?
Just how is he so comfortable showing this in front of him?
In the end, it doesn’t really matter and he never gets to ask before all of Kaeya’s effort is rendered moot.
The mitachurl’s shield strikes just the same.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
The teacup is whole.
. . .
Diluc tells Kaeya again on the seventh and eighth loop.
And again, Kaeya believes him. Again, Kaeya goes over the stones, and again he talks to himself in his mother tongue. Diluc looks, he claws with desperate fingers along anything he thinks might be a clue, but is only rewarded with dust and broken fingernails.
There’s nothing.
No clues, no leads, no answers.
There’s just him and time and the damp old stones and—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Diluc swings his legs over the edge of the cot and stares at the teacup.
There’s not a scratch on it.
He barely resists throwing the damn thing to the ground.
. . .
This time, Diluc goes alone.
He doesn’t wait for Kaeya, or even for the sun to finish coming up over the horizon.
He simply gets dressed, grabs his weapon and Vision, and leaves.
The domain feels far more foreboding by himself, but Diluc has faced worse odds alone before. He’s survived harbingers and monsters and the like, time and time again.
He can survive this.
All he truly hopes is that when he wakes tomorrow morning, it’ll be tomorrow, and there will be pieces of porcelain strewn all over his floor waiting for him to sweep them up.
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
On the eleventh day, after telling Kaeya once more, Diluc, with as much gentleness as he thinks he can muster, asks if perhaps his immunity to the time loop is related to his origins.
To Khaenri’ah.
And for a moment, Kaeya simply stares at him with a wide eye.
Diluc realizes it’s the first time he’s ever said the name ‘Khaenri’ah’ out loud.
But then Kaeya laughs, a bitter and melancholy sound, and the moment is lost. His hand drifts up, almost unconsciously to his eyepatch, fingers just ghosting over the leather before he lets them drop.
“Well, that’s certainly an interesting theory, isn’t it? Perhaps so.”
A sad smile curls at Kaeya’s lips, something lonely and vastly devastating.
Diluc regrets asking.
. . .
“You should tell Jean,” Diluc says on the thirteenth repeat.
They’re half-way to the domain already, Kaeya had already plucked his Sunsettia from the tree, and Diluc wouldn’t lie and say he isn’t trying to delay the arrival time.
Besides, it’s not like this conversation will have any real consequences, anyway.
“Tell Jean what, exactly?” Kaeya asks, carefully neutral.
“You know what.”
“Yes, I was just giving you a chance to change your mind,” Kaeya says harshly, turning to face him with a narrowed eye.
“Kaeya,” Diluc starts tiredly, and Archons, is he tired. Tired of repeating this day, tired of Kaeya not remembering, tired of fighting with Kaeya… he’s just tired. “She deserves to know.”
You deserve to have someone you can fully lean on, he doesn’t say.
Oh, Kaeya really looks angry now.
“You know, there are many words I would use to describe you, Master Diluc, but ‘cruel’ was never one of them,” Kaeya spits with a smile that’s more teeth than anything else. “Perhaps I should be changing that.”
Without giving Diluc a chance to respond, Kaeya turns on his heel and starts walking again, faster than his usual pace.
“Kaeya,” he calls, jogging a bit to catch up. “Kaeya, wait—”
“You’ve never, not once, brought this up before now,” Kaeya says with thinly veiled anger, though it’s obvious he’s already putting his masks firmly in place. The fact that Diluc cracked them in the first place is a testament to how touchy a subject this is. “Why bring it up now, hm? Looking for a rematch, perhaps?”
“Archons, no, Kaeya. I just—”
“Then what?” Kaeya turns to him again, and now they’ve fully stopped in the middle of the road. Diluc is grateful that there’s no one but a lone fox to eavesdrop. “What could have possibly motivated you to ask such a thing?”
“I can’t be the only one who knows, Kaeya. Jean trusts you. You seem to trust her a great deal, as you should. She deserves to know.”
“Ah, I understand now,” Kaeya laughs coldly. “Is this your way of getting me thrown out of the Knights, then? It’s a horrible plan if it is. You should have told Master Varka yourself.”
“That’s not my ‘plan’, you idiot, I’m just…” Diluc sighs in frustration. Why must every conversation with Kaeya be a psychological exercise? “I’m trying to say that you should have someone you trust who knows. Someone you can count on.”
Kaeya laughs, and Diluc thinks that it’s a horrible sound.
“Oh, really? Well, I hate to inform you, brother, but I already tried that. I know exactly what the truth gets me.”
He deserves that.
He does, and he knows it, but it doesn’t stop the ache blooming within his ribs, or the sticky tar of guilt settling in his lungs.
“Jean isn’t me,” he says, a little desperately, thready with the emotions of repeating the same day for nearly two weeks. “She’ll listen… she won’t—”
She won’t hurt you.
Kaeya halts from where he was walking away, but doesn’t give Diluc the grace of facing him as he speaks.
“I know she isn’t. That’s precisely why I can never tell her. It would only be cruel, to break her heart like that.”
“She loves you, Kaeya.”
“I know that, too,” Kaeya replies, and Diluc can’t recall him ever sounding so sad and small. “Allow me the selfishness to keep it that way, even if you believe I don’t deserve it.”
. . .
When the mitachurl comes charging in, Diluc shoves Kaeya out of the way and doesn’t fight the blow.
Of course you deserve it.
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
On the seventeenth repeat, Diluc doesn’t wait for Kaeya to show up, nor does he go to the domain again.
Instead, he drops the teacup, dresses, and makes his way to the Favonius library.
The knights who greet him are surprised as he walks up the steps, but recover quickly and allow him passage with nothing more than a polite ‘good morning’.
Lisa, who is already in the library behind her desk even at this hour, however, just looks amused to see him. Though, to be fair, that just seems to be her default expression, much like Kaeya. It nearly makes him roll his eyes regardless.
“Oh, well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Lisa coos, placing her chin in one hand. “It’s not often we see you in here; what’s the special occasion, dear?”
Diluc sighs. “You wouldn’t happen to have any books about time loops, would you?”
Lisa, for her part, simply blinks in a moment of surprise before her cattish grin falls back into place. “Fiction, mostly. It’s quite the popular trope as of late… though I hardly doubt you’ve taken the time to come all the way here to see little old me this early in the morning for some pleasure reading, hm?”
“You would be correct,” he confirms. He’s not exactly in the mood for Lisa’s honeyed words, but beggars can’t be choosers.
If there’s anyone who would have the information he needed, it would be Lisa.
She smirks at him, rising from her desk with a delicate yawn. “And here I was thinking I could get a catnap in before we had guests. This way, dear.”
She leads him to a bookshelf on the lower floor, hidden away in a back corner. Pulling over a rolling ladder, she climbs a few rungs until she can pull two thick tomes from the top shelf. She passes them down to him, and he holds them carefully in his arms.
He’s heard stories of what Lisa does to people who treat her books ill. He has no desire to find out if they’re true or not.
Lisa steps down a rung and passes him another, much slimmer book, before finally stepping down from the ladder.
“You’ll find what you’re looking for in chapters thirty-seven through forty in here,” she says, tapping the thickest tome on the bottom of his pile, “chapter thirteen here, and chapter nine here.”
Diluc nods, slotting away the numbers in his head. “Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate it.”
She smiles sweetly. Diluc doesn’t trust it for a second.
“But of course, sweetie. You just come find me if you need anything at all, okay? Make yourself at home, and treat those books kindly~.”
With a twirl of her skirt, Lisa takes her leave, a chuckle trailing through the air in her wake.
Diluc releases a breath.
Women.
Specifically that woman.
He doesn’t quite get what Jean sees in her, but that’s not his business.
Taking his books, Diluc seats himself at a nearby table and arranges the books into a neat stack.
Starting with the thinnest, he opens it and flips pages until he finds chapter nine.
Taking a deep breath, Diluc starts to read.
. . .
The books are… unhelpful at best.
By the time the dizziness takes over at around hour three, Diluc hasn’t learned much of anything.
The thinnest book tells him that the time loop only ended once the person stuck had learned to be a better person, and the thinnest simply gave him an explanation on what a time loop is. The third book was even less helpful, telling him of an old love story where the couple was forced to relive each other’s worst day, and then save them from it, over and over until they succeeded.
None of that quite applies to him, he thinks.
Stacking up the books neatly once again as black creeps into his vision, Diluc vaguely hears Ella Musk call and ask if he’s alright, right before his head thunks against the table.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
The teacup is whole.
. . .
On the twentieth loop, Diluc simply knocks the teacup off the table, and goes back to sleep.
He doesn’t want to be cut down by a mitachurl’s axe, or see Kaeya flung into another stone wall.
Maybe, just maybe, this time he’ll wake up to a pile of shattered porcelain at his feet.
Maybe.
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
Diluc takes to trying to memorize the pattern of monsters in the domain.
He dodges Kaeya’s questioning eye every time he side-steps a sudden attack, or pulls him out of the way of a hilichurl’s arrow volley, but they make just a bit of progress every day.
It just never seems to end, and inevitably, something strikes them down.
Something always strikes them down.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
On the forty-second day, Diluc finds himself back at Favonius headquarters, sneaking into the room of the effected knights.
Just as the first time he met them, they give him no help. They simply wail, and shake, and beg for it to be over.
Absently, Diluc wonders if they’re stuck with him in this loop, too. Forever stuck.
He shudders.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
The teacup is whole.
. . .
“Kaeya! Watch out!”
. . .
“Diluc!”
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
Some days, Diluc tells Kaeya.
He always tries to help, diligently going over every detail Diluc gives him for a clue. He never finds one, of course, or at least not one Diluc hasn’t already gone over a dozen times.
Some days, he keeps it to himself; keeps it in his own mind as he walks the same route, chokes on the same miasma and dread. His blade always feels unnaturally heavy in his grip, his flames doing little to comfort him.
Some days, he simply wanders around Mond, looking to see if maybe there’s someone, anyone else stuck with him in this hell.
No one ever is.
He remains utterly, and completely alone.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
Without even sitting up, Diluc pushes the teacup off the bedside table.
Some days, he just stays in bed.
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
He manages to track down Venti, one day.
The bard gives him a soft, sad look, when he asks if the god knows a way to stop it, stop all of this.
Venti pulls him down onto the bench next to him, hands him an apple, and plays him a song.
It’s melancholy and slow, but Diluc finds comfort in it all the same.
. . .
He stops keeping track of how long it's been after eighty-seven days.
He’s not sure why he picks that particular number to stop, but he can’t bring himself to care about it much.
He’s just tired.
So, so tired.
. . .
Kaeya’s skull smacks against the stone floor of the domain, an echoing, horrible crack resounding off the walls.
Diluc screams, and—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
Diluc narrowly pulls Kaeya out of the way of a mitachurl’s flaming axe, but isn’t so fast himself.
“Diluc—!”
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
Mages of all kinds bleed from the walls of the domain.
They try to split it, twisting and turning so one of them is always pointed at an element they can fight against, but it’s not too soon that they’re pushed too far apart, cornered by their own—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
He does not grow hungry, or thirsty, or tired.
At least, not in the physical sense.
Emotionally, mentally—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
. . .
A finch chirps three times—
. . .
A finch chirps—
. . .
“Kaeya!”
. . .
A finch—
. . .
“Diluc!”
. . .
The teacup is whole.
. . .
“Ready for an adventure?”
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest.
With a terrible, throat shredding scream, Diluc picks up the teacup and hurls it at the wall.
Porcelain shatters in every direction, scattering all over the floorboards and under the furniture.
Sparks spit from between his teeth at the sight. It does little to comfort him.
It’ll be whole soon again, anyway.
. . .
At 7:29, Diluc opens the door before Kaeya can even knock.
Kaeya blinks at him from the other side, fist half-way raised.
“Let’s go,” Diluc orders in lieu of a hello, shoving past Kaeya and onto the street without even bothering to lock the tavern door.
It doesn’t really matter, anyway.
He hears Kaeya sigh behind him, “well, good morning to you too, Master Diluc. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
“Something like that,” he grunts under his breath.
“How terrible, to see our dear Master Diluc in such a sour mood!” Kaeya exclaims dramatically, trotting up next to him, his long legs easily matching his stride. “Surely there must be something that can be done to alleviate it?”
Diluc takes a deep breath through his teeth. “I just want to get this over with, Kaeya.”
Rinse and repeat.
That’s all his life is now, isn’t it?
Kaeya pouts. “My, how crass! That desperate to be rid of my company, hm?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Diluc sighs, shaking his head in frustration.
“Oh? Then please, do enlighten me.”
“It’s a long story, and nothing for you to worry about.”
Nothing that you can worry about anyway, given that you won’t remember this, he doesn’t say.
There isn’t a point.
“Well, we’ve got nothing but time until we reach the domain,” Kaeya says, idly flipping a coin as he walks. “Why not share with the class?”
You have no idea how wrong you are.
. . .
They make excellent progress in the domain this time.
Somedays, like this one, it’s easy for Diluc to fall in-step with Kaeya, to take his mind off why he’s there in the first place and simply do his job.
They are brutal, and efficient, cutting down everything that comes their way without hesitation.
The waves of monsters flow in endlessly with only a few moments of respite in between.
Diluc thinks it’s the best progress they’ve made in a long time. He even feels a spark of excitement jump to life in his chest—
Perhaps this time—
. . .
He doesn’t see it coming.
There’s only two cryo mages left in this wave, leaving Diluc to do most of the damage. Kaeya helps, where he can, mostly in providing distractions and creating an abundance of elemental particles for Diluc to absorb.
It often means that he has to let Kaeya out of his sight, something he has been loathe to do after seeing him be flung through the air one too many times, but there is little choice here.
He’s too focused on one abyss mage, however, and gives the other a perfect window to attack.
He sees the giant icicle hurtling at him from the corner of his eye a second too late, but luckily Kaeya does, bodily shoving him out of the way at the last second.
“Thanks,” he calls over his shoulder, already having to roll out of the way of another volley of ice.
“No problem,” he hears Kaeya respond, and Diluc takes it as he’s alright.
It’s only another handful of seconds when finally both mages are cut down, fading into particles floating through the air.
“Diluc,” Kaeya calls from behind him once he’s lowered his blade, and just the tone of his voice makes him whip around.
“Oh, Archons,” Diluc mutters, bolting over to catch Kaeya as his knees buckle out from under him.
The spear of ice piercing Kaeya’s stomach is… massive, to say the least.
Diluc eases Kaeya down to the floor as gently as he can, carefully laying him on his side so as not to disturb the spear impaling him.
“Fuck,” he spits, hovering his hands over Kaeya, not knowing what else to do. “Fuck!”
“It’s alright,” Kaeya croaks, his voice thready and pained, “it’s alright.”
“It is not alright, Kaeya,” Diluc hisses, grasping the icicle with his left hand, and fuck, he can’t even wrap his fingers fully around it. He has no idea how long they have until the next wave comes, he’s never gotten this far, he’s—
“Don’t—Don’t pull it out,” Kaeya orders hurriedly, grabbing Diluc’s wrist, “leave it… leave it in.”
“I have to do something—you’re a sitting duck like this!”
Fuck.
In all the loops, neither of them have truly gotten injured like this. Not so slowly, so torturously.
It’s always been a quick, almost merciful transition to the next loop.
Kaeya’s never laid bleeding and impaled on the ground, breath wheezing from his lungs and blood flowing freely with every beat of his heart.
It’s too different, too sudden—
If the loop breaks here—
Kaeya’s own body heat, naturally cool that is, is melting the icicle, and Diluc is so sure his own pyro-blessed presence isn’t helping. A puddle of blood starts to pool under him, staining his destroyed corset and vest. It soon stains the knees of Diluc’s own pants, searingly hot.
“I can,” Kaeya wheezes, the hand on Diluc’s wrist fluttering down to where the seam of his flesh and the ice meets, “I can keep it… frozen for a bit… to stop the bl-bleeding…”
Frost crawls from underneath Kaeya’s fingertips, filling in the gaps from the melting ice. He gasps in pain, teeth bared and gritted. Kaeya breathes through it best he can, though he can only maintain it for a few seconds before he slumps down and his hand falls to the cool stone.
At his hip, Kaeya’s Vision flickers to a dangerous shade of grey.
“Save your strength,” Diluc demands, ignoring how his eyes sting and his hands shake. “Save your strength, okay? I’m gonna get us out of here. I’m gonna get you out of here, Kaeya.”
Diluc looks up to the stairs they came from.
He’s tried, of course, to escape and reset the loop by running back up them before anything could hit him, but he’d never been successful.
Even if he could pick up Kaeya and carry him up the stairs without hurting him further, there’s no guarantee—
“You’re not allowed to die on me, okay? We have too much to talk about, too much—shit!”
More of Kaeya’s blood stains the knees of his pants.
Kaeya laughs wetly, a tear spilling from his eye and over the bridge of his nose. “What an ironic way to go, eh? Killed by my own element… I hope the Gods are at least… having a good laugh at this.”
“You’re not dying, and nobody is laughing,” Diluc hisses, fisting his hand in the fabric of Kaeya’s vest and stupid fur collar. “I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? Okay Kaeya? Jean’ll kill me if I let her right hand die on my watch, so you cannot die.”
Kaeya hums, though the sound makes him cough, blood staining his teeth as he does. “Heh… wouldn’t want… to make Jean angry…”
The icicle is getting smaller, despite Kaeya’s added frost. The cold helps slow the bleeding just a bit, constricting the shredded veins of Kaeya’s abdomen at least temporarily.
But it’s not enough. Not to last.
Kaeya’s Vision is starting to dull.
Diluc bites down on his lip hard, and swallows a scream.
He feels so helpless, so weak, so stupid—
If this is the one day the loop breaks, the singular time, then—
Kaeya weakly tugs on his sleeve. “Di… look…”
Diluc wipes his face and turns to see just what Kaeya’s looking at, and he swears he feels his heart stop.
Two electro abyss lectors float forward, stopping in the center of the room. They don’t do or say anything, simply staring at the two of them on the floor.
Waiting.
Diluc summons his blade. The familiar weight of the Wolf’s Gravestone in his hands does little to comfort him.
“Stay here, Kaeya. I’ll take care of it,” Diluc says, rising to his feet despite the growing ache in his chest.
It feels like guilt.
Guilt of the past. Guilt of the future. Guilt of not being able to break free sooner. Guilt of not being able to do anything now.
“You can’t take them alone, not like this,” Kaeya mutters, coughing wetly.
“I’ll have to,” he returns, igniting his blade in a red hot flame.
He hears Kaeya sigh.
The lectors do not move.
“Diluc,” Kaeya calls softly, but it’s enough to make him turn.
He watches in horror as Kaeya raises his shaking hands, summoning a star-shaped piece of ice between them.
“Kaeya, what are you—”
Four neat icicles form around his waist, instantly starting to spin at a dizzying speed. A shield of thin cryo also pops into existence around him, just enough to protect him for a few precious blows, but it’s plenty.
“Go,” Kaeya orders through his teeth, coughing from the force of it. “Go!”
Without a second to hesitate, Diluc does, letting loose a violent scream as he attacks the lectors.
He puts every bit of pent up rage and fear and sorrow into his swings, lets the terror of the possibility of this being the last loop, the last day, the last chance spur him on. Kaeya’s cryo helps him tremendously, practically shredding through the lectors defenses in a matter of seconds.
They break all too quickly, though.
The shield shatters not too long after.
Diluc grits his teeth and holds on regardless.
He’s faced worse odds, he thinks, and come out the other side.
Just a little bit—
A giant orb of electro clashes with Diluc’s pyro and sends him flying through the air from the overload reaction.
Diluc slams into the ground with a shout, rolling to a stop just an arm’s distance away from where Kaeya lays.
His eye is open, unseeing and dull.
With a terrible, crushing sense of dread, Diluc trails his eyes over to his Vision.
It’s grey.
Diluc’s heart thunders in his chest. This has never happened before; Kaeya’s Vision has never gone grey, has never faded like—
Diluc rises back up to his feet and screams something awful.
Grief overtakes him, sudden and painful. It wells up in him like tar; thick and sticky to his ribs and all consuming in every way. but tar is flammable, and the one emotion Diluc is intimately familiar with is an ever burning rage.
“Burn!” he shouts, sending forth a Dawn that burns so intensely it's streaked with blue and white flame.
His blade burns just as hot in its wake, slamming into the lectors in a flurry of color and fire and pain.
Flames lick up his own arms, over his fireproof coat and singes the edges of his hair, but he doesn’t care at all.
He just wants to see them burn, see them all—
. . .
A finch chirps three times outside Diluc’s window as he wakes.
It flutters away in a blur of orange feathers as he shoots up in bed, eyes wide and right hand clutching at his chest. He heaves in air, trying to catch his bearings as the adrenaline fades from his veins.
It takes him a moment, but he realizes just where he is and spins to face his bedside table.
The teacup isn’t there.
“No,” Diluc whispers, turning with a heavy sense of dread to the floor.
Dozens of shards of porcelain greet him, just as he had left them the previous loop—
The last loop.
“No… no no no, no!”
Slipping from the cot, he crashes down to his knees, unflinching as the shards cut through his pants, then his fingers as he grabs at a few. His ears are ringing, loud and overbearing in his panic. He doesn’t see the blood staining his fingers, at least not as his own—
Kaeya—
Kaeya—
“Fuck!”
‘This can’t be happening,’ he thinks, prays, prays to any god who will listen. ‘Not again, please, please not him too—
But no matter how hard he stares, how much his heart batters his ribs and sternum and lungs for it to not be true, the pieces of the teacup do not come back together.
It’s broken, irrevocably so.
What he’s wanted for so long, for countless repeating, looping days has finally come to fruition.
It’s over.
Tomorrow, he will wake, and it will finally, finally be a new day.
And he will be alone.
Hysterically, Diluc laughs.
Doesn’t that sound terrible?
. . .
7:29 comes and goes.
Kaeya does not knock.
. . .
He has no idea how long he kneels there, broken pieces cutting into his knees and shins.
Perhaps the porcelain will simply become a part of him, a reminder of this torture, he thinks.
A reminder that he once again failed Kaeya.
For once, he doesn’t feel rage at the injustice, at the horrible fate Kaeya’s faced. He simply feels numb, and cold.
If he were to go back, would there even be a body for him to collect? To bury alongside father?
Would the domain still be there in the first place? Or is it satisfied now, with its prize of Kaeya’s corpse. Did it close up for good after swallowing him whole?
How is he supposed to tell Jean? What is he supposed to tell Jean?
Diluc doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.
He stares at the shattered pieces of the teacup. They don’t seem to know, either.
. . .
Someone opens the back door downstairs.
Diluc is vaguely aware of the sound of the lock turning in the wood, creaky and quiet though it is from upstairs.
Has so much time passed that Charles has arrived for his shift already? It doesn’t matter, really. Diluc doesn’t move from his spot on the floor; Charles can handle preparing to open for the day perfectly fine without him.
Absently, he listens as Charles bustles around downstairs, probably checking over tables and chairs, loading the kegs and bottles of wine for the day behind the bar.
Diluc flips a stained piece of porcelain between his fingers. His blood has started to dry, flaking along the sharp edge of white.
Focusing on the dried blood, he picks and scratches at it with his nail until the deep red gives way to white. It does little to sooth him.
Even with his Vision sitting a breath away on the bedside table, Diluc simply feels cold.
Cold, and empty.
A knock comes against the door, three hard and fast strikes on the wood. Diluc swallows, dry throat clicking on swollen emotion and grief.
“Not now, Charles,” he rasps pathetically. His voice sounds like he’d been gargling the pieces of porcelain instead of holding them.
The knock comes again, more urgent this time.
Diluc drops the piece and watches it rattle against the hardwood floor. He should probably get up anyway.
His legs creak and groan as he pulls himself up to his feet, stumbling as if he were a newborn foal and narrowly avoiding stepping on a few shards with his bare feet. A few of the cuts on his knees reopen as he stretches to standing, sending new rivulets of blood down his legs and staining the fabric of his pants. It’s fine, he thinks. He can always get a new pair.
He can’t get a new Ka—
Diluc squeezes his eyes shut against the thought, turns, and wrenches the door open. The cuts on his hand sting as he turns the knob.
“Whatever it is Charles, it needs to wa—”
When he opens his eyes, Diluc stops breathing.
“Ah, I guess by the look on your face, it wasn’t just a bad dream, then?” Kaeya asks, gentle in an odd and stabbing, painful way.
Wide-eyed, Diluc stares.
His hands shake, he can feel, and his breath returns too fast and too shallow. His heart rabbits in his chest, bullying and bruising itself against his ribs as it seemingly tries to rip free from his body. His legs feel much like jelly as his diaphragm spasms and—
“… Kaeya?” he asks on a breath, as loud as he dares.
He looks… fine. He looks absolutely fine. He looks solid, whole, unmarked and without a scratch or drop of blood on him. Even his clothes look untouched by the violence of the domain, the corset around his middle perfectly sturdy and free of shards of abyssal ice—
One of them whimpers, a painful and pathetic sound, and it takes him too long to realize it was him.
He reaches out, hands quaking so badly Kaeya’s come up to steady him. It feels like Kaeya’s hands are also shaking, just a bit, but they’re real and solid and warm and—
“Diluc, your hands—your knees, what—”
Diluc chokes on a sob, and yanks Kaeya to his chest.
“Woah, hey—Diluc, I’m alright,” Kaeya says gently, slowly bringing his arms up around him, though his grip is loose. “Come now, all this fuss over little ol’ me? I’m fine, see?” Kaeya tries, pulling Diluc back though he fights against it.
Still, he looks, he looks and yes, Kaeya is fine, but—
Diluc’s knees buckle under him, finally exhausted from supporting the weight of the never ending looping days, from keeping him upright and any semblance of sane. Kaeya is strong, though, and keeps him standing.
“Easy now,” Kaeya whispers, gently guiding him back over to the cot and sitting him down upon it, carefully kicking away shards of porcelain as he does.
Diluc chokes on a sob, split fingertips turning white along Kaeya’s arms from how tight his grip has gone, but Kaeya doesn’t complain. He does, however, gently pry himself free, though it triggers a fearful sound to erupt from Diluc’s chest. Kaeya shushes him all too gently, with a careful double squeeze to his knee; their forever ‘it’s okay, I’m here, I’ll keep you safe,’ message. Suddenly, he feels like a child, not wanting to be away from Kaeya for even a moment, but he can’t bring himself to care much after—
After—
Thankfully, Kaeya doesn’t go far, just into the adjoining room where the spare first aid kit is kept. He’s back in a blink, with a broom in one hand, leather-bound kit in the other. Quietly, Kaeya sweeps the porcelain into a neat little pile in the corner, and Diluc takes the time to compose himself just a little.
He finally starts to feel the sting of his cuts, fingers and knees throbbing in time with his rabbiting heart, and his diaphragm still quakes with every breath, but as he watches Kaeya open the kit, he feels himself calm. Just a bit, just a tiny reprieve from the terror and numb, all-consuming grief that had taken over after he woke up.
He’s alive, Diluc thinks, a tad hysterically as he wipes his face with his wrist. He’s alive.
“Hands first,” Kaeya orders softly, setting rolls of gauze, tweezers, wash cloths, and a bottle of antiseptic next to Diluc’s hip as he kneels in front of him.
He holds out his hands without fuss, silly as he feels.
Kaeya’s hands are pleasantly cool to the touch, and it helps ground him into reality. That this is real, this is happening and he’s not still—
He shakes himself free of the thought.
He’s safe.
The teacup has broken.
He’s safe.
It’s over.
Kaeya works carefully and gently to pluck spare shards from Diluc’s hands, even apologizing when he makes him flinch from the antiseptic. Diligently, Kaeya wraps his hands and cut fingers with gauze, neither too tight nor too loose. When Kaeya moves to roll his right pant leg, the fabric sticks to his shin, tacky with still drying blood.
“Were you laying in the pieces?” Kaeya asks quietly, somewhat incredulous, though he starts working to wipe away the blood all the same.
Diluc swallows. His throat feels thick and swollen and painful. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” he croaks, trying not to sound too pathetic.
He isn’t sure if he succeeds.
Kaeya huffs a laugh, plucking a shard free from his skin. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen you worse, afterall.”
Diluc flinches, though not from the tweezers. He deserves that. “I’m sorry for that, too.”
Now, he’s sure he sounds pathetic.
Kaeya pauses. “Well, that wasn’t quite what I was referring to, but if you wish to flagellate yourself on that particular memory, please, be my guest.”
Barely, Diluc refrains from clenching his newly wrapped hands into fists. “Maybe… maybe we should talk about that.”
Kaeya laughs, but the sound holds no humor. “Are you not the one constantly preaching to let go of the past and move on?”
“After…” Diluc swallows again, his throat still just as swollen and sore, “after what happened… I can’t… We need to… we need to talk about it, I can’t—I can’t—”
His breath comes too fast, too shallow, and all of a sudden, Kaeya is right in front of his face, one hand in a firm grip in his hair. It stings, just a bit, but it's enough to ground him back in reality once more.
“Breathe, Diluc,” Kaeya orders, piercing him in a steady gaze with his singular starry eye, “breathe.”
Diluc does, matching Kaeya’s breath until he feels more level-headed.
Slowly, Kaeya sinks back down to the floor, watching him intently as he goes, and starts to wrap his knee in gauze. “After what happened?”
Diluc’s breath hitches. “After the domain. Over and over—fuck—”
Kaeya’s eye widens. “How long?” When Diluc shakes his head, Kaeya grips his thigh tightly. “Diluc, how long were you in there?”
“I don’t know,” he finally croaks. He feels scraped raw on the inside of his ribs, empty and hollowed out with a stiff boar bristle brush. “Months? I… I lost count of the days, after a while. You never… you never remembered, even when I told you what was happening.”
“Shit,” Kaeya whispers, no doubt thinking of the knights in headquarters.
At least Diluc still feels half-way sane. Kaeya squeezes his leg just above his knee, twice in quick succession. He looks a bit pale himself, nails digging into the rolled fabric of Diluc’s pants.
For once, Kaeya seems to be at a loss for words, instead choosing to focus on diligently cleaning away the last bit of blood from his leg. He cleans up his left knee in much the same fashion, and Diluc can’t bring himself to break the heavy silence looming over them.
Finally, Kaeya deems his wounds fully tended to and packs up the first aid kit, sweeping the shards he pulled free into a little pile in his hands before dumping them with the rest. Then, he nudges Diluc to the side, sitting down on the cot himself.
“You always manage to have all the fun without me, hm?”
Despite himself, Diluc huffs a laugh, though it’s short lived. “I’ll be sure to include you in the terrible, never-ending domain next time.”
Kaeya hums, taking just a moment of pause. “You’re sure it’s over? If that was just one day, then…”
Kaeya trails off, and Diluc shudders. “I broke that teacup at the start of each… loop… It’s never stayed broken, so when I woke up and saw—”
“Ah,” Kaeya says as he looks over to the pile of broken porcelain, his right hand absently hovering over his stomach.
Diluc stares, just to double check there isn’t a spear of ice jutting out of his corset. But the garment is whole, unblemished, as is Kaeya. When Diluc looks, the Vision at his hip is pulsing a strong, steady blue; it’s not grey and faded and dull to the touch. Kaeya is alive. Kaeya is alive and well.
Before he can think twice about it, Diluc grabs Kaeya’s hand and squeezes, twice in quick succession. Kaeya squeezes back, twice in quick succession.
‘It’s okay, I’m here, I’ll keep you safe.’
. . .
“I tried to break it, you know,” Kaeya says suddenly, shattering the carefully constructed quiet they’ve built.
Diluc’s bed in the tavern is small, certainly so for two grown men, but they make it work, lying side by side, the same as they did when they were children; neither are particularly enthusiastic at the prospect of distance, with the memories of the last day fresh in their minds.
Craning his neck, Diluc finds Kaeya carefully twirling his vision around, the orb casting a gentle glow on his face. Kaeya smiles softly as he looks at it, though Diluc thinks he looks rather sad.
“What?” he finds himself asking, his voice a bit hoarse from earlier.
“It was in the first few days after you left,” Kaeya explains, and Diluc’s breath catches in his throat. “I tried everything I could think of: rocks, blades, fire… Jean caught me, the last time I tried. I was trying to crush it with a hammer I stole from Wagner,” Kaeya laughs, but it’s hollow and humorless. “Didn’t work, obviously.”
When Diluc looks at the vision, it doesn’t have a scratch on it.
“Why?” he asks, even though he doesn’t think he’ll like the answer.
“I was angry,” Kaeya states, exhaling slowly. “It felt like a mockery. Like the Archons were playing a joke on me. What’s funnier than the Prince of a Godless land of sinners receiving a gift from the Gods?”
Diluc doesn’t know how to respond to that, really. He puts the Prince part of the response away in a little box he’ll open later.
“Jean yelled at me when she found me,” Kaeya continues, a wry smirk on his lips. “She was furious that I would try to break something so sacred, I think.” Kaeya pauses then, dropping the vision to his chest and staring at the ceiling instead, so Diluc does the same. “I just couldn’t help but feel that it meant I threw it all away for nothing.”
For a moment, all he can do is breathe.
Then, as loud as he dares, “I’m glad you didn’t break it.”
Kaeya sighs. “I suppose it’s come in handy once or twice.”
“No, I mean—” Diluc huffs, frustrated at his inability to articulate just what he means, but Kaeya is patient and waits. “I don’t think the Gods were mocking you.”
“Oh?”
“Maybe you are the ‘Prince of Sinners’, but,” he shakes his head softly, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he tries to think of how to word this, “that’s not all you are. I think they were giving you the freedom to choose what you want to be. Fate is not the end all be all in this world.”
“Isn’t it?” Kaeya asks, stare still transfixed on the ceiling when Diluc looks. “That’s what all our stories and stars say, anyway; if fate decrees it, if it’s so written in the dust of the stars, then so it shall be.”
“I don’t think—” Diluc swallows the heaviness, the pain and regret and grief, “I don’t think they would have saved you, if your only fate is war against them.”
Kaeya is quiet for a long stretch of time. Diluc lets him be.
“Perhaps they simply wanted the honor of cutting me down themselves.”
Diluc allows himself to roll his eyes. “Don’t think quite so highly of yourself now.”
“Sorry, dear brother, you’ll just have to try harder next time.”
He knows (hopes) he’s joking, but, “there never will be a next time, Kaeya. Ever.”
“Mm. I do suppose attempted fratricide is a one time thing.”
“Kaeya.” He sounds a bit more anguished than he intended, throat swelling with emotions he doesn’t know how to deal with.
“Diluc,” Kaeya returns simply, and when he looks again, Kaeya’s eye is on him, expression painfully gentle and familiar in a way it hasn’t been in years. “You know I never blamed you, right? Not for that.”
He does. In a sick, twisted way, he does know that. That’s what makes it so terrible.
He doesn’t respond, not right away. Kaeya seems content with letting him think. Even after all these years, Kaeya can still read him as easily as any book.
“Kaeya,” he starts, and though he hums that he’s listening, Diluc takes another moment, two, before continuing. “Is that the reason you told me that night? Because you knew what I was going to try to do?”
His voice sounds hollow to his own ears, quiet and laced with a years’ old ache neither of them have dared to touch.
Beside him, Kaeya sighs, and it’s a heavy thing.
“Not entirely,” he says eventually, so quiet Diluc doubts he would have heard him if they weren’t right next to each other. “I didn’t go to you with the intention of commiting suicide. I wouldn’t have brought my blade if that were the case.”
And isn’t that just a punch to his ribs. A relief, too, albeit a small one.
“Then what?”
Kaeya shrugs. “I felt guilty. I was relieved, when father died, in some sick way. And further disgusted with myself for feeling that way.” Kaeya huffs a bitter laugh. “I thought that it meant I didn’t have to choose anymore, maybe. Since Crepus was dead, that meant I just had my blood father left to choose from, no? In theory, the whole night should have made my life all the more simple.”
Diluc, in theory, understands what he means. It sounds cruel on the surface, yes, but it does make sense. He doesn’t know how Kaeya lives with all of this, how he lived with it all throughout their childhood. It’s far too much for anyone, let alone someone as young as Kaeya, to bear, alone or not.
Diluc tries to read between the lines, as Kaeya always taught him to do.
“But you still had me,” he says, but not in an accusatory way. “I was still in the equation. There was still a side to choose.”
“Yes,” Kaeya says simply. “And I decided that waiting for the day my blood came for me would take too long. So I chose.”
Diluc always sort of knew what the implications of Kaeya telling him were, what it meant. In a sense, Kaeya had given him all of the power he needed to eliminate a potential threat. If not by his own hand, Diluc could have easily gone to the Knights and had him locked away or executed.
You wanted me to punish you. Judge, jury, executioner—
“I think I understand,” he says softly. Then, since he’s feeling bold, “do you regret it?”
Have you changed your mind?
Kaeya smiles, no doubt reading between the lines, too. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Diluc looks at him; he looks at the light streaks in his hair, at the star-shaped pupil boring into his own gaze. At the eyepatch and the hints of scar tissue peeking from beneath the black leather.
“I’m glad the Gods saved you that night,” he says, pouring every bit of exhausted sincerity he can into the words. His eyes burn and his throat hurts as he does, but they’re long overdue. “And I’m sorry they ever had to save you from me.”
For a long while, Kaeya just stares at him, then he smirks. “Like I said: this thing has come in handy once or twice.”
Diluc huffs a laugh, but sobers quick enough.
Using more care than he handles delicate glass bottles with, Diluc reaches out and takes Kaeya’s hands in his own. Kaeya lets him, and further lets him slowly peel away the fabric of his gloves, watching him with a careful eye.
Seeing the scars he left up close steals the breath from his lungs.
The tissue on Kaeya’s hands is thick, and too rough to the touch. Diluc can see where he’s missing prints on a few of his fingers, can see where his grip must falter or ache because of the warped skin.
Still scrubbed raw from the endless repeating days, Diluc barely chokes down a sob, clutching Kaeya’s hands as tightly as he dares without hurting him. He doesn’t trust that he’s wholly successful, but can’t bring himself to let go.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” he manages to whisper, throat thick and sore with every word.
Kaeya sighs, but doesn’t pull away, even as his shoulders tense, “it doesn’t matter, Diluc—”
“It does,” he hisses out through his teeth, the words harsh like steam from a kettle. He clutches Kaeya’s hands impossibly tighter, as a way to keep himself grounded. “Please… I… I want to see, Kaeya. I want to see what I did.”
Kaeya shakes as he breathes, forcing himself upright in one motion. He still lets Diluc cling to his hands, mercifully, as he does the same. “Diluc… You don’t have to—”
“I do.”
For a terribly long moment, Kaeya just sits statue still, staring at where Diluc’s knuckles have practically gone white. Then, he gently pries his fingers free, shaky as they are, and settles them on the first clasp of his vest.
“I’m okay, Diluc. I’m okay,” he emphasizes, undoing the small clasps and shrugging off his vest, neatly folding it next to him on the mattress.
He’s stalling, Diluc recognizes, but can’t bring himself to call him on it. He allows Kaeya to take his time undoing the hooks and laces of his corset and the buttons of his shirt—lets Kaeya simply stare at him for what feels like several minutes before he finally mumbles something to himself and shrugs off his shirt once and for all.
And Diluc… Diluc can barely breathe.
He chokes on a whimper, helplessly reaching out before yanking his hands back. He doesn’t want to touch without Kaeya’s permission, but… there’s just so much.
The junction between Kaeya’s left shoulder and neck is almost completely covered in scar tissue, thick enough it dents the muscle, and maybe even the bone. There’s another patch of heavy keloid over his left hip as well, creating a divet in his side, albeit smaller. Another, under the right side of his ribs, cross-hatched in that way only deep and terrible burns heal. A small patch covers the cap of his right shoulder, no bigger than his palm, and Diluc swallows a retching gag.
“It’s not all you,” Kaeya says, perhaps a bit desperately in the face of his sudden silence, “sorry, you can’t take all the glory here.” It’s a forced laugh Kaeya lets out, and Diluc chokes on a sob.
“It’s enough of me,” he hisses out, finally daring to touch the pale scars with shaking fingers. Kaeya quivers beneath him, and for a paralyzing second, Diluc worries that it’s from pain, but then—
“It doesn’t… it doesn’t hurt, anymore,” Kaeya whispers, and all Diluc can focus on is anymore.
It’s a lie, he thinks. He knows.
His own scars, some from his own hands as a child when he was first learning, ache even now. Kaeya’s are far more fresh, far more pink even in their age, and Diluc knows down to his bones just how much pain he caused.
“I’m sorry, Kae,” he mumbles out, lip quivering and cheeks rapidly turning wet. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”
Kaeya shushes him, pulling him close down under his chin when he can’t hold his sobs back anymore.
“I’m sorry too, Di,” Kaeya whispers from above him, and his voice sounds shaky and wet, too. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
Diluc clings to his brother, and Kaeya clings right back, just as tight.
. . .
Later, when they’ve both calmed down and they’re both pretending their eyes aren’t rimmed with red, and they've enjoyed a quick breakfast downstairs, Kaeya laughs across from him into his teacup.
(Diluc sort of hates the things now, if he’s being honest, though it’s not as if he can avoid them for the rest of his life.)
Diluc raises an eyebrow at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, I was just thinking that if I get Venti drunk enough, he might tell me what he was thinking when giving me my vision.”
Diluc sighs.
“Of course you know who he is.”
“Well, it’s not as if there isn’t a several story tall statue in the plaza that has a striking resemblance to him or anything.”
“That’s… fair,” he concedes with a shrug. He doesn’t know how the resemblance escaped him, really. Perhaps Venti used some sort of glamor? Or let people think he was simply very devout? “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Venti doesn’t give Visions; none of the archons do, actually.”
Kaeya slumps in his seat and pouts. “Well, that’s quite the shame. You know this how, exactly?”
Barely suppressing an eyeroll, Diluc takes a sip from his tea. He didn’t add enough honey, and it’s far too hot, but he tries not to let his grimace show. “I got curious and asked him. He's surprisingly open about it; you probably wouldn’t even need to get him too drunk.”
Kaeya blinks at him, and Diluc can see the moment he starts concocting some sort of plan to interrogate the god in his eye. Diluc decides right then to not ask. Unceremoniously, Kaeya plucks Diluc’s teacup from his hands and cradles it in his own. This time, Diluc does roll his eyes at him.
“Duly noted,” Kaeya says with a smirk, eye trained on the stolen teacup.
Diluc blinks when he notices frost crawling along the rim. After a few moments, Kaeya apparently deems the cup cool enough and passes it back across the table to him, along with the jar of honey.
It takes him a moment to process the simple gesture for what it was.
“Thanks,” he mutters, twirling the honey dipper between his fingers and over his cup. Kaeya shrugs in response, but to Diluc’s eye it seems overly-chalant.
Baby-steps, for both of them.
Diluc takes a sip of his tea.
The temperature is perfect.
. . .
“Do you miss him?”
They’re back up on the top floor of Angel’s Share now, once more huddled up on the tiny cot. Kaeya has himself pressed fully into Diluc’s side, legs crossed neatly in front of him. Diluc himself keeps his legs stretched out and ankles crossed, head gently tilted to rest atop his brother’s.
“Miss who?” Kaeya asks softly, idly braiding and unbraiding again the same few strands of his hair.
Diluc sighs. “Your… ‘real’ father.”
Kaeya freezes. It’s quiet for a few heavy moments, then, very deliberately, he lets out a slow breath through his nose and resumes his braid.
“Crepus was my real father,” Kaeya replies in a carefully sharp tone.
Diluc sighs, but doesn’t rise to the bait, though he thinks it’s fairly laid. “That’s not what I meant—I know that. Your birth father, then.”
Kaeya undoes the braid. “... I miss the idea of him.”
He hums. “I can understand that.”
Letting his hair fall, Kaeya sighs.
Diluc settles more of his weight against him. “Will you tell me about him?”
Apart from a few curious queries as a child, Diluc had never really asked about Kaeya’s ‘old’ family. Kaeya, for now obvious reasons, had never shared. It didn’t mean Diluc didn’t want to know, but Kaeya always seemed to clam-up when asked, before stuttering out a story that seemed too fantastical to be true (before he truly mastered the art of lying, of course). He always figured Kaeya would tell him when he was ready.
(And look at what he did to him when he finally was.)
It takes Kaeya a moment, three, but he does, indeed, talk.
“He… wasn’t a kind man, I think,” he starts, and Diluc reaches over to clasp his hands. He hopes the gentle motion of his thumb is soothing. “That’s not to say he was cruel, now. He wasn’t. He never hit me, and didn’t often raise his voice. Whenever he did yell he apologized, but he never spoke softly either. Everything was firm with him, as far back as I can remember.
“He was terribly strict; monitored quite nearly my every waking moment, and probably as I slept as well.” Kaeya takes a moment, sighing in thought. Diluc gently squeezes his hand, annoyingly mindful of the scar tissue now. Kaeya doesn’t seem to mind either way. “Always said that I ‘needed to be ready.’”
Kaeya laughs, but to Diluc’s ears it sounds hollow.
“Ready to be… planted here.”
Kaeya snorts. “That’s certainly one way to put it, yes.”
Diluc presses just a bit closer to him.
“My mother… my mother said he wasn’t always that way,” Kaeya confesses, so softly Diluc has to strain to hear him even so close. His voice sounds thick, and sad. Longing. “She said he was nothing but gentle and sweet and funny when they first met… She always said she hoped that one day I would truly get to see that side of him, but…”
He trails off with a shrug, but Diluc can feel the weight of what he meant. That he never got to.
“He loved me,” Kaeya says after a few moments of silence, taking a big, deep breath as he does. “I know he did. He never said it, never really showed it, not like—like Father did. But…” Pausing, Kaeya blinks away a sudden surge of something, and Diluc just holds his hands through it. “That night, when—when he left me here—”
Kaeya chokes on his words, and Diluc doesn’t think he imagines the tinge of fear coating them, so he gathers his little brother up in his arms and holds him; tucks him right under his chin and simply holds him. Kaeya shakes, just a bit, in his grip, but seems to welcome it all the same.
“It’s okay…” Diluc mutters, as gently as he can.
He very graciously does not mention the growing wet spot on his shirt collar.
“When he left me here… he’d never held my hand that tightly before,” Kaeya finally mutters into his neck, fingers gripping almost childishly into the fabric of his shirt. Joltingly, Diluc realizes this is probably the first time Kaeya’s ever spoken about that night, without the veil of grape juice and lies. “He was scared, I think. I used to think it was just… hatred of me, of Mond, in his eye when he looked at me then. ‘You are our last hope,’ he told me. He said it in Khaenri’ahn, even though he always spoke the common tongue around me to make sure I practiced and would be ready.”
For a moment, Diluc thinks again of Kaeya’s accent, from when he was so little and frail. He thinks that maybe it didn’t fully fade, and that Kaeya just learned to mask it, as he did so many other things.
“I… like to think he was scared for me, scared to leave his only son in a foreign land that spoke a language he didn’t understand nearly as well as he should have—that he loved me enough to be worried about what would happen to me. That the hatred in his eye that night was for what he felt he had to do… I just… I just sometimes wish he loved me enough to keep me with him. That I, we, were enough.”
Kaeya’s knuckles have gone white from where he grips Diluc’s shirt, as are Diluc’s from where he grips at the back of his, regardless of the bandages Kaeya had oh-so carefully wrapped for him.
“You’re enough,” he chokes out, voice more wet and thick than he intended but it matters little, not when Kaeya breaks on sobs crafted from over a decade of pain and longing and anger, “You’re enough, Kaeya.”
A broken, agonized and long overdue sound rends its way from Kaeya’s chest, just barely muffled by his shirt.
I’m sorry I ever left you.
I never will again.
. . .
“Will you teach me Khaenri’ahn?” Diluc asks, after his brother has calmed and his breath no longer shakes and shudders, though he still holds him close.
From within his arms, Kaeya barks a surprised laugh. “What?”
“Will you teach me Khaenri’ahn?” he repeats, a bit petulantly.
Kaeya pulls himself free just so he can sit up and stare at Diluc, eye narrowed in confusion and thinly veiled amusement. “You want to learn Khaenri’ahn?”
Diluc rolls his eyes. “That is what I said, yes.”
“The language that only I and a handful of nose-in-book, over-achieving scholars from Sumeru speak?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” Diluc shrugs, sitting up himself. “Like you said, you speak it.”
Kaeya doesn’t look very impressed. “I also speak the common tongue, like everybody else. At this point, more fluently than that one.”
“So? It’s still a part of you… still something of you I want to learn about, now, if… if you’ll let me.”
Something in Kaeya’s face softens. “There are other ways to do that than learning a very much dead language, Di.”
Diluc sighs. “I know, and I want to do those too, but… In some of the days, I heard you speaking to yourself in it, while you were trying to figure out what the rocks said, and I just thought… how often do you get to speak your own language, really? If… If that’s something I can give you, then I want to.”
For several long moments, Kaeya simply stares at him with a narrowed eye, though the effect is somewhat lost with it still being slightly puffy from earlier. Then, with a sigh only Kaeya could possibly make so dramatic, he half-heartedly shoves him back down onto the cot, before flopping down himself.
“I’d be quite the terrible teacher, you know.”
Diluc snorts. “I figured that out already.”
“I will assign you homework, of course.”
“Of course.”
“… My accent is absolutely atrocious now.”
“All the more reason to practice.”
“And I’ve forgotten an abysmal amount of vocabulary at this point.”
“Again, all the more reason to practice,” Diluc repeats, halfway amused.
Kaeya huffs and turns his head, squinting at him.
“You’re not giving this up, are you?”
“Nope,” Diluc replies, popping the ‘p’ just a bit.
“You’re actually insufferable, you know that?”
“So you’ve told me, once or twice.” Nonetheless, Diluc takes the victory.
Kaeya laughs—a real one, this time.
. . .
Later, though begrudgingly, they find themselves standing in front of the domain, or well, what was the domain.
It looks like an ordinary rockface, now, simple and unassuming as a squirrel scuttles by. The miasma has dissipated as well, leaving the air around them fresh and easy to breathe.
Just that is enough to lift a weight off Diluc’s shoulders, though it equally fills him with a sense of dread. He has no idea where the domain came from, where it went or why. Perhaps it was simply satisfied with him and his months of suffering, spitting him out when it’d had its fill.
“Well,” Kaeya starts, putting his hands on his hips, “at least that solves one problem.”
Diluc hums, though he doesn’t feel very reassured. “I think it just created more.”
Kaeya shrugs in agreement. “Oh, most definitely. It’s certainly given me a new mountain of paperwork, that’s for sure.”
“Kaeya,” Diluc admonishes with a frown, crossing his arms.
“What?” Kaeya returns, eye suspiciously wide and innocent. “It’s quite true! I’ll be up all night filling it all out; however am I supposed to get my beauty sleep? Looks like these don’t just happen, you know.”
Diluc rolls his eyes.
“I’m sure somehow you’ll find a way,” he says flatly, just barely resisting a tiny smirk. It doesn’t last long, however, before a frown takes over. “What happened this morning, anyway? You always showed up at 7:29, on the dot… well, you never remembered before either, so…”
Kaeya sighs. “I woke up in my apartment. It felt… like a dream. But also very real? I remember the pain, the blood…” Kaeya pauses, swallowing and clearing his throat, “I remember you… I remember you screaming. When I woke up, it was almost nine in the morning already. I was still in my clothes from the day before—still am—and, as you can see, not a scratch on me.
“After I was sure I wasn’t actually injured, I went straight to the tavern to find you. You truly need to find a better place to hide the keys, by the way. In the flower pot, I mean really Di?”
Diluc deadpans. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”
“As you should,” Kaeya says with a smirk, though he sobers quickly enough. “I really don’t understand why I was immune to this… ‘looping’ until now, or why it stopped.”
Diluc chews on his inner cheek, remembering the look on his brother’s face the last time he suggested why. However, with little else to go on, he says, as delicately as he can, “I… might have a theory on that.”
He sees the exact moment Kaeya figures out what he means, sees the second his eye widens and his face falls with realization. Kaeya blinks at him, for just a moment, then chuckles, though it’s hollow.
“A decent theory, I must say,” Kaeya mutters, his lips quirked up in a smirk that doesn’t reach his eye. “It certainly has merit.”
Diluc hums, switching his gaze to the rockface once more.
It isn’t fair.
“I’m going to have to tell Jean, aren’t I?” Kaeya asks after several moments of silence, his tone defeated and subdued in a way Kaeya’s voice should never be.
“You should,” Diluc still says, as gently as he can manage, “she deserves to know. You deserve to have someone you can rely on, fully.”
“Are you saying I still can’t you?” Kaeya returns, carefully sharp. He won’t meet Diluc’s eye.
“No,” he says, forcing his tone to stay calm and soft, though he wants to rage against the déjà vu all over again. “You have me. I’m not making the same mistake twice.”
Kaeya hums, though for several breaths doesn’t say anything more. Then, with another humorless chuckle, “I’m scared. I’m terrified of what will happen if I do. How pathetic.”
Diluc bodily steps in front of him, grasping his shoulders as tightly as he dares. “It’s not pathetic. Jean loves you. She will still love you even after she knows.”
Kaeya suddenly looks half his age, scared and small and frail. “How do you know that?”
“Because she’s not me,” he says, squeezing his shoulders for emphasis, “she won’t hurt you, Kaeya.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
Diluc swallows, and drops his hands from Kaeya’s shoulders. “Then she’ll have to go through me.”
Kaeya’s eye widens. “You’d fight Jean for me? You?”
“Yes.”
“The same Jean you had a crush on for three years and still hold an inhuman amount of respect for? That Jean?”
Diluc sputters as his face flushes. “That was when I was thirteen! And of course I respect Jean, she’s—I’m trying to be serious here, Kaeya!”
“So am I! Saying you’d fight against the Acting Grandmaster is quite the serious offense, you know; it’d be my sworn duty as a Knight of Favon—”
“Kaeya,” Diluc hisses out, folding his arms across his chest. He has no idea how Jean puts up with him all the time.
“Oh, alright. I was just trying to lighten up the mood,” Kaeya pouts, though his face falls into a more serious expression soon enough.
“You’d really fight for me?”
Diluc takes a deep breath. “Yes. I told you: I’m not making the same mistake twice.”
Kaeya nods, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment. “And if I ask you to be there, when I…”
“Then I’ll be there.”
Nodding again, a wry smirk forms on Kaeya’s face. “And I don’t suppose you’re going to let me procrastinate this until you forget, are you?”
Diluc deadpans. “Not a chance.”
Kaeya huffs a laugh. “I thought as much. Very much a dog with a bone, you are. What a shame.”
He winces. “But…” he starts, then takes a deep breath to find his words, “I won’t… force you to do anything you’re not ready for.”
Chuckling, Kaeya shakes his head. “Well, we both know what it took for me to be ‘ready’ the first time, so… best not to wait for anything quite so tragic to happen.”
“Best not,” he agrees, shoving the sudden rush of memories down down down—
“Besides,” Kaeya says, cutting through his rambling mind, “if this domain really is…Khaenri’ahn, then we might not have the luxury of time. I have a feeling… something’s coming. Something big.”
Diluc hums. “Whatever it is… we’ll face it together, like we used to.”
Kaeya smiles, and though it’s small it’s easy to spot as genuine. “Like the good old days, eh?”
“Like the good old days.”
Even he can crack a chuckle at that.
His relationship with Kaeya isn’t perfect, isn’t fixed yet; it’s still riddled with holes and anguish and resentment, on both sides, and there’s still much for them to talk about, but…
It’s a start.
. . .
The next day, when Diluc wakes, he is in his own bed in the winery.
There is no finch chirping outside his window. There is no teacup or shattered porcelain across the floor.
It’s finally, actually, tomorrow.
Diluc smiles.