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Chapter Text

The Angel’s Share felt more congested, suffocating, claustrophobic than normal.

Kaeya downed the remainder of his Death After Noon, a tremor rising from deep within his bones. His hands shook as he slid the empty glass away from him, resolving to end his night with this drink. Head spinning, he stood and left the payment on the bar, stumbling towards the door.

I don’t remember the gentle tavern lights being this fluorescent.

Maybe he should have lost both eyes with how garishly bright his usually comforting rest stop seemed. No sight at all sounded preferable to these blinding lights. Barbatos above, this was the wrong night to drown his carefully-hidden sorrows.

With a shaky, alcohol-tainted breath, Kaeya slipped his fingers underneath his eyepatch strap, shifting it over to his working eye and blotting out the swaying world.

Ahh … the sweet relief of darkness.

Though the consequences of this incredible lack of thinking soon hit him square across the jaw — just like the cold road of Mondstadt’s silent streets as he tripped over his own feet.

Groaning, Kaeya ripped off his eyepatch, blinking blearily at the cobbles he’d had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face. Something warm trickled down his nose, slipping between his lips with its unwelcome metallic taste. He spat on the ground and massaged his jaw.

That was stupid. How would he have gotten home if he’d blindfolded himself like that?

Get it together, Alberich.

Kaeya grunted and pushed himself onto his knees, snatching hold of a nearby streetlamp for stability as he hauled himself up. With some effort, he was back on his shaky feet and stumbling down the night-bathed streets, drawing himself up a little more every time he encountered one of the Knights’ sundown patrol.

Heaven forbid one of his fellow knights saw Kaeya — a known enjoyer of alcohol and a frequenter of the Angel’s Share — wandering drunkenly around at night.

Sooner or later, the spires of the Church of Favonius loomed ahead, its grand stature looking down upon the people over which it casts its holy shadow. The gaze of the gods carved into the art of architecture, and a sanctuary for lost souls the winds guide into Mondstadt’s protection.

The moment he’d passed the church, however, he found himself … called from within its doors. A small whispering, playing with his conscience like a frolicking spirit. All daily services had long since ended, so there would be nobody inside but him and perhaps a sister or two.

And yet …

Maybe Barbatos needs me for something.

He scoffed. A ridiculous idea.

Then again, he’d tried walking home blind after an unhealthy amount of drinking.

Tonight was the night for ridiculous ideas.

With a small, dry laugh, Kaeya changed course and practically fell through the cathedral doors, wondering what on earth the heavens could want from him.

Chapter Text

Papers rustled as he set his quill in the inkwell and leant back in his chair.

Ever since a rather flaky winery from Sumeru had reached out about a partnership to sell top-of-the-line Mondstadt alcohol, Diluc had been up to his neck in paperwork and “late” letters. Elzer was normally around to assist him in these sorts of matters, but after he took a nasty fall down the stairs, the duties of managing business logistics fell solely on Diluc’s shoulders.

“You should ask Master Kaeya for extra help!” Adelinde had suggested once, and then never again. Watching the quiet hope drain from her still-young eyes was too much for him to handle, and that night he swore to never again shout down his beloved maid and caretaker.

“Perhaps Master Kaeya—” The speed in which Adelinde had shuffled away the clueless Connor still ate at Diluc’s consciousness, to the point where he rarely left his quarters now, unless it was on business matters.

Elzer’s heavy, stumbling weight as Diluc carried the bruised man home should have been foreshadowing to this bleak overwhelm he was feeling now.

With a huff, he dragged his ink-stained hands down his face and scooted his chair back, stretching out his legs with a concerning crackle from his knees. He stood and shook out the creakiness from his joints, rolling his neck as his body protested all the movement after hours of sitting. Something odd settled in Diluc’s chest, all these thoughts about Kaeya making him feel incredibly uneasy.

After the night of his father’s death, he’d never ignored a gut instinct ever again.

But if this turned out to be a false alarm …

Don’t. Don’t think that. Just go.

Slipping into his hardier boots and shrugging a coat over his broad shoulders, he made his way out of his room and exited the winery, the brisk chill of the night breeze tossing his red locks away from his face as he set his course for Mondstadt City.

Any other day, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But on a night like this, the gentle winds keeping his vision unobstructed felt like a blessing from Barbatos.

Like the anemo archon was purposefully keeping Diluc’s path straightforward and easy.

It curdled like a knot of apprehension deep in his stomach.

All of a sudden he was running. The wind shifted and gusted forth from behind, giving his panicked feet a divine propulsion that left Dawn Winery descending behind the road.

Something is very, very wrong.

Diluc blazed by Swann and Lawrence, barely hearing their confused shouts as he tore through the dark streets of a midnight Mondstadt. His panicked strides took him to the most obvious of Kaeya’s whereabouts, skidding to a stop just in front of the Angel’s Share.

And he nearly heaved up his dinner as he found the damning evidence that proved his instincts correct.

Shaking, Diluc dropped to one knee and took the wine-reeking eyepatch into his gloved hands, clutching it close as he rose back up to his feet.

I have to find him.

Chapter Text

The bells of the Favonius Church tolled four times, signalling the hour before dawn.

From his right-side pew, Kaeya stared at the small rise at the front of the nave, where he knew a door would slide away to reveal the sanctum for the Holy Lyre der Himmel. The fond memories of the Traveller’s time in Mondstadt crossed his mind, but only briefly, as the effects of his alcohol session had already begun to wear off.

The only sister present at this unholy hour was asleep in the frontmost pew on the opposite side of the aisle, keeping Kaeya grounded with her random intervals of snoring echoing through the otherwise silent cathedral.

Silence to his ears and to his heart.

Restless from the anxiety nibbling away at his resolve, Kaeya stood, his creaky knees echoing more than he’d like as he made his way to a side exit. Perhaps at this lonely hour, he could watch the sunrise from the bell tower. Amber often asked him to join her on her morning gliding sessions if he was idle at sunup, so he knew the perfect way to climb the church walls undetected.

Not like anybody would be out and about at such a late time.

I’ll be by myself.

His skin was met with the frigidly refreshing air of the unborn morning, and he craved the coolness as he stepped out into the night. Almost like he was being suffocated, Kaeya slipped his cavalry armour off, letting his fur-draped pauldrons and vest fall to the cobbles as he flexed his fingers and reached up to grab hold of the doorframe.

With a hoist, Kaeya was off the ground, scaling the side of the cathedral with a level of difficulty he had not accounted for: he was still drunk.

Oh well. Can’t back out now.

Shaky hands grasped ledges, stumbling feet pushed him up higher, a single eye scouted out his next footholds, and an inebriated mind convinced him more and more that this was still a good idea.

He blinked and he was halfway there. Shoulders trembling from clumsy exertion, Kaeya glanced down.

Shit.

The world tipped and swayed once he realised how far down the ground fell behind him, and he clung to the sill of a stained glass window.

It’s too far down to give up.

Taking a shuddering breath and letting the paling night’s air sting his lungs, Kaeya pushed forth, reaching up to grab the slight overhang above the window. He convinced his feet to step up and use the shallow ledge of the window’s frame to heave himself up. Something dim and faint rang in his ears, like a distant call from somewhere beyond.

I can do this. Just don’t look down.

Don’t look down.

“Don’t look down,” he chanted under his breath, keeping his movements in time with the rhythm he gave his body. A surge of confidence made his skin tingle once he saw the edge of the bronze bell, and he took a risky gander downwards.
The vertigo slapped him across the back of his mind like a reprimand for his cockiness.

If I fall, nobody will be around to help me.

I’m alone.

With a shiver, Kaeya shakily reached up and snatched an overhang, realising with a breath of relief that his fingertips didn’t hit a wall.

One more hoist.

A grunt and a prayer, and Kaeya swung himself up, pushing himself over the ledge and laying flat on the bell tower’s top.

He swallowed a sob as he grasped the thin inner pillar and pulled himself to his feet, bracing against the stone support as he gazed across Mondstadt before him.

Kaeya’s home city swooped and dipped around him.

Don’t fall.

Chapter Text

“Have you seen Captain Kaeya after he entered the Angel’s Share?”

Huffman shook his head, looking Diluc up and down with a strange concern in his eyes. “No sir, I only just started my shift—”

Diluc grunted a reply and moved past, cutting him off as he stormed down the cobbled streets of the waning Mondstadt night. Huffman was just one of the many knights he’d stopped to interrogate and, like the others, had provided no useful insight on the cavalry captain’s whereabouts.

How had nobody been around to see Kaeya leave? Surely there would have been men stationed to do night patrol, and their cavalry leader is known to frequent the bar.

Just another stroke of incompetence on the Knights’ part, he thought to himself with a grumble.

The Knights of Favonius headquarters loomed ahead as Diluc power-walked up the stone steps, and various knights just starting their early-morning shifts quickly dove out of his way as he strode up to the front doors and heaved them open with both hands.

The crashing noise echoed through the checker-floored halls and announced his arrival to the dozing guard just outside of Klee’s time-out room, startling the hapless fellow to attention. “M-Master Diluc!” he stammered through a yawn, saluting with the wrong hand. “What— What brings you to the headquarters at this hour—”

“Where is Jean?” Diluc interrupted, a brewing thunder laced through his words. Only he was allowed to call the Acting Grand Master by her first name in non-casual settings, considering how close he was to her. This was his way of relaying just how serious this matter was, since nobody else seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.

The knight trembled as if expecting to be hit by lightning. “She’s in— She’s just come into her office, b-but—”

That was all he needed, so he turned his attention ahead and stormed past the guard. He stopped just before her door and gave her the decency of a knock — more of a pounding if anything, but a knock regardless. “Jean? May I enter?”

“Diluc? Is that you?” her dulcet voice rang from behind the pine wood, and he could practically see the beaming smile on her face as she realised who was behind her door. “Yes! Yes, please come in!”

He wasted no time as he practically barged inside, just now realising how out-of-breath he was. “Have you seen Kaeya at all?”

Jean, gathering books at her desk, looked up as he entered, her soft expression hardening into unfiltered worry as she straightened. “No, I haven’t,” she admitted, tucking the books under one arm. “Are you alright? Did something happen? Ah— here, close the door and we can talk.”

Diluc obeyed and shut the door with his heel. “There’s no time,” he grunted. “None of your knights on patrol have seen him since he left the Angel’s Share last night, and he …”

Swallowing something thick in his throat, Diluc dug around in his breastpocket and withdrew Kaeya’s eyepatch, holding it out in front of him. “I found it abandoned on the ground just outside the tavern,” he said, voice low and angry. “Tell me why nobody bothered to investigate why it was abandoned, why I found it after coming into the city on a whim?”

It wasn’t on a whim. It was on that gut instinct that somewhere, somehow, something was wrong. It was on the gust of wind that carried his feet in a panic to the city gates.

It was on the divine intuition that Kaeya was in trouble.

Jean’s eyes darkened, reflecting the panic that was slowly tightening Diluc’s chest. “I will see to this immediately,” she whispered, setting her books down and circling around the desk. “I’ll gather the Investigation Company to perform a search of the city and the surrounding wilderness. You go out ahead and search in all the areas you think he would have wandered off to.”

Diluc nodded and stared at the carpet, quickly pocketing the eyepatch so as not to let the sick feeling in his stomach win over.

A gentle hand stroked his cheek, and he looked up to find Jean’s gentle lilac eyes searching his face. “You’re shaking, Luc,” she murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. “Breathe. We’ll find Kaeya, whether it takes us beyond the world’s borders and back, do you understand?”

With a trembling sigh, Diluc nodded and grasped her wrist as he leaned into her touch. In it, he found a shred of comfort.

Until a frantic hammering on the door startled them both out of the tender moment, and Huffman stumbled in, eyes wild and breath haggard. “Captain Kaeya has just been spotted climbing the cathedral!” he gasped, clutching the door frame.

Diluc and Jean exchanged panicked glances before Diluc barrelled out the door.

He crashed through the gathering of the investigation company, exploding out the doors of the Favonius headquarters and racing through the paling night towards the church.

Please don’t be too late, please don’t be too late.

Chapter Text

The wind gently caressed his face, as if begging him to take a step back.

Kaeya shuddered as he leant out over the expanse of the city he dared call home, loosely holding the thinner beams of the bell tower for support. In the waning night, as the sky’s hue lightened in preparation for the sun, a cold emptiness settled in his chest and burrowed deep into his heart.

His hair weighed down on his head, his ribcage suddenly turning to iron and constricting his lungs.

There’s nobody here.

I’m alone.

Crepus was dead. Varka was abroad. Diluc hated him. Jean would hate him if she learned about this. Lisa wouldn’t care much. Rosaria would probably rather drink alone. Albedo would be ashamed of how low he’d sunken. Klee didn’t deserve such a problematic presence in her life.

The stars beckoned for his long walk off a short ledge.

Besides, it was almost morning. The bell would toll five, he’d get startled, and he’d fall anyways.

Every breath scraped his lungs with icy, despairing shards, and Kaeya gripped his own throat. The old scar — long since healed — sent shocks of pain through his skull as if freshly torn open, as if freshly cauterized upon impact by the blazing anger of a grieving son, as if freshly cooled by a sacred blight descending as an icy shield between brother and brother.

The fire of retribution should have consumed him that day.

The anger of spilt blood unavoided should have mixed with his open wounds that day.

He knew now. The gods hadn’t spared him with their gaze, hadn’t saved him from death.

They’d condemned him with the guilt of he who lived in spite of death.

“I’m sorry you hate me,” Kaeya coughed, praying the winds keeping him company would carry the words to his estranged brother.

He clung to the pillar with trembling knees, that same ringing echoing in his head even as the bronze time-teller behind him stayed still in its awaiting of the fifth hour. It was all too loud, too loud, too loud too loud too loud—

Wait …

Kaeya lifted his hanging head. This wasn’t noise.

Voices.

He dared to peek downward, finding a group of knights racing from the Favonius headquarters towards the church. Panic sliced through his core, and he went cold as he realised the morning patrol had begun half an hour ago, and that someone likely spotted his dangerous ascent.

“Kaeya!”

A sob tore from his lips as his knees gave out, that desperate call dredging his heart from the deep recesses of the icy hell of his own making as he clung to the pillar. It pumped fresh and painful, each beat tattooing his brother’s name into his soul with a raw, visceral love and longing.

The shouts from below grew in volume and desperation as the knights below — the same knights he called his family — realised the gravity of the situation, screaming his name or frantically begging the sisters running outside to withhold the hourly chime.

Red flashes painted their eyes, turning their shouts into angry jeers that echoed the voices in his head. Suddenly they weren’t shouting for the sisters to not ring the cathedral bell, but for him to throw himself down and end the miserable life he’d been living.

Mondstadt was no longer home, but a chopping block.

Diluc, eighteen and crying, held the flaming axe.

His fingers went numb. His feet found air.

Hair blue as the eclipse whipped around his face as the bell heralded the morning’s arrival.

And a gloved fist caught Kaeya’s wrist.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got you.”

Diluc strained against the stone edge of the bell tower, gasping with a cry as it cut into his ribs. His arm tingled with adrenaline as he let out a roar and hoisted Kaeya up with a mighty heave, using the momentum to tuck his knees and drag them both up and away from the edge.

With another pained cry, Diluc pulled his brother close, untangling his feet from the slender pillar and struggling to his knees. He took deep breaths and leant up against the thicker pillar, each inhalation feeling like knives between his ribs as he dragged Kaeya into his arms.

Trembling fingers suddenly dug into Diluc’s back and shoulders as his brother clung tightly. Kaeya sobbed, realising he was safe.

A shaky exhale, an even shakier hand enmeshing itself in his little brother’s hair, and Diluc stared out at the horizon, seeing nothing. He processed what just happened, between the grown man curled childlike in his embrace and the carving pains in his chest.

Kaeya almost died.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, clutching his brother close and resting his cheek on his blue hair. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Kaeya almost died.

If he’d been even a second later, or if he’d dallied too long in Jean’s office, or even if he’d ignored the gut instinct he felt back at Dawn Winery …

Archons above …

Tears streamed down Diluc’s face, from wide, horrified eyes that stared long beyond the firmament at the spilling rays of a Mondstadt dawn. Kaeya’s crying stuck pins into every inch of his heart, overruling the physical pain in his ribs as he rocked back and forth, shivering from the chilling moment he prevented.

Everything would have changed if he was even a second off.

“Here,” Diluc coughed, arms constricting around his brother — his little brother — as he pulled his shaky legs under him in an attempt to stand. “L-Let’s get you down— down from here, okay?”

Kaeya couldn’t form words around his sobs, only able to nod his head as he clung to his brother — his big brother — like Diluc was the one thing keeping him alive.

Which might be true.

A lump formed in his throat as he hauled them both up, leaning heavily against the pillar so as not to fall. The clamour of metal armour grew steadily louder as the investigations team from early finally made it up to the bell tower’s top, surrounding the two men and helping them to the edge where they’d propped up a ladder. Two knights grabbed Kaeya’s shoulders in an attempt to carry him down the ladder, but he gasped and stumbled forward, refusing to let go of Diluc.

“Kaeya—” Diluc stammered, holding his brother’s shoulders. “You have to let them—”

“No, please,” Kaeya sobbed, shaking violently and grasping at Diluc, burying his face in his shirt. “Don’t— please stay—”

The knights looked to Diluc with worry plain in their eyes. With a deep breath, Diluc wrapped his arms tighter around Kaeya. “I’ll take him down,” he said, his lungs stinging with a violent cough. He doubled over a little, clinging to Kaeya as he struggled to find breath. “Let me take him.”

Glancing at each other, the knights took a step back and allowed Diluc to begin his trembling descent. Kaeya hung on like a baby animal to its mother, and Diluc kept a steady hand on the back of his head and neck.

Soon enough, his feet met cobbles.

They were safe.

Chapter Text

The chair creaked as he plunked heavily down, groaning in relief as he propped his armoured boots up on the table.

Only week in Nod-Krai and he’d already found a lead in Amsvartnir.

Varka sighed heartily as he set his mug of ale down and reclined, shuffling through the notes his scouts had scribbled down during their mission earlier. With a pencil, he circled key words and underlined important paragraphs, repeating them under his breath to keep the findings fresh in his mind before the alcohol hit. 

He may be a drinker — and a heavy one at that — but that didn’t impact his ability to keep his position of Grand Master. By the grace of Barbatos, he’d found ways to keep information in his head throughout inebriation, so as not to drunkenly mislead his knights or ruin an important mission. 

He considered it a talent of his.

With a chuckle at the amount of rushed spelling errors in scouter Chava’s reports, Varka leant over and took another swig of drink, swiping the foam from his brow with his forearm. The fiery sting of Nod-Krai ale burned down his throat with satisfaction as he reached for another report.

BANG!

“Grand Master Varka!” gasped Fallstaf, a messenger in his company, as he clutched at the door handle and stumbled inside. “An … an urgent message from Mondstadt … whew … flew in today by hawk, addressed to you …”

Varka set down his tankard and sat up, brows furrowing as he beckoned Fallstaf closer. “Urgent? From Mondstadt, you say?” he murmured, standing up and taking the envelope from the messenger knight. “I thought I left the knights there in the capable hands of our Acting Grand Master. Why would she constitute an urgent message?”

“I don’t … I don’t know,” Fallstaf panted, leaning against the table and wiping his brow. “So it must be serious.”

Jean was never one to send panicked messages.

Now worried, Varka hastily sliced open the top of the letter, slipping a folded paper out and unfurling it. His eyes widened as he recognised not Jean’s handwriting, but Diluc’s, as he read the message:

To the Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius,

I know you’re away in Nod-Krai, on business that far surpasses the priority of Mondstadt emergencies.

This, however, is a familial emergency.

A few nights ago, I caught an awful feeling that led me to making a trip into the city, where I found Kaeya’s eyepatch abandoned by the Angel’s Share. I was then told Kaeya’s whereabouts had been unknown ever since he left the tavern. At around 4:30 in the morning, he was spotted atop the cathedral’s bell tower in a state of drunken misery. Had I not scaled the buttresses and the stained glass windows in time, I would not have caught him before he threw himself off the edge.

 I write this from Dawn Winery, where Adelinde has committed to keep Kaeya for the time being, and I did not overrule this decision. He has been unwilling to talk ever since he sobered up — not to me, not to Jean, nor Adelinde and Elzer, even. I cannot get through to him, not even by offering the wine from our reserves. All he does is stare out the window from my bed and refuse food and drink. 

I’m sick to my stomach with worry. I think if you came home to visit him, even for a day, it might break his laconic state.

Please, Uncle Varka. Kaeya needs you home. 

We need you home.

~ Diluc Ragnvindr

The signature's ink had been smudged with water droplets.

Varka’s hands shook.

“Fallstaf, notify the Alder Knight that she will be temporarily overseeing my position as head of the company,” he rumbled, fisting the letter and tucking it into his breastplate, “and tell the stable boys to saddle my horse.”

He shouldered past the confused messenger and gripped the doorframe, looking back. “I have to head home.”

Chapter Text

Pale morning light seeped through the windows of Dawn Winery, illuminating the silhouette of an exhausted man.

Diluc shivered and set the dish towel down, gripping the sink and leaning heavily against it. His ribs ached from the motion, and he winced, gripping the edge of the bandages wrapping his midriff.

“Master Diluc?”

Adelinde’s voice startled him, and he whipped around, grunting and stumbling back against the counter as his injuries protested. “Adelinde … I’m sorry, didn’t see you there,” he murmured.

Her spritely blue eyes gazed up at him with a curdling worry, the crows feet adorning them deepening at the corners. “You should not be up and about. The deaconess gave strict orders to—”

“I know,” Diluc interrupted, running a hand through his unkempt hair and dragging it down his face. “I know. I just … need to be doing something, and you won’t let me help with the cleaning or cooking.”

With a sigh, the head maid took his arm and led him gently out of the kitchen. “What I need you to do,” she said as they walked through the quiet, still manor, “is check on Master Kaeya to make sure he’s safely in bed. We cannot give him any opportunity to hurt himself, intentionally or inadvertently.”

A rush of panic filled and left his body like a wave, the feeling akin to missing a step down the stairs. “I thought Connor would be doing that from now on, given how positively the cavalry captain reacted to his presence.”

They stopped just before Diluc’s bedroom door, and Adelinde turned to face him. “He has a name, Diluc Ragnvindr.”

He’s your brother.

The unspoken words wrote themselves clearly into her disappointment-soured smile lines.

Diluc sighed, face heating up in shame. “I’ll check on Kaeya,” he said softly, not meeting her eyes. “Will you fix him something in case he asks today?”

“I’ll make three meals a day, regardless if he eats them,” Adelinde declared, locking her jaw as her chin began wobbling. “I fed him for eighteen years, and I’ll keep feeding him so long as my Kaeya keeps living.”

Her voice broke, and she pursed her lips, fixing her apron to busy her shaking hands.

Diluc pulled her into a gentle hug, leaning down to rest his head on top of her sandy, greying hair as she sobbed into his shoulder.

“I wrote to Varka last night,” he whispered, swallowing the lump in his throat. “I think … I think Kaeya will respond to him if— if he comes home.”

Adelinde looked up, eyes watery and wide. “You did what?”

Diluc squeezed his eyes shut. His heart clenched as he forced out the words, “Varka will be able to help. He always has.”

Breathing slow to quell her shaking, Adelinde nods, her tense embrace loosening as she leant further against the young man she’d watched grow up. “You’re right,” she murmured. “Though part of me worries he’ll feel torn between his duties in Nod-Krai and his family.”

“Whatever decision he makes,” Diluc said, “will be the better decision. If he thinks we can handle this ourselves, we’ll receive a letter back. He’s always had his priorities in order — he’s the Grand Master, after all.”

His hands tightened around Adelinde’s shoulders, the stained words in Varka’s desperate letter still tattooed in the deep recesses of his memory, even four years later: “Don’t bother with a response letter, boy. Ride back to Mondstadt yourself, and tell me to my face that staining foreign snow in a fit of vengeance is what Crepus would want of his eldest son.”

The day he returned was the first time he’d ever seen the Boreas Knight shed tears so openly.

Adelinde sighed and withdrew from the hug, straightening out her apron. “I’ll fix Master Kaeya his breakfast,” she declared, drawing herself up taller as she resumed the posture of head maid. “Let me know of any changes you see — in his behaviour, speech, or demeanour.”

“I will.” Diluc pursed his lips, nodding tersely as he reached for the door handle. He hesitated, listening to Adelinde’s fading footsteps before turning it and stepping inside.

Whatever Varka chose to do, it would be out of an intimate understanding of his people and the situation at hand. But archons above, there was only so many times a man could walk in to see his brother’s corpse-like form huddled in his bed. 

Diluc prayed that his uncle chose home.

Chapter Text

“GRAND MASTER!”

The voice of Frederica Gunnhildr barely rose above the blustering winds whipping his furs about, and Varka turned with a struggle as he clung to the pack he was strapping to his horse. 

“You have some nerve, you do!” she roared, clutching at the fur-lined cowl over her head. “What in Barbatos’ name makes you think you can take off mid-expedition?”

Varka gritted his teeth against the freezing wind. “I thought I made everything perfectly clear in the meeting we just adjourned, Alder Knight!”

Frederica grabbed his arm, nodding towards the stable nearby for shelter from the elements, and Varka finished clipping the pack to the horse’s saddle before leading it with him as he followed her.

Once they were under the wooden structure, Varka pulled his cowl off, wincing through his teeth as his exposed skin protested the sudden change of temperature. “I will only be gone a week at the very most,” he grunted, dragging a hand down his face to warm it up. “It’s urgent, personal, and private enough that I didn’t want to shout it from Nod-Krai’s rooftops at the meeting.”

“Well then,” Frederica huffed, lifting her chin affrontedly and crossing her arms. “There are no rooftops off which to shout in this stable with your second-in-command.”

Breathing deep, Varka put his hands on his hips and cast his gaze down. “It was Master Diluc. He wrote from Dawn Winery informing me that the cavalry captain, Kaeya, was … saved from falling off the bell tower of the cathedral, and that my presence would help him recover.”

Frederica’s blank stare unsettled him, and she laughed. It was a laugh void of humour — more of a scoff, if anything. “And Sir Kaeya being all shaken up is enough reason to abandon your men here? We are about to head to Amsvartnir, and you’re taking a pony home just because the Cavalry Captain had a great fall.”

“There is more to it than just this surface level of understanding you have—”

“No, Grand Master, I believe I’m seeing exactly what it is,” she snapped. “Do you think I would simply drop everything and race home if Jean had broken an ankle falling down the stairs? My duty as a knight is serving under your leadership, and your duty—”

“He nearly died!” Varka roared, towering over the Alder Knight with a tremor in his hands. “Kaeya would have died had Diluc not been there to catch his hand! I nearly lost my son, Frederica!”

Oh, the anger flowed steadily and readily now, tears of pent up frustrations at the brothers’ estrangement finally gushing forth. “It may be a foreign concept to you and the strict training regimen your daughter had for a childhood, but I care about the family I raised!”

Frederica paled and took a careful step back, suddenly finding no words to let loose upon her senior.

Too far.

Varka fisted his gauntleted hands and rested an arm against a wall, the gravity of his family’s situation finally settling across his battle-hardened shoulders. “I— I’m sorry. That was an unnecessary, spiteful thing to say. Please … forgive me.”

“No.” Frederica drew herself up, her gemstone eyes so much like Barbara’s it was almost uncanny. “I did not have the whole picture, and so I got angry. Like I said, my duty is to serve under your leadership, and you have given me the role of expedition leader.” 

She cast her gaze down, around, anywhere but directly at him. “I should have obeyed without question. You’ve proven enough times that your authority is trustworthy.”

Varka looked over at her. “You know that’s only what happens on paper, Alder Knight. We Favonius are a family, too, and you of all people have a right to know why I make certain decisions.”

He straightened and wandered over to the horse, adjusting the saddle straps as the silence settled around them. The shouted words stung worse than he anticipated, knowing they were said in blind anger.

Frederica was his second-in-command, and his best friend.

Then he sighed and made an effort to meet Frederica’s eyes. “Since I became a Ragnvindr, the duty of a parent has been drilled into my bones time and time again. Though he was taken from me too quickly to have a will and requests, I know for certain that Crepus would have wanted me to look out for his boys once he was gone.”

Varka swallowed the lump in his throat. Though the pain of becoming fatherless was immense, Diluc and Kaeya weren’t the only ones who had lost someone dear that day.

“I cannot speak on such a matter like this,” Frederica said tentatively, “considering death did not do us part like it had you … but I know the weight of missing a body beside yours when you need one most.”

She stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, gaze hardening. “Return to your boys. The men will be safe under my jurisdiction, I swear this to you … Varka.”

The use of his casual name brought a crooked smile to his lips, and Varka grasped her shoulder just as tightly. “I trust you more than any of the other knights in this expedition. I know they will be in good hands, Freda.”

Frederica grinned, affectionately shoving at his shoulder. “May the anemo archon keep the wind at your back, Grand Master Varka Ragnvindr.”

Varka laughed heartily and swung himself up on the horse, throwing his cowl back over his head. “I’ll return in a few days!” he shouted as he spurred the horse into a trot, cutting into the violent flurries. “Let the wind lead, Alder Knight Frederica Gunnhildr!”

And with a roaring “hyagh!” Varka set off, daring the storm to impede the speed fuelled by a father’s loyalty.

Chapter Text

“Now breathe in as deep as you can.”

Obediently, Diluc slowly drew breath until he felt a stabbing spasm, pain rippling from his core outward.

Jean caught him by the shoulders as he doubled over with a gasp, and her hand against his chest acted like a grounding tool to keep his mind from running wild in this lack of breath. “Easy, easy,” she whispered.

Barbara lowered her hands, the water spread across his bandages dissipating with a wave of her fingers. “You’ve been overexerting yourself, Master Diluc,” she scolded as she stood and circled around to face him, crossing her arms. “My healing cannot do anything if you’re impeding its progress every day.”

He rolled his neck with a huff. “There’s much to do, deaconess. It’s only my maids and myself around to keep the winery intact, and I’m not making Elzer return to his post.”

“Is there nobody else around to help?” Jean asked, a scoff laced in her words. “Surely it can’t just be you and the maids.”

With a sigh, Diluc turned his attention to the sleeping form of Kaeya in his bed. How small his brother looked, alone in the sheets of a king-sized four-poster, and how frail too. It was hard to believe that he and the suave, charismatic cavalry captain were one and the same.

“My healing isn’t the priority anyways,” Diluc mumbled, reaching out to lean on Jean as he slowly walked towards the bed. He settled himself down on the edge with her help, staring with a hollow, wintry gaze at Kaeya.

Barbara held her hands close to her chest as she approached the bed, her bright, girly eyes filling tears. “It’s so— It’s so upsetting to see him like this,” she shivered. “This isn’t like him at all, even after drinking.”

Diluc’s mouth pressed in a tight line, and he nodded.

With a sniffle, Barbara stumbled forward and threw her arms around him and Jean, crying softly.

Gritting his teeth against the small stab of pain, Diluc gingerly put a hand around her little shoulders, wrapping his other one around Jean’s waist to pull her closer. He let Barbara sob into his bandages, feeling his eyes flutter closed as Jean’s gentle, callused hand combed through his hair.

This closeness … 

It was a sweet memory, sewn together by a bitter nostalgia for the days of his childhood. A sour grief for the years where his brother’s eyes and ice weren’t a constant flash in his nightmares, where his father’s fading face wasn’t seared into his skull forever.

“I miss Uncle Varka.”

The sobbed words from Barbara elicited a small rustle from the bedsheets. Kaeya curled up just a little tighter and shuddered like he’d been crying for hours. That alone was enough to make Diluc’s grip around the sisters tighten, enough confirmation that his decision of writing to the Grandmaster was the right one. 

He could help Kaeya. He was his brother’s sole caretaker and companion during those three years of absence on Diluc’s part, and had always fought to keep him on his feet while juggling the responsibilities of the Knights at the same time. 

If Varka couldn’t help, not even Barbatos himself could.

A scream pierced the heavy silence.

Diluc shot to his feet, ignoring the sore throb of his ribs as he snatched Jean’s and Barbara’s hands and sped out of the bedroom. “Adelinde?” he roared, halting to suck in a painful breath and shake his body from the danger reflexes. “What’s going on?”

Another shriek — from one of the younger maids — echoed from further within the main floor, the girl scrambling through the halls as she broadcasted her news to the whole of the manor.

“The Grandmaster is back! The Grandmaster is back!”