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It starts, as it always does, with white, hot, blinding pain .
The rain falls from the sky in sheets, drenching him with cold wetness that seeps into his bones. The flesh around his eye bubbles and burns, aches with something that he can’t even begin to describe. His throat runs raw, ruined by screams that came from his throat. Blood runs down his arms, dripping off his elbows.
His brother, beloved and safe and trusted, stands over him with his claymore in hand. The look on his face, once soft and gentle around the edges, shines with murderous intent. His brother doesn’t look at him with love, as if they hadn’t spent most of their lives together. Instead, his brother looks at him as if he’s the reason why their father is dead, as if he has been the enemy the entire time.
It makes something in his chest hurt, breaking and cracking like fractures in a mirror. In front of him, his Vision, glows a bright blue, the color of the sky that once shone over them from behind the clouds. He lets a bloodied hand fall from his face, held out towards his brother in one last plea for forgiveness.
His brother flinches like he’s something disgusting and the claymore is pointed at his neck, the edge of it pressing into his skin. He stares up with his one good eye, the only eye he has left if his brother hasn’t decided to take that one too.
“Get out and never come back.” His brother spits at him like acid, scalding more than the burn on his eye. “I never want to see you again.”
“Diluc–”
Thunder cracks, lightning flashes, and he swears that his brother’s eyes flash with it. “Go, Khaenri'ah.”
The name, the title, is said like a curse, a foreboding for the death that walks across the land. Something cracks inside of him, good eye widening as he turns around, grabbing whatever rests on the ground and running in the other direction. The name, the one his father spat back at him to remind him of his place, hurts more than anything his brother has done to him in the past hour.
He runs until he can’t run anymore, until his legs are weak and the burn around his eye has become so painful that thinking is a chore. He falls into the wet dirt, mud caked on his clothes and he knows that Adelinde would be upset by how dirty he is when his mind kindly reminds him that there is no more Adelinde.
There is no more Crepus.
There is no more Diluc.
There is no more home .
There is only Khaenri'ah and the reminder that he isn’t wanted anymore.
A hand touches his shoulder and his fist connects with something hard , knuckles aching with the action. He flies up, sweat drenching his body as raindrops tap against the window. His breath is heavy as it goes in and out of his lungs, as if he had been running in the rain. His hand presses against the burnt flesh of his right eye, the wrinkled texture sending shivers down his spine.
Even after all of that, he can still feel the Star of Khaenri'ah burn behind his melted lid.
He looks down at the sheets, blood coating the knuckles of his left hand. It’s wet, barely even crusted over and he sighs through his stuffy nose. This isn’t the first time that he’s gonna have to find the latest spot that he scratched open in his sleep, flesh rubbed raw and torn. He can still remember the one over his right shoulder, created the first time he cried and he remembers how much it had hurt, how much it felt like Diluc burning him all over again.
He has a lot of nights like that.
Faintly, something reconnects in his brain and he thinks that if he should be bleeding, should it be under his nails and not his knuckles?
Slowly, he lifts the back of his hand to his mouth, sniffing it as if it’s a foreign substance and it hits him that this isn’t his blood, that it doesn’t even come close to his own.
“Fuck , Kaeya!”
The mention of his name, loud and annoyed, forces him to turn his head. Diluc is kneeled on the floor, hands cupped over his nose with a wince to his expression. The waterline of Diluc’s eyes are filled with tears, barely even threatening to roll down his cheeks. Instead, Kaeya focuses on the look in them, the anger present flashing him back to the moment in the rain.
He isn’t in the winery anymore, being protected from the rain in the space of his old bedroom. He’s back in the mud, the body of their father behind Diluc as his brother points his claymore at him, the edge digging into his neck. He’s back in the thunder and lightning and the glow of Diluc’s eyes as he calls him by that wretched name.
A hand brushes against his shoulder and he flies back into the mud, arms over his head as he protects himself from Diluc’s flames. He braces himself for the pain, for the moment where more parts of his body melt and he remarks that it wouldn’t be the first time that Diluc has burned him before.
“K-”
“No!” He screams, eyes screwed shut. “Don’t call me by that!”
Through the opening in his arms, Diluc flinches, claymore held away from his neck. “Kaeya, you’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re lying!” Diluc had said that a long time ago, had said that as a promise between two brothers before that promise went into flames. “You’re lying to me!”
The hand that he keeps flinching from settles on his knee, something that he recognizes as out of the memory. Diluc never touched him in that memory, never even put his hand on his knee like he’s doing now. The Diluc in his memory is still standing away from him, hands still on his claymore as rage sparks in his eyes.
“I’m not lying, Kae.” The voice, reassuring, is a far cry from the voice he heard Diluc have that day. “I promise that I’m not going to hurt you. Does my hand feel hot?”
He doesn’t want to think about the heat, the warmth turned toxic against the flesh of his eye. The hand on his knee is cold, frigidly so. He shakes his head.
“Good.” Diluc says despite the murder in his gaze. “Can you feel your bed? Can you feel the sheets?”
Sheets? Bed? Slowly, like a wounded animal, he lets one of his arms down, expecting fully expecting to feel wet dirt. Instead, he feels soft sheets, cared for with love that feels familiar. Suddenly, he’s thrown back into the present, good eye blinking as the sounds of the world come back.
The rain is still there, but the sound is faded, as if there’s a wall between them. The hand on his knee, Diluc’s hand is bare, unlike it was when they had first fought. Diluc himself regards him with a trained expression, but he can see the worry in his gaze, a look that had been absent that day.
“...Luc?”
Through the good eye, he can see his brother sink into himself out of relief, a sigh leaving his lips. Lips that, Kaeya’s brain unhelpfully supplies, are coated in blood. He looks down at his hand, the blood on his knuckles dry and crusted. Panic rushes through him like a body falling into water and Kaeya can already see it now.
He can see himself back in the rain, fists pounding on the door as he begs for Diluc to let him back in, that he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean it, that he isn’t the Khaenri'ah Diluc thinks he is. Or maybe he has been this whole time and he’s just been lying to himself.
Faintly, distinctly, he can still feel the Star in his eye, the Star that refused to die no matter how much Diluc tried to burn it out of him.
“Kaeya.”
Maybe this time, Diluc could finish the job.
“Kaeya.”
Maybe this time, he won’t have to look in the mirror and be reminded of the Star that still lives inside of him, the same star that ruined everything.
“Kaeya!”
He flinches, a little more violently this time and Diluc sighs, but the sound is more exhausted. He tenses, waiting for the moment where Diluc realises that the months they’ve spent reconciling with each other, apologizing to each other, had been nothing but a waste of time to him.
Diluc runs his hand over his face, dark circles under his eyes. “Kaeya, I’m not–! I’m not… going to attack you.”
“You said that before.” His voice is quiet, barely there. “You said that and then you…”
Burned him. Pushed him into the mud and told him to get out, called him by a name that made him feel sick for weeks, a name and place that haunts his dream as much as that night has.
“I know. I’m sorry.” Kaeya isn’t sure that apologies can make up for losing one whole eye, but he supposes that it’s a start in the right direction. “...Does it hurt?”
He snaps his head up. “What?”
“Does it…” Diluc looks away from him, shame and guilt crawling on his face. “Does it hurt?”
Surprise filters through his face. It’s the first time Diluc has ever asked something like that, the first time that he’s broached the topic on his own without some sort of apology coming after it. If Kaeya thinks hard enough past the vague haze of fear and panic, his eye doesn’t really hurt. Aches, yes as it always does on rainy days, but it doesn’t hurt.
It hurt back then, back when it had still been fresh, back when all he had left of his brother was his Vision and a burn mark that made him want to cry. It still makes him want to cry on the bad days, when the voices in his head whisper that Diluc should have killed him, that Diluc was better off without him.
He thinks that the voices might be wrong when he looks at Diluc. He can’t find any of the murderous rage, the anger of a scorned brother. Instead, he sees the worry, the concern that comes from being an older brother. Hesitantly, he reaches over, grabbing Diluc’s hand, the very same one that once burned him.
“No, it doesn’t hurt anymore.” He answers as honestly as he can. “It hurt then, but… Not now.”
Diluc looks down at their linked hands, an audible swallow filling his ears. “I’m sorry for burning you, for hurting you like that. I should have…”
There were a lot of should haves, could haves between them that could fill lakes and oceans. Kaeya ignores all of them in service of laying back down in bed, shutting his good eye and feeling Diluc’s hand still on his knee.
“Stay here.” He says, half-way towards sleep. “Make it up to me by staying here.”
For a moment, he thinks that Diluc is going to get up and leave like he did all those years ago, high and dry with no words except for scars. Instead, Diluc climbs into bed next to him, his body warm thanks to the Pyro.
“Kaeya… When I called you Khaenri'ah…” A wince moves across his face, the Star in his eye burning. He really wishes that Diluc would stop talking. “I didn’t–”
He shakes his head, moving forward to plant his forehead against his brother’s shoulder. “You didn’t mean it. I know. I forgive you.”
There’s a voice in his head that tells him that he shouldn’t, that he shouldn’t be opening his heart to his brother if he didn’t want for it to be broken again. He considers it, thinks about throwing some witty retort and leaving the winery in the pouring rain to sneak back to his apartment.
But then Diluc, his older brother who promised to keep safe, wraps an arm around him and suddenly, the idea of leaving comes unappealing.
He doesn’t want to leave anymore.