CW: Diluc is traumatised, gore, character death(Crepus), reference to intercourse but nothing happens here, Kaeya appears
A/N: Wanted to write Diluc so… presto?
When they put a sword in your hands, bark at you to swing it right, rap the back of your calves with the cane till you’re standing right, you start to think there’s an order to battle.
He was good at it, or so he was told back when he’d sent the snot-faced Lawrence brat arse-first in the mud.
His triumph hadn’t lasted long when Crepus’ shadow fell over him, Kaeya stepping between them and stammering his bad Mondstadtian. He’d only kept saying the word “please” over and over. Diluc would have laughed at the choppy way he’d said it, if his heart wasn’t pounding in his ears.
Crepus had looked at the wooden blade in his grubby hands, then the mud that caked his burning cheeks. But he didn’t get a night without dinner.
He got an instructor, and his first Favonia raiment.
There are many ways to become a man.
The staff’s children, who offered help at the winery, though thinking back on them made Diluc think they were more for him than the grapes, said it was your beard, your chest-hair. A bit older, then it was straddling a “fair-haired dame with cheeks like apples and breasts like grapes.”
His noble-blooded playmates insisted manhood was awarded when you were crowned the head of your clan, or when it was your name on the contracts.
But when he first kneeled before the Grandmaster in his ceremonial armour, felt the flat of the sword on his pauldrons as he was anointed a knight of Favonius — that was when Diluc first felt like a man.
But there was order in all that. There was practice and technique. Treasure Hoarders and monsters had neither. They had numbers and a violent desire for life.
They didn’t parry or thrust to a drillmaster’s command; they grabbed and scratched and stabbed and spat.
His hands held the sword dumbly, his eyes barely following the quick slashes of the bandit’s blade. The parry shook his bones, the metal screeched against each other. Something struck him from the side, but he’d only realised when his body crumpled and the earth slammed into his face. His sword clattered uselessly to the floor, his side assaulted with cruel and quick kicks.
They’d laughed. Spat. Stabbed at the metal and tried to get at the flesh.
Somewhere he heard Kaeya call for him, but it was drowned by the crash of metal somewhere behind him.
He remembered his hands trembling. Clammy with cold sweat. Then it got hot. Really hot.
He was screaming, his voice cracking, fire leaping through his palms.
The kicks faltered, then they were screaming too, flopping their arms and writhing, flames licking at their clothes.
His hands still shook, but he’d gripped the blade, still screaming, charging right at them.
There was no technique. There was no patience or honour. His arms followed the lessons, but his mind only caught the fire and the screaming, the sick crunch of bone against metal, how bodies still kept twitching while the heads rolled away and got trampled on.
He was still shaking when Adelinde scrubbed the bits of flesh off his hair.
Dinner was quiet that night.
Still, that had its own order. Violence for violence. You needed a rebellion to overthrow a god, you needed the brawn to stave off the bullies and you needed someone who could split a man in half to protect a nation. But it wasn’t what he’d thought honour would feel like.
The knights gave him a new rank after the fifth raid, for “exemplary bravery and resolve.”
At thirteen (edit: fourteen), he was Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius.
Crepus had wept after the ceremony. Not sobbed or cried, but Diluc remembered his misty eyes glinting in the firelight.
“I’m proud of you, my boy.” He’d said. Diluc’s heart had swelled. His own eyes stung, but he hoped it wasn’t too obvious to his father.
Kaeya had slapped his shoulder, grinning ear-to-ear. He said something about “bribing his new captain with wine”, but the exact words never came to him after.
Diluc’s lips moved and vaguely he heard himself reporting Ursa’s attack. The cold of Crepus’ dying body still clung to his fingers.
What had he expected? Thinking back on it— on the rare instances he allowed himself to— he still didn’t know. Sympathetic murmurs? A hand on his shoulder? A public memorial for Crepus’ sacrifice, a posthumous anointment to knighthood?
What he did know, that it wasn’t the order to cover up the circumstances of his father’s death.
Was this order? The direct command from the Inspector?
He’d gaped at Eroch while the words ruminated in his head. Then it got hot again. Very, very hot. He felt it in his veins. On his nape. His ears.
He felt himself moving forward. Saw Eroch tense and reach under the table.
The table rattled with the force of his palm. He’d half expected his Vision to shatter. It didn’t. Stared back at him, perfect and pristine.
The board members jolted.
“Then don’t consider me a knight,” he felt the words grind together in the back of his throat. “Not anymore.”
He didn’t remember the rest of the day. At least, not until the midnight rain, the knock on his study door and Kaeya slinking in like he’d murdered Crepus himself.
Hearing the knights boast of it now always got a scoff out of him. Their parades, the star-eyed recruits half his age. He almost pitied them.
But he still believed in it. That damned order.
He lost sleep over it, fought for it, got half his body mangled for it.
Crepus stared at him from the wall. It was a self-portrait, him with his boys. Kaeya was there too, but not like he’d seen him in … years.
Diluc stared back. Didn’t see the resemblance Adelinde gushed about.
There was the hair and the eyes, but if he stood next him now…
A quiet huff left him. He looked older than Crepus’ memory. A good clump of his hair came out with every brush and Adelinde had to dab at the dark circles under his eyes with powder before every wretched official appearance.
He rose from his chair, it needed some effort tonight. Tonight’s Abyss Herald had done a number on his leg. The singed skin protested with uncomfortable numbness when he’d bound it.
With effort, he limped to his bed, flopped down on the mattress face-first.
His eyes shut, burning with fatigue.
It was not a pleasant thing, to think in the early hours. It was easier when he left the logistics to others.
But he was order. Crepus’ order. His order. The order that chased shadows when they’d just crept in.
Order didn’t rest. And neither would he.
His hands reached for the covers blindly.
There was work to be done, and the sun was rising already.
A/N: Been having an awful time lately, so thought it was best to channel it through this. Wanted Diluc to have a separate “voice” from Kaeya, so please let me know if it worked <3 Header by @qixingicons
