Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Diluc holds his breath as he waits for Edith to answer his brother. Maybe they’re all holding their breath, given the impermeable silence hanging over them, but he can’t focus on much else beyond the constricting confines of his body.

Kaeya’s here now. There’s no need to worry.

He just needs to trust his brother.

Everything’s going to be fine–

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Edith says, scoffing slightly as she looks down at Kaeya.

He’s unfazed, as he always is. “Really.”

Edith doesn’t say anything else. She just clamps down on both of Diluc’s shoulders, her fitted silk gloves wrinkling from the force of it. She leans down as if to whisper something in his ear, but he doesn’t hear it.

Kaeya’s eye narrows at that, but if he has any objections, he doesn’t voice them and only lets out a silent sigh instead.

“So that’s how you want to play it, hm? You sure about that?”

Kaeya glances back at the bloodstained note.

It’s covered in uneven creases, the stains brown and faded – but all Diluc can see is the bright vermillion of fresh blood seeping out of it, the pale hand that had been gripping it tightly with its dying strength–

“Let me make one thing very clear up front,” Kaeya says, his voice cold enough to send a chill down Diluc’s spine. “The only reason you’re still here is that my brother is Celestia-sent, and he believes in giving his family endless second chances, even when they don’t deserve it. Unfortunately for you, I’m far less generous than he is. And far less inclined to treat you as a part of this family to begin with.”

He can practically hear Edith glaring, even if he can’t see it.

Something tells him he should take this opportunity to push her hands off his shoulders and get away from her. Too bad his entire body is frozen in place, glued to the chair and incapable of moving even an inch.

He doesn’t have to, though. Edith moves away on her own.

“I don’t have to listen to this. Come, Diluc–”

She only manages to take a single step before a thick layer of frost blooms across the lock on the door in the blink of an eye.

Kaeya’s still wearing that same smirk, rolling his wrist flippantly as if he didn’t just trap them all indefinitely in this too-small office.

“No one’s leaving here until we get to the truth.”

Maybe Diluc should’ve taken him up on that offer to leave earlier. He’s not sure how much more of this claustrophobic feeling he can handle before he explodes–

But leaving Kaeya alone with Edith feels more wrong. That half-hour yesterday had been excruciating enough.

She returns to his side again. Drops her hands on his shoulders again. Freezes him in place again.

Kaeya’s smile cracks.

“If you have any vested interest in the continued functioning of your hands, you’ll keep them off my brother.”

The sharpness of Kaeya’s voice makes Diluc flinch. It makes Edith flinch too, her hands instantly jumping away from his shoulders as she splutters.

She doesn’t seem to know what to do with them; they hover around him uselessly while she tries to speak. “Diluc, dear, surely–”

“Kaeya,” Diluc says, trying to keep his inexplicably shaking voice in check, “what’s all this about?”

His brother watches him with an expression Diluc can’t read, before his eye darts back to Edith. He gestures to the note once more with a casual flick of his wrist, the delicate rustle of paper echoing loudly throughout the room.

“Last chance, Edith.”

She folds her arms across her chest and doesn’t say a word.

Kaeya shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

He looks at the photograph that Edith had pointed out to Diluc earlier. Something about it softens his gelid stare for just a fraction of a second, the nonchalant smirk nearly slipping and shattering the illusion he’s working so hard to maintain. Nearly.

“If there’s one thing I know about Father,” Kaeya begins, just as Diluc’s about to tell him to stop stalling, “it’s that he was a family man. Anyone who knew him would agree that he was a rather exemplary father. Anyone, it seems,” he says, shooting a pointed look at Edith, “except you.”

It’s hard to see her expression from this angle. But Diluc can make out the clench of her jaw, the subtle tapping of her silk-covered fingers against her garish yellow sleeves, the slight slip of her shawl as her shoulders hike up just a fraction.

“But who could blame you for that?” Kaeya says with exaggerated sympathy. “After all, he cut you and the rest of your family out of his life for no reason, seemingly for good. How could anyone think of someone like that as a family man? Is it really possible that he managed to fool the entire city, and you were the only one who ever saw his true colours?”

Edith lifts her chin to stare down at Kaeya from an even greater height. “Obviously–”

“–not. That’d be an absurd conclusion to reach, wouldn’t it?”

His smile was already sharp, but it grows even sharper when Edith shuts her mouth.

Maybe Diluc’s imagining things, but he can hear Edith’s teeth grinding against each other. It’s not a pleasant sound, and it doesn’t sound like she’s going to stop any time soon, either.

At this rate she’s not going to have a whole lot left of her teeth, not if Kaeya drags this confrontation out for as long as it seems he’s intending to. Why wouldn’t he, when he’s clearly enjoying this? A bit too much for his own good, Diluc thinks.

“Father wouldn’t have cut you all off without a good reason. That’s the more obvious conclusion.” He holds up the note to the faint bits of light breaking through the storm clouds outside the window. “And luckily for us, he kept his supporting evidence safely stored under lock and key – in case something like this ever happened, I assume. He always was a bit of a pragmatist.” He lowers the note and smirks at Edith over the top of the crumpled paper. “You didn’t like that about him, did you? I can see why. It must have been a great inconvenience.”

“You shouldn’t speak of things you don’t understand,” Edith says slowly.

“I think I understand well enough. This little piece of paper here told me pretty much everything I needed to know.”

Kaeya makes a show of passing the note to his other hand, raising an eyebrow as he feigns interest in reading whatever’s on that bloodied page.

Cut it out with the dramatics and get to the point–

“It’s almost funny how much this explains. It doesn’t get much clearer than an explicit indictment from your own sister. This is all Edith’s fault, it says so right here – and how desperate she must have been, to write something so–”

“That is not what it says,” Edith snaps. “I won’t stand for these lies–”

Kaeya grins. “So you do know what this is. Finally had enough of playing dumb, have you?”

She draws her hand back with an imperceptible gasp. Diluc hadn’t even realised she’d moved her hand at all.

“I should thank you for the little tale you told us last night, honestly. I never would’ve thought to look for something like this otherwise. But as soon as I heard what happened to Diluc’s mother, I knew what was missing from this whole story.” He leans his head on his hand, his smile somewhere between mournful and mocking. “No good suicide is complete without a note, after all.”

Diluc really is going to be sick. Nausea plagues every inch of his body.

He can’t look his brother in the eye. Good thing Kaeya’s busy staring right through Edith’s soul, too occupied by their barbed exchange to focus on Diluc’s growing unrest.

“This is what you were looking for, wasn’t it? The last words of Evelyn Ragnvindr.” Kaeya lets out a sigh, but it’s firmly on the side of mocking this time. “How careless of me to have left the door open after I came in here and found it before you could. I suppose you wasted your time because of me. Terribly sorry about that. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

So Kaeya’s the reason the door was open?

Did he… plan all of this? He knew what Edith would do, that this was going to happen, and he prepared for it in advance? Even though it’s only been a few hours since–

…

Just grabbing a glass of water, huh?

Diluc braces himself against the chair. Now’s not the time to snap at his brother for keeping things from him yet again. He’s tired of being in the dark, and Kaeya’s offering the only way out of it that he can see, sinuous and twisted though it may appear, so he doesn’t have a choice.

He just needs to trust his brother.

Everything’s going to be fine–

“You have no business reading my sister’s suicide note.”

“And you have no business snooping around my father’s office. So let’s agree to call it even, hm?”

Edith looks like she very much doesn’t want to agree. But she only lets out a short huff and glares at Kaeya, who continues on being completely unbothered by her increasing fury.

“You knew that what your sister wrote here was enough to make Father cut you off, so you had to find it before Diluc did – before he could read it and pass the same judgement.” Kaeya rolls his eye. “So predictable.”

Must he keep throwing in unhelpful remarks after every other sentence? Aren’t there more pressing matters that they should hurry up and get to already before Diluc actually falls apart–

“So, how exactly did your sister end her life? All the blood on here suggests it was a rather violent affair.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Edith says, folding her arms even more tightly than before. “I wasn’t exactly there to see it, now was I? I would’ve stopped her if that had been the case–”

“Would you truly have done that, though?”

Her eyes are as cold as the unthawed lock on the door a few feet away. “What are you insinuating here?”

“I’m just saying. This is all a little strange. I can’t help but wonder,” Kaeya says, narrowing his eye, “if it was really a suicide at all.”

What?

What the hell is Kaeya trying to say?

He can’t be saying what Diluc thinks he’s saying.

“Your poor sister, already weakened from a miscarriage, devastated physically and mentally – it wouldn’t have been difficult to overpower her, even if she put up a fight. The perfect excuse was right there, too – no one would’ve been too surprised, would they? Forging a little note like this to go along with it would hardly have been a challenge either. That would’ve been all you needed to make her tragically early death look like a suicide, when the truth is that you killed her in cold blood. And everyone would’ve been none the wiser.”

Diluc looks between him and Edith desperately.

There’s no way– that’s just too much– it was already too much, but this–

Her laugh is cold and cruel and devoid of any mirth whatsoever. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hm? I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Kaeya says, not a trace of sincerity to be found in his voice. “Care to enlighten us?”

Any restraint Edith had retained until now evaporates all at once. She slithers forward and places her hands on the desk, silk sliding across sleek wood as she leans down towards Kaeya.

“The audacity you must have,” she hisses, her voice almost too low for Diluc to hear, “to even suggest that I would do something so vile – it’s simply–”

“–another absurd conclusion, of course.”

Edith freezes, her next words disappearing into an unsteady silence. She stands up straight again, her movements slow and needlessly cautious, but her fingers are still curled around the edge of the desk in a grip tight enough to splinter the wood.

She glares at Kaeya, as she’s been doing ever since he entered, but his smile is unyielding. Colder than anything Edith could ever hope to muster.

“You’d have to be quite the unforgivable monster to do such a thing. You wouldn’t still be here if that were the case. Father would never have let you walk away from this place alive. He had the power to get away with it too, if he wanted to. Cutting you off from the family would’ve been a mercy you didn’t deserve, and he was an excellent judge of character – there were very few people he was willing to extend mercy to who didn’t deserve it. Somehow I doubt you were one of them.”

Kaeya’s definitely enjoying this too much. When does he plan to end this little game of cat and mouse and quit toying with Edith?

Toying with both of them, at this point – Diluc is definitely too tired for whatever this is. Just the truth, that’s all he wants. But he should’ve known that something so straightforward was too big an ask for his brother.

“Diluc, my dear, how long are you going to keep entertaining this drivel?” she says, stepping away from the desk and turning back to him, shaking her head. She stretches out her hands towards him, as if she’s about to caress his cheek or hold his shoulder like before. “All he’s doing is accusing me, your aunt, of all these terrible things, slandering me–”

A shard of ice zips past his ear.

He doesn’t dare to breathe as he glances to the side at Edith’s hands, just an inch or two away from him, stock-still in mid-air.

There’s a pencil-thin line right across the palm of one of the previously pristine gloves. The fabric has split just enough to allow a sliver of pale skin to peek through.

The line turns red. A microscopic bead of blood forms in the centre of it and trickles down the silk, unhurried.

“I hope you didn’t forget what I said earlier.” Kaeya shrugs as he lowers his hand, wisps of Cryo energy still dancing about it. “Consider that your final warning.”

He still doesn’t dare to breathe. Edith doesn’t breathe either.

“Let’s go back to this, shall we?” Kaeya waves the note at them and smiles brightly, enough to make up for the sheer lack of sunshine in here – though it’s a bitter sort of brightness, glaring like the reflection of winter sunlight off the snow-capped peaks of Dragonspine.

Being trapped on Dragonspine would feel less daunting than this.

“I know you didn’t kill her – didn’t stage her suicide, at least – because the handwriting in the note matches the letters she sent to Father, and it’s quite different from the handwriting in the letter you sent to Diluc,” Kaeya says. “And I doubt you were clever enough to arrange an elaborate forgery after all these–”

“What does it say?” Diluc asks, leaning forward in his chair, shoving down the bottomless trepidation that’s been keeping him silent all this time. “The note. What exactly did Mother write?”

Kaeya’s gaze meets his own in an oddly intense stare. His eye is wide – almost fearful.

Why does Kaeya look afraid? He’s been carrying himself with such self-assured smugness all this time–

Edith looks back at him, and the laugh that leaves her when she turns to Kaeya once more is unquestionably derisive. Kaeya keeps his head down, staring at the note as if he has some power to change what’s written there just by looking at it for long enough.

“Go on. Tell him what it says. There aren’t any secrets between you, right?” Edith laughs again, placing one hand on her hip.

Kaeya’s mouth doesn’t move.

“What’s the matter? You seem so serious all of a sudden,” she says, a contemptuous echo of Kaeya’s words from earlier. “Are you finally coming to your senses?”

“This is why I wanted you to leave,” Kaeya mutters, his eye flicking up to Diluc for just a second before he averts his gaze, too quick for him to figure out what any of this means.

“You see, dear?” Edith moves closer to him again, though she keeps a reasonable distance this time. “All he wants to do is attack me with all these awful lies, and he cares more about that than about whether you would be hurt by it. Your mother never would’ve wanted you to read her suicide note, now would she? I’m simply trying to protect you–”

“Let’s not forget who brought all of this up in the first place.” Kaeya’s voice cuts right across Edith’s, and Diluc doesn’t know how he continuously makes it sound colder than before every time he opens his mouth, but he does, and it does nothing to settle Diluc’s nerves. “It could’ve stayed dead and buried if you hadn’t decided to use it to emotionally manipulate my brother. Don’t pretend for even a second that you were trying to protect him.”

“You’re very keen to place all the blame on me, aren’t you?” she says.

“Someone has to.” Kaeya’s grip on the note tightens, crumpling it even further. “Someone has to, on your sister’s behalf.”

Edith sneers. “As if there’s anything to blame me for–”

“Yes, that is what she said, isn’t it?” Kaeya places the note on the desk, his hand splayed out over the aged paper, effectively obscuring any of the faded writing from Diluc’s view, even when he leans a little further forward to read it upside-down. “You mustn’t blame Edith – that’s what she wrote.”

“Exactly,” Edith says, an undercurrent of triumph beneath her words as she smiles back at him. “See, Diluc? I’m not the monster he’s making me out to be, your mother said so herself–”

“You mustn’t blame Edith,” Kaeya repeats. “She was right. I can’t be the mother Diluc needs. He’d be better off without me.”

It’s like the floor is falling away beneath him. He’s weightless and heavy at the same time, sinking into fathomless depths while floating up and out of his own body, unable to do a single thing.

Unable to change the facts.

He glances over at Edith. Even she looks shocked at what Kaeya just said, her eyes wide. Like she wasn’t expecting him to go that far.

Like maybe–

“Mother didn’t actually write that,” Diluc says, his mouth moving of its own accord, like it always does when he’s on the cusp of an awful truth that he doesn’t want to hear.

He clings to the tiniest hope that maybe, just maybe, his brother is lying. Maybe it’s just a ploy to rile up Edith again, like he was doing before, maybe it’s just another part of his scheme–

Kaeya’s gaze is apologetic. Enough of an answer on its own.

He wants to cry.

Gods, it’s pathetic, but he just wants to scream and cry and yell at someone– anyone– maybe even Kaeya, since he’s the one bringing all this shit to light–

But none of this is his fault.

All of this started long before Kaeya was around.

“She was unwell when she wrote that note,” Edith says, her voice dragging him back into his own body against his will. “Clearly she was, she killed herself right after. Only a fool would take her seriously. She came up with all that nonsense on her own, I never said anything of the sort–”

“Was she unwell, or was she of sound mind? Do we trust her or not, when she says you aren’t deserving of any blame?” Kaeya’s face is stone cold as he looks up at Edith. “You’re contradicting yourself, dear aunt. I suggest you pick a story and stick to it. Not that it matters, really. The truth is clear enough now, isn’t it?”

Edith keeps quiet as she slowly turns her head towards Diluc, ignoring Kaeya’s question.

“Do you always let him run his mouth this much?” she says, gesturing dismissively towards Kaeya with one hand, a disbelieving, callous, bitter smile on her face.

A wave of revulsion courses through his body, but he can’t seem to say a thing when she looks at him like that. When Kaeya doesn’t even flinch at her words, the mask of neutrality never slipping.

“All that’s clear,” she continues, looking back at Kaeya before Diluc can work up the sense to say anything, “is that Evie never had a clue what she was talking about. She always was such a flighty, anxious thing. I’ll never understand what Crepus saw in her–”

“How could you say something like that?”

Diluc’s staring at the ground when the words leave his mouth. He doesn’t know how he manages to get them out when he can barely look at his own brother, doesn’t know what’s enabling him when he was so helpless just moments earlier, but they spill out before he can stop them. He grits his teeth, clings to the armrest like it’s the only thing anchoring him to reality.

“Diluc, dear–”

“Stop that.” His voice shakes so much he can hardly make out what he’s saying himself, but the words push past his trembling lips anyway. “You keep– you act like you and Mother were so close, but then you keep saying things like that– it’s like you don’t even love her, like you hate her–”

“Of course I don’t hate her,” she says, her voice sickeningly sweet, as if she’s talking down to a child, “but I will not pretend she was perfect. I’m only being realistic – she had her flaws, everyone does–”

“So let’s return to yours.”

Kaeya finally gets up from Father’s chair, a spring in his step as he swings his legs off the desk they were resting on all this time. He’s careful to fold the note up and grip it tightly in one hand before stepping around the desk to stand at Diluc’s side.

His other hand comes down on Diluc’s shoulder – it’s cold, like it usually is, but the simple touch still fills him with an incomprehensible warmth, and Diluc chases it shamelessly, grabbing onto his brother’s hand before he can think to move it away. Kaeya gives his shoulder a firm squeeze in response.

It’s an apology and a promise and the only thing that makes any fucking sense right now.

Kaeya holds Edith’s gaze as firmly as he’s holding Diluc’s shoulder. He only looks away when she does, following her eyes back to the desk. To the letter that she’d been showing Diluc earlier. The last letter Mother wrote.

“So you were going through her old letters, were you? Was that the only one you could find?” Kaeya holds him a little tighter. “That was a rhetorical question. Of course it was. You didn’t honestly think I’d leave everything for you to find just like that, did you?”

Diluc distantly wonders how much sleep Kaeya got last night, if he’d been messing around this much in Father’s office. He seems bright-eyed and completely awake right now. Maybe Adelinde had let him get away with more than three cups of coffee this morning.

“I took the liberty of going through some of Evelyn’s last letters to Father. Apparently, he had to go on quite a few business trips while she was pregnant, so there were a lot of letters to go through. And you were with her for much of that time, weren’t you? She mentioned you making the trip down from your family estate to be with her whenever Father wasn’t – until, mysteriously, any mention of you disappeared entirely. Almost like she was avoiding talking about you at all. You disappeared entirely from her life, only to reappear in her last moments. In the last, most tragic thing she ever wrote.”

Kaeya says all of that as he marches around the back of the chair to his other side, and interposes himself between Diluc and Edith.

“All of that leaves me with just one question.” He crosses his arms and stares down at her. He’s nearly a head taller than Edith, even taller than that when she shrinks back from his scrutinising eye. “What in the world did you do to her?”

She remains tight-lipped. Any tighter and her skin might just snap under the tension.

“Funny how you’re so talkative right until someone asks an important question,” Kaeya says, cocking his head to the side. “But it’s fine if you don’t want to say anything. I have a theory of my own anyway. Would you like to hear it?”

Edith’s lips curl into something close to a snarl. “If it’s as nonsensical as everything else you’ve been saying–”

“Sorry, that was another rhetorical question. I’m afraid you really don’t have a say in the matter. Thought you would’ve realised that by now.”

Distantly – very distantly, none of this feels real, it’s terrifyingly easy to convince himself that he’s only watching a completely incomprehensible situation happen to some other unfortunate soul – Diluc wonders which one of them in this accursed room is going to snap first.

He’s not sure if whatever Kaeya’s doing counts as snapping or not.

“I think you and your sister were never that close, were you?”

Edith inhales sharply. But she remains suspiciously quiet.

“Diluc’s right. You keep pretending otherwise, but the way you talk about her makes it impossible to believe. Even your sister didn’t believe it – in all her letters, any mentions of you were so clinical, so brief. Like you were nothing more than an obligation, someone she had to acknowledge simply because you were family.”

“You can’t claim to understand anything about us from a few simple letters–”

“I wonder,” Kaeya presses on, unheeding, “if you only visited so often so you could enjoy the privileges of the Ragnvindr estate for yourself – a taste of life in the lap of luxury, under the pretence of caring for your sister. I wonder if she could see that. If she tried to put distance between you two because of it, and you couldn’t stand it. So you lashed out.”

He watches Edith closely. Tries not to think about the dread coiling around his heart as her face shifts into something impassive and heartless, haughty and self-righteous and just plain wrong.

“Maybe it was violent. Maybe you pushed her, caused her bodily harm. Or maybe you just wore her down with words until the stress made her snap. Either way – I think you were a not insignificant factor in her miscarriage, weren’t you?”

Edith doesn’t say anything for countless overwhelmingly long seconds. Then she lets out a slow exhale, and glares at Kaeya, her flat expression giving way to a frown tainted with pure disdain.

“You think you’re very clever, don’t you, Alberich?”

Kaeya’s smile doesn’t falter. “I never think anything without enough evidence to back it up.”

“Evidence? You call lies constructed from a handful of letters evidence?” She scoffs and turns to him. “Diluc, you mustn’t believe–”

“Which parts are a lie, then?” he asks quietly, his voice wavering in a most unwelcome manner.

All this time– he just wanted her to be good.

And now there’s– all of this– if it’s all true, if Kaeya’s right– she hurt Mother– didn’t just hurt her, she all but killed her–

“She’s not denying it, Luc. You know what that means.”

Kaeya’s always right.

“Edith,” he pleads, “just tell me–”

“So what if we had a fight?” Her voice rises sharply, tinged with a familiar mania. She throws her arms out wildly as a torrent of bitterness rushes forth from her lips. “It’s hardly my fault that anything happened to her. That she couldn’t handle a little fall down the stairs. It was an accident. She should’ve been more careful.”

He can’t look at her. He knows he’ll be sick if he tries to comprehend the expression on her face. The truth behind her words.

Kaeya raises an eyebrow. “She was pregnant–”

“She would’ve ended up the same way no matter what I did, what anyone did, because she was weak– I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re acting like I killed her when that couldn’t be further from the truth–”

“Maybe you didn’t kill her directly. But you hurt her, and then doubled down on your cruelty when she was at her weakest, telling her how she’d failed, that what happened was her fault and hers alone, that she wasn’t enough – you did all of that instead of being there for her,” Kaeya says, the glacial tone of his voice enough to overpower the indignant heat behind Edith’s outburst. The note he’s still holding onto like their lives depend on it is crumpled almost beyond legibility now. “You planted the idea in her head, the metaphorical knife in her hands. You pushed her until she broke – and even after all these years, you still don’t feel guilty about it in the slightest, do you?”

Diluc holds his breath. Thinks that maybe Edith will object– will tell Kaeya that he’s got it wrong, that she does regret what happened, that she really was trying to make things right here–

But she says nothing.

“Maybe you didn’t kill her directly,” Kaeya says, his eye narrowing until all Diluc can see is that crystalline starry pupil gleaming coldly amongst the shadows on his face, “but that’s all just semantics. You might as well have. Father knew it. I know it. And now Diluc knows it too.”

She maintains her silence. An infuriating silence, when she has so much to explain– when all of this is so fucking horrible and none of it makes sense–

“Edith– I– why?” He hates how broken his voice sounds. He shouldn’t feel so broken up about this. None of this should matter. He wishes none of it mattered. “Didn’t you care about her?”

How could she be so cold– so cruel– to Mother– to her own sister–

“Oh, I see,” Kaeya says, his voice too light and breezy for the situation they’re in. He takes one last glance at the note before folding it up and placing it back in his pocket, and then he meets Edith’s eyes once more, unperturbed by the incandescent anger in them. “You were jealous, weren’t you?”

He sounds almost sympathetic. But not a kind sort of sympathy. Closer to pity, mixed with utter loathing and a sense of superiority–

And a hint of… understanding.

“Jealous of your perfect big sister, with her perfect life, her perfect new family – you were jealous that she had everything you wanted, and angry that she could see right through you. And you’re still jealous to this day – you treat everyone in your life with such disdain. All you can see in them are things you want to take for yourself.”

Kaeya leans against the armrest of the chair Diluc’s sitting on, almost entirely blocking his view of Edith. Or maybe he’s trying to block Edith’s view of him. Or both.

“I suppose that explains why you did all of this, even after so much time had passed. If it had just been about the money, there were so many other ways you could’ve gone about it. You didn’t need to weave some lie about wanting to reconnect. You could’ve just asked him up front – no sob story required, just tell him that his aunt needs money and he probably would’ve made the trip out to you to deliver the cheque himself and make sure you had whatever you needed. He’s wonderfully generous like that.

“But it wasn’t just about the money, was it? No. That’d make you the same as everyone else, but you’re a thousand times worse. You didn’t just want the money – you wanted him. You wanted to control every aspect of his life and take everything he had for yourself, because you failed to do it with his mother or father. You did all of this, because deep down you’re nothing more than a jealous, insecure, soulless bitch.”

Kaeya sounds so triumphant. Diluc feels anything but.

He shifts to the side a little, to catch a glimpse of what the fuck Edith’s reaction to all of this is. She’s been unusually silent throughout Kaeya’s whole soliloquy.

She looks like one of those tacky figures in a wax museum, her face contorted in a caricature of shock and horror, pinned in place by the ceaseless and precise stabs of his brother’s words.

“Father could see past his wife’s grief, past his own grief – he saw how much you’d hurt her,” Kaeya says. He has so much to say. Diluc wishes it would stop. “And he knew you wouldn’t quit even with your sister gone. You’d move on to a new target, because people like you are never satisfied. Maybe it’d be him. Maybe his son. So he had no choice but to get you out of their lives.”

Kaeya’s voice shakes just enough for Diluc to notice. He glances back at Diluc for a split second, then pushes off the chair and stalks towards Edith, a predator finally cornering its prey.

“Honestly? He let you off easy. Perhaps he was more merciful than I thought, because if I’d been in his place, you’d be nineteen years dead and counting.” Kaeya leans in until he’s just inches away from Edith, and Diluc’s never been more grateful to be his brother rather than his enemy because he knows he’d crack instantly under that lethal smile. “But hey. Better late than never.”

Edith stumbles back a step, clutching at her chest with a gasp, pulling the shawl around her shoulders a little tighter as if it could protect her from anything Kaeya’s thinking of doing. “Are you threatening me?”

“You’re smarter than you look,” Kaeya says, smiling innocently.

“Diluc,” she says, her voice dripping with desperation, “surely you won’t stand for such–”

“Enough.”

He pushes himself out of the chair.

He’s let this go on long enough.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do– or– no. Kaeya’s done all the explaining,” he says, stepping a little closer to his brother – whether to shield him or be shielded by him, he can’t tell right now. Maybe there isn’t a difference. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Diluc, there’s nothing to say. You’re really going to trust him and all his baseless accusations over me?” she says, still intent on keeping the saccharine, sycophantic act up, apparently. “Yes, perhaps my relationship with Evie wasn’t always the best, but I still cared for her – I still care for you, my dear, my nephew. Don’t let him fool you. He doesn’t know a thing about me, he just wants to turn you against me – against your family.”

You’re doing the same thing.

He trusts Kaeya completely. He made the mistake of not trusting him once. He’s not going to repeat it. Not now, not ever– not for her, not for anyone–

She’s still family. Are you really going to cast her aside for mistakes she made in her past? Haven’t you done enough of that already?

No– no, no, no, that’s not the same, what is he thinking? None of this is the fucking same, he just needs to get a grip–

“Persistent, aren’t you? Like a weed. Parasitic, too.”

Kaeya sighs deeply, shaking his head like a parent would at a misbehaving child.

“You know, I really didn’t want to have to do this, but if you insist on being that stubborn, you leave me no choice.”

He reaches behind his back, almost like he’s about to summon his sword, or fashion one out of Cryo, and Diluc is hopelessly paralysed–

But the thing Kaeya presents is very much not a sword.

“Seem familiar?”

Edith’s ring glitters brilliantly in the dim morning light.

How did Kaeya get his hands on it when she’s–

Oh.

Edith’s wearing gloves today. Not the ring – she hasn’t worn it since last night.

She gasps and lunges forward. “That belongs to me– you thief–”

“Now, now, hold your horses,” Kaeya says, stepping back and holding the ring out of her reach. “I’ll be quite happy to return this to you as soon as you answer a few questions.”

“I don’t have to answer any of your questions when you just stole my property–”

“Answer him,” Diluc says, with all the authority he can summon.

She goes still, her voice dropping to a hesitant whisper. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Kaeya doesn’t give her a chance to protest before he speaks again. “We spoke about this yesterday, but I can’t seem to recall right now – remind me where you got this from again?”

“It’s a family heirloom,” she says, her voice laced with bitterness.

“Of course. It belonged to your great-grandmother, and has been passed down all the way from her to you. That was the story.” Kaeya tosses the ring up in the air and catches it in a single smooth motion before smiling back at Edith. “Silly me. Details like that just slip my mind sometimes.”

Who is he kidding? If a detail slips from Kaeya’s mind, the world might as well be ending.

“So. A family heirloom, you say. You must be intimately familiar with it then, seeing as you’ve been in possession of it for so long. I hope that means you’ll be able to explain… this?”

Kaeya holds the ring out to her. With one thumb, he flicks it open.

He… what?

He opened the ring?

He opened the ring–

And now they’re all staring at a tiny pool of reddish-purple liquid swirling about in a silver container, dark and ominous, a sharp contrast to the glittering light of the sapphire that had been there moments ago.

A poison ring.

That’s what that is, right?

…What the fuck–

“That’s– but that’s impossible– this is some kind of trick,” Edith snaps, glaring at Kaeya. “He’s setting me up, Diluc, you can’t trust him–”

“What trick? This is your ring, isn’t it? Are you saying you don’t know what this is? You didn’t put this poison in here?”

“Of course I didn’t– it was empty last I checked, I hadn’t put anything in there yet–”

“Yet, you say?”

If the world wasn’t spinning before, it definitely is now.

Everything is silent and deathly still. No sound, no air, not even a twitch of a muscle to indicate any life.

All the implications come crashing down on him at once.

He grips Kaeya’s arm to keep himself steady. He doesn’t look Edith in the eyes.

She hadn’t put anything in there… yet.

Kaeya smiles as all the colour drains from Edith’s face, and then a short, raucous laugh breaks free from his lips.

She can’t do anything but watch, it seems, as her body trembles and she remains rooted to the spot. Diluc almost feels sorry for her. She looks more pathetic now than she ever has.

“Oh dear. I shouldn’t find this funny, but Archons, it’s just too easy. Laughably so. Everyone falls into the same trap, don’t they? I’m almost disappointed. I didn’t even have to try.”

He brings the ring closer to himself again, out of Edith’s grasp, a strange blend of pride and disgust swirling about in his eye as he observes it, just like the poison in the ring.

“This really was a last resort, you know. I was fully prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, pretend that there was nothing more to you than old family drama – surely she isn’t that cunning, I thought. But you’re full of surprises.” Kaeya snaps the ring shut, his smile taking on a dangerous shine, matching the sapphire in his palm. “So, you were planning to put something in here eventually, were you?”

She shakes her head urgently. “No– of course not– it was a mere slip of the tongue–”

“A very convenient one for me, I must say.”

“You– Diluc, please, you can’t listen to him–”

“What was your plan, I wonder?” Kaeya rolls the ring between his fingers lazily, as if it’s just another piece of jewellery and not a potential accessory to murder – literally. “Not to use it on yourself, I assume. Were you going to kill Diluc as soon as he let his guard down? As soon as you convinced him to marry your daughter – nice work there, by the way, very subtle indeed – and you were firmly reinstated in the family again? Or maybe you were going to poison him slowly, quietly, play the long game until he was completely dependent on you and you had him in the palm of your hand, ready and willing to give you anything you asked for?”

“I– I would never– you simply have some vendetta against me, making all these outrageous claims when I’ve done nothing wrong–”

“The game is up, Edith. At least have the decency to accept your loss with grace before you embarrass yourself completely.”

She looks like she’s forgotten how to breathe. Her face goes from corpse-like and pale to flushed red – from anger or shame, Diluc doesn’t know, and he doesn’t particularly care, either.

“You haven’t got any proof,” she says, weak and woefully lacking in any sort of conviction. She can’t even look either of them in the eyes. Pathetic. “I haven’t done anything– all you have is circumstantial evidence– it’s all just baseless speculation. I’m innocent– I won’t allow you to treat me like some sort of criminal–”

“You’re right,” Kaeya says, shrugging helplessly, though his voice doesn’t sound helpless at all. He’s been in control this whole time, of course, he wouldn’t slip up now. “There isn’t much else I can do from here. Legally speaking, I mean – it’d be rather a lot of trouble to prove any of this, considering that you technically haven’t committed a crime yet. Much to my dismay.”

“So you–”

“Family doesn’t operate by traditional rules and laws, though. So I think we have to defer to the head of the family’s judgement here, don’t you agree?”

Both of their gazes snap to Diluc at the same time and he’s pretty sure he deserves some sort of reward for not crumbling under the sheer combined weight of it all–

But that’s for later. He has to take care of this mess now before it spirals any further out of his control.

Edith softens her voice, as if she really thinks she can win him over at this point. “Diluc, dear, please– you must hear me out. All he’s done is lie, and try to make me look like some sort of villain. You don’t really believe him–”

“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you over him,” Diluc says. “You won’t ever find a reason for me to do that, so quit while you’re ahead. Don’t dig yourself a deeper grave.”

Please just let this nightmare end already–

“You don’t understand, dear. You’re falling for the same thing your father did– I’m only trying to help you, like I tried to help him, can’t you see that?”

She reaches for him, but he grabs her wrist before she can get any closer, holds her at a distance even as she tries to squirm out of his grip. He’s probably holding her too tightly. He can’t bring himself to care.

He could break her wrist right now if he wanted to. It’d be so easy.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

“You really are like Crepus, aren’t you?” She laughs hysterically, looking at Kaeya and then back at him. “No wonder he’s won you over so easily, he’s using whatever tricks he used back then, preying on the same weaknesses–”

“What is that supposed to mean–”

“Crepus only adopted him to make up for the child he lost,” she spits. “And he only hired that maid of yours to replace Evie– he was willing to do all of that while completely ignoring his real family, don’t you see the injustice in that? They wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for us–”

Diluc is this fucking close to snapping each and every one of her fingers as he shoves her away, her back colliding sharply with the wall as he does. “You wouldn’t know a fucking thing about what a real family is, not after what you did to your sister–”

Her hysteria is incessant. “Look at him, Diluc. Your father was going to run the winery in the ground just to accommodate him– he was going to throw away everything he’d worked for, all the connections he’d formed, over some child that no one gave a damn about– and I tried to protect you back then, because he was going to ruin both of your lives for this stray who calls himself your brother when he’s anything but–”

Diluc sees red.

People in Mondstadt–

Just talk too damn much.

And then he sees white and marigold yellow, mixed with pale flesh, as he lets go of Edith’s wrist to grab the shawl hanging around her shoulders.

He wraps it around her fragile little neck and tightens it until her lips turn blue and she’s screaming but no sounds are coming out and she crumples to the ground and doesn’t move because she’s dead–

She’s finally fucking dead and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t know why he waited this long because that’s exactly what she fucking deserves after everything she’s done to all of them–

He blinks.

She’s still standing in front of him. Her hand is shaking in his grip.

His knuckles are white. As white as the shawl that he is on the verge of strangling her with–

But he hasn’t killed her yet.

Pity.

The tremors in her voice fill him with a sick sense of satisfaction. “Diluc, please–”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He can’t tell if he shouts it or whispers it, but he knows he’s said it with enough vitriol and fire nonetheless when her pupils dilate and her eyes are damn near popping out of her skull, and she shrinks back against the door as far as the laws of physics will allow.

“I don’t care what you want from me, or what you wanted to do to me – no one gets to come into my house, disrespect every member of my family in the same fucking breath, and get away with it unscathed. And you’re a fool if you ever believed otherwise.”

“I am your family–”

“No you’re not.” The laugh that leaves him is ugly and vicious and cruel, but it’s perfectly fitting here. “If you were, you’d understand why Father gave up whatever he did for Kaeya. You’d understand that he’s my brother, and he always will be, that he matters more than any amount of Mora the goddamn winery could give us, and nothing you say will ever, ever change that.”

He can feel Kaeya’s gaze burning into his back. It only bolsters his righteous fury.

“That’s how we do things in this family. But you wouldn’t know that, because you’re not a part of it, and you never will be. Not as long as I’m alive, and not even after that. I’ll make sure of it.”

She chokes out a strangled laugh and it only makes him want to follow through and actually strangle her.

“After everything you did,” he growls, “you really had the fucking nerve to try and pretend you ever cared about me? About our family?”

Another strangled laugh. She’s wasting all the precious oxygen in this office. “Evie wouldn’t– I wouldn’t have raised you like this–”

Flames rush to his fingers, and he does nothing to stop them. “Too bad neither of you got the chance because of–”

Something pulls him back and he turns on his heel without a moment’s hesitation to fight off whoever’s trying to get in his way–

But it’s Kaeya.

Kaeya grasps his fist in an icy hand, and the sudden drop in temperature freezes the molten anger running through his veins, extinguishes the sparks of fire that had been dancing around his hand.

Why the fuck is his brother stopping him now–

Kaeya pulls him back a little further, and throws an arm out in front of him, preventing him from getting any closer to Edith.

“I’ll take a page out of my brother’s book and give you a second chance,” Kaeya says slowly, not looking back at him. “A final chance. If you don’t take it – if you don’t get the fuck out of this house and leave us alone for good… well. I hope you like the sound of being buried six feet below our father, because I can promise you that’s exactly where you’ll end up.”

I could save us both the trouble and put an end to all of this right now–

Edith scrambles to stand up straight and her hands fumble around for the lock–

Oh. It’s not frozen over anymore.

He’s not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

She manages, somehow, with her trembling, useless hands, to unlock the door. But after it opens with a deafening click, she doesn’t move.

None of them do.

Kaeya moves his hand away from Diluc, no longer obstructing him.

That seems to inspire some urgency in her.

“Get the fuck out,” Diluc says.

She swings the door open at last and tumbles out of the room. Her shawl slips from her shoulders as she does and she nearly trips as she runs, but that doesn’t stop him from advancing ever closer, staying just a step or two behind her to make absolutely sure she doesn’t even think of turning back–

“I’ll– I’ll tell the others about this,” she says, her voice shaking wildly as she stumbles down the stairs with whatever the opposites of poise and grace are. “They won’t be pleased, when they see how you treat your own aunt–”

“Good. Fine. I don’t fucking care.”

He takes the steps two at a time, just to keep Edith on her toes, just to watch her run even faster in those stupid flimsy heels, to see the hem of her garish dress impede her own feet as she fights so desperately to escape the hell of her own making.

“Tell whoever you want – tell them all exactly what you did, and tell them exactly what I thought of what you did – and if any of them are on your side, maybe they’ll have the common sense to stay away. Or maybe I’ll get to demonstrate exactly what’ll happen to you if you ever try to set foot on these grounds again.”

He can hardly hear himself over the blood thundering in his skull and his ears, the infernal heat washing over him and pushing him onwards, the flames following in his wake as he chases Edith all the way to the front door. There’s a coldness at his back too – Kaeya, he thinks in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t stop to acknowledge it.

So entrenched in his own anger is he, that he doesn’t even register Adelinde’s presence until she appears out of thin air, like the angel she is, to press Edith’s luggage into her hands. Her pleasant smile is a delightful contrast to the fear twisting Edith’s face into something hideous and grotesque and utterly pathetic.

“The carriage is waiting for you outside,” she says in that perfectly poised, perfectly graceful tone that she’s always been a master of. “Please see yourself out.”

And don’t ever come back, he thinks.

He doesn’t need to say it. The way Edith’s eyes widen tells him she already knows.

And she doesn’t need to be told twice – she pulls the door open, the heavy oak testing the limits of her strength, and lets it slam shut behind her as she hurries down the winery steps and out of their lives.

For good, this time.

Diluc doesn’t intend to go back on his word.

The sound of the door shutting rings in his ear for several beats after it’s stopped moving, the quiet rattle of the doorframe and the subtle squeak of the hinges all much louder than usual, resonating through the entire foyer.

The silence that follows is so blissful and serene it feels alien. Like he’s stepped into a dream world, and reality has ceased to exist.

Somewhere behind him, he thinks he can hear Kaeya saying something to Adelinde. But blood is still pounding in his ears and compressing his skull from every angle, and he can barely feel his own limbs, let alone sense anything going on around him.

He presses his forehead against the door. Slumps against it, just a little, and closes his eyes. Just for a minute or two.

It’s cool and smooth to the touch. The invigorating heat of anger slowly, gradually fades away, allowing more coherent, less welcome thoughts to appear in its place.

So. There really was a reason they never kept in touch with their extended family.

Fucking idiot. Of course there was. He should’ve known. What was he thinking, ignoring Father’s perfectly sound judgement? Ignoring Kaeya’s judgement? What the hell was he hoping to get out of all this?

He doesn’t know anymore.

It’s not like it matters. Edith’s gone. Everything she did is in the past and it’s gone and he’s never going to let her get close to any of them ever again.

He half-wonders if he should just chase her out the door and kill her anyway. Just to be safe.

But– Kaeya had stopped him, up there in the office, for whatever reason.

He doesn’t get it. Why Kaeya of all people would go easy on her, when she’d been nothing but cruel to him–

But Kaeya’s… probably right.

Killing her would be more trouble than it’s worth. Probably.

Damn if he doesn’t want to do it anyway.

He takes a deep breath, and savours the coolness of the wood for a little while longer.

Disowning family isn’t always that bad, huh?

…He’s not going to indulge that thought any further.

He opens his eyes and takes a step back with another deep breath.

The storm has passed.

Warm morning sunlight has broken through the clouds and now spills into the house from each and every window, casting a golden, bright glow over everything in his sight.

It’s like Edith took all the shadows with her.

He hopes they follow her to the end of time.

Another step back, and Adelinde is there at his side. She reaches up and brushes his hair over his shoulder for him, tucks a few loose strands behind his ear without a word – he hadn’t even thought to tie it that morning. He must have looked like a right mess throughout this entire ordeal.

She follows his gaze to the door. He can’t seem to look away, his eyes keep snapping back to it no matter what else he tries to focus on. She pats him on the back gently, her touch warm and gentle and familiar.

He doesn’t mind standing here for a while. Just– watching the door. Being with Adelinde in this blessed quiet, embracing the fact that she understands how much he needs this quiet after everything.

Yes. This is nice. This is good.

Edith could never come close to the woman Adelinde is, not in a million years.

“Quelle connasse,” Adelinde mutters under her breath, breaking their divine tranquillity.

Out of all the things that have happened this weekend, this might just be the most shocking.

That’s– it’s been a while since he heard something of that nature, but he’s pretty sure that’s Fontainian slang. Incredibly vulgar slang, at that–

He chokes on air and splutters helplessly. He coughs into his hand to mask it, but of course she notices despite that.

“Are you alright, Master Diluc?”

Not at all. I think I’ve actually gone insane now. This can’t be happening.

He never thought this opportunity would arise in his lifetime.

He turns to her and raises an eyebrow, an uncharacteristically gleeful grin tugging at his lips. “Language, Adelinde.”

She raises an eyebrow back at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I– you– just now, you said–” He shakes his head. “I can’t repeat it. You’d tell me off for it.”

“Is that so? Just what sort of foul language have you been learning over the years, young man?”

…How is it that Adelinde was the one swearing, and yet he’s the one getting in trouble?

She’s trying very hard to look stern, narrowing her eyes at him like that, but they’re alight with mirth. She obviously knows what she’s doing. Kaeya inherited his unstoppable deflection abilities from somewhere.

They’re both going to be the death of him. And yet he loves them anyway.

“Addie,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulders, “have I ever told you how wonderful you are?”

She doesn’t seem at all taken aback by his sudden boldness, and offers him a small, warm smile. “Plenty of times–”

Her reply is cut off with a quiet gasp when Diluc picks her up in a deathly fierce hug.

“Master Diluc, please put me down,” she says, though her voice is toneless and heavy, like she’s already resigned herself to her fate.

“Father truly was an excellent judge of character, to have kept you around,” he says, squeezing Adelinde even tighter, ignoring that half-hearted protest. Maybe too tight, but she’ll live. He needs this right now. “To think that we could’ve had someone like Edith in our lives instead of you. What a horrible thought.”

He sets Adelinde back on solid ground again, his grin stretching his face so wide it hurts. A good kind of hurt, completely different to what he’d grown accustomed to over the past few days. It feels foreign after all this time.

It falters when he turns to check on his brother.

Kaeya’s smiling too – but it’s an absent, distracted sort of smile, the kind he wears when he’s not quite living in the same moment as the rest of them.

He’s staring down at the ring, his eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. He flicks it open and closed repeatedly with his thumb, waiting for the metallic click to completely fade each time before he moves it again.

He flicks it open one last time.

And then he pours the poison into his mouth–

Diluc lunges forward and shakes his shoulders. “Kae– what are you doing?! Spit that out right now–”

Kaeya swallows.

“Kaeya, no–”

You promised–

“Relax, Luc, it’s not poison – that was all a setup, remember?”

Huh?

He– what–

Right– yeah, he remembers– does he? Fuck–

“Blegh. Might as well be, though. Tastes like cough syrup, and not the sweet kind,” he says, sticking his tongue out in a show of blatant disgust. “It’s wine from Connor’s experimental shelf. Second bottle on the right – promise me you won’t go forward with that one, please. You’ll kill half the city if they drink even a drop of this stuff.”

He feels faint.

The image of Kaeya blurs and for a moment there are two Kaeyas in front of him and he shudders at the thought.

“Luc, I– you do know this was all fake, right? You can even ask Adelinde, she helped. Didn’t you, Addie?”

He turns to Adelinde without taking the time to breathe.

She sighs, rubbing her forehead as she looks between them. “It was the third bottle on the right, Master Kaeya, not the second.”

“You sure?”

“Quite.”

“Hm. Well, there you have it. Adelinde said so. Nix the third bottle on the right. Cavalry Captain’s orders.”

He shakes Kaeya’s shoulders, more roughly than necessary – or maybe not roughly enough. His brother’s a goddamn idiot. Maybe he needs more violence to actually get through to him.

“Don’t fucking scare me like that again. Ex-Cavalry Captain’s orders.”

“In my defence, you really had nothing to be scared of–”

“Kae–”

“Yes, alright, whatever you say, sir,” Kaeya says, grinning when Diluc lets go of him with a huff.

Yeah. Definitely going to be the death of him. He’s so very difficult to love.

But Diluc loves him anyway.

Kaeya’s still staring at the ring, like he’s silently interrogating it for more answers. Answers to what, Diluc has no idea – but there are a few answers he should probably get out of his brother while he has the chance.

“How’d you know about the ring?” he asks, his voice more hesitant than he expects it to be.

“Hm?”

“You said she wasn’t planning to use it yet. So how– if she didn’t do anything with it, how’d you know it was a poison ring?”

“Lucky guess,” he says with a nonchalant shrug.

As if. “Kaeya, be honest.”

He seems to pick up on the seriousness in Diluc’s tone as he lets out a sigh. “I recognised it from a case I worked on a while back,” he says, waving his free hand, gesturing at nothing in particular. “It’s a bit too distinctive to forget.”

He… recognised it.

“You knew what it was from the beginning?” Diluc tries not to chew on his lip. “But then– why didn’t you do anything earlier–”

“I did. I checked to see if it was empty when I shook her hand yesterday. Checked again when we were talking outside – empty both times. She even took it off later, like it wasn’t anything important, so I figured maybe she was simply using it as an accessory and didn’t know what its true purpose was. I wouldn’t have thought anything more of it if she hadn’t gone and acted the way she did later.”

“…Oh.”

Kaeya… had done an awful lot behind his back, hadn’t he? All without saying a word or alerting him to any of it.

This would’ve been so much easier if you’d just told me something was up from the start.

But that’s not how Kaeya’s learned to do things. That’s not how Kaeya’s ever done things, and Diluc’s never noticed or cared enough to do anything about it – he’s let them continue this way for years, so he doesn’t have the right to complain now, does he?

Still. He’d thought he was getting better at seeing through his brother’s lies, noticing when he was up to something.

Seems he still has plenty to learn, if he truly wants to keep up with his brother. If he wants them to be a proper team.

“…What case?”

It can’t have been anything in the past year, he would’ve heard about it, surely. It’s something older. Something from the times Diluc knows painfully little about.

“Not an important one–”

“No– stop. Tell me the truth. I’m done with people keeping secrets. Where’s this ring really from?”

“You should remember it too.” Kaeya looks away and sighs again. “But I don’t blame you. It’s been a while since you saw it. Saw him. And it’s not a terribly important detail in the grand scheme of things, of course you would’ve forgotten about it after all this time.”

“Who–”

“This was Eroch’s ring.”

Eroch’s ring?

…Shit.

No wonder he’d felt uneasy looking at it. No wonder it didn’t seem to fit her.

Fuck. He should’ve– there’s no excuse for missing something so obvious other than plain forgetfulness–

You didn’t even know that ring was anything special. It’s not like recognising it would’ve helped–

He can picture it clearly now, how it had gleamed menacingly in the shadows when Eroch had given him those unforgivable orders minutes before he resigned. How its shine had suited the traitor’s supercilious smile.

But wait– that means–

“You’re telling me she’s connected to Eroch–”

“No.” Kaeya shakes his head firmly, patting him on the shoulder as an extra reassurance. “I would’ve found out well before today if that were the case. She’s got nothing to do with him. The ring is just a coincidence, that’s all. Funny how things come full circle, don’t they?”

“But then– how did she–”

“That ring was on his finger until the day he died. She couldn’t have gotten it from him – she just bought it from a pawn shop. She lied to me about it being an heirloom, presumably so I’d stop prying. Or maybe so I wouldn’t realise how desperate for wealth she was. Hard to tell.”

Just when he thought they’d unravelled every mystery surrounding Edith – of course there was more to it. And Kaeya wouldn’t have even told him any of this if he hadn’t gathered his senses enough to ask. Damn it.

“I’d wager she didn’t even realise what it really was until after she bought it, and that’s what inspired this convoluted plan of hers. She saw a means, and decided on an end.”

He feels lightheaded again. Maybe breakfast is in order soon.

…Until the day he died.

Jean said she didn’t know what happened to Eroch. That no one’s seen a trace of him since he was exiled.

Jean said that Kaeya didn’t think that was punishment enough.

“Kaeya?”

“What now?”

“Did you… kill Eroch?”

Kaeya rolls his eye and looks away. “Always jumping to the most extreme conclusions–”

“But did you?”

Kaeya hesitates, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the silver band of the ring, still not meeting his eyes. “Does it matter?”

A nervous laugh makes his voice crack. “A little bit, maybe–”

“What would you say if I did?”

He has a feeling his next words are going to matter a lot to Kaeya, and for a long time, so he takes a deep breath – or tries to, at least, but he has to say something quick before the moment can slip away and his brother gets the wrong idea.

“I’d say… I wish I could’ve been there to see it.”

A heavy beat of silence follows, and Diluc feels his chest tighten at the thought that maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say after all–

But then Kaeya laughs softly and throws his arm around him, pulling him into something that isn’t quite a chokehold, but is close enough to have him gasping anyway. Diluc brings an arm up around Kaeya’s back in a weak attempt to regain some control and return the favour, which only makes Kaeya laugh again, his grin unrestrained and impish.

“We’re a real fucked-up pair of brothers, aren’t we? What would Father say?”

He might be disappointed. He tried to raise two upstanding knights. Not… whatever it is that we’ve become since his death.

But, right now–

“It doesn’t matter.”

As long as you’re here with me, nothing else matters.

He wraps his other arm around Kaeya and pulls him close into a real hug. Against his shoulder, he can feel Kaeya’s devilish smirk fade into a genuine smile. He mutters something that ends up muffled and lost in the fabric of his clothes – probably another jab at Diluc being overly sentimental, if experience can be trusted. Diluc smiles anyway.

Adelinde’s voice jolts them out of that brief moment of serenity. “Klee?”

Both him and Kaeya turn in unison with frightening speed to find Klee hovering at the top of the stairs, rubbing her eyes sleepily as Adelinde hurries up towards her.

“Oh dear– it’s alright, you can go back to sleep, you must be so tired– it’s rather early in the morning for a child to be awake–”

“It’s okay,” she mumbles, oddly pliant when Adelinde lifts her into her arms. “I already woke up a long time ago ’cause of all the shouting.”

Oops.

He glances at Kaeya out of the corner of his eye, and knows that the sheepish expression on his brother’s face must be perfectly mirrored on his own.

“Sorry, Klee,” Kaeya says quietly as Adelinde carries her down the stairs. “You weren’t scared, were you?”

Klee shakes her head, still nuzzling against Adelinde’s shoulder, eyelids drooping as if she’s about to fall asleep again any second now. “Klee’s a brave girl.”

“That you are. The bravest girl I know.”

“Aunt Edith’s gone, by the way,” Diluc adds. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”

That has the girl on high alert in an instant and her eyes fly open, wide and beaming with excitement. “Really?”

Wow. She really didn’t like Edith, did she?

Clever girl.

“Yeah, really.”

“That means Klee’s plan worked!”

…So did everyone have a plan for getting rid of Edith except for him?

And not one of them deemed it necessary to share any details of said plans with him?

Does him being the head of the family mean nothing to them–

…He knows the answer to that.

He drops his head with an exasperated sigh. “And what was your plan, exactly?”

She points over towards the vase– no. Towards… Dodo-Diluc.

“I told Dodo-Diluc to scare the mean lady away with his grumpiness. He looks nice but he can be really scary when he wants to be. And it worked! Klee knew he could do it.”

…He needs stronger medication to deal with whatever this is.

He walks over to the vase. Towards Dodo-Diluc.

He picks up the creation that has perplexed him since the moment its creator put it in his hands, and stares at it blankly. It stares back, grumpy as ever.

Hm. Yes. He can certainly see how this existential dread he’s feeling might have contributed to Edith’s departure.

He clears his throat. “Thank you for your assistance, Dodo-Diluc-”

“Sir Dodo-Diluc.”

He looks back at Klee. He hopes it’s not a glare, but his self-restraint has been worn worryingly thin by recent events. “Since when is Dodo-Diluc a knight?”

“Knights protect people! And Dodo-Diluc protected us from your aunt, so now he’s a knight.”

…And now he’s outnumbered by the Knights in his own home. How did he let this happen?

“Perhaps there’s hope for the Knights after all,” he mutters to himself as he places Dodo-Diluc back at his post, guarding the vase.

He didn’t quite mean for anyone to hear that, but he knows he messed up when Kaeya snickers loudly behind him.

Adelinde puts Klee down just as Diluc walks back to the group in shame, and the ever-energetic child doesn’t hesitate to tug on his sleeves to get his attention.

“Can we go through the photo album now? You said we could do that yesterday but then your aunt came and you guys were so busy.”

He’d almost forgotten all the things that had happened before Edith arrived. It feels like a whole year has passed in the span of a day.

He’s exhausted. He doesn’t really want to do anything else today other than sleep.

But the way Klee’s smiling at him is too precious. He can’t very well deny her such a simple wish.

“Sure, Klee. We’ve got the whole day ahead of us. We can do whatever you want.”

Klee giggles brightly. It’s a lovely sound.

He should’ve gotten rid of Edith so much sooner, if she was preventing them all from hearing Klee’s laughter.

What the fuck was he thinking?

“Whatever you want to do can wait until after breakfast, I hope,” Adelinde says, giving him a pointed look. “We’re all awake too early as it is. I won’t allow any other disruptions to your routine.”

“Can we have pancakes again?”

“Pancakes two days in a row? Careful, Luc, she might get used to this,” Kaeya says. “Poor Noelle will never hear the end of it. Jean’ll definitely have a thing or two to say about balanced diets, or something. You’re dealing with that, not me. I am not taking responsibility for anything that happens in your house.”

He shoves his brother lightly in the ribs. “Pancakes would be wonderful right now, Klee. Good idea.”

She hugs his legs tight. She’s very fond of doing that. Even though it makes movement rather difficult… he doesn’t mind.

He looks up from Klee and finds Kaeya and Adelinde both smiling at him, their eyes crinkled around the corners with the same fondness and lit up with the same amusement.

They almost look… proud?

…Nothing they do makes any sense to him.

Nothing he does makes any sense to himself either.

His arms come up around each of them before he even realises what he’s doing, gently tugging them into a hug that neither of them resists. They return the hug with zero hesitation and equal strength, affectionate laughter erupting from each of them when that only makes him pull them in closer.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, when their laughter has settled into muted smiles. “I should’ve listened to you all earlier – you were right all along–”

“It’s okay, Luc,” Kaeya says quietly. “You’re always trying to see the good in people. Can’t really blame you for that. One of us has to, I think.”

“Still– I should’ve–”

“None of that now, Master Diluc,” Adelinde says, massaging his back with a light hand. “You did what you had to in the end. That’s all that matters. Let’s not worry about it any longer, alright?”

…They’re both far too kind to him. Even when all he’s done is make their lives needlessly more difficult–

But… they don’t care about that. They never do. They continue to be kind to him anyway.

Perhaps he doesn’t deserve it right now. That means he’ll just have to keep working at it until he does. Until he’s worthy of everything they give to him.

A long-term goal. Very, very long-term.

He thinks he can manage it, though. As long as they’re here.

“Maybe I should just bring August up here next weekend,” Kaeya says, an audible smirk in his tone. “Now there’s a member of the family I think we’d all be happy to see.”

He wouldn’t mind that at all. August running around the winery would be a welcome sight.

“She can scratch up your furniture for a change, and maybe then you’ll finally see that she’s a little devil–”

“Shut up, Kae,” he says, laughing into Kaeya’s shoulder.

“I’m sure she’s not as bad as you make her out to be,” Adelinde says, sounding only a little exasperated.

“Oh no, she’s worse, Addie. Diluc here won’t ever admit it, but you have to trust me on this one.”

Diluc laughs again. His chest feels strangely light.

That persistent tightness that had been suffocating him for so long has faded, if only for a moment, and the sheer relief coursing through him now is dizzying. More intoxicating than any wine could ever be, he’s sure of that.

He feels so warm.

Of course he does, when the people he cares about most in the world are right here beside him, laughing and smiling with him. When they’re all safe, all together, all happy.

He’s… happy.

His arms form a perfect circle around his family.

An unbroken, unbreakable, perfect circle.

He’s never going to let them go for as long as he lives.