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Kaeya notices a lot.
It’s the little things, really. The things that don’t add up to the whole picture. Kaeya has always been a collector of details, a connoisseur of contradictions. And Diluc… Diluc is a gallery of them.
Take the scent, for instance. It’s not the heavy, woody cologne most noblemen favor. It’s something lighter. Clean. Almost floral, but not quite… like sun-warmed grapes and crushed mint leaves, with a faint, elusive hint of something like… berries? It’s subtle. You’d have to stand too close to notice, and few dare. But Kaeya does. He leans in when he talks, just to catch it. Just to see if it’s still there. It always is.
Must be some expensive one. He knows it too, Diluc’s preference for wearing the finest quality. He also knows most of it must be suggestions from Adelinde herself that Diluc learned to adapt to his own tastes.
Then there’s the way he sits. In meetings with the Knights or guild representatives, Diluc is all rigid posture and sharp angles, with the elegance of a noble. But in quieter moments, he also crosses his legs. A refined, prim crossing at the thighs, a graceful habit.
But the most telling things are the smallest. The unconscious gestures.
Like the way he’ll sometimes lift a glass. Not with the whole-handed grip of a man who’s used to hauling wine barrels and swinging a greatsword, but with his fingers curled delicately, his pinkie slightly extended. An old, ingrained habit of elegance that feels… practiced in a different context.
Or the way he’ll tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear with a flick of his wrist that is too fluid, too automatic to be something he learned in the past five years. Once, after a long day, Kaeya saw him sigh and push both hands through his hair, holding it with one hand and reaching into his pocket with the other. To find a comb, perhaps. He’d stopped himself halfway, his hands freezing, before letting them fall back to his sides like dead weights. He must not have had a comb.
He knows the reason. Diluc takes his hair seriously now. He never cared before, not as a rabunctious boy who kept it untied and messy. It is only now, when he has to put ten times the attention to his appearance as an established nobleman.
Sometimes, when he’s reading late in the corner of Angel’s Share, he’ll rest his chin in his palm, his fingers curled against his cheek. It’s a soft, thoughtful pose. Almost vulnerable. It makes him look younger. Softer. It makes something in Kaeya’s chest tighten strangely.
He knows Diluc would dismiss it all. Call it Kaeya’s overactive imagination, his penchant for finding trouble where there is none. And maybe it is. Diluc might as well just naturally be like this. Maybe it’s just the eccentricity of a nobleman who’s been alone too long. But Kaeya doesn’t think so. These aren’t airs and graces. They’re relics. Habits from a life lived in another skin, peeking through the cracks of this one when his guard is down.
It must be from the blank years on Kaeya's observations of Diluc, or lack thereof. He'd thought Diluc must have been striking his way through those years with brute force and flames, but he must be wrong.
He never mentions these mannerisms. Not directly. He just… watches. Files each one away. A smile playing on his lips, not mocking, but curious. Fond, even.
Because the truth is, he likes these little slips. They’re the only times the Diluc he knew, the one who burned with feeling, seems to flicker. The embers glowing faintly behind the ice.
The air in Angel’s Share was thick with the warm, fermented scent of dandelion wine and wood polish. A low hum of conversation filled the space, a comfortable backdrop to the evening’s slow unwind. Behind the bar, Diluc moved with his usual emotion, wiping down a glass with a clean white cloth. His focus was absolute, a fortress of concentration, until the bell above the door chimed, and a familiar pair stepped inside.
The Traveler and Paimon. Their presence was… different. Uncomplicated. They didn’t carry the weight of Mondstadt’s history with them, didn’t look at him and see a ghost. They just saw Diluc.
He nodded a brief greeting, his expression unchanging, but something in his posture eased almost imperceptibly. As the Traveler approached the bar and began recounting a tale of a peculiar Geovishap encounter in Liyue, Diluc listened, his arms crossed. Paimon, floating excitedly, punctuated the story with dramatic gestures.
It was during a lull in the story, as the Traveler laughed at Paimon’s embellishment, that it happened. Diluc’s shoulders relaxed fully. He leaned his hip against the counter behind him, one hand coming up to absently twist a long strand of his own red hair around his finger. It was a idle, almost self-soothing gesture. And when he replied, his voice was different.
It wasn’t the low, measured baritone he used for patrons and Knights. It was lighter, its edges softened, the pitch drifting slightly higher in a way that was melodic, almost gentle.
“It sounds like you handled it more efficiently than most of the Knights would have,” he said, and the words carried a warmth that was rarely heard in Angel’s Share. A faint, genuine smile even touched his eyes.
Kaeya noted this, again. Irrelevant but worthy in Kaeya's eyes.
Time passes. The hour was deep, the air in the Angel's share hazy with the low glow of the candlewicks and the comfortable air surrounding the drunk patrons.
The Traveler was deep into a story, hands gesturing wildly, Paimon buzzing around her head like an overexcited fairy. Venti was strumming a lazy chord on his lyre, Rosaria nursing her fourth glass with a look of detached amusement, and Kaeya… Kaeya was watching, silent and still, from the corner nearby, extracting information from a couple of drunk envoys who had come to trust Kaeya’s presence.
It's three in the morning.
Diluc is not immune to feeling tired, to be influenced by the haze of the night, the comfortable atmosphere. The constant performance of being Master Diluc was a weight on his shoulders, and tonight, with the tavern nearly empty and surrounded by this strange, fragmented circle of… acquaintances… it felt heavier than usual.
The Traveler finished her tale with a flourish, something about a stubborn Whopperflower that had, apparently, tried to propose to Paimon. Paimon was stomping her foot in the air. “It did not! Paimon would never!”
Diluc, who had been leaning against the back counter, listening, let out a soft breath that was almost a laugh. He pushed off the counter and came around to their side, a rare move. He rested his elbows on the bartop, leaning in. The motion was fluid, uncalculated. His long hair fell forward over his shoulders, and he made no move to push it back.
“No shot,” he said, his voice softer, the consonants less sharp, the rhythm of his speech falling into a casual, almost lazy cadence that was almost foreign. His voice and words direct, unpretentious, and laced with a familiarity that felt like a shared secret. “That thing’s entire vocabulary is ‘splash’ and ‘hiss.’ You’re telling me it learned ‘marry me’?”
The Traveler grinned, recognizing the shift in tone not as something strange, but as a layer of Diluc they were privy to. “It had a very expressive leaf!”
“It was menacing!” Paimon insisted.
Diluc's lips quirked into the faintest, most genuine smile, accompanied by a small sound akin to a chuckle. He was completely focused on them, his guard down, his body language open and relaxed in a way that was neither masculine nor feminine, but simply his. It was a naturalness he usually kept locked away, a relic of a self he thought he’d buried.
Then his gaze flickered over the Traveler’s shoulder and locked with a single, knowing blue eye.
Kaeya was leaning against the far wall near the staircase, a glass of his favorite Death After Noon held loosely in one hand. He hadn’t been there a moment ago. His expression was unreadable, but his eye was sharp, intensely focused, missing nothing. He’d seen the casual lean, the hair-twirling, and he’d certainly heard the shift in timbre.
The change in Diluc was instantaneous. His hand dropped from his hair as if it were hot iron. His spine straightened, the casual lean vanishing into a rigid, formal stance. The warmth in his voice iced over, retreating back into its familiar, guarded depth.
“Is there something you need, Captain?” The question was delivered flatly, a clear dismissal and a re-establishment of every boundary between them.
Kaeya’s lips curled into his characteristic lazy smile, but his eye remained keen. He took a slow sip of his drink, never breaking eye contact.
“Just enjoying the atmosphere, Master Diluc,” he drawled. “And the… service. It’s particularly… attentive tonight.”
He emphasized the words just enough to be infuriating, but not enough to be directly accusatory. He’d seen it. He’d understood the significance of that unguarded moment, the glimpse of a person he hadn’t seen in over a decade.
Diluc’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He turned away abruptly, picking up a wine bottle to polish that was already gleaming. “Then enjoy it quietly.”
The moment was over. The mask was firmly back in place. But the air between them crackled with the unsaid thing. Kaeya took another sip, his mind already turning over the new piece of the puzzle; the voice, the gesture, the sheer, unvarnished ease of it. It wasn’t just a mannerism. It was a glimpse into a room Kaeya hadn’t even known existed in the house of Diluc’s life. Well, it would be an exaggeration as he, too, had received the same attention from Diluc. Just not with that same ease, not with the smile, just with the familiar Hm’s and dry remarks that he was still, honestly, grateful to even receive.
And for his part, Diluc kept polishing the same spot on the bottle, his knuckles white, feeling the heat of that scrutinizing gaze on his back like a brand.
The pieces, once scattered and dismissed as tavern ghost stories, began to click into a terrifying, brilliant mosaic in Kaeya’s mind. The rumors had started almost a year after Diluc’s abrupt departure from Mondstadt. Tales from merchant caravans and adventurers of a savior, often described as a woman, sometimes a youth of ambiguous features, but always with hair like burning embers.
A phantom who struck Fatui supply lines and monster camps with terrifying efficiency and pyro-infused precision, then vanished without a trace. They’d called her various names, the Scarlet Wind, the Crimson Shadow. Names that Diluc would’ve scoffed at, or must have scoffed at, the same way he did with the Darknight Hero. A ghost story that lasted for years, popping up in different regions, sometimes with slight variations in description, different disguises, different aliases.
Those that Kaeya had secretly desperately chased, even if he knew there was no way it could be him. But every single story had been a lifeline, especially in those months he was a wreck, when he’d be watching the light in Diluc’s vision flickering out, fading on his desk.
And then, those rumors had ceased. Almost exactly around the time Diluc Ragnvindr, colder, harder, and fundamentally altered, had returned to Mondstadt. The Crimson Shadow had disappeared, and the Darknight Hero had appeared in her wake.
The realization was a cold shock, followed by a wave of dizzying admiration. All this time, he’d been chasing the shadow of a legend, and the legend had been standing right in front of him now, polishing wine glasses and looking through him as if he were glass. The sheer audacity of it was breathtaking… The skill.
The loneliness of it.
The halls of Dawn Winery were silent at this hour, steeped in the deep darkness that only old, sturdy homes could achieve. Diluc moved through it like a ghost, the soft silk of his pajamas whispering against his skin.
He’d just washed away the scent of the tavern, the grime of the day, and with it, the last threads of his performed rigidity. His hair, still damp, was loose around his shoulders, and his face was bare of its usual stern mask, replaced by a simple, weary neutrality.
He padded silently toward his bedroom door, intent on retrieving the forgotten gift basket from the foyer that Adelinde informed him of. It was a care package from an old friend abroad, filled with the rich, fragrant creams and lotions he had come to favor over those unspoken years. The thought of them was a small, private comfort.
He pushed his bedroom door open and stepped into the hallway.
And froze.
Leaning against the opposite wall, one boot crossed casually over the other, was Kaeya. He wasn’t doing anything. Just… standing there. As if he’d been waiting.
Diluc’s entire body went still. For a heartbeat, the old instinct roared to life, flickering in his chest. To snap, to retreat, to rebuild the walls in an instant. But the night had drained him of the energy for it. The fight was gone. He just stood there, in his soft pajamas, with his hair down, looking more exposed than Kaeya had likely ever seen him.
Besides, he's familiar with Kaeya's usual shticks. This just... must be a new one.
Kaeya’s gaze swept over him, taking in the unusual picture. There was no smirk, no teasing glint. His expression was unreadably calm. “Well, well,” he said, his voice a low murmur that barely disturbed the silence. “What’s this? Roaming the halls after dark. Couldn’t fall asleep?”
Diluc’s fingers tightened on the doorframe. He didn’t have the energy for games. Not now, at four in the morning. “What do you want, Kaeya?” His voice was quiet, stripped of its usual defensive edge, leaving only bare exhaustion.
Kaeya pushed off the wall, taking a single, leisurely step closer. He didn’t answer the question directly. Instead, he gestured vaguely down the hall. “Can’t a man visit his old home? The memories here are… formative.” The words were delivered with his typical theatrical flair, but the usual needle-sharp teasing was softened, almost absent.
His eye lingered on Diluc for a moment longer, on the unguarded tiredness in his face, on the way he stood in the doorway as if he weren't quite sure whether to step forward or back. Kaeya seemed to come to some internal decision. He offered a slight, almost imperceptible shrug.
“Don’t let me keep you from your… errand,” he said, waving his hand in the air at the last word, his tone light, deliberately not looking at the basket downstairs, not commenting on the faint, clean scent of soap and something subtly berry-scented that clung to Diluc. He took a step back. “The night is still young for some of us.”
And with that, he turned and began to walk down the hall, his footsteps echoing softly on the polished wood. He didn’t look back. He’d gotten his answer without asking a single question. He’d seen the truth of the exhaustion, the vulnerability, the complete lack of a front. That was enough. For now.
The soft tread of Kaeya’s boots had almost reached the top of the grand staircase when Diluc’s voice cut through the silent hall, low and clear, stripped of all artifice.
"So I’m guessing you've figured things out?"
Kaeya’s steps halted. He didn’t turn immediately. It didn’t sound like Diluc. Or rather, it sounded like a part of Diluc he’d never been allowed to hear in the recent years.
Because it does sound like Diluc. Like the one he knew, the wild teenager who held the torch, lead the path, looking back at Kaeya with eyes so alive.
Just now, it's subdued. Open. Vulnerable.
Slowly, he turned. His expression was a masterclass in neutral curiosity, though his mind was racing, trying to parse the meaning from tone and context. "Figured you out? Why, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you refer to the vase you still keep downstairs? Or perhaps—"
“No, just—” Diluc hadn’t moved from his doorway. He looked small there, framed by the dark wood, his face pale in the low light. The weariness on his features was deeper now, tinged with a resigned acceptance. He pushed a hand through his damp hair, a gesture of pure fatigue. "You’ve been staring all night. And… other times. I’m no idiot." His voice was even, but there was a rawness to it, an uncharacteristic willingness to lay a card on the table. He was too tired for the dance, for the endless circular sparring. Especially at the dead of night, when his usual Darknight Hero proclivities weren’t scheduled. "You have questions, Kaeya. I can see it. So just… ask. Or don’t. But this whole staring that you’re so fond of doing… is getting old."
A slow, thoughtful smile touched Kaeya’s lips, but it lacked its usual edge of mockery. It was something quieter, more genuine. "Questions?" he echoed, his tone light, almost playful, but his eyes were serious. "I have nothing but questions, Master Diluc. Most of them are terribly boring, I assure you. Tax codes. Vine rot. The structural integrity of the city’s older rooftops. And the emotional and physical state of my horses." He took a single step back toward him, his hands spread in a placating gesture.
He wasn’t going to ask. Not like this. Not when Diluc was standing there in his pajamas, looking like he might fall over. The truth was too big, too fragile, to be demanded in a midnight hallway.
His smile softened another degree. "But if you’re offering to review the winery’s ledgers with me, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. I’d hate to bore you to sleep where you stand."
It was a deflection. A graceful, strangely kind one. He was acknowledging that he’d seen something, that the unspoken thing between them was real, without forcing a confession. He was giving Diluc an out. And in doing so, he was telling him, quite clearly, that he could keep his secrets. For now.
Kaeya’s deflection, strangely gentle as it was, seemed to land like a physical blow. Diluc’s shoulders, which had been slumped in exhaustion, tightened. He didn’t look up, his gaze fixed on the polished floorboards between them. His right hand, hanging at his side, clenched slowly into a white-knuckled fist. The quiet of the hall felt suffocating.
When Diluc spoke again, his voice was low, strained, each word pushed out as if it cost him something vital. “Don’t.” A single, sharp syllable. “Don’t do that. Not tonight.”
He finally lifted his head. His eyes were blazing, not with anger, but with a raw, desperate intensity that Kaeya had never seen in him before. It was the look of someone standing on a ledge, deciding whether to jump or step back.
“I know what you’ve seen,” he continued, his voice gaining a brittle edge. “I know the… the conclusions you must have drawn. The… discrepancies.” He faltered slightly, searching for the right word, a faint, pained grimace flickering across his features. “So just… say it. Does it…”
He swallowed hard, his throat working. He was forcing the issue, demanding a verdict, because the not-knowing was suddenly worse than any rejection.
“Does it bother you?”
The question hung in the air, stark and terrifyingly honest. It wasn’t about whether Kaeya was curious or had figured it out. It was about whether the truth of who Diluc was—who he really was, in all her messy, complicated, un-Mondstadt-like reality—was something Kaeya found… unacceptable. After everything else that had broken between them, was this the final difference?
‘I’d already deviated so much from what I should’ve been. What he wanted me to be.’ The... woman? with the red hair muttered in her drink, her face partly hidden by a mask, the air about her mature, but her features seemed young with her cheeks so round. She wasn’t familiar, not a regular in this tavern, her voice sounding that of a Mondstadtian’s. Out of place in a cold Snezhnayan bar.
A gruff voice responded, speech slurred. “Who ya talkin’ about? Is it your lover?”
The woman with the red hair didn’t respond. She had two figures in her mind as she pushed herself off the bar, the chair dragging on the ground as she staggered away.
He stood there, waiting, his body braced for impact, looking more like the wildfire boy Kaeya remembered than he had in a decade. All feeling and no armor.
Kaeya’s carefully constructed deflection shattered against the raw plea in Diluc’s voice. The air left the hallway, leaving only the frantic hammering of two hearts, two hearts that had been in this same hallway once, but entwined. Kaeya watched, utterly still, as Diluc’s composure cracked open, revealing the raw nerve beneath. The clenched fist, the blazing eyes that weren't angry but terrified. This wasn't the stoic Master of the Winery. This was the boy–the kid he’d fought beside, the one who felt everything too much, who’d once looked at him with that same devastating intensity right before their world ended.
Does it bother you?
The question echoed in the silent space between them, and with it came a wave of such absurd irony that it nearly stole Kaeya’s breath. Bother him? After everything? After he’d confessed the darkest secret of his own bloodline, his own treacherous origin, and been met with a flaming sword and a sworn brother's hatred? After years of believing that truth was the ultimate, unforgivable transgression in Diluc’s eyes?
And now, here Diluc was, standing in a hallway in his pajamas, looking like he was about to be sick, asking if this—the truth of his own soul, the shape of his own identity—was what Kaeya found unacceptable.
Kaeya, the last of his family. The only one who Diluc can seek the opinion of. He can’t look his father in the eyes and ask if he’s doing alright, if this is what he should be doing, if it’s okay. (He remembers the small moments when he caught the disappointment in his father’s eyes, the way his father’s eyebrows knitted together as he shook his head whenever Diluc moved wrong. And Diluc avoided the pain; he made it motivation. A motivation that persevered even past the curtain of death.) But with Kaeya, he can. Even if it’s utterly ridiculous.
A sharp, incredulous laugh threatened to bubble up in Kaeya’s throat, but he choked it back. The universe had a truly wicked sense of humor. All this time, he’d thought Diluc’s coldness, his distance, was a permanent judgment on his lie. He’d built his entire persona around that expectation of rejection. And now he was being shown, in the most vulnerable way possible, that Diluc’s greatest fear was the exact same thing. That he, Kaeya, held the power to devastate him with a single word.
The realization was an earthquake in the foundation of everything Kaeya thought he knew. Diluc hadn’t stayed away out of hatred. He’d stayed away out of a mirrored shame, a parallel fear. He cared. He cared so much that the idea of Kaeya’s potential disgust had him physically bracing for a blow.
Kaeya took a slow, deliberate step forward, then another, closing the distance. He didn’t stop until he was standing directly in front of Diluc, well inside his personal space. He searched Diluc’s face, seeing the panic, the defiance, the heartbreaking hope she was trying to crush.
His voice, when it finally came, was low and incredibly soft, stripped of all mockery and pretense.
“Diluc,” he said, and the name felt different on his tongue. “The only thing that has ever bothered me… is that you left.”
He let the words hang there, heavy with the weight of a decade of unsaid things. He wasn’t talking about the winery, or Mondstadt. He was talking about them.
“Whatever this is,” he continued, his gaze unwavering, a faint, wry, almost painful smile touching his lips, “whatever you are… it’s a part of the landscape. A part of you. And I’ve long since made my peace with the fact that I’d follow you into any hell you chose to walk through.” He paused, his eye holding hers. “Even this one.”
It was the closest he would come to an answer. It wasn’t acceptance, it was something far more foundational. It was loyalty. A loyalty that had, against all odds, survived a sword through the heart. He wasn’t bothered. He was just… finally, being allowed to see.
Kaeya’s words did not land softly; they struck with the force of a physical blow, but one that healed instead of broke. They carved through a decade of ice, of isolation, of believing her own truth was a thing to be rewarded with a flicker of disappointment in a loved one's eyes.
The only thing that has ever bothered me is that you left. It wasn’t about the body she wore or the voice she used. It was about her absence, about them.
Diluc stared at him, the fight draining from her limbs, leaving behind a trembling exhaustion. The fear didn’t vanish, but it was suddenly replaced by something else, something so vast and overwhelming it made her eyes burn. Kaeya wasn’t looking at a problem to be solved or a secret to be dissected. He was just… looking at her. And he was staying.
A shaky breath escaped her. The tension in her shoulders dissolved, her clenched hand slowly unfurling at her side. The desperate hope she’d tried to suppress now shone plainly in her eyes, glistening with unshed tears she would never let fall.
Without a word, she took a half-step forward, closing the final sliver of space between them. Her movements were hesitant, almost clumsy, as if she’d forgotten how to initiate contact that wasn’t a blow or a block. She lifted her arms, and then she was leaning into him, her forehead coming to rest against his shoulder. It was not a dramatic embrace, but a slow, sinking surrender, her body curving into the solid, familiar shape of him.
For a moment, Kaeya was perfectly still, caught off guard by the sheer physicality of it. He could feel the fine tremors running through her, the way she seemed to fold into herself against him. This was not the rigid, unyielding Diluc he was used to, this was someone yielding all walls. Her trust.
Then his own arms came up, one hand settling carefully between her shoulder blades, the other resting lightly on the back of her head, his fingers threading gently through the damp, deep red strands of her hair. He held her not tightly, but firmly. An anchor. He let his chin rest against her temple, closing his eye. The scent of her shampoo—clean, faintly amber and berry—filled his senses, so different from the winery’s oak and musk, so utterly and intimately her.
His mind, usually filled with calculations and witty retorts, was quiet. There was no analysis, no strategy, no prodding. There was only the profound, staggering irony of it all. He, the liar, the spy, the one built on a foundation of falsehood, was being trusted with this; the most vulnerable truth of the most honest person he had ever known. And he understood, with a clarity that was almost painful, that this was the real apology for that night years ago. Not words. This. The offering of a shattered thing, in the hope that he would know how to hold it.
They stood like that for a long time in the silent, dark hallway, two broken pieces of a story that was, against all odds, finding a new way to fit together.
fin.