Oh, Brother Of Mine

Chapter 7

Tracking down the creators of the metal device was a rather simple task, probably because it quite literally had the emblem of the Fatui embedded into the metal and Diluc still had more than half a functioning braincell. As for the strange glove... He wasn't quite sure what to make of it now. Perhaps he could find a way to control it, like his father had. Or maybe he could at the very least find out what, exactly, it was so that he'd know what to expect of it.

Getting to the Fatui turned out to be a lot harder than tracking them down. The safest bet was to go straight for their heart in Snezhnaya, which meant Diluc would have to go somewhere to the north-west, which was, obviously, a very exact location for him to track down, and not at all just a vague idea of where to go. He set off early in the morning, taking the path near the river behind the winery to make his way out of Mondstat, to the grounds of Liyue. A camp of hilichurls and a few mitachurls blocked his path, but he managed to fend them off with his claymore. Fighting without his vision felt strange. Unnatural. As if a part of him was gone, and he would never get it back now. Every move he made now was cold, felt foreign. He hated it.

By nightfall, he'd gotten to some small settlement, almost like a harbor without water, where he managed to find a place to spend the night. He realized then that he probably should've brought mora with him, or at least thought through some methods of earning it while traveling, but decided he would deal with that once it actually became a problem. In the meantime, his claymore and a not-so-charming smile was enough to score him a room for the night. He left before the sun rose, tugging his cloak over his head and hiding as much of himself from the world as he could. 

He moved like a shadow, staying away from crowds and working solely on his own as he slowly made his way up north, travelling one day at a time, setting up his own camps as the sun set and leaving as soon as it rose again. The terrain grew rocky, harder to scale, harder to move along. He wasn't used to it, but it wasn't anything that he couldn't handle. He found himself growing more and more tired with each passing day, the previous revenge-fueled energy long gone, but he couldn't stop now. His father had died a cruel and unfair death, and the Fatui had most likely influenced it, if the metal machine was anything to go by. He would get his revenge if it was the last thing he did. 

He realized some time on the fourth day of travelling that Kaeya must've gotten his letter already. He'd stopped in his tracks, his mouth going dry. Did Kaeya believe what he'd written? Did he forgive him? Or did he maybe think that this was just another one of Diluc's cruel ploys to use against him? The realization brought forth the memory of him leaving his vision behind. Did Kaeya hold on to it, he wondered, or had he simply thrown it aside like trash? Or had Kaeya decided to treasure it, as the last thing given to him by his brother? Or perhaps Kaeya wanted nothing to do with it?

Diluc missed his vision, he realized. He missed it in the way he'd miss his hair if he cut it, or in the way that he'd miss leaving his claymore behind. He'd grown attached to it in the years since he'd gotten it, and imagining a life without it now seemed practically impossible. He missed the feeling of warmth spreading through his body when he used the vision, the familiar sensation of power coursing through his veins. Oh, the things he'd do to get that feeling back...

His hand rested against his pocket as he came out of his stupor, where he still kept the glove that Father had worn. Even now, days later, he could still perfectly recall the way that black fire arced through the sky, twisting and turning to Father's will. Had it been the glove that gave him the power to control those flames? It had to be, right? There was no other explanation. So would the flame respond to him, then, in the way it had responded to his father?

He shouldn't do this. The glove was his father's to control, not his. He had a vision to rely on, rather than... whatever this was. But he'd left his vision behind.