this lives a few months after the last story in my ragbros and Mond hurt/comfort collection, after Diluc has had A Bad Time not too long ago.
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Diluc was ill.
It started, as these things usually did, with a dull headache in the morning, and a dry throat that did not abate even though he obediently drank the tea that Adelinde set at his elbow at regular intervals. Autumn was the season for colds and fevers, as he well knew from previous years, and from Elzer’s discussion of worker absences in the last few weeks. The Winery folk had been taking particular care not to expose him to a single sniffle this year, to his embarrassment. Maybe they had also had orders from the Deaconess, and the doctors of various locales and skill sets that had come and gone from the Winery ever since his close-call incident of last spring.
Nonetheless by midway through the day he had to admit that he’d gotten a cold from somewhere. The by-now-familiar joint pain had intensified and been joined by shivers, and it was becoming increasingly impossible to breathe through his nose, with the headache making it downright painful to try. He did his best to keep his mind on the papers that he was going through with Elzer and the Guildsman who came for teatime, but the tickle in his nose and the burning in his throat didn’t help. The food didn’t seem to have any taste in his dry mouth.
Elzer must have noticed his abstraction, because he whisked the papers away afterwards from the table with remarkable speed, when the door had barely shut behind the Guildsman. And then, as Diluc blinked dully against the light from the window to try to appease the headache, “Are you feeling well, sir? You look a little tired.”
“Yes. I’m… rather tired.”
He’d been lying down in the afternoons for an hour or so, most days, on the doctors’ suggestions, so as not to use up too much of his energy at once - and balancing that, on the doctors’ other suggestions, with a short walk around the Winery grounds each day to build his strength up. In the last few weeks he’d been able to manage a full slow circuit without getting short of breath, but today even thinking of making the attempt made the throbbing in his head intensify.
Elzer glanced at the gray sky outside the window, then remarked it did seem a good day for a nap; that might have been a solid moment to make an escape, if Diluc hadn’t sneezed then.
“Oh,” said Elzer, with an unreasonably knowing sort of expression, and stood up. “Yes, you should probably get some rest, sir.”
-
Diluc had picked his Winery folk for their efficiency, among other qualities, and their ability to organize with or without his direct orders in response to threats or arising situations. There were advantages and disadvantages to having such capable and well-ordered staff - he thought glumly, from the edge of his bed, as he surveyed the dressing gown and nightclothes Adelinde had set out for him, and heard the running of the water taps in the washroom next door.
His head ached less now that Adelinde had drawn the curtains, a small candelebra the only lamp in his room. He’d left as little space as possible on his nightstand for medicine bottles these last months so the new supply Hilie and Gerald had just brought up had had to go on the corner of his desk instead.
“The bath’s ready for you now, Master Diluc, and after that I think you’d best take your rest early,” Adelinde called, through the half-open door.
“Adelinde, it’s only a cold. I - ” he pinched the bridge of his nose to stop a sneeze - “am perfectly able to continue with my day’s work.”
He’d spent enough nights on the roofs of Mondstadt and the cliffsides, too, feeling this ill or more so. The thought of his carefully-folded red coat somewhere in the depths of his wardrobe was more of a pang than usual, at the moment, as he stared down the flannels spread out on the bed.
“The Deaconess told us quite clearly that your lungs are still weak, and a cold could go to your chest as easily as not,” Adelinde said. “You know that too, sir.”
He did know that. He’d had to listen to Barbara say the same thing, in fact, several times that autumn. He rubbed at his eyes and swallowed lightly, his throat raspy on the way down.
“There, the bath’s ready for you now. I’ll check on the tea downstairs.” Adelinde emerged from the washroom, her sleeves rolled up; she reached out and felt his forehead gently, then bent closer to listen to his breathing. Diluc blinked and tried to measure his breaths, but coughed anyway - perhaps from thinking about it too hard.
“No fever yet,” she said brightly, after a moment. “That’s good. Wash up and change, sir, and I’ll have the tea brought up, with a little something in it to help you sleep.”
-
The “little something” foreshortened the day most alarmingly, with a heavy sleep full of unhappy half-remembered dreams, with Diluc waking to the thread of fiery sunset light between the curtains and a feeling like gravel in his throat as he swallowed. He lay still and staring up for several long moments, trying to place himself, trying to breathe without setting off a cough by accident. He couldn’t lie abed now, he had work to do. He had been going to meet Vile tonight at the edge of the grounds, and trade business with her, and hear about the news of the war from Inazuma…
He rolled over, and stifled a groan at the pull of aching muscles and joints, shivering as the blanket slipped off his shoulders. He was freezing, which frightened him a bit; it didn’t feel quite the same as a fever, but disturbingly like to one. His throat and temples ached in shuddery waves.
He wasn’t aware he was crying until the tears began to haze and overflow his eyes, and he buried his face in the pillow, sneezing damply. This weakness felt far too familiar, and despairingly so. It’s just a cold, you’ll be fine in no time, he told himself, sternly; but before, he’d been fighting Treasure Hoarders and Fatui through enough minor illnesses and more so. Before, when his claymore had been light in his two hands, when he had been his own weapon and shield alike, with fire burning in his wake. Before - so long ago it seemed, almost like a dream, though it had only been a few months since his illness.
How had he become so horribly breakable…
Diluc slept again, or dozed anyway, and woke to voices: Adelinde, and was that Kaeya, of all people? His brother hadn’t been to the Winery for a week or so, what with the scramble of preparations for harvesttime. His eyelids were heavy, the scent of steam and herbs twining its way thinly through his stuffed-up nose; he lay still, half-awake, shapelessly limp under the blankets.
“…got word from Charles with the delivery wagon today…” Kaeya was saying, in a low voice.
“…nothing serious, we hope,” Adelinde was murmuring, then. “But he’s running a low fever now, and I don’t like the sound of his breathing. If you’d want to stay the night, Master Kaeya, and bring word to the Deaconess in the morning if need be…”
“Of course.” The end of the bed creaked, moving ever so slightly under Kaeya’s cautious weight. “Addie. You don’t think - ”
“No, dear. I hope not, anyway.”
A pause, and then a sigh from Kaeya. “They all say he’s getting better, but they have that funny look on their faces, and nobody promises anything.”
“I don’t think anyone can promise anything, Master Kaeya, when it comes to such things.”
“Yes, but - it seems that they could promise a little more.”
The bed shifted, and Kaeya’s hand ruffled back Diluc’s hair, cool and soothing against his headache-tense forehead.
Kaeya he tried to say, but his throat let out only a pained sort of sound, and he blinked his eyes open to candlelight and his brother by his side.
“There you are, ‘Luc. I was coming by, you know, and fancy finding you in such a state. And you haven’t even been bartending, which might excuse picking up something like this…”
Adelinde leaned down and set a bowl of steaming water on the nightstand, which was oddly vacant in preparation, all of his books and trinkets and even the knife inexplicably vanished. She vanished out of his sight and reappeared again with a mug of something and a spoon.
“Sit up and have something to drink, sir. It’ll help your throat.”
“No more sleeping draughts,” he managed to rasp out.
“No, nothing like that. Just honey and mint, and qingxin from over the border, that the Deaconess’s friend sent you.”
Kaeya helped him sit up, his arm and the pillows supporting Diluc equally, and steadied the mug in his hands as they shook with the sudden chill of the air. “Easy now.”
His throat did feel remarkably better after the first mouthful, and even more so after the second. The warmth of the tea helped banish the shivering somewhat, and Kaeya’s arm around him did more. He blew his nose on one of the mysteriously appearing handkerchiefs that had been slipped in along the side of his pillow, and coughed after, cringing at the explosion of pain in his throat that it caused.
“Thanks. That’s - better.”
“That’s the way of it.” Kaeya’s voice was warmly cheerful, the one he used for Klee, and for the junior Adventurers from the Guild. “Now if you don’t want to sleep again yet, you can stay sitting up, and I think there’s supper on the way?”
If it was soup, he thought he was going to cry again.
“Chicken skewers and mint salad,” Adelinde said, “just a little light food, sir, if you can manage it.”
He nodded, and blew his nose again.
-
Of course nobody let him out of bed for long that night, and he found, to his shame, that he didn’t really want to be; the shaky trip to and from the washroom before supper was enough for him, the downward gravity of the mattress calling him helplessly back afterwards. Kaeya stayed there, fussing about his room, sticking his nose into a number of places that Diluc would have scolded him for if he had had the voice for it, and eventually settling down with the third volume of some trashy-sounding Inazuman light novel. Not even wartime quite stopped the smuggling of ridiculous books, apparently.
Adelinde replaced the steaming bowl of herbal brew several times, its vapor easing his coughs, although he could barely smell it. He huddled into the bedcovers and listened to Kaeya’s occasional snorts of laughter and acerbic marginal comments.
Vile wouldn’t lose much sleep over his missing a meeting these days, Diluc had to admit as the appointed hour came and went. He hadn’t had very good luck sneaking out even under the best of times in the last months, and he was pretty sure Elzer had set a watch around the grounds each time he’d succeeded.
Sometime late in the darkness, as his eyes drifted open and closed, Kaeya came and pressed a kiss to the corner of his hairline, unless he had been dreaming already; and told him goodnight, brother.
-
Diluc woke in the morning with a truly ghastly hoarse throat, and unable to breathe through his nose, but at least when he sat up and gargled gently with the salt water Moco brought him he felt slightly more alive by the end of it. Adelinde had another hot bath for him, which helped too, and while she’d pointedly laid out fresh nightclothes and dressing gown for him on the bed she didn’t stop him from moving to the chair instead when he returned.
He took the day slowly by necessity - Kaeya sitting with him until midmorning and talking about the Liyue Qixing succession choices, and then Elzer appearing with a very basic outline of the autumn workload requirements and shipping plans to go over. By noon he was yawning as well as sneezing, his stuffy nose beginning to turn more liquid, and when Adelinde suggested a nap after lunch he acquiesed.
Despite sleeping most of the afternoon he still managed to sleep soundly enough at night - he suspected Adelinde’s tea had contained something to assist with that - and woke again with a slight cough and no more than the usual aches, his throat pain quickly chased away by breakfast.
Adelinde let him go downstairs that day, though she made sure he wore an extra sweater over his shirt, and two handkerchiefs in his pockets.
-
“I’m glad to see you back up and about,” Kaeya said, when he came by the Winery later that week. He had his own set of scratches and bruises to sport - he’d been helping Razor fight Rifthounds, of all unfortunate but necessary activities - but a genuine smile on his face, and he didn’t twitch back as Diluc drew him in for a quick hug.
“Yes. I’m not even sniffling anymore, and my cough’s gone away.” He put away the knife he’d been polishing, next to the stave he’d been exercising gently with earlier that day in the front courtyard. “I’m sorry for scaring you for nothing, after all that fuss.”
He expected Kaeya to laugh back, and deny that he had ever felt any sort of that way; but his brother only nodded.
“It was nothing because you rested and didn’t try to work through it and pretend you were fine like you usually do.” Kaeya leaned against the corner of the wall, fidgeting one hand along the carved rail.
“It was a minor illness. Don’t be silly.”
Kaeya’s visible eye narrowed. “There aren’t any minor illnesses for you anymore. Haven’t you been listening to Barbara and the others? You can’t afford setbacks; after this spring you haven’t any reserves to lose. And - ” His voice twisted for a moment, and his fingers stilled on the wooden carving. “And we want you, here, more than we want the paperwork done a day earlier; do you understand that, ‘Luc?”
He didn’t like hearing that note in Kaeya’s voice, that edge of fearfulness that he hadn’t recognized since childhood, back when Kaeya was confident to let himself be afraid without shame now and again. But he had had enough fear of his own, muddled between his long naps and nose-blowing and tea-sipping, in the last days. So he only nodded.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, and meant it. Then, because he couldn’t really help it at this point - “So what do you mean about Rifthounds in Wolvendom? Bring me up to date, Cavalry Captain.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Rufus Blaiddyd/Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Rufus Blaiddyd & Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius & Original Characters, Rufus Blaiddyd & Original Character(s)
Characters: Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Rufus Blaiddyd, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Unethical Experimentation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Azure Moon | Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, Blood and Injury, Animal Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, character tags including
Summary:
There is a beast roaming Fraldarius. His people were fearful of it, and his soldiers were being maimed by it. It was a monster far more powerful than any regular demon, and wreathed in a mane of gold.
“But, she needs to not mess this up, which looking at Rowan like she has tonight might very well do. He wasn’t looking at her the same way. Probably.
She whirls, leaving her own glass on the side and marches into her bedroom, the one opposite Rowan’s. But she’s not thinking about that, she needs this loft to work out.”
Man I told myself I was going to take a break from DA stuff after my epic redo of Rota but like...I HAVE to make at least one more Hawke, to fully appreciate all these mods Atlas makes...gosh.
