Chapter Text
Unlike what most people would have others believe, Kaeya takes pleasure in hoarding knowledge. There is just one problem: he knows very much about inconsequential matters and very little about what really matters. He has extensive knowledge of some topics (like how much Diluc hates him) and almost none about some others. He knows, and learns, and listens to the voices that speak in the night, and his precious throve grows and grows, and the maps and puzzles of webs and wires become tangled and untangled all at once.
Khaenri’ah is somewhere in the middle. Of the web, of the weight: it is at the center of everything he is, the most important for what he is meant to be, but inconsequential for what he wants to be. He wants to be an anchor for Diluc’s mind, a pliant body for him to unload his troubles and desires, a friend that will always be there; yet what he is instead is a wavering light in the sky, a body not meant to be alive, a soul barely human at his very core. That is what Khaenri’ah is: a paradox of existence stuck in time, a land of gods without any left, a thought scattering in his brain with each word.
He knows that the people of Khaenri’ah are different from humans, from the people of Teyvat, from even the Archons themselves, or maybe closer to them in a way. They are ‘made of stardust and the nature of elements, shaped through the will of willing to exist,’ whatever that means. They are intangible and unreachable, yet more than any other being, omnipresent and all-knowing. They had reached the height of civilization only to fall into the Abyss, and since then they had become unnamed, untrusted, heretical.
At least, that is what he had been led to believe, what he had been raised to know. Any further knowledge he has of his homeland comes from scattered conversations with enemies, a language shared though his dialect is outdated. Of physical remnants, he had none apart from his eyes. He did not even keep his name, throwing it away the moment he had been able to, changing a hiss for a click and becoming Kaeya.
Not ⬛⬛⬛, the last hope of the land to restore its humanity; not Alberich, the last of the blood fallen from the sky. Simply Kaeya Ragnvindr, not even that: just Kaeya. Just like his names were discarded with time, so was his identity as Khaenri’ahn. And just like he covers his eye for it does not work well in the light, so does he cover his own self, hiding behind a wall of stardust and ice.
It has become more ice and less stardust, now.
Yet, even if he has become more Teyvat than Abyss after so long under the eyes of gods and the burning sun, his body continues being Khaenri’ahn. And that, while it had gone unnoticed so far, has now come back to break the routine of his life. Within few months after that fateful day, he discarded the name Ragnvindr, his mantle as Spymaster for a job he does not care about, and also his humanity.
He throws it away, just like he does everything else, and steps into the Abyssal Nest.
What he has learned from scattered memories and short talks with shielded mages, is this: the people of the Abyss are not born, not anymore. They come to exist through the power of wishes, manifesting from the will of another to ‘become more, become stronger’. The Abyss Mages are all ‘clones’, created from an original splitting into two, then four, then eight and so on; the people who remain in Khaenri’ah and keep their own selves close to their hearts had all been born from a falling star each. Male, female, it does not matter: when reproduction is not a concern, such distinctions become of negligible importance, just another ‘human’ thing they could make fun of.
However, it had once been different: Kaeya remembers being told he was born from a mother, something to be celebrated even if she had breathed her last the moment he opened his eyes. He, the very last hope, had been conceived, not willed into existence, and that made it so he could leave their land and spread his wings. Once, very long ago, the Abyss had been the same: every few decades, one split would evolve, become able to conceive children the way a human mother would. They would build nests and wait for their cohort, picking only the one who could make it through the trials to finally mate.
He watches said trials retreat from his steps: he is here as a guest, after all, for all that Abyss Mages are meant to be the enemy. If the one in the Nest can help reduce his pain just a little bit, then this endeavour will not have been fruitless. If it can help him recover the life he once had, then he will sell his soul to the Abyss if that is what it takes.
The pain. It had simply come one day out of seemingly nowhere, twisting his insides whenever he tried to get up, searing, making him melt from the core of his very heart. Incapacitated as he was, he had been unable to report to duty, to greet his team, to move until Jean got worried enough to visit. He had been repeatedly examined by medics and healers, but there had been nothing wrong with him. And yet, yet the pain came back, every time he fought, every time he spoke, every time he did anything that used his physical abilities instead of his mental ones.
He had been ordered to take a break after the fifth time he had collapsed out in the field. Take a break of everything, his Knights duties and his intelligence gathering (‘You are not Spymaster anymore, Kaeya. Please, rest’) and his keeping tabs on wherever Diluc had run off to. ‘Just, take a break, recover, then you can come back’, except there was nothing to recover from, because nothing was wrong.
Then the morning sickness started, and he had remembered. He was reminded of a conversation long past, a family that did nothing for him besides throw him out into the sun, and also of that night. That night, when he and Diluc fought for the last time as brothers in any sense, and when Diluc threw what little hesitations he still had away and, like a beast in heat, mounted Kaeya, over and over again, while Kaeya laid on the ground bleeding and unresisting —he became the pliant body for Diluc to unload his troubles and desires. That night, when Diluc had told him he was no longer his brother while fucking relentlessly into him, and Kaeya tried to kiss him through tears before Diluc left him behind to pick up his broken pieces.
And something clicked then, a thought that maybe ⬛⬛⬛ Alberich hadn’t been discarded so much as well hidden, a thought that maybe the blood of Khaenri’ah had been stronger this time, a thought that maybe he was not quite as physically male as he thought he was, because he is Khaenri’ahn, and the distinction is of negligible importance. The conclusion was very simple, at that moment, and still shook him so bad he had needed a few more days of rest before doing something about it.
Finding an Abyssal Nest had been relatively easy: he had tried to keep track of where the smallest Mages were more commonly seen, then just triangulated the location. And today, he finds himself entering the Nest, not to destroy it as many people would do, but to seek answers to his existence.
The being that greets him at the end is one that has forgotten mortality, left aside identity, one that exists as the remnants of an era long gone. They are ancient, dying, not in any shape to conceive more children; they do have, however, an answer to his questions.
“⬛⬛⬛, you come to me seeking answers.” The being speaks, like a million voices layered over each one. “Ask away.”
And so, he asks.
The good news is, he is not dying. He does not know how to feel about this knowledge, or about the knowledge of what is truly happening to him— inside him. Creating a new life is another one of those things he had been led to believe were impossible for him, and he had never considered the idea that he might be able to give birth. Why would he? His body is, on the outside, completely male.
What is he supposed to do about this?
His first idea is, find Diluc and tell him. He can’t do that: the small being growing inside him is most definitely Abyssal in nature, already able to throw its energy around to grasp at the fire in the hearth and make it stronger. Of course it would be Pyro, it is Diluc’s child after all, and Kaeya knows he will be unable to let go the moment it is born even if he is unable to use his own skills until then.
Preparations are his second idea, so that’s what he does. As he lays in bed, one hand idly stroking the too warm swell of his stomach, he thinks, and he plots, plans being made and discarded as soon as they are formed. He can’t let his condition spread around, as he does not know what the reaction would be, if he will be accepted or executed on the spot, or worse. This means he will have to deal with this on his own.
Well, not completely on his own. The Abyssal Nest is open for him and his needs, as the entity in it had promised its protection. So far, the progress of his pregnancy had gone how they had said it would, so he doesn’t think they are lying to him, but they are still an Abyssal being and… He does not know if he can trust them completely, but it is the safest option as of now.
So, five months after Diluc has left, four months after the pain began, Kaeya asks for a long leave of absence and vanishes from Mondstadt. He leaves his belongings in Jean’s care and a letter to Diluc to be delivered if he doesn’t return before two seasons are over. Jean makes him promise he will not do anything stupid, but Kaeya can’t say anything to that: what he is going to do is very stupid.
And that’s how he spends the last month before his child’s birth: ready to die at any moment, curled up on a bed of fluffy feathers, and hoping against all hope he will not be found.
Diluc’s child is beautiful.
“She is very much your daughter as well,” the entity says as their spells sweep the melted ice out of the room. Kaeya wants to know why and how they have declared the child as female because he can’t see any distinction, but he is also recovering from childbirth so maybe he deserves a break. “All children born to Pyro are ‘female’. That might change later, but you can call her a girl for now.”
Well, okay then.
The baby girl —his daughter is very cute, and also obviously not human. She is way smaller than other babies he has seen (that is, apparently, normal and healthy), with soft pink skin and red fluff at the top of her head. Her eyes are already open, two diamond-shaped rubies peering at everything from the void as she looks around with curiosity. Her hands clutch at him tightly, as if afraid he would vanish and leave her alone.
The beginnings of a shield shape around her, slowly reshaping after it had broken when she had taken her first breath.
“She will not leave your side for at least ten days, but then she will probably start whizzing around.” Dear Abyss, he had forgotten that’s what they called it. He had also forgotten how hard it is to control, it being as natural as breathing for them: why walk or run when you can just slip through space in a blink’s time? “I am not sure about anything else, it has been many centuries since a Khaenri’ahn was born to this land. Might be closer to a human, or closer to us, I do not know.”
Kaeya also doesn’t remember much of his own childhood, choosing instead to throw it all away just like he himself was. What he does know is that the sun burns his eyes, that the air outside is far too heavy for his lungs, that those first years in this side were a struggle to keep himself alive. Nothing would feel right, not the clothes on his skin or the distorted way his eyes produced images or how slow the world was. At times he would feel like the world was made of stone, others it would be like he was the stone, but everything was wrong.
He does not want his daughter to go through that.
Barbatos, he has a daughter.
Small and delicate and breakable, in the middle of a balance between human and not, sleeping in his arms now that the exhaustion of birth had settled over her. Diluc’s daughter at that, who will probably grow to be just as stubborn and emotional as her father is, chasing an ideal of justice that this world does not have and will not offer to either of them. Khaenri’ah’s child, a blasphemy born to a land of laws and order disguised as freedom and hope that would rather see her shatter before she can get a deeper hold into this reality.
His daughter.
Choking on his own heavy feelings, Kaeya laughs and laughs until tears come to his eyes, until he can’t any longer hold his heart from cracking under everything that has been this past half a year. Losing his father, his family, his place in a world that had taken years to accept him; Diluc discarding their relationship like paper in the fire, throwing him out of the home they had shared for so long and leaving him grasping for anything he could salvage. And now a new life burning bright in his arms, made of strength and dreams and stars that fall to the abyss and beyond—
He cannot, will not, let anything happen to his daughter.
That, he promises.