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"What happened to big sister, grumpy adult?" Klee asked with innocence, looking back and forth between the framed photo near the open casket and the red haired man before her.
And Diluc, he stared. No doubt he hadn't even heard the question in midst of his loud thoughts. The photo was one from their wedding, an old style picture from an old camera, and the thin glass being the only thing keeping it alive. She was smiling, she always was, and when she was with him he smiled too. Yet this time that smile only brought grief to his heart. He hadn't had the strength to look at her body either.
"She's gone on a vacation, Klee. A long long vacation, so master Diluc is quite sad. We should let him gather his thoughts, yeah?" The voice of his blue haired brother brought him back to reality, but only partially. Diluc was not fond of leaving that happy place in his memories.
"So... What now?" Kaeya, with a hand on his brother's shoulder asked. His usual playful tone was nowhere to be found, just dark circles under his eyes to match his brother's puffy ones. The so called stone faced man clearly wasn't so stone faced, that melancholy was clearly not made of stone.
It took a while, but Diluc answered. "I..." And he stopped there. After all, that was enough words for Kaeya to know. Silence once again engulfed the room as they wordlessly looked at the coffin, almost waiting for it to open, for her to say 'I'm back', for the sick joke to be over with. Diluc hadn't eaten, or slept. Not since the night before, he refused, saying it'd be no use, and he'd just throw it all up.
Diluc only noticed Kaeya had left when he saw the other man coming back in with Adelinde in tow.
"Please, master Diluc. Eat, have some rest, if not for yourself then atleast for her." The woman gently jerked her head to the staircase. Perhaps that brought him back some sense, even just a little. So he followed the woman into the kitchen, where he was presented with a few fruits and a slice of bread with cheese on top.
He ate, a bit, before deciding it was too much. Atleast he did that much, Adelinde tried to reason, yet even she couldn't help but see an old image lost to time. Diluc was just like his own father in his time, and she prayed her old self would never see Diluc's daughter like that.
The funeral was short, and Cecilia had stared at her mother's beautiful figure from the moment she woke up till the casket closed. Diluc always thought the trend of naming children after flowers was a bit stupid, that was until his own was named after one. He hoped the child didn't understand, atleast not yet, but the wilted look on her chubby face suggested otherwise. Her eyesight hadn't developed yet, but the lingering scent of her mother from that long white dress on the cold corpse was familiar to her.
Diluc hated the world, or just most of it. It was a recent development really. He was fine with the world handling his heart like a prisoner of war, but he never wanted the same for a child barely a year old.
"Diluc!" A distant voice called out, and he turned around to see nothing.
Once again, he heard the same voice, and turned around to see nothing.
Was he going crazy? Hearing voices of the dead?
Maybe he was, he didn't care. He'd rather be a madman than forget that voice.