#aprilluc 2025

[bobaboob]

molten

[aprilluc day 2]

[ofbardsandmen]

"ppl who celebrate fictional character birthdays are annoying pass it on"

FUCK this post and happy birthday diluc ragnvindr

[aratitty-itto]

Happy birthday, Diluc.

[duchesss33]

He's raising Diluc nation to create. He-he😄

As it is, I just decided to rethink his skin for armor. It seemed pretty.

I'm also sad that because of work and other things, I drew so little for April.

[howuart]

Aprilluc day 1 flower

[jinxed-forever]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Diluc & Kaeya (Genshin Impact) Characters: Diluc (Genshin Impact), Kaeya (Genshin Impact) Additional Tags: aprilluc, aprilluc 2025, Day 26: Portrait, Diluc and Kaeya are Siblings (Genshin Impact), Diluc and Kaeya Reconciliation (Genshin Impact), Soft Diluc (Genshin Impact), Diluc is Soft for Kaeya (Genshin Impact), Kaeya Needs a Hug (Genshin Impact), Kaeya Angst (Genshin Impact), Diluc Angst (Genshin Impact), Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Reconciliation, Injury, Injury Recovery, Delusions (Genshin Impact), Drawing, Portraits, Scars, Kaeya's Eye (Genshin Impact), Kaeya's Eyepatch (Genshin Impact), Kaeya is from Khaenri'ah (Genshin Impact) Summary:

Aprilluc 2025: Day 26 ~ Promise

--

Diluc huffs a little laugh, more for Kaeya’s sake than his own. Curiosity gets the better of him, and the question slips out before he has the chance to stop himself, “Why do you cover that eye, anyway? I think I asked you a hundred times when we were kids, but you never gave me a straight answer.”

Kaeya’s lips press into a thin line, and his gaze darts around Diluc’s face, calculating.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Diluc adds quietly.

Kaeya sighs, reaching behind himself to undo the knot at the back of his head.

--

OR: When Diluc takes up sketching to help rehabilitate his hand after using the Delusion too much, and Kaeya becomes his latest subject, Diluc notices a scar underneath his eyepatch that wasn't there before...

[soggywriter]

Day 2 - Forge

A sword as old as the walls of Decarabian’s city, Diluc was told when he was granted the first blade of his life. It was a gift; a reward for passing the trials that took most others so many years to overcome at the tender age of eleven years old. At the time he got it, it was far too heavy for his tiny body to heft properly; he could get it to his shoulders, twist it into the proper guard like Varka had shown him a hundred, a thousand times with the little wooden swords they’d made together, but he couldn’t keep it there. All his tiny body trembled like a leaf in a storm, like a tree about to snap. “Be careful with that, Diluc - we wouldn’t want you to cut your own body, now - I think that might be a little counterproductive for a Knight.” Varka’s voice was light and laughing as he said it, but he was serious, too, and Diluc understood that. There was no way that he could train with it. To his eyes, to his young, young eyes, it was an insurmountable hunk of iron, for gods or even some kind of other creature to wield properly - the same way that his parent did, with ease, before he gifted it down to his child.

Diluc grew older.

Small eyes, not so small eyes, younger and older and older, all went to the same place, every time he went into the city: to the sound of metal on metal, and the sight of sparks and hot slag flying from the anvil. It was always the same figure hunched over it, hammer in hand, skin illuminated yellow like the first dandelions of spring from the heart of the forge, glowing red from the thrumming blood underneath it. Beneath those hands, something beautiful - different, almost every time Diluc went - took shape. 

When he was younger, he’d go up to him, stand at his side and watch the black bar of metal, black as the underside of a falcon’s talons, take shape into something equally deadly and even more beautiful. Wagner’s eyes hovered on him warily, impatience pulling at his mouth, even though it never spilled out at him. “You want to know what I’m doing?” Diluc nodded. “Stay out of my way, and watch, and you’ll learn.” Not harsh, not kind; Wagner always spoke simply, and Diluc liked that. He stepped back, and watched.

That time he went, it started out the same as every other one: simply, unadorned. The bar, heated until red like the core of a flaming flower, beaten until flat, drawn out until flatter, turned so familiarly. Diluc did not move for the whole process, mesmerised by the sound, by the sight - by the smell of almost-burning iron, and it felt like a forest creature was lulling him into a dream. Slowly, it became more familiar, still: more bars of glowing metal, handled delicately with teeny-tiny tweezers, were shaped into little beads almost like diamonds. Black, when they were first cooled - and then, heated again, and then cooled again in something else: this time, something different. This time, when it came out, it was red. Beautiful, deep red, which he’s seen a hundred, a thousand times over. Wagner caught his eyes again, and that time, the impatience was gone - leaving something almost like a smile in its wake; even if it couldn’t be called that, it was, undeniably, mirth. 

“Look familiar?”

Diluc nodded, eyes shining like the embers in the hearth.

“Your old man commissioned it. Gift to the Grandmaster. Said you two could match.”

— 

Mid-fight, the same blade that the Fatui Killer has been working with since he was a child snaps. It meets its mark, sure, and cuts it down, but no more. Fragments are no way for a sword to exist. (…As much as he claims himself to be unsentimental these days, he cannot bring himself to leave the shards behind - so, even though his gloves are torn, and there is a familiar, cloying red pooling in his palms-) He collects them, and gathers them into a piece of fur that he cut away from an agent’s cloak earlier. It’s relatively clean, only wet from flame-melted snow.

This camp is big enough to have something resembling a glass-firing oven at the centre. For the amount of contraptions that the agents carry around, even the pitious, minor ones, it’s natural that they’d need some upkeep. As do the Fatui Killer’s. 

Now, it’s still burning - he attacked at a good time, an opportune time, because they were all busy, which means that he can use this for himself, now. He’s watched the process happening enough times to know how to do it himself. He should be able to do it himself.

With steady hands, he shifts the pieces of the blade onto a tray together, and shoves them in. It only takes seconds before they take on that all-too-familiar glow, like the Delusion does when it screams. He pulls it out, onto an anvil, and- there should be a hammer nearby, somewhere - yes, there, good, absolutely lighter than the one he’s seen being used before, but better than nothing - and… begins to beat it. It’s soft enough to give way under blows, soft enough to give in and merge back into itself. Good. Good. That’s the first step, he knows it well. Fold the metal. He needs one bar to work from, first, and then he knows the rest, too. He keeps going. The process itself is mind-numbing enough that any exhaustion building in his limbs can be ignored; raise, slam, raise, slam, in the right place every time, so something like the right shape begins to take form. Good. 

(It’s heavy and stifling, like deja vu; the heat is as oppressive as ever and it’s enough that it forces what water he has in his body to pour out, desperately trying to cool him. He is not used to this. The Delusion’s fire is a different kind. This is familiar - but not from this position.

The smell of the smoke. The smell of the cooking metal. The look of the glow. No. All he has to remember is the process. Nothing else. No distractions.)

Calm, he keeps going: it looks about right, which means it’s time to temper it. The water hisses and spits at him, but it doesn’t hurt. Fine. Fine. Now, the additions. More metal. The smaller shards will do for this. He does the same again, heats them until they glow, and brings them back over to the anvil, begins to beat them again. These, now, are less loyal than just the blade was, which was like clay, far more malleable. These resist being worked with. Fine. It’s fine. He can keep going. More and more and more. He keeps going. There are enough individual pieces to assemble it properly, now. (They’re rough. They don’t look like they’re supposed to, and it unsettles something deep inside his gut, because if he’s going to fix this, it should be at least fixed correctly - right?) There isn’t enough time for him to bother about such small things - he knows it well by now that the second he’s finished with one base, it’s a countdown before the forces on his tail come to find him, bloodhounds to a corpse - even doing this at all is enough of a risk.

Breathe. He brings down the hammer again.

C

ra -ck. 

…

What. What was that sound. And. The grazing feeling that came after, like shrapnel. He’s looking down at his work, but it takes him far, far too long to see what is underneath his hands. And it’s not a sword. Shards. Again. More shards. Tiny shards. The entire structure has fractured, which means that he has failed. Whatever it was that he made was brittle enough to turn into this. It could not have been called a sword. Which means that he ruined it.

(Oh, there’s something so dangerously familiar crawling up his throat, like a prisoner stuck in a well, but he mustn’t, he mustn’t, he mustn’t-

Oh, look at us! Matching, hm? There’s only one thing to do now - crown which of us is the superior wielder!He musn’t-)

When the steady breaths that he made sure were timed with his blows begin to come short and quick, he tells himself it’s because he’s inhaled too much smoke. He tells himself that it’s because it’s too hot here. There’s one long shard, still attached to what might have been a hilt. The Delusion at his hip hums, happy in its resolute strength - happy in his… need.

He snatches away the shard, and turns his back on the rest of the failure. He has no need for things that serve no purpose.

---

(find me on ao3 at @satorustan where i post more of this :])

[bobaboob]

sibling that burns ^ ^ sibling that tans

[aprilluc day 7]