Oh, Brother Of Mine

Chapter 15

It had been two years since Diluc left him. Two years, during which Kaeya had learned, all over again, what it meant to be truly alone. During those two years, people had stuck to his side like moths drawn to a flame, or like ants in a honey trap. Everywhere he went, he heard them. Empty condolences. Words of comfort that didn't mean anything. The I'm so sorry's, and the Stay strong's and the Hey now, cheer up's. All meaningless. All with no purpose other than to make people feel better about themselves.

During those two years, he had discovered a lot about people. For one, he learned about what people cared for, and what they only pretended to care about in order to keep up appearances. Take Lisa, for example. She cared about Jean. She cared about knowledge. She cared about her library. She pretended to care about Kaeya. She pretended to care about Diluc's disappearance. She pretended to care about how to get him back.

Kaeya learned pretty early on that this was a fun game to play. Jean cared about her work. She didn't care about Klee's new invention. Huffman cared about his new mission, the one where he was placed in charge of patrolling the outskirts of Mondstat. He didn't care about the weekly specials at the Cat's Tail. And Albedo... well, Albedo was what made the game so interesting to play. He could never tell what it was that Albedo cared about, or what he didn't care about. He was just... different that way.

Of course, during those two years, more happened than Kaeya coming up with a game. He also got promoted to the spot of the Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius. Hooray! That made him the second youngest Cavalry Captain in Mondstat's history, right after his brother, of course, and he only got that position because his brother disappeared. Of course. Which was of course amazing! Because Kaeya hated his brother who tried to kill him after Kaeya told him the truth about who he was. Of course.

And that was another game that Kaeya made during those two years. He even made a name for it. He called it "Lying To Himself". The entire idea of the game was for him to make a statement about himself, such as I hate my brother Diluc, which was obviously a lie, and to attempt to convince everyone around him, and then himself, that said statement was true. Another great example was the typical Who, me? Yes, I'm doing perfectly fine, thanks for asking! and the No, I'm not at all bothered that Diluc is gone. He had to admit, when he'd started playing the game, he wasn't that good at it, but he'd significantly improved since then. He almost believed most of those lies now, and considering all the trust issues he had, that was saying a lot!

Now, obviously, he'd done a lot more during those two years than just play little mind games with himself. He'd also done a lot of work on improving the Knights of Favonius, on being a better leader than they ever expected him to be, on proving that he earned the spot of the Cavalry Captain rather than just inherited it when everyone's favorite brother suddenly disappeared. That, of course, also meant that Kaeya had long since noticed the fact that the Fatui were keeping a close eye on his every move, and the fact that, for some reason, his paychecks have gotten abnormally large recently.

At first, he'd really been tempted to make a joke about the fact that he probably now had some mysterious Fatui sugar daddy, but, considering the fact that his biological dad had left him out to die and his adoptive father had died before his eyes, he decided that joke was... poorly timed, to say the least.

Despite the fact that neither the Fatui nor the abnormally large sum of mora in his account had acted out in a manner to pose a threat, Kaeya still kept a close eye on them, making sure that neither of the two things suddenly... acted out?..

Oh, Archons, this was annoying, and he couldn't even complain about it to anyone, because who would listen? A complaint about the Fatui keeping track of him? Oh, as if that was anything new! A complaint about his bank account becoming concerningly large? That was a problem most only dreamed of having! The only person Kaeya could have even complained to was Diluc, and Diluc... well, he'd made his stance clear.