Chapter Text
Red is the color of Klee’s Dodoco, the color of her jacket reflecting off the sun. The color of bombs exploding in the water.
Step 1: Well this step is pretty straightforward. Kids always cry at funerals and when someone leaves, it's quite… exhausting. They are the purest of the people you will encounter in life, easy to manipulate. If you act kind, they smile. If you show a slightest of anger towards them, they crumble and look as if their entire world has fallen apart. Such is the simplicity of kids.
I found Klee by Starfetch lake, she was rambling to Albedo about something that sounded like “fish bombing techniques”. Her whole face lit up when she saw me, like I’d hung up the sun in the sky for her, as if nothing else mattered for a moment. “Kaeya! Big brother Kaeya!”
She was a blur of red as she crashed into my legs. I patted her head gently, as an “old brother” would do, to show care to a younger one. Her hair was quite sticky, I distantly noticed, oh well, it's not going to matter much anyways.
“Are you bothering big brother Albedo’s drawing time? That’s not very knight behavior!”
Kaeya teased.
“N-no! Klee was not bothering brother Albedo! Pretty please? Klee doesn’t want to end up in solitary confinement again…” Klee gasped, clutching at Kaeya’s leg desperate to not be taken away.
Albedo looked up from where he was painting the view.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you here, Sir Kaeya.”
“You too, Albedo. Is it fine if I take Klee to play by the lake for a while?”
“Yes, of course. Thank you for taking care of her.”
“Haha, that’s too high praise. See…see you later, Albedo.”
I restricted Klee from her fish bombing streak after her third bomb. The fish ecosystem is already bad enough as it is, we don’t need them going extinct before the day is over. Instead, we skipped stones. I showed her how. My stone danced 13 times before plopping into the depth of the lake. Hers… flew across the surface in an arc and exploded out in a water bomb, spraying water to all the ducks around it. Klee, on the other hand, puffed out her chest and laughed. It was supposed to feel warm, was it not? It was just… a noise. Quite high pitched in fact. Klee was laughing. I couldn’t really make any sense of it, I’m afraid I can’t describe it any better than that. Pathetic, isn’t it, that a Captain can’t even describe something as simple as that. It’s not that I find no humor or joy in laughing, but I find it rather amusing that something as full of color could appear in a world that's gray and black, that something could laugh at the bleak world around it.
Afterwards, we sat in the grass, sharing a sunsettia, watching Albedo paint nearby, the sun setting in the background. It was a beautiful scene really, if the juice wasn’t sticky and gross on my fingers. I wanted to wash them. Klee swung her legs, kicking up puffs of dirt.
“Big brother,” She said, mouth full, “can you come fish blasting with me next week? I made a new bomb! It goes wheeeeeeeeeee ━ and makes a little kaboom then a HUGE KABOOM!”
I looked at her. Her eyes reminded me of everything I couldn’t have, everything I couldn’t be. I hated those eyes, those childish eyes filled with happiness. They reminded me of everything I had lost. Sometimes I wish I could claw out those eyes and replace mines with them. If I did that, will i see the world through another lens? Will I learn to enjoy life once again? To feel the sun’s heat on my skin and close my eyes?* In them, I saw next week, I saw next month. I saw a future where “Big brother Kaeya” was a permanent, smiling, feature in her life. In her world, I was real. In her eyes, I saw a future that I could have had if I wasn’t torn away from my childhood, if I wasn’t forced to be a spy, if my father hadn’t died, if my father Master Crepus had stayed, if Diluc was still my brother, if I could still run across the mansion, carefree despite an entire nation’s burden on me. Will those crimson eyes of hers still hold the child like happiness if she had been in my role?
“ I can’t, Klee. I’m sorry.” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. There was no need to lie anymore, there was no purpose to lie for anymore.
Her kicking stopped abruptly. “B-but why not?”
“I have to go away… for a while.”
Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled with unshed tears. The sunsettia slice fell from her limp hands.
“Away? B-but why? Did Klee do something wrong?” Her voice cracked. “I’ll be g-good! I won’t fish blast anymore! Klee will go to solitary confinement… I’ll make a big drawing of them! Please don’t leave because of me, Klee is sorry…"
I watched her cry, her shoulders shook as the emotions whirled through her face: confusion, hurt, sadness, guilt. I suppose causing her pain now is better than causing her more pain later on. The adults will know better, they will go along my lie of me going on a trip. She’ll be fine in no time. I pulled her into my lap, hugging her. She buried her face in my coat, snot and tears mixing and smudging the material. “Shh…” I murmured, my voice a dull monotone against her bright hair. I was too tired. “It’s going to be okay, Klee. Don’t worry about it, everything is going to be fine. It’s not your fault, it never could be you.” The words were right, I made sure of it, tried to make it as comforting as possible. But the tone was all wrong, or was it the pitch or just the voice in itself? It’s the kind you use when you do something boring, soothing a scared deer. But she clung to me. She trusted “Kaeya”. She didn’t know that the person she called “Kaeya” never existed, it was just a bunch of memories and smiles pieced together.
When she calmed down to hicupping, I wiped her face gently, removing all traces of tears from her face.
“Be good for Jean,” I said, waving towards Albedo to come get her. “And for Albedo.”
My legs creaked when I stood up, I suppose that's what I get for being more than 500 years and sitting down for so long. I see Albedo walking towards us. I had no intention of speaking to him, I looked back down towards Klee. She looked up, her eyes searched mines. As if waiting for me to proclaim it was all a game, wink, or smile at her. I could give her nothing of what she expected. A voice in the back of my head laughed at me. Just another thing the Calvary Captain without a calvary couldn’t do. Useless. Worthless. Pathetic. I stared tiredly at Klee’s face, as if memorizing it one more time.
I walked away, I felt her confusion clinging to the air behind me, her eyes trained to my back even as Albedo picked her up and walked off.
The sun was still above the horizon when I looked back. There was no warmth.