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You laid in the confines of the soft bed—softer than feathers and Cecilia's petals, your body easily leaving markings on it with its weight. As you lazily moved your limbs to sprawl across the sea of the blankets and pillows, they creaked in soreness from the inactivity of the past few… days? Weeks? You were never one to recognize the passage of time without the help of a calendar so you were left to ponder alone how long you had been imprisoned.
Imprisoned. Yeah, that's the right word, you remind yourself again. Because no matter how soft, comfortable the bed was, how many beautiful and silky clothes were bought for you, how precious the dazzling and jaw-dropping jewelry was, how rich and flavorful the food could be—you were a prisoner with no free will. (Ironic for a Mondstadt citizen, you realized.)
You didn't want to admit that all this care, all these presents, all this attention, made it sometimes hard for you to keep your wits about yourself. No, you prided yourself for being the rational one. The one who was always honest and sincere with their friends even if it meant hurting them, for their own good always, the one who would tell someone they are in the wrong even if it put them in a disadvantage, the one who could foresee trouble and avoid it based on your knowledge and wisdom on people.
Yet you were the one in the most fucked up situation possible.
Such thoughts would have usually given way to anger, frustration, shame, any ugly feeling of the sort really, but just like your body, your mind was sore and weary as well. You had been stuck in this spacious room with its giant four-poster bed, the big wooden desk and grandiose seat by the long (yet barred) window, wardrobe filled with pretty clothes—and with nothing. No books to read, no pens to write with, no paper to rip apart—nothing.
This had to be a psychological torture of some sort, you thought. Who had given him the idea for it? Was it to make you feel so fucking bored that even the sight of him could elicit a feeling other than utter disgust and hatred?
Hatred… It was weird to think of yourself hating someone—anyone. Hatred was a thing; a plot device the bards put in their ballads, the directors depicted in their theater plays, and the authors placed into their characters. In real life, it was an emotion less common than love, you thought. It was for those gravely betrayed by someone trusted; for those who had loved and lost something or someone, and needed a scapegoat for their grief and pain. You on the other hand hadn't had such grand losses of trust in order to hate someone. Whatever friend turned out to trashtalk you, you simply let go of. Whatever acquaintance turned out to dislike you, you simply forgot about them. That all required so much less energy than a life filled with petty acts of hatred as most misused the word.
No, hatred was much more different. It was the thing that fueled your starved mind to keep going, keep harming, keep seething and spitting poison at him. It was something rarer than love, something that came in the rarer cases when heartbreak was not enough to glue the brokenness inside you.
"Y/n?"
You didn't move. You didn't acknowledge him.
The bed dipped downwards a little close to your right arm, the smell of burnt caramel infiltrating your nasal senses but besides the rustling of the bedsheets, nothing touched you.
He didn't touch you.
And you kept your silence. It must have been at least three, maybe four? days since you stopped responding to him. No venomous curses, no begged pleeadings, no sweet falsities. Since he didn't try to coerce you into speaking by any other means, it wasn't all that hard. You just acted as if he didn't occupy the room—your room he had excitedly placed you in, safe from the ailments of a truly lived life. You acted ignorant to his existence despite it being the sole reason for this predicament.
All you did was blink, your head luckily having already been turned towards the wall before he had come in. That way, you didn't have to force your eyes to stir away from his figure, his hair or his gaze. To think you had found him attractive once.
With a defeated sigh, the weight on the bed lessened and you inwardly felt a mixture of relief and anxiety swirling around your chest. You expected the usual but you felt like something different might happen today. Cold sweat coated your hands and for a brief moment, you directed a portion of your hatred at yourself; for not being able to stay fully ignorant to his presence and letting him affect you this way.
"How long will you keep this up, [Y/n]?"
That's a good question , you humored yourself internally. How long would he keep me trapped here, was for sure a better one though.
You heard his footsteps, strong and steady, as he strode towards the door of the room. That was fast , you thought. Usually he spent at least an hour, or what felt like one, to cajole you. He unlocked it—you heard its damned click, a sound equal to the accursed screeching of a crow. The doors would automatically lock so you would have no means to open it or any other door in this archon-forsaken manor. He then spoke:
"Go."
His command was loud and clear. Perhaps a voice he used as a mere teen yet a captain of the knights way back then. The memories of those peaceful times brushed at your fingertips, twitching, pushed aside all the same, as you lethargically moved and sat up on the bed. You were probably a hot mess. Your long hair cascading along your back in an unkempt manner, the loose, cream-colored nightdress you had found on your bed the night before now decorated in wrinkles from all the trashing of sleepless and tireless nights, the soft dark eyebags to further highlight them, and a bare shoulder, giving but the most watchful gaze a glimpse of scratches that had been self-inflicted not too long ago.
He had noticed them but that had been another story altogether.
You faced him now, clarity slowly materializing in your eyes but not without an ounce of confusion added by the ticking second. You loathed to break your unspoken vow of silence but the sight of Diluc himself standing on the doorstep, commanding you to step outside, setting you free, seemed like a complete farce to you.
"What?"
Your voice cracked, the question coming out almost inaudible from days past without usage and had he not been watching you, he may had missed it altogether.
There never was something about you he missed on though.
"You can go. I have been made awfully aware of your hatred for this place and for—" Myself , he would have added if he wasn't such a coward to admit his wrongs. No, that's something only you did apparently. But oh. This was unexpected of him that it left you reeling for a while. Did Barbatos pierce that thick Ragnivdr skull of his with an arrow of self-reflection?
"I will not keep you here any longer." He continued, his crimson gaze fervently staying on yours. "That is not what you truly wish for and I can deny it no longer." Your heart skipped a beat at those words. (Whether it was just because of his words or because it was him, that was different.) But you weren't gullible enough to fall for the honeyed words. Not again.
He just didn't sound resigned enough to do this.
"What's the catch?" You ask, your voice this time louder.
He was the silent one this time.
You narrowed your eyes, pushing your legs off the bed as you stood up and left the bed. You took a few steps towards him, stopping in the middle of the room. You had crossed half the distance required until your freedom—and him.
"There is a catch then," you sigh, crossing your arms in front of your chest. Out of habit, you begin to scratch your arm while contemplating. You don't catch it but he balls his fists, obviously hating that habit of yours and catching himself from stopping you. You hurt yourself too often that way, scratching so much and so deeply sometimes that you bled. And he hated the mere thought of you bleeding, of you being hurt— irrelevant of the mental and emotional pain he had caused you.
"My friends," you bait him carefully and you wait. Waiting is not a stranger to you after all this time. "You'll go after them again," you tilt your head to the side, looking comically uncaring as you utter those words. The rising heat in the room is all you need as an answer.
"They are not your friends. They are backstabbing filth who so readily talk behind your back—"
"And you are any better?" Just like that, the room's temperature dropped. For a veteran vision wielder, he was pathetic at controlling it over being controlled by it. "You, who keeps me here like a fucking prisoner, kidnapped me, drugged me, acts as if—as if you're doing me a favour! And speak as if I'm supposed to be grateful—"
"I give you everything—"
"You TOOK everything from me!" You shake, you realize, only after this exclamation. He has moved from the door, and it shut closed, locked automatically, out of reach once more. You're stuck with him between you and that door.
"I had a life, I had a job, I had my own apartment and my own struggles and hobbies and friends and you—you took everything away from me just so you can live in your cute, little, fantasy where a single person out there actually loves you."
Your words were cruel. You knew that. You knew perhaps better than anyone alive that those words were cruel to Diluc specifically. He had lost so much, he had been betrayed by those he trusted the most. He had been a vessel of hatred for far too long and while hatred had its roots in love, love could also be its remedy.
But you refused to be the one playing into this sick type of love.
"You love me."
"I don't."
His head hung low, his frown deepening at your rejection. If you had a care to spare, you might have comforted the expression of loss off of him.
"Open the door, Diluc."
"..."
You took some cautionary steps towards him and stupidly enough, you had to remind yourself not to touch him as you did so. The days when you'd be on such terms had ceased the moment he had crossed that line.
"Let me go. With no threats. Please."
It was a small eternity before he complied, before he turned and unlocked the door for you to exit through. Another small eternity until he walked you down the stairs until the front door of the manor and unlocked it as well. You were desperate to keep your breathing even, to keep your beating heart from deafening you or any signs of reluctance from him. It was best to act before he could gather his bearings, before he could reel back into his passionate feelings and cage you with them again. Your eyes could have bored holes through his back the way you followed his transic state—ironic, since you had spent the past weeks ignoring him.
When he opened the front gate and stepped aside for you, you didn't hesitate. You passed the threshold denied to you for far too long and kept walking ahead. You didn't spare a glance at him or the manor, at the one you had called a friend and a lover, at the place you had fantasized living in with him and being a happy wife instead of a golden prisoner—you simply kept going, and faster, and faster than that, breaking into a sprint with miraculous adrenaline pumping your muscles as you finally—finally tasted the freedom this nation was known for.
"Barbatos… Thank you." You prayed in earnest once you felt you were far enough, one of the few times in your life where you'd done so.
Yet he wondered at the same time, was drowning in your hatred better than swimming through life without it?