Chapter Text
Diluc finds Kaeya in a holding cell.
It’s easy enough. The Treasure Hoarders who took him are sloppy, amateurish; and not to mention Kaeya left a wispy a trail of Cryo behind him when he was taken, so strong Diluc can almost smell it. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional.
He follows that trail all the way to the Thousand Winds Temple — convenient for keeping someone locked up, sure, but an incredibly obvious place to look, given its size and proximity to the city. His heart palpitates, pacing and agitated and angry — no, more than angry. His rage is indescribable.
He hears a shout, sees a Treasure hoarder point at him; and he unleashes hellfire on the place.
When the smoke clears, he searches the smoldering corpses; finds a key in the pocket of one and a two-winged Vision on another. He wants to vomit. He’s wanted to vomit for the last eight hours.
Jean rarely summons him to her office. When she does, it’s about things like organizing festivals and the like. This morning it’d been to break the news that Kaeya didn’t come to work yesterday morning, wasn’t home or anywhere in the city; and before she forgot to mention it, he’d also been tasked to raid a Treasure Hoarder camp near Old Mondstadt and if she had to make any assumptions it’d be that they were angry. But this, apparently, was not information he needed yesterday — Diluc, better than any Knight at tracking down people who didn’t want to be found and she damn well knew it.
To cover her ass, she’d put Kaeya in danger. It had taken all his willpower not to punch her lights out and he’s not ashamed to admit it. Eight hours later and he doesn’t know if his brother is even alive.
His boots click fast, purposefully, on the stone floor. This hallway smells like seared flesh and fear, sounds like screams for mercy, and he couldn’t care less. Mercy is a privilege, and not one afforded to scum. His vision is red with blood, red with flame and red, red with fury.
Burnt human skin smells like pork lard.
Kaeya is wedged in the corner when Diluc comes up to the bars, curled upright in the fetal position as if he wants to hide himself but can’t. Even in the darkest part of the cell, Diluc can see the blood.
With a trembling hand, he fishes the key from his pocket. When the door swings open, squeaky on its hinges, Diluc stumbles inside and falls to his knees.
This… body could be mistaken for a corpse. He almost assumes it is.
Kaeya’s hair is positively matted with blood, his whole face sticky with it and damn it, he’s barely breathing. There’s blood on the walls and on the floor, and what twists his stomach the most is the bloody chains, discarded on the other side of the room: at some point, he’d become so weak they deemed it unnecessary to keep him bound.
He can’t think of a more disgusting way in which Kaeya looks like Father.
He can’t do this again.
“Kaeya.” Diluc hovers a gloved hand over his brother’s shoulder, like a delicate vase in a gallery. He doesn’t know if he’ll hurt him. “Kaeya, wake up. We need to get out of here.”
For a second, Kaeya says nothing, doesn’t even move and Diluc imagines the worst. Then, he coughs. It’s wet and that can’t be good, but damn it, he’s alive.
“Get… away,” he manages, barely above a whisper. Diluc’s heart shatters.
“Kaeya, it’s me. Diluc, Your brother. I’m here to get you out, alright?”
This time, he does put his hand on Kaeya’s shoulder. It’s a mistake.
“W-wait! Wait, stop, stop please,” Kaeya begs, and with all his strength, slaps Diluc across the face. Diluc reels in shock, but it doesn’t hurt, hurts more that it doesn’t hurt. “I don’t want to do it, please don’t— don’t hurt me, I’m…” He coughs weakly, wrecked, and tries to crawl away but lands right on his face. He yelps and keeps trying to drag himself across the floor, but Diluc’s recovered from the shock of the assault and intercepts him.
“Kaeya! Kaeya, listen to me. I’m not going to hurt you.” Diluc grabs Kaeya by the wrists and he shrieks, broken and terrified, and maybe Diluc should’ve thought that part out, but what else could he have done?
Kaeya writhes beneath him, but Diluc holds fast. “I need you to calm down. Please. I’m going to take you home.”
His head spins with adrenaline. Whoever Kaeya’s seeing, it’s not him.
“I don’t want to do it anymore,” he sobs. Diluc notices, for the first time, that his eyepatch is gone. It twists his stomach into knots.
“You won’t,” he insists, and takes the risk of placing one hand on Kaeya’s back. There’s a heartbeat like a wild horse there, his body racked with tremors; and hot, righteous anger boils deep in Diluc’s stomach at the idea that he has no idea what these bastards put him through to make him like this. “Whatever it is they made you do, it’s all over now. Let me help you.”
Kaeya makes a choking sound, and presumably, realization hits him. “L, ‘Luc?” he asks. He sounds like a child again.
Diluc nods enthusiastically, even though Kaeya can’t see him. “Yes, Kae, it’s me. Your big brother. It’s Diluc.” He strokes Kaeya’s back in what he hopes is a soothing gesture. Kaeya relaxes, if only a little, and sighs in relief.
“It’s gonna be okay, Brother.”
It took eight hours to track Kaeya down. It takes four to get him back.
Before they leave, Diluc had takes stock of his injuries — the ones he can treat right then and there. An open wound on his head produced the most blood, but it’s not anymore. Then, it’s a gash on his shoulder, and another on his abdomen. His left wrist is swollen and when Diluc goes to touch his ankle, he jolts like he’d received an electric shock. Bruising mottles his… everywhere. His chest, mostly, but also wrists and arms and his neck, which just about sends Diluc into an apoplectic rage.
He does what he can for the surface wounds — he keeps gauze on him for a reason — and wraps Kaeya’s wrist, but can’t take his boot off without putting him in more agony. He yelps when Diluc tries to hoist him onto his back. He moans, groans, whines, and whimpers when Diluc accidentally jostles him too much on the road. Every sound he makes sends microscopic knives into Diluc’s heart, shatters it over and over again.
After roughly an hour of travel, Diluc realizes a peculiar cold patch has formed in his pocket; and that Kaeya, too, is starting to chill. He thinks something’s seriously wrong at first — though really, how could things be worse? — But realizes what he’d pulled off of that dead Treasure Hoarder, and remembers one of the things Kaeya’s Vision can do is heal him. Not much, but enough to take the edge off, like an ice pack or a soothing touch. Even though it’s not on his person, even though he’s not awake, Kaeya’s Vision is still trying to keep him alive.
He wonders: is it the Vision doing the work, or is Kaeya the one unconsciously willing it to help him?
As they walk, Kaeya murmurs things. Diluc doesn’t catch most of it — what he does hear are words like “please,” “stop it,” “I’m sorry,” and what hurts the most is “not anymore.” Diluc does his best to reassure him with sweet nothings, but he knows it’s no use. Kaeya is in his own, impenetrable world of torture, and Diluc is but a helpless observer.
Kaeya is strong. Stronger than he needs or ought to be. Diluc could never, ever doubt that. Yet in only days, those fuckers had dragged him through the seventh layer of Hell and back, he’d come out a shell of himself. It’s almost impressive, how they managed to mess him up so bad. It makes him want to kill them over and over again, to be able to watch their faces as they beg for mercy and he, with a smile on his face, tells them no.
He wants to subject them to that same Hell.
As they near the gates, Diluc almost collapses in relief when he spots the Outrider Amber.
“Master Diluc!” She calls, because she sees him first. “Master Di—“
She stops. Confusion, then horror dawn on her face.
“Archons,” she breathes. “Is, is that…?”
Diluc stumbles forward a few more steps, and Amber intercepts them both. “Help him,” he stammers. “He’s—“
After hours of running, fighting, carrying, praying; Diluc’s body chooses that moment to fail him. He buckles, and only Amber’s quick reflexes save him and Kaeya from toppling.
“Whoah!” she yelps, and braces Diluc by his shoulders. “Hey, let me take him. I’ve gotcha, now… yeah, that’s good.” She collects Kaeya, limp like a folded shirt, her tone almost that of a mother’s — he thinks sluggishly about how weird that is, given that Amber’s several years younger than both of them. “There’s so much — so much blood. Archons, he’s cold…”
At some point, Diluc stops listening. He teters, unsteady, and sits hard on the ground. Everything sounds like he’s submerged underwater and spots dance in his vision. He can’t get air to his lungs fast enough.
He’s watched family die in front of him once before. He can’t afford to do it again.
Kaeya is ashen. He didn’t know what “pale” looked like on dark skin before.
Once, Diluc had tried to kill him; saw a beaten and bloody body he once called his brother there in the mud and thought, good. It sickens him, all these years later. It keeps him up at night. This, too, will keep him up at night.
He thinks he hears yelling, the thunder of footsteps — Amber must’ve flagged down a team. Seconds or minutes or hours ago, he doesn’t know. They descend on Kaeya like a swarm of armored mosquitoes, lift him onto a stretcher; and Diluc has to resist the urge to snatch him back. No, that’s my baby brother. Don’t take my baby brother.
Kaeya looks so broken there, wrapped in blood-soaked gauze, his face contorted in pain he’s not awake to feel. The adult inside Diluc lets them take him away. The opportunity to go with them presents itself, and he doesn’t take it.
Amber stays by his side, as he tries to breathe. He thinks he appreciates it, in another universe. He doesn’t feel much of anything now.
“I can’t believe you found him,” she murmurs. She sounds relieved and grief-stricken all at once. “I’ve been — I’ve been up for thirty-three hours, I think. looking.” She meets his eyes, her face sun-tanned and cinnamon-freckled, carrying the weight of the world. “Thank you. So much.”
Amber and Kaeya are friends, he knows. She’s not fond of alcohol, so they spend most of their time together hiking, or reading, or playing TCG in the rec room. Goodness knows what they talk about — goodness knows what Diluc would talk about, if he had friends. She’s young and a little naïve, Kaeya says, but has a heart bursting at the seams. She makes him feel whole, for a few hours out of the day.
It’s all Diluc wants for him.
“It’s you I should be thanking,” he says, and he means it.
The sun has begun to dip below the horizon, and they sit in silence, just the two of them.
The next evening, as he’s working the bar at the Angel’s Share, a Knight comes in.
That night, Amber had offered to escort him to the Cathedral — he’d said no. Before, he had struggled to let the Knights take him. Afterward, he didn’t think he had the strength to see him again, looking like that.
So he’d gone to the tavern, to the little one-bedroom flat in the attic that no one else, not even Charles knew about; and he had not slept. He hadn’t expected to.
And when Charles had come in to open the day after, Diluc told him to go home. He’d take care of things today.
Diluc is drying a glass when the bell above the door jingles. The kid has got to be less than a hundred-twenty pounds, dwarfed further by his ill-fitting armor and a single pimple on his nose. He radiates a sort of contagious anxiety as he explains that the sisters want him at the Cathedral. He doesn’t know why; just that he has orders, just that it’s urgent.
The first thing Diluc thinks is: he’s dead.
Diluc pushes past the kid, out the door, and runs.
He missed his chance. Kaeya’s gone, and he missed his chance to see him.
Barbara is pacing the pews when he bursts through the double doors. She looks up, a hand reaching reflexively for her grimoire; but her face melts when she sees him.
“Master Diluc,” she says. She does well to play off the way her voice cracks. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Where is he?” he demands. He’s out of breath, out of shape. Out of time, maybe.
“Wait, please — slow down. Kaeya’s alright.” She puts out one hand, a placating gesture. “I asked you here because he’s stable now. I thought you might want to see him.” She looks nervous, wired. Diluc’s heart does calisthenics exercises.
“He is?” he echoes. He shouldn’t sound as vulnerable as he does. “He’s okay?”
She nods. “Well, okay isn’t— isn’t the word I’d use. But he… um, perhaps can we discuss this upstairs?
Barbara sounds… exhausted isn’t the right word. She sounds like she’s about to be ripped apart. Sounds worse than he feels; which is like his brain is perpetually being fed into a rotary meat grinder, coaxed into a little bit of intestine, twisted off into sections, and hung up as a tasty Diluc sausage. So, bad.
“Okay,” he says. Dumbly. He doesn’t know anymore. He follows her, like a Judas goat leads a flock of lambs, up the stairs and through the hallway.
(Maybe it’s cruel to call Barbara a Judas goat. He feels, though, a bit like he’s being lead to slaughter).
The door to the infirmary is closed. Barbara stops. Looks at him, and they communicate a silent conversation with their eyes.
It’s okay. I can handle it.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he can.
She opens the door.
Kaeya is the Cathedral’s only patient; a splash of blue and brown on a white, white canvas. He’s… Archons.
It’s not that bad, really. He’s bandaged, almost everywhere, but they’re clean. He’s bruised in some places, darker than they were yesterday, but that’s just how bruises work. His wrist is wrapped and there’s a patch of gauze on his temple.
An IV drip in his right hand; a thin line connecting a blood bag and the crook of his elbow. He’s breathing a bit tightly, but.
He doesn’t look like he’s in pain anymore.
“He’s lucky you found him when you did,” Barbara says. “He’s got — he’s got fractured ribs, four of them. Nothing life-threatening, in the grand scheme of things. Some blood loss; some dehydration. I’ve got him on fluids and painkillers; he should be out for a while. His wrist and ankle are only sprained, luckily. He had a… a seizure, late last night, but it doesn’t seem to have caused any lasting damage.”
He blinks. “A seizure.”
“They’re not uncommon, after severe trauma to the body and brain. He suffered a concussion — mild, unlikely to leave problems behind — which, really, makes it no surprise that it happened,” she explains, in a manner that makes him think she does that sort of thing often. “It sounds scary, but they’re not necessarily dangerous. It’s just important to make sure a seizing patient doesn’t hurt themself.”
She’s extrapolating, removing Kaeya from the situation and replacing him with an unnamed patient. If that’s how she wants to cope, then so be it.
“So what is the worst of it?” The broken ribs? the blood loss?
The fact that it happened at all, really. That Diluc didn’t find him sooner. That Jean had’t told him. That he ended those bastards’ lives much, much quicker than he ought’ve.
Barbara looks around the room, like she wants to confirm no one’s around to hear them. “There’s one more thing I think you should know. I don’t know if it’s right to say it’s ‘the worst of it,’ but. Um.” A bead of sweat traces down her brow. “There was also some, some rectal bleeding.” She looks at him, with those big blue eyes that carry the weight of the world, and.
He can’t breathe.
“Oh.“
Kaeya was.
He,
“It wasn’t severe,” Barbara murmurs, though Diluc’s hardly listening. His ears feel waterlogged. “It’s procedure to look for that sort of thing after… this sort of thing. That’s a, um, a part of the body that heals quickly. Physically, he’ll recover. It’ll take bed rest, and physical therapy, but the human body is resilient.” She sighs a sigh like shattered glass. “In terms of everything else? He’ll need you, Master Diluc. You’ll be more help to him than myself or any of the nuns.”
Please don’t, he’d said. Not anymore, he’d said. The brand-new context makes him sick.
What did he think Diluc was going to do to him?
That’s his baby brother. They, they fucking.
“What the fuck,” he breathes. The room spins like a whirlpool. “What the fuck, what the fuck?”
Father taught him to speak more eloquently than this, but he thinks it’s appropriate. Nothing else quite describes how he feels.
“Hey, slow down. It’s going to be okay, alright? take a deep breath.” she puts a hand on his shoulder, this girl a head shorter and a decade younger than him, and he snaps.
“The hell it is.” He laughs, crazed and confused and so, so tired. “I want to— I want to mutilate their damn bodies.”
He wants to kill every Treasure Hoarder alive. He wants to flay them, to tear them limb-from-limb, to burn them to ashes. He wants vengeance.
He knows from experience that going on a killing spree won’t fill this cavity in his soul, but it’s not about him. It’s about Kaeya.
“I understand how you feel,” Barbara says, distant to his ears, “but please don’t do—“
“What would you understand, Barbara?” He growls. “That’s not your brother. That’s not you.” How dare she assume she knows how he feels?
“It was me, once.” She says it so quietly, so meekly that he almost misses it.
“…What?”
She looks down at her shoes. “Well, not quite the same. It was… it was when I first joined the clergy. A Knight was brought in from the training grounds. He had a broken arm, I think. He was on the bed, and I thought he’d passed out so I leaned over him and…” She breaks off with a shudder. “Lots of people take a sister’s piety as a challenge, you know?”
Those eyes are so shiny, so blue. Blue like Kaeya’s, but hers are like sapphires and his is like ice, like Cider Lake, like winter and beautiful like death.
“I’m,” he starts.
“My point’s not to guilt you or anything,” she says. She glances at Kaeya, and back at Diluc. “Just that I do know. I know why you’re angry. I know how… violating it feels, to be touched like that. But just — just remember it’s not you who was hurt, okay? When Kaeya wakes up, he’s going to be in a lot of pain. Physically, yes, but more so mentally. He’ll need you, and you can’t be trapped inside your own head when he does.”
Barbara looks remarkably like Jean: same curly blonde hair; the same curve in her nose; the same exhaustion in her sea-blue eyes. Barbara is so, so young. So small, with such a heavy burden.
Jean tries. He knows she does. She slips up sometimes. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll forgive her once this is all over.
“I understand,” he says.
“There’s a chair, if you’d like to sit.” She gestures to it, a few yards away at another, vacant bed. He wonders briefly if the person sitting there had felt as torn open as he does; if they’d gotten up from that chair relieved or heartbroken. “I have some duties I must attend to downstairs. Though I doubt it will happen, if Kaeya wakes up, please alert me or another sister.”
He swallows. Looks at Kaeya. “Yeah.”
“And— Master Diluc? Please take care of yourself.”
Eyes that carry the burden of the entire universe. He nods, silently.
She leaves.
Alone, he realizes the room smells like Hydro; that the air is heavy with the stuff. If Visions are gifts bestowed upon the ambitious by Celestia, than he’d give up his; find every damn Vision in Teyvat and exchange it for a promise that Kaeya never have to feel pain again.
As the city falls asleep, he begins to sob.