Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Adelinde could sense the days when Diluc would return from his “business trips” with startling accuracy. He’d long since ceased bothering to pen her a warning of his return, as the mail was just as inconsistent and unpredictable as his arrival times, but regardless, he’d come to rely on the fresh pair of clothes and warm towel that awaited him each time he stepped into the winery and shuffled tiredly toward his quarters there.

Adelinde herself wouldn’t make an appearance until he cleaned up and he knew this—remembered it from many long journeys over the many years that she’d been employed at the winery—but he still fumbled with his knotted tongue in his slack, dumb mouth as he considered what the first words he’d speak to a human would be after multiple weeks spent in solitude.

He’d told her once, “I’m not so good with the…you know, the talking thing.”

She hadn’t smiled because she didn’t smile much, not when she didn’t need to. Not when she understood that his mood wouldn’t be elevated by such false pleasantries.

“I know,” she’d said. “It’s not necessary to mince your words when speaking with me. I’m not paid in compliments, after all.”

He’d offered her a laugh even though he truly couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not. He’d gotten so rusty at human interaction. The pile of letters on his nightstand looked daunting and vaguely threatening and he convinced himself that their writers could wait another few days to hear back from him when they’d already waited this long.

For the time being, he was tired. His stomach clenched in hunger and the new bruise that wound up the left side of his ribcage smarted something serious. He’d enjoy a soak in the tub and he knew that Adelinde would have been drawing it now, while he shrugged off the blood-and-dirt-crusted coat that he’d been wearing since he left three weeks ago. She was a good housekeeper. He wasn’t sure what he paid her anymore, but it surely wasn’t enough.

His hair felt dry as he removed the band that held it together. He’d slept on a bed of straw one night, tucked in the backend of a farmer’s cart as he traveled between one no-name rural town and the next, and he remembered waking up unsure of which strands against his face were his hair and which were pieces of hay. His father’s hair was the same color and texture and he’d always managed to keep it shiny and healthy. He always looked a lot more kempt than Diluc felt now, and he wondered, if his father could see him now, would he look at him and not even recognize him as his son anymore?

It was a masochistic train of thought. He crushed it in the back of his mind as he stepped through the door of his bedroom into the connected bathroom and eyed the steam that rolled from the surface of the tub. Adelinde, reliably, was nowhere to be found. There wasn’t a good reason for her to linger in the bathroom when she knew he’d want to soak as soon as possible. She was a good housekeeper, after all. He made a mental note to have a meeting with her about upping her pay before he left again.

It smelled nice, like lavender, and he wondered when she’d picked up the bath salts that soaked in the water, and from where. Traveling salesmen who claimed that their wares were shipped straight from Dragonspine and Inazuma weren’t uncommon on the front steps of the winery but Adelinde was adept at shooing them away before they made a scene. He didn’t know if these sorts of luxury items fell within her allotted budget for the month, but he allowed those thoughts to slip away as he peeled his filthy clothes from his body and stepped carefully into the water that, as expected, felt perfect.

His hair regained some elasticity as it soaked, his muscles and bruises easing less painfully as he rested his head against the edge of the tub and gazed up at the immaculately-dusted chandelier that suspended high above him. His father had designed this suite as a temporary living/workspace when his work here ran too long to return home safely. Diluc wasn’t sure what he’d think about it as the closest thing to home that he knew now. With the mansion gone and Kaeya gone, everything that had at one point resembled Diluc’s entire life had burned to ash in the wake of his father’s needless and untimely passing.

The winery was the only thing he hadn’t had the heart to sever ties with. He didn’t know why, exactly, but it felt nice to have somewhere to return to, even if it was a single bedroom and a bathroom at a business that reminded him all too much of everything he could have had but didn’t.

His father probably would have considered him too rigid and upright. He probably would have lectured him about the human aspect of business and life, and how important it was, in the end, to forge relationships with others and leave a legacy of kindness in his wake. But kindness hadn’t ever gotten his father anywhere, he thought. Kindness hadn’t gotten him anywhere, either. His toes bumped the opposite edge of the tub. The water smelled coppery like dirt and old blood, accented with the powdery sweetness of the lavender bath salts that soothed the prickly edges of his filth enough to make it palatable. Adelinde, as smart as she was, must have understood that lavender would be good in a situation like this. He slid lower in the tub, submerging his nose and blowing the tiniest bubbles over the surface as he allowed his eyes to slide shut.

He wouldn’t fall asleep here, but he’d been allowed so few moments of peace over the last three weeks that he wanted to savor this while it lasted.

Tomorrow, he would be Diluc: the business owner. Tomorrow, he would respond to all of those letters that should have been collecting dust on his nightstand had Adelinde not been so diligent at her job.

Tomorrow, he’d have to remember how to be good at “the talking thing”, but for now, he was tired and sore and pitiful. He liked the smell of the lavender bath salts. He found comfort in them as he hadn’t found comfort in many things since he’d sold his father’s mansion and deconstructed his entire life.

He told himself that he’d thank her personally for picking them out. That way, he thought, she’d understand that he enjoyed them and make a habit of purchasing them each time she sensed that he’d be returning home soon.

Steam rose in waning plumes from the surface of the water.

He stirred awake minutes later to an embarrassing amount of water sucked up in his nostrils.

“The Acting Grand Master requested a meeting with you,” Adelinde said flatly, picking through an impressively-sized potted plant near the window and wiping invisible dust away from its waxy leaves. “She said it wasn’t urgent, but important. She also said that you’d understand what she meant by that.”

He supposed it wasn’t difficult to figure out, but he also understood Jean’s mannerisms well enough to decipher that she was anxious about something, if she was overexplaining herself to Adelinde when leaving a simple request.

“How long ago?”

The leaves shuddered as Adelinde shuffled them around.

“Only a week. I informed her that you were taking care of urgent business elsewhere. She didn’t ask questions.”

“She wouldn’t,” Diluc said idly, lacing his fingers together and setting his chin atop them, his elbows propped firmly on the desk in front of him as he eyed the pile of letters, still unopened, that stared incredulously up at him. “She probably assumed that it was wine-related.”

Adelinde’s shoes clicked against the hardwood as she made her way to another potted plant across the room.

“Oh,” he said softly, dropping one hand to spread out the letters, like toppling the pile would somehow make the collection less daunting. “The bath salts you used yesterday—I enjoyed them. Thank you.”

He listened to the sound of water being poured from a pitcher into the soil of one of the plants. After an extended pause, Adelinde’s shoes clicked again and he could feel her eyes on the back of his head.

“My apologies for not asking permission before using them, Master Diluc, but they were a gift—not a purchase that I made on your behalf. It seemed like a shame to let them go to waste. They were imported from Liyue, after all.”

His eyebrows raised. The import tax on something like that alone would have cost more than a dozen bottles of bath salts, he thought. Who in their right mind would waste their money on a gift like that—and for him, of all people?

“Who…who sent them?”

His eyes dropped down to the letters spread out over his desk. So many were sent in the same off-white envelopes, with the same ugly, unpracticed handwriting reading the same name. He felt his chest pinch before Adelinde even got a chance to respond.

“My apologies again, Master Diluc. They were a gift from Master Kaeya, sent with his most recent letter, I believe.”

Dread scored hotly through his chest, mingling with the annoyance and anger that often accompanied the mention of Kaeya’s name.

Typical, he thought, suddenly feeling like the lavender scent that clung to his skin and hair was entirely too nauseating. If he could take back the aches that those bath salts had eased out of his muscles, he would have done so eagerly.

“From Liyue,” he said softly, his frustration crackling in his voice. “That idiot.”

Adelinde apologized again. He wasn’t angry with her.

He could see the heading of a few of Kaeya’s letters in the spread-out pile.

They felt like they were mocking him. He barely resisted the urge to toss each of them in the trash can next to his desk.

He read the letters over dinner, stationed at the head of a dining table that was far too long and ornate for a single person, but unbothered by the extra space as he enjoyed a hot meal for the first time in weeks and struggled to remember what proper etiquette looked like. Adelinde didn’t mention it when she entered the room to offer him a drink refill and there was food spilling out of his mouth. He felt like an animal, despite her politeness, and hurriedly wiped his face with his napkin before swallowing, ears burning, and thanked her.

Kaeya’s ridiculous pile of letters was banished to its corner of the table. Each felt like an insult in its own right and he dreaded the moment that he knew he’d relent and read at least a few of them, at least the one that came with the bath salts, just so he could figure out which insult they were supposed to complement. He knew Kaeya too well to think that he’d sent them out of the goodness of his heart, after all. He expected to hear all about some smell that had lingered on him the last time they met face-to-face, or about how sweet flowers might dim the nastiest edges of his sour personality. He’d heard it all before. Kaeya wasn’t as clever as he thought he was and he certainly wasn’t mature enough to send this many letters without a few of them being a monumental waste of time and money.

The Knights just didn’t pay well enough for the joke to be worth it. He remembered, even if Kaeya might’ve thought he’d never looked at his salary the entire time he worked for them. They most certainly didn’t pay well enough to buy expensive imported bath salts from Liyue, so the idea of Kaeya going through the trouble and spending that kind of money for the sake of a rude joke sat strangely in the back of his thoughts. He could still smell the lavender in his hair and had noticed, too, how the maids’ heads had turned earlier when he’d passed like they couldn’t believe that the delicate scent that filled the halls was following Master Diluc, of all people. Kaeya was generally more of a perfume guy, he knew. Kaeya knew all about the right kinds of lotions and oils to accent his natural beauty. It shouldn’t have been hard, Diluc thought, since he’d found Kaeya beautiful even when they were kids, but he’d seen Kaeya’s bathroom before, quite a few times, and he’d never imagined that one man needed so many different bottles of different products just to get through a work week.

He was getting distracted, zoning out as he considered the sticky clay substances that Kaeya claimed he slathered on his face twice a week to prevent wrinkles. He could still remember the smell of it—chalky, but sweet. He could still picture the grainy texture of it, like oatmeal. Like he could have leaned forward and swiped his tongue over Kaeya’s cheek and it might have tasted like honey.

He cleared his throat, shuffling the first page of the letter in his hands even though he hadn’t finished reading the opening line. Adelinde had brought him a stew to start the evening—something contained enough that he should have made a minimal mess no matter how much his table manners had degraded over time. He grimaced as he noticed the tiniest smudges of that stew on the papers in his hands, feeling like a barbarian who’d been whisked here from a simpler time, like he couldn’t belong in this life anymore and it was idiotic of all of them to expect him to be refined.

Kaeya was always a lot better at this sort of thing. He could fake it at any point in the day, no matter how weary he might have been feeling.

Diluc shook his head, sending the letters in their banishment pile another sidelong glare and hoping that somewhere, miles away, Kaeya could sense that someone was cursing his name. He hoped that idiot choked on his next swig of wine, that his stupid clay masks curdled, that he woke up with a tangle so bad in his hair that he needed to cut a few inches off.

And then, finally, he finished his stew, setting the soiled letter in a messy pile atop the others and reminding himself to remove his elbows from the table when Adelinde returned to collect his bowl and ask if he wanted dessert.

He passed on it. She left him alone.

Kaeya’s letters watched him from their corner.

He sighed, reaching out and grabbing one at random.

Time had been kind to Kaeya’s penmanship, even if only a particularly discerning eye could recognize that.

Diluc could still remember the many afternoons that his father had spent with Kaeya at the kitchen table, patiently positioning a quill in his tiny hand and coaxing it toward the ink bottle to wet the tip. Their shirts had both been stained that first time, Diluc remembered too, when Kaeya jolted unexpectedly and accidentally knocked over the bottle, spilling ink everywhere. That table still had the stain when Diluc sold it. As a kid, he always thought it looked like a squid if he tilted his head just right. As an adult, it looked like another dark mark that Kaeya had left on their childhood memories and he’d been glad to see it go.

He didn’t know what his father would have done if he’d known that the child he’d taught to read and write had always been intending to betray him at some point in an indefinite future. He didn’t know if it counted for anything that Kaeya would inevitably grow up to betray the duty he’d been born to fulfill instead, but in his father’s lifetime and for many years after, Kaeya had never quite gotten the hang of penmanship.

All these years later, his cursive was atrocious. The letters looked more like wobbly, rotten vines than the easy, looping swirls that composed Jean’s beautifully-scrawled letter laid out just beside it. It was undeniable that Kaeya had sat down and written all fifteen of these letters, but the dates marked on each were so varied that Diluc wondered if they’d gotten lost in the mail. Adelinde claimed that they’d arrived gradually over the last three weeks, but the paper was worn and older, crinkly like it’d been stored somewhere damp and dried again. The ink was faded, smudged in some places and bleeding through to other pages.

If Kaeya had written all of these and waited to send them…why? What was the purpose of spamming him now? He knew he hadn’t missed Kaeya’s birthday during his trip and it wasn’t like he’d made a habit out of visiting or sending a gift in all the years since they’d parted ways. If Kaeya hadn’t chewed him out the last few times he’d spent his birthday at the bar, alone, it would have been unusual for him to suddenly start caring about it now.

It didn’t make a lot of sense. Kaeya was often confusing and frustrating, but something about this didn’t sit right with him in ways that Kaeya’s antics never had before. The letters were mundane, outlining various intel that had long since gone out of date, events in town that were long passed, and encounters that he’d heard about, that he could imagine happening at a point in time many, many months ago, and he didn’t understand why he was hearing about any of this now.

D,

Looks like it’s going to be a hot one for the next few weeks. We’ll have so much sun that I’d hope for some snow if I were you. Heard it’s moving in on your area soon. Stay cool.

-K

This was about the Abyss Mages that he’d taken care of six months ago, he remembered. The coded words weren’t particularly hard to figure out and he wondered if he needed to have a word with Kaeya about discretion in the future. It was true that he’d never let slip that Diluc was the vigilante fighter that no one in the city could stop talking about for some time, but…he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t want to trust Kaeya—not that he couldn’t. No matter how many months and years passed and Kaeya continued with his normal life as though he’d never had any intention of betraying Mondstadt, it was hard to look at him sometimes and not hope, just a little, that maybe someday he’d slip up.

It would have been easier if Kaeya would have betrayed him fully, not in little pieces. Things could have been simpler if he’d been allowed to hate Kaeya with every ounce of his desperately broken heart.

He sighed, setting that letter aside.

D,

Cold front moving in, supposed to hit southern Monstadt sometime next week. I overheard some Salesmen discussing it at the bar the other night. We had a nice chat about sales routes. Seems like they’re looking to expand to Dragonspine soon. Might wanna look into it. Maybe they could add Dawn wine to their selection.

Don’t forget your coat.

-K

Treasure Hoarders, he remembered. He’d busted them near the border roughly a year ago. The date at the end of the letter indicated as much and he resisted the urge to call out to Adelinde and ask for a third time if she was completely certain that she hadn’t held onto these letters longer than just a few weeks.

The more he read, the stranger it felt that Kaeya would send these now, of all times, when none of the information they contained was relevant anymore. But the more he read, the less he was able to decipher the code words. He started to wonder if some of these were intended to be codes at all, or if they were nothing but the inconsequential ramblings of someone filling out their journal. If they were to be taken at face value, this wasn’t the kind of information that Kaeya would ever be willing to share with him in person. He doubted that Kaeya confessed his genuine thoughts to many people, as a naturally secretive, sneaky, and conniving person, and for this reason, the letters left him bewildered and perhaps just the smallest amount flustered.

He felt, as he continued reading, as though he was thumbing through Kaeya’s diary and any moment now Kaeya would burst through the door and accuse him of violating his privacy.

D,

Woke up around sunrise this morning, what a pain in the ass. You wake up early, right? Even if you’ve got nothing to do, you’ve always been a “seize the day” kinda guy. Insufferably so, I remember. The sky was black at first but then it was dark blue, then pink and orange and a red so vibrant that it made me think about you. Here’s my advice: when you wake up too early after a night at the bar, you need to take a shot. This is gospel straight from God’s mouth, if you ever try growing up and drinking adult drinks again. You’d be surprised what taking a single sip of wine can do for you. Maybe you’d pull that stick out of your ass for once, if you drank away just a few of your sorrows.

You should sleep in someday, drink more. Try to live a life that’s not weighed down by all this stuff you hate. Try to be human for once, enjoy something.

You ruined my sunrise. All I could think about was how many mornings you’ve probably woken up and got to see a sky just like that one, and how many mornings you’ve probably just shrugged it off and trudged on without really looking at it.

What do you think about when you see a sky like that?

What do you do when you can’t stop thinking about the past and you won’t even drink to take the edge off?

Your precious grape juice can’t work the kind of miracles that your dad’s old wine can.

-K

His cheeks felt warm. He blamed this on the stew that sat comfortably heavy in his belly. No matter how many times he traced over the words, he couldn’t parse any meaning but the most straightforward one. When he’d silently criticized Kaeya’s code-writing earlier, he hadn’t anticipated that he’d get too good at it. If there was a key somewhere, at some point, it was woefully absent now. He fumbled with more letters, skimming them for any indication of a key among their words, but found nothing. They devolved into more personal ramblings—journal entries, just like that last one—which held no more importance than the kind of uncomfortable back-and-forth that he might have with a business partner before a meeting began. 

—selling a new kind of meat at The Good Hunter now—

—sent me out on patrol yesterday and I found—

—haven’t seen you in a while so I wanted to tell you that you’re still—

— ’s hard to stick around when you can feel your life spinning in place, like the wheels of an overturned cart. I guess part of me gets why you’re always running off on those jobs alone because it sure as Hell must beat watching your life trickle through your fingers while doing nothing noteworthy to pass the time.

That last line caught his eye. The paper looked fresh, the ink saturated, dark, and free from the smears and stains that marked many of the others. It wasn’t timestamped, but he got the feeling that this might have been the one of last ones.

It didn’t smell like lavender, but he took a moment to sniff each of the unopened letters in search of one that could have been sent along with the bath salts. He found it a moment later, eyeing the most pristine white of the fifteen envelopes before turning his attention back to the letter in his hand.

D,

Been thinking about going on a trip soon. I’m not sure yet where I’ll end up, but somewhere sunny might not be too bad. Jean would probably let me take off for a month if I wanted to. It’s not like there’s anything to do around here now that my entire squad’s gone. It’s laughable to think that I’ve stuck around here all this time because of…well, you know. Because of him. Because of what he wanted.

He didn’t really want this life for me and I understand that. It’s not like I was his son, not like I could have carried on his legacy.

Not like I had any say in what happened after he

Well, you know that too.

He probably wouldn’t be proud of me even if he could see me now, huh? Even if he knew that I was the one who stayed. It’s hard to stick around when you can feel your life spinning in place, like the wheels of an overturned cart. I guess part of me gets why you’re always running off on those jobs alone because it sure as Hell must beat watching your life trickle through your fingers while doing nothing noteworthy to pass the time.

I’d like to go to the beach, maybe. Feel the sand between my toes again. Collect seashells that don’t make me feel conflicted every time I look at them.

Make good memories that aren’t stained by you anymore.

Guess I’ll let you know how it goes.

Next time you see me, I’ll be a more traveled man. 

By then, maybe I’ll finally be over this.

-K

Over…what? Diluc’s brows knitted, his teeth pressing firmer into his bottom lip as he contemplated everything he’d just read. He recognized the handwriting and the tone, of course, but the honesty surprised him. It wasn’t like Kaeya to be even this upfront with anything he was feeling, and it most certainly wasn’t the sort of thing they talked about when they were unlucky enough to be face-to-face.

He sucked in a long breath, allowing it to filter slowly through his nose as he set that letter down gingerly and plucked the lavender-scented one from the pile. It was sealed with melted wax that didn’t match the others—no longer adorned with the familiar Favonius symbol but the simple outline of a lotus pressed into the seal. When he pried it open, it read simply:

D,

For you, a memento. It must get pretty grubby on those long trips, huh? Have one of the maids run you a bath with this next time you come back. Pharmacy guy says it’s supposed to remedy all sorts of aches and pains, but it sounds like some kind of snake oil junk to me. Ha-ha, if you knew the guy at the pharmacy, you’d appreciate the snake oil joke for how clever it was.

Do you “get” jokes? When’s the last time you laughed at anything?

Well, take care. Have a nice bath.

-K

This sounded more like the Kaeya he’d grown up with—snide, with the expected joke about his hygiene, too loose and casual to the point of toeing the line to rudeness but never quite stepping over it completely. Kaeya was good at being just unpleasant enough that anyone who complained about him would look like the bad guy. Diluc knew. He’d been that bad guy many times in the past and would probably continue to play that role as many times as he unfortunately crossed paths with Kaeya in the future.

But it was still strange. All of this was strange. The open letters stared up at him, their scratchy handwriting bled into the parchment like broken-off spider legs that he yearned to scrape off into the nearest trash can.

His skin felt softer than it had in weeks. His hair smelled nice, even if bath salts alone couldn’t alleviate the dryness.

He’d have time to confront Kaeya about this bizarre stunt when he arrived in the city for his meeting with Jean. He’d stop by the Angel’s Share and give Charles the night off. Kaeya would meander in at some point and spend an evening giving him a headache before disappearing into the streets with whoever would have him that night. Diluc would pretend that it didn’t make his stomach knot up when he thought about how idiotic and crass it was for Kaeya to give himself away to so many people unabashedly.

He didn’t frequent the same circles as the knights anymore, not enough to know for sure if they whispered about Kaeya and his proclivity for booze and sex and brainless pleasures. It wasn’t like Jean had ever been the type of person to gossip either, but he wondered about it—wondered if Kaeya understood that he could have made something of himself, at least, even if Diluc was unwilling to live up to his father’s legacy.

Kaeya had stayed, just like he said in those weird letters. He’d stayed behind and allowed his life to melt into mind-numbing monotony. He broke this monotony apart with carnal pleasures that couldn’t have lended any sense of meaning to his existence.

Beneath his smugness and self-satisfaction, Diluc knew he was unhappy. He knew he chased his misery with the contents of a wine glass, then a bottle, then two or three bottles on particularly bad nights until it was a miracle that he didn’t wake up with the world’s worst hangover. Diluc had never known the name of that deep unrest that festered inside of Kaeya and now, he didn’t care to. He hadn’t cared enough in years, really. But he understood that Kaeya would go on his silly vacation to some nearby beach and that unhappiness would follow him like a shadow, and he’d drink there, too, and be the same unpleasant person he always was. The change of scenery wouldn’t make him a better man. It wouldn’t alleviate the persistent black fog that had cloaked his heart for many decades and would probably follow him for the rest of his life.

Diluc knew this because once upon a time, he’d thought that running away would save him, too.

And once upon a time, he’d learned that at the end of everything, at the corners of the earth and the darkest domains and seemingly endless caverns where the world’s truest evils hid away, he was still the same Diluc. No distance could be vast enough to separate him from the person he was and no amount of time could heal all the things that were wrong with him.

He sighed, elbows on the table again. He massaged his fingers into his temples, watching as the spider-legged letters ahead grew blurry and morphed together. He’d leave for the city tomorrow morning and probably arrive there close to dinnertime. He’d eat something at Angel’s Share before Charles left. Bar food wasn’t his favorite by any means, but it would get the job done. Considering some of the things he’d eaten during his travels, he knew he couldn’t exactly be choosy about it anyway.

The idea of seeing Kaeya after this—whatever this was—loomed large in the back of his thoughts. He dreaded it, or told himself that he dreaded it, at least, despite the not-quite-unpleasant-enough flutter that stirred in his chest when he thought about that familiar handsome face across from him at the bar again, drinking something that he’d put together with his own hands.

He wasn’t stupid enough to deny the affection that he still felt for Kaeya, no matter how desperately he wished that he didn’t.

It was another part of what made Kaeya so insufferable: he couldn’t have broken away in one big piece. That would have been too kind.

Instead, Diluc felt the pointed edges of his shattered shards left behind. Every time he saw him, when he looked down at these letters and smelled the light scent of lavender that still clung to his skin and hair.

“By then, maybe I’ll finally be over this.”

He understood that line intimately, but probably not in the way Kaeya had intended when he’d written it.

He packed the bath salts in his day bag before handing it off to one of the maids to deposit in his coach, shrugging on a light jacket that Adelinde smoothed out over his shoulders before offering her a few idle instructions and making his way outside. She nodded along even though she must have known exactly what to do in his absence by now. She could have run this place just fine without him and he wondered if she understood that he was nothing more than a figurehead here anymore, a vestigial organ that hadn’t started sucking too many resources away from the important parts just yet, but someday…

He sighed, grasping the edge of the carriage and pulling himself up. His bag was tucked on the seat across from him. No one else occupied the space, so he prepared himself for a sleepy journey over the countryside with nothing to bother him but his thoughts.

He planned to return the salts when he saw Kaeya next. The lavender scent had long overstayed its welcome and he convinced himself this morning that it was giving him headaches. Kaeya had no business spending that kind of money on him when they hadn’t spoken in months, when Diluc convinced himself that he would have been perfectly content not speaking to Kaeya for the rest of his life, either.

He’d heard chatter during his last mission that the famous traveler had been spotted near rural Mondstadt just the other day. He anticipated running into him again, chatting with him and Paimon like old friends, like he could have possibly kept friends in his current circumstances, or he could have ever been so normal. It was comforting to imagine slipping into that personality for a moment, assuming the role of a friendly acquaintance as he would, too, when he saw Jean and Charles, or Sara at The Good Hunter. It didn’t have to be completely unpleasant to see the city again. There were good people there, too.

Not all of them carried as much baggage as Kaeya.

He nodded Adelinde off before she shut the door, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his seat as the driver slowly pulled the carriage away from the winery. It felt strange to travel in luxury after he’d spent so many days hitching rides with anyone who would have him, but it also made him feel itchy and restless, like he should have been pursuing something important instead, and not squandering an entire evening on leisurely visits.

This was important too, he begrudgingly reminded himself. Jean had requested this meeting with him weeks in advance, apparently, and she’d never been the sort of person who called for him for trivial matters. Worry tugged at his heart as he contemplated that, chewing on the inside of his lip and tapping his foot against the carriage floor as the path became bumpier and the view of the winery through the window grew more and more distant. He could have probably slept away most of the trip. He’d grown so familiar with sleeping in uncomfortable positions that he knew it wouldn’t cause him any trouble at all. He felt too restless to consider it, however, and instead spent the morning into the afternoon mulling over everything that could have gone wrong within the Knights’ ranks before eventually, his mind eased back to Kaeya, as it did so frustratingly often, and then, of course, to his strange letters.

He hadn’t felt comfortable reading all of them and he didn’t understand if sending things so intimate was some kind of new, sick power play that Kaeya had decided to make for no reason. If he had to hypothesize, that reason was probably boredom, but even boredom wasn’t a good enough reason to warrant spilling his heart on paper that anyone could pick up and read, then actually sending that paper to Diluc, of all people, to discover. Diluc could never. He’d rather die than let anyone know what was running through his thoughts half the time. He wasn’t eloquent like Kaeya was anyway. He wasn’t good at weaving a realistic mental image with pretty words. He wasn’t good at being the kind of person who set others’ minds at ease.

Kaeya was popular for that reason. No matter how ornery he tended to be, he was skilled at making people like him. Diluc didn’t know if he was jealous of that trait or not. He didn’t know how he’d feel if anyone cared about him more than they needed to.

Hearts seemed too tender, in his opinion. A heart was far too delicate to be trusted in his bloodstained hands.

He sighed, dropping his head back against his seat.

The letters had been far more personal than Kaeya had spoken to him since they were kids. He couldn’t recall the last time Kaeya confided in him about anything since their falling out, and for good reason, he thought. He wasn’t the person who Kaeya should be bothering with his drunken monologues. He wasn’t the kind of person who knew how to handle anyone else’s woes. Charles coached him through it a few times when the drunks at the bar teased him about his lack of social skills. Apparently, bartenders were supposed to be easy to talk to. Apparently, it wasn’t good enough to simply prepare a customer’s drink and pass it to them while listening passively to their complaints about their day.

“They want company,” Charles explained patiently, scratching his nail against a speck of sticky wine that had dried in the woodgrain of the counter. “Your brother hangs out at bars a lot. Have you guys never talked about this before?”

“He’s not my brother,” Diluc said way too fast. His ears had burned for reasons that he didn’t understand and wasn’t at all willing to explore.

“Well.” Charles paused awkwardly, not looking in Diluc’s direction but focusing fully on the wine speck that Diluc was pretty sure he’d managed to clear away in seconds. “Anyway, uh…you gotta talk to people, listen to their woes. Help ‘em unload the weight of a day’s hard work, all that. Bartenders aren’t the backbone of Mondstadt for nothing.”

“I thought that was because everyone here drinks too much.”

Charles had laughed, long and low as a broad smile worked its way across his lips.

“That too,” he’d said fondly, charmed by Diluc’s observation in ways that Diluc was helpless to grasp. “But everyone wouldn’t drink so much if they didn’t have problems, right? So you talk to them. You hear ‘em out, give ‘em some advice. You and Kaeya are close at least, aren’t you? Just imagine you’re schmoozing like he does and you’ll be fine.”

Honing his inner Kaeya hadn’t ever worked out well for him. The few times he’d made even the smallest attempt to pretend that small talk came easily to him, he’d fumbled so pathetically that he’d pivoted on his feet and marched straight to the storage room to compose himself. People told him things when he worked at the bar that he’d barely be capable of admitting to himself. They complained about problems in their marriages, affairs, squabbles, their kids and pets and troubles at work. They poured their hearts out about traumas that he’d have preferred not to know about, and he’d wondered if this was the kind of information that Kaeya was vying after when he liquored his bar friends up and got them talking.

He wondered if anyone in the world, even Kaeya, would want to know some of the things that the Angel Share’s patrons confessed to him so willingly.

Kaeya’s letters felt a lot like that—like red-faced men with glassy eyes spilling their hearts to him as he shuffled awkwardly in place and wished he was alone in his room at the winery again, or out fighting monsters because at least the monsters could be shut up with a firm thunk of his claymore against their jugulars. At least the monsters barely spoke anyway, and it didn’t matter if they thought he was a freak who didn’t belong in a civilized society. The monsters didn’t mean anything, their opinions of him were equally inconsequential.

But people, and their secrets…

He sucked in a long, heavy breath. The carriage thumped violently, the wheels catching on a log or a rock that jostled him wildly before the driver’s voice called back to him and apologized.

“It’s all right,” he said softly, perhaps too softly for the driver to hear over the rustling of the carriage on uneven terrain. “I understand how rough this trail can be.”

Aside from that roughness, the remainder of his journey passed uneventfully. Near dusk, the carriage stopped outside of the city walls, his driver coaxing the horses gently as the guards eyed him through the window, recognized him within seconds, and rose in straight-backed salutes that brought new warmth to the shells of his ears.

The driver ambled out and helped him with his bags as he descended from the carriage. His legs felt shaky and unsteady after sitting still for so long, but he thanked his driver nonetheless, instructing him to “take it easy and get something to eat” because he’d be gone for a while. He’d organize lodging later, not looking forward to spending a night with his face pressed against the scratchy pillows at the inn, but resigning himself to the fact that if he didn’t want to snooze away the night in the back of a bumpy carriage, he’d need to stay somewhere else until morning. Maybe he’d make himself a pallet in the back room of the bar. Maybe he’d fall asleep standing up after hours like he’d been known to do in the past.

But at the moment, he sucked in a heavy breath, turning his frown at the twin guards at the entryway and raising a single brow in their direction.

“At ease, soldiers. You shouldn’t be saluting a civilian.”

It came off a lot harsher than he intended, but he let it simmer in the air as they awkwardly lowered their hands, one apologizing softly before ducking his head and turning his eyes away.

There wasn’t a lot he could do about it now, he told himself, no matter how much it felt like he’d arrived here and immediately sucked all mirth out of a city that allegedly thrived with life when he wasn’t around. Of course, he’d heard the whispers that Kaeya was easier to work under than Diluc ever had been. Of course, he was aware of how prickly he was even when he didn’t need to be.

“Is the Acting Grand Master in today?”

The guard on the left jolted somewhat, pausing for a moment as his brain caught up with the question. Diluc resisted the urge to brush past him and head to the Knights’ base to check for himself instead.

“She’s—yeah, she’s in, sir. Busy though, picking up the slack, you know? Things have been hectic around here since the recent…vacancy.”

He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.

Diluc couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I didn’t need to know that.”

The guard stood straighter, apologizing feebly like he had any reason to bend a knee to a regular citizen. Diluc sighed, forcing himself to stop short of rolling his eyes.

Any issues within the Knights should have remained within the Knights, though, so he didn’t feel that guilty about reprimanding him. If Jean or Kaeya or anyone else wasn’t going to remind these men how to keep their mouths shut, he supposed he could spare them that much.

So he said, “Thank you. I’ll head over there.”

And after that, he toted his bag through the front gate, enamored immediately by the familiar sounds and smells and sights of the city, but convincing himself that it didn’t at all feel like returning home.

Flora manned her flower stand near the front gates. Another guard dozed off on duty as he leaned the majority of his weight against a tree. The Cat’s Tail balcony was occupied by a dozen felines of different colors and patterns, splayed out to drink in the sun. A black and white, short-haired cat squinted happily at him as he passed by. The delicious food smells of The Good Hunter made his stomach stir hungrily, but he ignored it for the time being. He’d have an opportunity to eat dinner later. For now, he wanted to catch Jean before she went home for the night.

He passed the storefronts, the fountain, and the stairs he’d stepped over a thousand times before. As he crested the first set, a voice called out to him.

“Diluc? Uh, Mast–um. Di-Diluc?”

It was waning, fluttering, and feminine. It reminded him of the way a butterfly's wings beat in the wind, desperate and anxious but overlaying the usual sounds of the city well enough that he stopped and turned around to find the source of it.

Behind him, breathlessly leaning her weight against the stair railing, a young brown-haired girl looked up at him. Her brows were low, her cheeks pink from embarrassment or strain as she struggled to catch her breath. He felt the smallest tickle of guilt again as he wondered how many times she’d called out to him as she’d presumably chased him down.

“Uh, sorry,” he said blandly, wetting his lips and flicking his eyes from her pink face to the distant Knights’ headquarters. “You’re…the Outrider, correct? Have I done something wrong?”

If he recalled correctly, her name was Amber, but he wouldn’t call her that while she was on the clock. She seemed to be, at least, with her half-filled arrow quiver slung over her shoulder and the bow holstered at her hip. 

“Yeah!” she said, a little too loud. She heaved another breath, swallowing thickly and straightening herself out. He waited for her to catch her breath with growing impatience.

“I-I mean, yeah, I’m the Outrider! You didn’t do anything wrong, but…you’re going to see Jean, right?”

He nodded wordlessly, hoisting his bag over his shoulder more fully.

“Well, if it’s okay with you…I’m gonna escort you, okay? We’ve got some stuff to talk about and I don’t know if Jean’s gonna have an easy time doing that alone.”

He agreed to be escorted because he wasn’t interested in making her job harder than it needed to be, but her wording raised more questions than it answered. If Jean was going to ask him to rejoin the Knights because they were short-handed, then he’d wasted a trip out here. He didn’t think she’d bother with something like that, considering how resolute he’d been in his decision to leave, but for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what was so important that Jean would not only call him here but that she’d need the assistance of the Outrider to settle things.

Worry gnawed at him. Was it Dvalin again? Was the traveler in danger? Was the Abyss Order active in the city once more and he’d negligently missed it?

He didn’t ask, feeling his thoughts pinballing inside of him so restlessly that he couldn’t have put them into words even if he wanted to. He allowed himself to be led past the saluting guards at the front door, through the long entry room, past the library and offices, and straight to Jean’s office.

He felt jittery and restless by the time they made it through, his bag over his shoulder heavy and awkward enough that he wondered if he should have found somewhere to store it before he came here. Jean glanced up from her desk as Amber let him pass her through the door, slipping in behind him and shutting it before settling next to it, against the wall.

“Master Diluc,” Jean all but sighed. The dark circles under her eyes were prominent. Behind her, a pale-haired girl that he barely recognized as another Knight pulled random books from the bookshelf and thumbed through them before scoffing and shoving them back in the wrong spots. Lisa was going to have a meltdown when she visited next time, but he wouldn’t be around to see it, thankfully.

“Just Diluc,” he said lowly. “We’ve been over this before.”

Jean paused briefly before catching herself. She lifted a hand to her face, pinching two fingers around the bridge of her nose and scrunching her eyes tightly closed.

“Of course, of course. I’m sorry. Things have been hectic around here lately. My head isn’t where it needs to be right now.”

“Because of the vacancy?”

She perked at that, her eyes widening and her brows shooting up toward her hairline.

“You’ve been informed of it? Sorry, your housekeeper said you had been away, so I didn’t know if word would get back to you or if he’d have said anything—”

“One of your guards mentioned it when I arrived. I know nothing more than the fact that there’s a vacancy and you’ve been picking up the slack .”

She spared a look at Amber, just behind him. They must have exchanged a look because Jean’s expression morphed from tired surprise to tired understanding. Frustration bubbled up inside of him. He was already getting sick of not knowing what was going on.

“Did…Well, um. Have you spoken with Kaeya recently?”

A pregnant silence settled over the room. In the back of his mind, he was already beginning to slot the pieces together, but he wasn’t quite ready to accept his hunch as the truth. Kaeya…wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do something like that. He was a lazy jackass, sure, but he wouldn’t do something like that .

“He didn’t—”

Jean nodded firmly, burying her teeth in her bottom lip.

“He resigned from the Knights a month ago and disappeared overnight. He didn’t schedule a meeting to discuss his resignation but simply left his things on my desk and packed everything in his office without a word. No one knows where he is now. He completely vanished.”

The room spun. For a moment, he thought an earthquake was working its way through the city, or that a hurricane had picked up the building and tossed it around in the eye of a storm, but the Outrider, Jean, and the mysterious pale-haired girl all seemed to stay rooted firmly in place. Jean’s expression was unmoving and welling with regret, the pale-haired girl paused as she continued messing up the bookshelf to turn and peek at him over her shoulder.

“I—I don’t understand. Why…why would he leave?”

He shouldn’t have cared about this. His head felt fuzzy. The journey here must have taken more out of him than he’d realized. The hunger pangs that echoed hollowly in his belly earlier were suddenly replaced with sour bile that threatened to climb up his throat.

He lifted a hand to his mouth, intending to take a step back, but he stumbled, his legs still too tired from the carriage ride over. Amber sprung forward, placing a firm hand on his back that grounded him in the moment and made him realize how bizarrely he was acting. His cheeks burned. He needed to step outside and get some air.

He didn’t understand what was wrong with him.

“I’m sorry, Ma—Diluc. I—I’m sorry. He didn’t…contact you at all before he left? He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

He sucked in a breath, twitching away from Amber’s too-warm touch and scrubbing a hand over his face.

“He sent me letters,” he gasped. He usually wouldn’t have offered that information so easily until he had time to contemplate what it could have meant, but his thoughts were swirling around the inside of his brain like fish caught in a whirlpool. He had little control over anything that left his mouth at that moment. “He sent a lot of letters, but…none of them mentioned that he was going to leave.”

“Letters? What kinds of letters?”

“Old ones, I—I don’t know. They seemed old, personal. There were fifteen of them in total. They didn’t seem like the kinds of letters he usually writes, they were—”

“Oh.”

Jean, Amber, and Diluc all three snapped their heads in the direction of the pale-haired girl. She pushed herself up from her crouched position in front of the bookcase, one hand clutching a thick dictionary to her chest as the other brushed off her knees.

“That was me.”

The room tipped to the side.

Jean cocked her head, the confusion painted over her features perfectly matching the befuddlement that Diluc felt growing inside of him.

“Eula, what do you mean that was you?”

The girl, Eula, shrugged nonchalantly. She glanced between them with an expression so placid that Diluc couldn’t understand if she was telling some kind of ill-timed joke or not.

“You sent Amber and me to the Cavalry Captain’s home to look for clues. We discovered a box of old letters addressed to that man under the bed, so I sent them.”

“Eula!” Amber practically squeaked. “When—why—”

“Vengeance,” Eula said simply, easily like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What is the point of addressing a letter just to keep it stored under your bed? Shouldn’t letters be sent to their recipients?”

Amber cut in, a graceful, wonderful person who stopped the world from spinning just as it threatened to topple over and throw the whole office around them into disarray.

“Mas— Mister Diluc, do you need to sit down? You’re looking kind of, um…tired.”

Right, he was tired from his trip. He was tired after spending an entire day in the back of his carriage over unforgiving terrain. He nodded numbly, his throat feeling tight and swollen and his tongue fat and limp in his mouth as Amber’s small, too-warm hands reached out and took him by the arm to lead him toward a plush couch that Jean kept against the wall. He dropped down with a quiet “oomph”, his head swirling with so many incomprehensible thoughts that he didn’t have it in him to feel an ounce of shame about how bizarre he probably looked to everyone else in the room.

Kaeya probably never had moments like this. Kaeya took everything as it came and never seemed to stumble for too long.

But Kaeya was gone.

Kaeya had vanished in the middle of the night without a trace and the only clue he’d left behind was a pile of letters that he hadn’t intended to send.

“So—” He sucked in a breath, swallowing hard to clear away some of the swelling in his throat. “The…the bath salts. Did you send those too? Why?”

The pale-haired girl, Eula apparently, tipped her head and studied him for a long moment like she was trying to understand whether he was making a joke or not, too.

“I didn’t send any packages. Just the letters. There was nothing in the box but the letters.”

He perked at that, staring across Jean’s office at her emotionless face, searching it for the smallest indication that she’d be lying about something as strange as this. Jean’s voice cut in.

“Diluc…you received a package? From Kaeya? Are you sure it was from Kaeya?”

He hesitated for a moment, searching the blurry floor and patting himself on the shoulder, surprised to find that the strap of his bag was gone. Amber sunk onto the couch next to him, nearly a full cushion away as she leaned down and tugged his bag up from between them. She helped him fumble with the clasp and tug it open and she even looked away and pretended not to be paying attention as he rifled through it for the salts and the accompanying letter. He’d never spared much of a thought on her. She hadn’t been a Knight when he was still employed there. Kaeya gossiped about a lot of people when he’d bother Diluc during his shifts at the bar, but he never spoke ill of this girl. For all Diluc knew, she was unsubstantial enough that she even evaded Kaeya’s radar, but she was kind. He felt embarrassed for writing her off before.

He plucked the salts from inside, nudging the bottle in Amber’s direction and muttering awkwardly, “Could you—I, I can’t—”

“Of course,” she said, her voice agonizingly gentle. She took the bottle from his hands and stood from the couch to walk it across the room and hand it to Jean. This gave Diluc the proper opportunity to fumble with the letters and select the right one. He was grateful that its wax seal wasn’t the same as the others, that the envelope was that slightly different shade that made it easy to differentiate when his head still spun and his eyes still had a terribly hard time focusing.

He handed that to Amber, too, when she approached him again, thanking her for her assistance and turning his attention back to his bag just to give himself an excuse not to look at her for too long. Even like this, it wasn’t easy to let someone pick up his slack. Especially like this, in front of so many people, it was hard to understand that he looked like an idiot when he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Amber gave the letter to Jean.

“Can I read it?”

Jean’s voice was barely above a whisper. It quivered as she spoke like she was terrified of a few sloppy words written on a piece of parchment.

“Of course,” he said, no consideration whatsoever for her position, for whatever she must have been feeling when she held Kaeya’s final attempt at communication in her hands. “If it’s a coded message, I’ve not the slightest idea what he was trying to say. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it no matter how long I looked through it.”

The quiet room was filled with the soft scraping of the envelope coming open. He couldn’t look at Jean as she read it. He was too afraid of what he’d find in her expression. To Jean, Kaeya had been reliable and hardworking. He’d never made any attempt to dissuade her from trusting Kaeya, convincing himself at one point that Kaeya would show his true colors eventually, and…maybe that time had come now. Maybe, after all these years, Diluc was the cruel one for not warning her that eventually, Kaeya was bound to let her down.

His father had told him once, “ We check every barrel of wine meticulously before we ship them out. Our clients aren’t the fools for purchasing bad wine from us. We’re the scoundrels for failing to warn them that our stock has gone bad.”

“—A pharmacist?”

Amber, having refilled her position beside Diluc and currently fumbling in the most obvious way with the decision to put a comforting hand on his shoulder or not, turned her face toward Jean again and furrowed her brows.

“A…pharmacist?”

Jean chewed the inside of her cheek, her brows drawing lower as she skimmed the letter a second time.

“Yes, he references a pharmacist. He refers to this pharmacist as though Diluc would not know who he was, so it cannot be the pharmacist here in Mondstadt. These bath salts…and the seal on this letter, they’re both from Liyue, aren’t they? He couldn’t have…why would he have—”

She fell silent again, her eyes flicking back and forth as she skimmed the letter once more.

“Eula, are you absolutely certain that you only sent the letters?”

Eula nodded passively, her arms crossed over her chest, hip cocked out and rested against the corner of Jean’s desk.

“Yes, each letter costs a single Mora to send. It was thirteen Mora in total. I surveyed the price per letter carefully in order to update my list of reasons why the Cavalry Captain deserves further vengeance. He will pay swiftly and painfully for every Mora I squandered on his endeavors.”

“Wait.” Diluc sat straighter in his seat, startling a still-skittish Amber who pulled away her hovering hand like he’d slapped it. “Thirteen? You—you’re sure it was thirteen? Not fourteen?”

Eula squared him with a look.

“Are you doubting my intelligence? You must understand that questioning my ability to do simple arithmetic is deserving of the nastiest of vengeance—”

“Eula,” Jean cut in softly.

Eula shot her a look, sighing as she shifted to rest her weight on the opposite leg and lifted a hand to wave in the air.

“I am completely certain that it was thirteen Mora for thirteen letters. If you received fifteen instead, then two were not in the box that Amber and I uncovered in the Cavalry Captain’s belongings.”

Still holding the letter pile in his hands, Diluc chewed on that thought for a long moment. An anxious silence rested over the room again, before he sucked in a breath, tossed the letters on the couch next to him, and closed the clasps of his bag. Amber stirred nervously as he shoved up but she didn’t stop him. Jean looked at him in surprise, her mouth open like she intended to say something, but he shook his head, clarity cutting through his previous brain fog well enough that he was capable of marching toward the door without issue.

“Okay,” he said simply. “I’m done playing along with whatever idiotic puzzle he left behind. If you want to keep giving him the attention that he’s obviously desperate for, feel free, but I’m not entertaining it. Keep the letters and the bath salts. I don’t care about this anymore.”

Jean called out, but the door closed behind him before she could finish her sentence. He hoped his driver hadn’t decided to spend his evening in the bar by now. He needed to get the Hell out of this awful city as soon as he possibly could.

It was dark outside when he shoved through the front door, the sky scattered with a billion pinhole stars that watched him above that he knew, insufferably, he shared with that idiot Kaeya. His chest was tight and his throat hadn’t stopped feeling constricted, but he knew he’d be okay once he put some distance between himself and the city smog.

He knew he’d be fine once he severed his last ties to the toxic fog that was Kaeya.

He stumbled down the stairs, angry with himself for being rude to Jean when she was clearly overworked, angry with this city for feeling like a comforting blanket that siphoned off the smallest pieces of the rage he wanted so terribly to simmer in, and angry with Kaeya for causing all of this, for being unable yet again to simply live a pleasant, uneventful life and fall in line when things would be so much easier for everyone that way.

Kaeya wasn’t a fuckup. He wasn’t unreliable. For all the things he was, for all the ways he’d failed as family and as a friend and as everything else he’d been to Diluc once upon a time, he’d never been someone who went back on his word or dropped the ball when it mattered. He hadn’t earned the title of Cavalry Captain for nothing, after all. He wasn’t well-liked and sought-after in Mondstadt for no good reason.

So this was a new low that Diluc wouldn’t have ever expected.

This…he didn’t know how it made him feel, but for the first time in his life, he ached for the relief that could only come in the form of drunkenness. He wished more than anything that he was the kind of person who could handle his alcohol and wake up fine the next morning.

He was wrestling with himself over whether or not he’d disregard his principles and have a drink just to stave off his misery when someone called his name. He was tired of being called out to already, but he stopped at the bottom of the stairs nonetheless, turning slowly after taking a moment to regain some of his composure, but surprised to see not Amber or Jean, but Eula slowly trailing behind him.

He noticed the letters and the bath salts in her arms and prepared himself to reject them if she attempted to give them back.

“Mister Diluc,” she said blandly, her expression just as even as it had been the entire time they’d shared Jean’s office.

“Just Diluc is fine.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment before turning her eyes to the peak of the Barbatos statue that was barely visible from their low vantage point.

“I’d like a word,” she said. At this hour, only the guards at the top of the stairs were present near the Knights’ headquarters.

“Okay.” He didn’t know what else to add, so he let that single word hang in the air between them.

She tapped her fingers against the bath salt bottle, not restless or nervous, but pensive.

“I understand if sending the Cavalry Captain’s letters was an offense deserving of your vengeance someday, but I did not intend for you to become wrapped up in my pursuit of justice. It’s only fair that I accept the ramifications of these decisions. However, I won’t simply roll over and accept defeat if you do decide to—”

“Vengeance,” he interrupted, too tired and frazzled to entertain more of her monologue. “Did Kaeya do something to deserve vengeance?”

Kaeya was deserving of a lot of things, sure, but he couldn’t imagine that anyone in Mondstadt was capable of the kinds of evil he fought outside its protective stone walls. Kaeya wasn’t an incredible person by any means, but…vengeance?

Eula’s face turned sour. She glowered at the ground between her feet as her fingers continued tapping against the salt bottle.

“The Cavalry Captain was deserving of the most extreme vengeance, yes. However, that isn’t of importance right now. A letter that’s been addressed already should be sent. It’s a waste of good wax and ink to place it in a box and never send it.”

He sighed, taking a step toward the pathway that would eventually lead him to the Angel’s Share. He wanted nothing more than to remove himself from this conversation as quickly as possible, grab his driver, and pay the guy whatever bonus was necessary just to get back to the winery as soon as he could.

“You don’t have to explain your motivations to me,” he said, his patience wearing thinner by the second. “Whatever happened between Kaeya and the Knights is none of my business. I haven’t cared about either in a very long time.”

At this, he turned to take his leave, but Eula stepped forward quickly, blocking his path and fixing him with a look so firm and threatening that he wondered if he should have brought his weapon with him.

“The Cavalry Captain deserved vengeance because he purchased a meal for me when the clerk turned me away. He pitied me, which is deserving of the most extreme vengeance. It’s a well-known fact within our ranks that the Cavalry Captain is a lonely person, that he rarely spends time at home alone but prefers to frequent bars and work overtime to avoid being by himself. A person so pathetic had no right to look down on me. Someone who cannot even say what he means in a letter and send that letter to its recipient has no business having compassion for someone like me.”

This made no sense, but Eula seemed impassioned enough that her expression twitched the slightest amount.

She looked him up and down, determining something in a split second before shoving the salts and the letters into his arms with so much force that he couldn’t stop himself from grabbing them.

“Don’t be a coward, Mister Diluc, or I’ll have to enact vengeance on you someday as well.”

With that, she shoved past him, pacing back up the stairs toward the Knights’ headquarters and leaving him confused and oddly embarrassed without any opportunity to question what in the world had possibly just transpired between them.

Jean employed some real nutjobs, he decided.

No wonder Kaeya had been so highly-regarded before he’d up and run away, if everyone else that Varka hadn’t taken with him was just as strange as Eula.

Something stirred in his chest as he looked down at the bundle of items in his arms.

Resigned, he cursed and sighed, dropping his bag from his shoulder and finagling it until he managed to tuck everything inside.