Cross-posted on AO3

Day 22: Burned

Diluc sat silently in his room as he turned the events of the day over in his mind. He had arrived back home to a very warm welcome. Adelinde had nearly been in tears while Elzer and Charles had been overjoyed. The staff had wanted to celebrate his arrival, but he had felt exhausted and just wanted to go to bed.

The sun had since set and Diluc was laying in his room – his father's old room – as he wondered what his next steps were going to be. He already knew that he was going to take over the business and continue it, but he didn't really know what else he would do.

There was no way he was going back to the Knights of Favonius. Not after what they did.

He decided to ignore the thoughts for now as he rolled over and let himself sink into the bed.

When morning finally came, Diluc opened his eyes to the sound of a commotion from somewhere in the Winery. He quickly shook off the sleepiness as he rose from the bed, not bothering to change out of his sleeping clothes.

He left the room as he made his way to the foyer, where he believed the sounds were coming from. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he finally noticed that several maids were standing by the front door, crowded around a hooded figure, whispering frantically amongst themselves.

As he got closer, he noted that Adelinde was the one talking to the stranger and that she looked nervous, the most nervous he had ever seen her. He sped up until he tried to make his way to the Head Maid's side, though the group of other servants made it hard. The second his employees noticed him, they parted like water around stone, the whispers growing and some of them beginning to look more nervous than the maid he was trying to reach.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

By the time he reached Adelinde's side, she seemed to finally take notice of him. She kept looking between him and the stranger, her eyes going wide in. . . was that fear? The mystery person she had been talking to had also gone quiet and Diluc could see how the person's figure had gone tense.

"Mind telling me what's going on here, Adelinde?" he questioned.

The maid still looked unsure and kept shifting her gaze back and forth, clearly hesitant to say anything. Diluc could feel the irritation building at the sight. What was so special about this stranger that even Adelinde – his most trusted employee – wouldn't want to tell him about an unknown person who was standing in his own house?

"I -," she started, but quickly shut her mouth again, turning her gaze towards the stranger again, almost like she was asking them for help.

Before he could say anything to her to demand to know what she was hiding, the stranger let their hood fall. Diluc felt his heart drop and he was certain his eyes were as wide as Adelinde's.

"It's a pleasure, Master Diluc," the man said, an unfamiliar smirk on his face. And a very familiar face it was.

Standing before him was the brother he thought he would never see again. His hair had grown in length, reaching almost to his waist in a ponytail that was settled over his left shoulder. His eye had an odd look to it that Diluc couldn't place. But what made Diluc's heart stop, made his blood run cold was his face.

Kaeya's face, once smooth and glowing in its natural youthful light, was marred by large burn scars. While the right side of his face was mostly unharmed, the left side of his face was the one with the scars. Thankfully, it was mostly hidden by his hair and the eye patch (that he noticed wasn't the one their father gave him), but it still snaked down the side of his neck and probably covering part of his collarbone, maybe even further down.

Diluc felt sick at the sight.

"Like what you see?" the other asked. His tone was definitely not its usual teasing jab, the one that he used to tease him for hating wine with. It was cold, practically venomous. It was a tone that he had only use a handful of times and had always been aimed at an enemy or someone he had really disliked.

It stung to think that he might now fall into that category, but he knew he couldn't blame Kaeya for it. All the younger man had done was tell the truth.

And Diluc had burned him for it.

A/N: This took far longer than it should have to write this and I have now fallen further behind. This story took me two days to write, most of it being written on the 24th and finally finished on the 25th. I'm going to need to write three to four stories tomorrow to catch back up with the prompts, so the stories are likely to be shorter.

This was just me wanting to write Diluc having burned Kaeya during their fight. That's literally it. I liked how StrangeDiamond wrote about Diluc burning Kaeya's hands and just about to myself, "what would be worse than burning his hands? How about half of his face so that he can't forget what happened since he'd see it in the mirror every day?!" And then this monstrosity was born.