Chapter Text
Oddly enough, the day Diluc's life changed forever was not the day that his father, his only remaining family and favorite person, died.
That was certainly one of the saddest days of his life. But it wasn't the day everything changed. Really it'd changed nothing. He still woke up, he still got dressed, and he knew that once the mourning period was over, he'd return to his routine of working as the owner of Dawn Winery, making social calls with his best- and kind of only friend- Jean Gunnhildr, and taking shifts at the Winery's primary bar location to stave off boredom of life at the Manor.
No, the day his life changed forever was two days after his father's passing, when his father's lawyer approached him with a letter that his father's will had dictated only Diluc open, and only after his passing.
The letter had not been long. It'd gone as so:
Diluc, my dearest son.
For the past near decade, I have been lying to you. It is the biggest secret that I ever had to keep, and I apologize for my cowardice in only telling you after the consequences can no longer affect me. I apologize even further for leaving you to those same consequences.
In my days of dying, I have had the realization that it should be my duty to attempt to right my greatest wrong as a mortal man on earth.
As you may recall, more then a decade ago, a man named Pyotir Alberich worked at the Dawn Winery as a secretary. Ten years ago, he died from an illness that I believe was either incurred or worsened by stress. I did not pay attention nearly as much to the state of my employees at the time, and so I felt deeply guilty about his passing. In his passing, he'd left behind a child. This child was named Kaeya, and I felt responsible for her wellness. So I moved her into an apartment and would occasionally check in on her. I thought I could be a good guardian for her, but as time went on, as our relationship developed, and as she got older, I fell in love with her.
-
It'd been at this point that Diluc had had to stop reading. He'd always encouraged his father to find someone after his mother's death. After all, it'd been nearly two decades- or so he'd thought. This was obviously not what he'd meant. This was one of the worst things he'd ever heard of! He almost couldn't believe it, he almost put it down. Because it couldn't be! His father was a good man, he'd been a good man!!! This had to be a fake-
But then he thought of the number of doors this letter had been hidden behind. Of double checks the lawyer had to do to ensure that this was for sure his fathers word, his fathers will. So after almost half an hour of leaning back in the armchair he'd sat down in before opening the letter up with his father's ornate letter opener, he came to the answer. The only answer. The only option.
The letter had to be real. There was no way it couldn't be. Which means his father had fallen into a sick sort of infatuation with a girl he'd met when she was just a child- and that that wasn't nearly the end of the story, seeing as how long the letter still went on after this.
So he had to continue reading. As much as he desperately didn't want to. He owed it to Pyotir Alberich. He owed it to the girl, to Kaeya.
-
The first time was an accident. I'd been drinking in town when my group randomly came across her own group, as she'd been doing the same thing exactly. As I still fancied myself to be a chivalrous gentleman, and as her legal guardian, I decided that it was my responsibility to get her home safe. But it turned out that both her and I were more drunk than I thought, and one thing let to another. But accidents have consequences, and so-
-
And so Diluc had a younger half sister. Fucking hell. How old had the girl been, he wondered. Underage drinking wasn't unusual in Mondstadt, where drinking laws were lose and social codes said that anything above 13 was okay as long as it wasn't inebriating amounts of alcohol and you were in your parents supervision. But he soon received his answer as he turned to the next page of the letter and saw-
Fifteen. She'd been fifteen. She'd been fifteen when Diluc's father had, for lack of a better term, knocked her up.
Oh Barbatos.
To summarize the rest of the letter, Diluc learned that this so called accident hadn't just happened one time. It'd happened... well, he couldn't tell how many times it'd happened. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
But what he was sure of, was that it had at least happened three criminal, inexcusable times.
Because that was the exact number of half siblings he had. Or well, it was the number of half siblings he would have, once the poor girl gave birth to the newest one.
Because this had been going on recently enough that she was currently pregnant. He couldn't imagine the situation she must've been put in to make her be quiet about this for all this time.
The rest of the letter was mostly legal drivel. Crepus had left the girl a fourth of his total assets, sin all those that belonged to the Winery, as some sort of child support. He doubted the girl would be too upset about the Winery asset loss, as her allotment still amounted to millions and millions of dollars, but if she did... well, if Diluc had to be honest with himself, he'd say he could probably be pretty easily persuaded to give millions more as what he could only describe as reparations to the girl his father had been raping since she was fifteen.
And he'd also left one last line. Instructions for Diluc. Some ridiculous attempt to make himself not seem like a complete bastard.
"Please ensure the safety and well-being of what I've neglected." Like "neglected" was the right word for any of this. Like a girl hadn't been abused, like her innocence hadn't been stolen from her, like her agency hadn't been stolen from her time and time again. Again, his thoughts went to the situation that she must've been put in- by his father- to make her be quiet about this for years.
He had to know. He had to fix this. But he knew, he couldn't fix this. But maybe, just maybe, he could make it better. Maybe the best way he could make it better was by allowing her complete severance from his fuck up family.
Even if he couldn't, he had to try.
So here Diluc was, three days after his life had changed forever- since his image of his father had shattered completely, the reality of the man he'd loved for his whole life breaking his brain and his heart in one fell swoop- standing in the middle of the day in front of an apartment door that he'd found on an address slip also in the envelope, a briefcase of papers and such in one hand and his heart- and the address slip- in the other.
He didn't know what do to.
Did he knock? He had a speech prepared for when they did talk- folded up in his coat pocket- but he had no idea how to approach this, how to initiate that discussion.
Fortunately- ha, like any of this was fortunate- he'd only been standing there for a few minutes before he was awoken from the daze of his own thoughts.
"Excuse me sir. Is there a reason you're just standing there?" A voice said from behind.
He turned around to see two blonde men holding grocery bags with very very unhappy expressions on their faces. The taller one looked downright aggressive, so much so that Diluc panicked for a moment, thinking that maybe he'd gotten the address wrong and had actually just been loitering in front of a random apartment.
"Do you two live here?" He asked, his heart beat immediately picking up.
"No, but our friend does, and he called us saying that a strange man was standing in front of his door." The shorter one said, giving him a dead eyed look.
Diluc blinked and looked back down at the address slip. "Is your friend's name Kaeya Alberich?" He wasn't sure what possessed him to ask, seeing as the Kaeya from his fathers letter had been a woman, but something in his gut...
The two men looked at each other.
"What's your name sir." The shorter one asked, tone sharp.
"Diluc Ragni-" And then the tall man was upon him, grabbing him by the lapels and throwing him up against the wall, his arm up and against Diluc's windpipe in an instant.
"Dainsleif, wait!" The shorter one shouted, dropping his grocery bags by where the other one had dropped his and rushing up the steps.
"I don't think this is him-"
"It is him Al- I told you Kaeya showed me a photo-"
"He said he was an older man-"
"My father! You saw my father!" Diluc choked out desperately.
"See I told you, an older man."
"That doesn't matter anyways- why the hell are you here-"
Suddenly the door swung open, almost hitting the shorter man where he stood apart from them.
"Hello??? What the hell is happening out here?"
The first thing that Diluc registered was that their interrupter was in fact a man- but that he looked very similar to what he remembered of Pyotir Alberich, and that he had a very obvious belly bump- and with a drop of his own stomach, Diluc realized that indeed, this must be he-him. Him, he remanded in his head.
"Kaeya." The man called Dainsleif confirmed for him a second later. "This bastard says he's here to talk to you about-"
"Yes, I assumed as much, now could you drop him! The lady across the street likes watching drama from the windows and she'll call the cops or something if you don't."
There was a long moment where all was still, before finally Dainsleif grunted and dropped him back onto his feet. Diluc stumbled and picked back up the briefcase he'd dropped during the scuffle before turning to Kaeya. His heart stopped- the man he'd been so scared to meet was just leaning against the open door, his arms crossed and eyebrow raised, waiting. Not angry. Not yet. He had no idea the bomb Diluc was about to drop.
So, he took a deep breath- but what came out of his mouth was not his pre-prepared speech.
What came out instead was the culmination of the stress and guilt and shame he'd been feeling since reading that awful awful letter- guilt over not noticing, shame over the fact that he'd forever be tied to that son-of-a-bitch... that in spite of it all, he still loved him... and it all came out in one word vomiting mess.
"Crepus Ragnvindr is dead. He will never bother you again. I'm his son, my name is Diluc... I'm here to deliver his will- he left you a fourth of all his assets- I can leave and never come back after I leave these things here but I need your signature for the transference of ownership paperwork and-" He was suddenly cut off by the man holding his hand up in a stop position. His expression was complicated, somewhere in between a frown and a grimace. Diluc waited for him to speak. It took a moment.
"Crepus... is dead?" He clarified. He didn't seem to believe him.
Diluc nodded solemnly. The man took a deep breath in and out before turning through the door and beckoning Diluc forth. "Come on in."
"What?!" The taller blond behind Diluc shouted, echoing Diluc's own shocked thought.
"You two too, obviously. This is the kind of conversation that needs a table. I don't want to have it out on my porch. Also, like I mentioned, my neighbors are nosy." He explained, and so reluctantly Diluc stepped into the house, feeling the calculating gaze of the shorter blond and the icy hot gaze of the taller on his back the whole time.
It wasn't until they were settled at the table, Diluc sitting uncomfortably in a chair on the same side of the table as the shorter blond- almost the other one but Kaeya had told him to stop and get away- and across from the one who glared at him and eventually Kaeya, after he provided them all with cups of tea, that Kaeya settled down and looked up at Diluc, making eye contact with him for the first time since the exchange outside the door.
After a long moment of that eye contact from the man, Diluc finally caught onto what he was waiting for and pulled out his documents. First he pulled out the death certificate. If Kaeya didn't want to see it, he was sure the taller blond would- who in fact did seem to settle slightly after reading it, before passing it across the table for the other blond, who only gave it a quick glance before handing it to Kaeya to read.
Kaeya apparently did want to see it, and gazed at it for a good while even after he seemed to have already read through it. Eventually, he sat up with a sharp inhale. There wasn't anything lighter or happier about his demeanor- which Diluc had expected, even as much as he'd hoped seeing proof of his abusers death would do him some good- but he seemed to be ready for the conversation in a way he hadn't seemed before. So at least there was that.
"So. He died from natural causes." Kaeya opened up the conversation.
Diluc nodded. "Yes, from all indicators. But... just between us two- or us four, I suppose." He grimaced, glancing at the other two, "If... if you did have anything to do with it- though I don't think you did... there wasn't a lengthy examination, but it has been conclusive. Unless someone actually admits to something on record, there should be no further investigation... I only say because... I mean..." Accidentally, his gaze slipped to the taller blond, and though he shot his gaze back to Kaeya as soon as he could, he saw that the implication hadn't gone unnoticed as Kaeya's arm went up to the blonde's back.
"Dainsleif didn't have anything to do with it... none of us did." He said, his tone cold. Diluc looked down at the table, ashamed.
"But." His sulking was interrupted and they all turned to look at the shorter blond, who gazed back at Diluc with an understanding in his eyes he was very glad to see. "We're happy to know you might understand why someone might've hypothetically wanted it to happen that way. That's very kind of you to say, considering that the deceased was your father, and that in spite of the information you now have about his actions in life, you still hold him in some regard as a result of that relationship." And then his gaze turned back to Kaeya, who was now looking at Diluc with a different kind of understanding. The understanding that this was all he could say. He could not say that he was sorry, because that would never make up for the grief that'd been caused by the man who'd also been the best person in Diluc's own life... but he could say that he could understand the degree of hatred Kaeya must feel for him. That he could empathize, even if he couldn't find it in himself to vocalize it.
After a long moment, Kaeya nodded to the briefcase, and so, with a relieved exhale, Diluc reopened it and moved onto the next topic.