Thread by @morphasia4

u ask and i provide
angsty kaeluc
potential (later) character death. partial (past) disfigurement. Slight mentioned body gore. Mute this thread if any of those things bother you.

aka my thoughts on kaeya's eyepatch potential.
thread below 💗

In the past, Kaeya would have gone to Adelinde if he faced discomfort with cleaning the wound where his eye had once been. He only knew she was comfortable with it after he'd found her burying the body of a would-be assassin under the grape trellises in the winter, when he was 9.

Because he had not asked any questions, he trusted her to not ask any in return when cleaning the old, scarred tissue made his tiny hands shake too much to bear.
With a certain, terrifying gentleness, she had done so for him until Diluc had cast him from their home.

As an adult, he has grown into treating such things for himself. He does not allow himself the same, tender touches, because there is little more there than a scar that needs cleaning, regularly.

Until it starts to hurt again.

At first, he blames everything but what he fears it to be. The weather--old wounds ached with changes in temperatures, didn't they?

Stress. Lack of sleep. He even dared to swear off alcohol for a week, until the pain is strong enough one night to force him to drink.

Eventually, he swears Barbara to secrecy in treating the wound, hoping that her curing magic would help with the constant, dull ache that persists in his skull like tiny pins and needles.
Though Kaeya is one of the most attractive bachelors in Mondstadt, he expects her flinch.

The scar is not pretty. The removal of his eye had not been a delicate procedure.

The lid is flat over where it had once been, but the skin is stressed and tight and discolored just below it, and up to his brow. Her touch reminds him of Adelinde.

He knows why her touch is tentative, but he assures her with a quiet smile that she cannot do any more damage than what has been done.

His fists clench at his knees, because while the press of her fingers around the scar does not hurt, the pain has started under the lid again.

It's only when she pulls back the eyelid does she recoil, fully. That's a motion that surprises him; the Deaconess had treated war wounds far more severe than his own. He had never seen her this faint of heart.

He hadn't seen the glow that lit across her fingers.

Still, he's... traditionally unflappable. He tilts his head back down, because it's clear she doesn't necessarily want to touch him again.

The shock on her face is enough to stir discomfort in his chest.

"Barbara?" His tone is careful. Dare he say, nervous. "What's wrong?"

Her own hands are shaking, and with the same hand that had checked his eye, she lifted her palm to cover her mouth in horror.

"...S.. Sir Kaeya," she whispered, barely loud enough to hear. "You're-.. That... is an Abyss Mage's eye."

For a very real moment, Kaeya wonders if he is going to have to kill Barbara.

More slowly, the realization sets in that there is no point even if he were trying to preserve his cover:

The curse had manifested again. He didn't have long.

He chokes, quietly, on the air that had been in his lungs at the time she'd spoken, and bitterly, he raised his hand to cover the exposed scarring.

All of this. All of everything.

For nothing.

For a moment, he can't help but be bitter about the fact that even though the Khaenri'ah curse had found him again, it hadn't even given him a /working/ eye in the process.

He couldn't see with it, but he understood now. That piercing pain. It was the slow loss of his own body.

When he stands, his feet don't feel like his own.

Nothing feels like his own, anymore. It won't be, in not much longer.

"Sir Kaeya?" Barbara asks, because she doesn't understand what's happening. He can't blame her for that. The secrets of his nation were long-kept stories of legends, told only in tales of horror to dissuade adventurers for daring to venture into that gods-forsaken land.

For the first time in his life, Kaeya does not have words for a pretty lady looking worried over him. Any attempt to speak freezes in his throat--though he knows the curse takes days, if not weeks to fully convert someone, he fears if he speaks it will be in garbled growls.

Though she does not understand what is happening, Barbara feels as if she has just passed his death sentence.

In a way, she had.

In the end, he cannot answer. Kaeya can only shake his head, slowly, and tie his eyepatch over his face again.

He would allow himself that dignity, at least.

Whether she told Jean or not, whether he was arrested on this strange circumstance--it no longer mattered.

One thought persisted over the reigning realization that a fate worse than death was barreling towards him, as undeniable and unavoidable as death itself:

He wanted to see Diluc.

It was startling how being confronted with his own mortality suddenly framed what felt more important than anything else.

Kaeya considers it no small miracle that he's as gentle as he is when he brushes Barbara aside. It's an even larger miracle that he makes his way through the streets, even though the glances he earns when he returns no one's greetings are... alarmed at his lack of charm. Worried.

Mondstadt loves its found son, its Cavalry Captain.

He can only hope whoever replaces him will be as willing to sacrifice everything, as he had in his own ways, to protect it.

He knows that Diluc favors working the bar on weekends. More drunkards, more loose tongues, more chances to catch crime before it happens when someone's had one too many. He isn't there every time, but Kaeya feels one, brief ray of happiness light his heart to see him there, now.

The relief he feels is almost palatable, curling up the back of his tongue like a pleasant, lingering taste after eating something that'd made him sick.

Of course, Diluc being Diluc, regards him with flat skepticism and a cold greeting: "Isn't it a little early to drink?"

Even Diluc's condemnation may have been as firm as ever, but it makes Kaeya feel strangely as if he'd stepped into home, and was fussed at for his hair being messy, or for tracking mud in on the carpet.

Diluc's more suspicious when he doesn't answer, and simply sits at the bar.

The bar is empty; maybe the gods have some mercy in some twisted sense of the word. They're alone.

Kaeya wanted to say everything at once. He wants to apologize for not being there for Diluc when his father had died. He wanted to apologize for dropping /everything/ on him.

In the end, he can only muster six words spoken in a voice so soft that it sounds as if it's spoken from somewhere very far away.

"I am going to die, soon."

The glass Diluc had been drying shatters when it hits the floor.

Diluc curses, and he can't help the anger that bleeds into his tone--and his boot crunches the glass underfoot instead of worrying about cleaning it immediately.

He owns the glass. He owns the Angel's Share. His possessions were unimportant.

"That's not funny."

Kaeya is still himself enough, he thinks, to choose his words carefully.

He could lie. He could make Diluc hate him here. He could declare, with false bravado, that he had gathered enough intelligence to return his homeland, and cause the downfall of Mondstadt.

He could make Diluc kill him, too, to end his suffering before he was fully transformed by the curse.

He could be selfish, and leave Diluc loathing him too much to miss him.

It would be easy. Kaeya could tell himself that it was a kindness for Diluc to not miss him.

But oh, he wants to be missed.

He wanted, more than anything, to be remembered as Kaeya: Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius-- remembered as someone who had loved this city, in his own way.

He wanted to be remembered as more than what he had been supposed to be.

It's more selfish, almost, than just making Diluc kill him. He refused to survive the transformation, but Diluc would not be the tool he used to avoid that end.

"...I'm not joking."

The strained, forced smile he gives Diluc is enough to make the other realize his honesty.

Something small in Diluc breaks.

Whether it be some, stubborn small belief that he would never forgive Kaeya for his betrayal, battled constantly against his desire to be as close as they once were, it shatters beyond recognition.

"Kae," he repeats, some long-lost Diluc of the past speaks, daring to whisper the nickname he hadn't blessed the other with in so long. He repeats himself, slowly. This time there's no anger. This time, there's just a careful, desperate urgency in his voice. "That's not-" Funny.

Kaeya thinks that maybe, like an injured animal, he should have carried himself off to the forest and never allowed himself to be seen again.

Maybe it would have been easier than watching Diluc process everything at once.

It was the one, selfish thing he'd allow himself.

"Luc." Kaeya's voice cracks. That smooth, taunting lilt hadn't cracked since he was twelve--when Diluc had teased him for it then.
His gaze is shining, as if he might cry. Both of them might.

Diluc rounds the bar before either of them are fully conscious of him moving.

"Who?" He demands, and though he has been so /careful/ since their fight to never lay hands on him again, not after it had driven Kaeya to the desperation that the Gods had seen fit to give him a Vision, he reaches out, grasping his shoulders.

There's no pain to his grip.

The fierceness to the question isn't directed /at/ Kaeya, but it's enough to surprise him. He hadn't elaborated. Of course he couldn't know.
Diluc had always been one to act. He'd always wanted to protect, no matter what the cost. But that he would still want to fight for him...

Kaeya's fingers shook as they lifted, cupping the other's cheek as he trailed a bare thumb against his cheekbone.

"There's nothing you can do to stop it."

The words are honest, but they feel terribly cruel.

As if Kaeya had struck him, Diluc feels dazed by the simple statement. His legs want to crumple under him, and the news is almost suffocating. His grip tightens, as if Diluc can keep Kaeya there, away from whatever invisible threat that Kaeya believed would take him.

"I just," Kaeya starts, and closes his eye, exhaling slowly as he worked through honesty that he had veiled behind so many clever twists of words and lies and fibs for so long.

"...I just wanted to see you one more time."

The rest of Diluc breaks, and he pulls him tightly in.

"Tell me," Diluc pleads, because he doesn't /know/ if he can stop it or not, not if Kaeya won't be honest with him this time, not if he won't just-

Kaeya just shakes his head into Diluc's shoulder, gripping against his shirt so tightly the fabric threatens to rip.

Out of everything, the thing he is most afraid of is not death itself, but the thought of the loathing he knew Diluc's face would hold, if given the chance to watch Kaeya fade into whatever twisted form the Khaenri'ah curse would choose for him.

"Please."

Kaeya can't stand the fact that he's reduced Diluc to begging, unintentionally. His shoulders shake, because his voice is gone again, and Diluc can only feel warmth against his shoulder where Kaeya's tears bleed through the fabric.

The only thing that keeps Diluc from also crying is the fact that he has lost so much before-- that, and the determination to not lose anything else again. Not without a fight.

"Are you sick?" The questions will not stop. He's not handling it well. "We can find a cure-"

"There is. no. cure." Kaeya repeats a little firmer than he means to, because to search for a 'cure' would be challenging Khaenri'ah itself. He drags himself back, drawing in a short breath. His cheeks are wet and red and Diluc hates how lovely his eyes look after crying.

"There has to be." Diluc answers, because he can't accept an answer otherwise. He shakes his own head, his throat feeling dry. "I can't lose you, too. I won't."

Kaeya regrets ever coming, realizing how familiar the pain in Diluc's voice is.

He's as terrified of losing Kaeya as he had been broken by losing his father.

"I'm sorry."

"How long do I have you for?" Diluc asked, not admitting that he was losing him, not yet, but--

Whatever days, whatever hours, whatever /minutes/ they had left were suddenly so precious. Invaluable. Priceless.

"I don't know. I can't stay," Kaeya started, tentatively, already knowing that Diluc would protest it. His thumb pressed to Diluc's lips, silencing him as he took a deep breath.

"I don't want you to look for me. I don't want you to avenge me. I want you to live."

He bit his lip, only to scrape his teeth there and dig deep for courage. "I want you to remember me, I want you to remember what we had, and I want you to know that I never betrayed you. Any of you. Can you do that for me, Diluc?"
It's nothing short of the wishes of a dying man.

He has no voice, because Kaeya won't let him save him. Not this time.

Maybe Kaeya's the one saving him by refusing to allow Diluc to be haunted by the delusion of being able to save him--to save /them/, and everything they should have had.

He nods, wordlessly.

He owes Kaeya this much. He owes him for every year that he doubted him after Kaeya's honesty that night. Kaeya relaxes at this agreement, lowering his thumb to press his lips there instead.

It's a slow, deliberate kiss, and everything Kaeya has ever wanted.

It's also his distraction.

His fingers slip, with practiced precision down to the Vision at Diluc's waist, unsnapping the chain there, and throwing it across the tavern floor before Diluc's come back to his senses to realize what Kaeya's doing.

A flick of his wrist has his own Vision active as he pushes Diluc back to the bar, separating them as ice crawls up Diluc's legs, freezing him to the floor.

He turns a startled gaze to him, horror rising to his face. "Kaeya? Kaeya, /no/-!"

Kaeya's expression steeled, before it broke into a smile.

Diluc screams after him, but Kaeya wants the last thing Diluc remembers of him to be his smile.

"I loved you, Luc. Remember that, too."

He's gone while Diluc rails against the ice pinning him in place, closing the door of the Angel's Share behind him and freezing the lock on it, just in case Diluc figured out how to break out early.

He was too smart for his own good.

It takes Diluc all of twenty minutes to grab an ice pick from behind the bar and break himself free. Kaeya had had the damnable forethought to make sure the ice only held down his boots, never touching areas where it would have left him frostbite.

Kaeya is gone.

In the following hours, far too much happens for Diluc to process it all easily.

He scrambles to gather what staff of the Winery that he can for a search party. He's preparing his own horse when a small company of knights rides up. He doesn't have /time/ for this.

He's ready to snap off when he realized that Jean leads them, and he's tense at the hesitant look she gives him.

"Have you seen Sir Kaeya?" She starts off with, and immediately, Diluc doesn't what to cooperate. They never brought out three knights unless it was a search party.

Or a manhunt.

"Why are you asking me?" he asks, emphasizing the importance of denial, as if he would never be caught dead with that information.

Jean hesitated. The topic of the two was never one either wanted to broach. "There's... been an incident." Barbara had reported it.

Diluc went tense. "What 'incident?'" He asks slowly.

Jean struggles to find the words not to accuse Kaeya of treason. "We think that he's... sick. That something's wrong."

"How do you know?" His words are sharp. Demanding.

"I can't tell you that."

Secrets. More lies, more secrets--even Jean wasn't immune. Tension bleeds into his shoulders, and he grasps the saddle of his horse, lifting himself up abroad the mare.

"Then I can't tell you anything either." He shouldn't have wasted time entertaining the conversation at all.

Jean watches him leave, reservation in her frown.

He pushes those who were willing to volunteer to work for him until night falls, and they start falling away from the search party, one by one.

They cross paths with the Knights more than once-- also searching for Kaeya.

Diluc is one of the few from the Winery crew left searching when he hears the shouts--and that is what set chills down his spine.

Shouts meant conflict. Shouts meant disaster.

It meant Kaeya had not gone quietly with the Knights, or...

Dread mounts in his chest as he drives the horse forward to where the shouts had echoed from--the pass towards Stormterror's Domain.

Diluc remembered the Knights at the bar, just the last weekend, complaining of a Ruin Guard infestation that had been steadily pushing closer.

The temperature seemed to be dropping the closer he approached, and as he emerged around the corner of the worst of the pathing, only to see why the shouts had been echoing back so loudly:

They were bouncing off the wall of ice that completely blocked off the road.

The scattered parts of old technology lay in shambles, embedded into the rock walls around them.

Twenty Ruin Guards. Shattered. Judging from the movement of battle, they would have pushed into the main roads proper over the next few days, overwhelming all in their path.

There were more, frozen in place by the wall that rose easily to the lip of the ravine above, but that wasn't what Diluc's eyes fell on.

Trapped in the ice was the slender figure of the man that had summoned it. A man who had poured every ounce of his power into this fight.

Unmoving, preserved, like a fly caught in honey.

Diluc's heart caught in his throat. The Knights were already shouting for back up, for axes, for picks--anything to get to the man suspended in the frost.

They stayed for only seconds when Diluc's fire surged forth.

"Kaeya!"

It takes everything he has not to let the flames whip out of control. The water rushes hot around their feet as it melts on impact, and Diluc pushes through, breaking the ice around Kaeya gradually, until the body falls backwards.

The body.

There is blood. So much blood.

As Diluc catches Kaeya, he realizes with growing horror that the wall of ice had been something born out of the only thing that could have warranted that much power; Kaeya had used the last of his strength to stop the enemy.

He was smiling. Even in death, he was smiling.

Diluc has no way to know that Kaeya had found just what he'd been looking for, and even considered using him for:

A way to avoid becoming the monster he couldn't bear Diluc seeing him as.

Diluc is hoarse from the sob that rips from him, burying his face down into the blood-stained fur that always adorned Kaeya's shoulder, and none of the Knights dare move them until Diluc's shoulders can no longer shake from the force of his grief.

It's unspoken between them that they will never repeat what they see that day, Diluc Ragnvindr pleading with the corpse of their Cavalry Captain for a second. No one will do him the disservice, when they realize that he is the one that will grieve Kaeya the hardest.

Adelinde is the one that convinces him to hand over Kaeya's body, her hand gentle on his shoulder, speaking to him with soft sternness as if he's a child all over again.

They will return him, the Knights promise. They need to prepare the body. The ravine is unsafe.

His arms are empty without Kaeya's weight in them, too heavy in death. He sits there, on the floor of the Ravine, for too long afterwards even as they quietly lift Kaeya away from him.

They try to comfort him with what they can. He died in service of Mondstadt.

He died keeping people safe. There was no telling how many men they would have lost fighting that many Ruin Guards.

It's hollow comfort. When he finds his voice again, he stands and leans heavily into Adelinde's side, worn from how much energy it had taken to thaw Kaeya from his icy coffin.

"He will be entombed with my family," he finally speaks, barely.

The news comes as a small surprise. The divide between the two was not a secret--and the Ragnvindr family tomb was something sacred to one of the oldest family in Mondstadt. They don't question it, though. It's not their place.

Adelinde gets him home safely, eventually.

They are not people who leave their own out of the ground for long.

The funeral is private. It is separate from the service the town holds, but it is something Diluc needs.

He barely allows Jean and Lisa's attendance, but he can't deny they were more family to Kaeya that he was, in the last few years.

Jean at least knows better than to speak to him at the funeral. Lisa offers a few words of comfort, but it's Barbara that approaches hesitantly, trying to offer the soft mention of comfort, before she took a sharp breath.

"Sir Kaeya, before ... he went to the ravine..."

"Stop," Diluc interrupts, his tone firm, but raspy enough to tell Barbara that he had cried at some point, whether into the glass of wine that he so rarely indulged in (he had broken into Kaeya's favorite), or when he'd stepped away when the Knights came to honor their Captain.

"I don't... need to know why he made his decision. I know that it was not a mistake, or... some last minute heroics." He didn't know what it was, but he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Barbara's gaze drops, and she clenched her hand over her heart.

"If he didn't tell you, it was to protect you."

His hands curl into fists, and he steps away, to let his heart ache in peace until he can send his guests off in peace.

They entomb him next to the place where Diluc knows that he will one day rest, himself, not unlike how his parents were arranged.

Adelinde does not question that decision. None of them do. They don't have to.

Diluc had never believed in routine, or letting pattern dictate his life.

But the grave at their family's small, personal mausoleum would have calla lilies placed atop it twice a week until the day came that Diluc would join him again.

( -fin!- For real this time! )