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dawn-til-duskk · 24 days

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okay i know technically Crepus week is already over but i want to start sharing a bunch of my Genshin headcanons on here so I'm pretending i'm totally not late and jumping on the bandwagon by starting with him so let's go

Fatui Crepus Headcanons

(including how he got the delusion, why the Fatui assassinated him, and how he met his wife)

(adapted from some ideas i had for the AU i have with @applesandcecilia that i decided i liked enough to make them part of my canon universe hcs. we named Diluc's mom Selene for that so that's what I'm going with it's a pretty name)

Hopefully this makes sense? I always feel like halfway through typing these kinds of things out that it just kind of devolves into rambling and a bunch of meaningless nonsensical crap. I swear my headcanon lists aren't going to be this long normally this just got weirdly intensive.

Word count: 2,025 (there's also a TL:DR at the end if you're curious but don't want to read I have no idea how this got so long I've written actual complete fics shorter than this)

The Ragnvindr clan has always been a clan of heroes. From the rebellion against the Decarabian all the way down to Venessa's rebellion, wherever great things in Mondstadt happen, you can expect that a Ragnvindr will be there. So naturally, from the moment little Crepus could even pick up a toy sword, he was training to be a knight.

While their son spoke much of his plans for joining the Knights of Favonius, Crepus' parents had other plans in mind. They had been unable to have more than one child, and as the sole heir of the Ragnvindr clan, were relying on their son to carry on the family's thousand-year legacy of the Dawn Winery. They dismissed Crepus' dreams of knighthood as nothing but foolish childhood daydreams, and offered very little support in his efforts.

As Crepus got older, however, his need to participate in the protection of Mondstadt only grew stronger, especially as Abyssal monster activity increased. But in addition to a lack of support from his parents, he also lacked the physical strength he needed. He had been a sickly child, often in bed with a fever or other illness, and although no healer could find anything specifically wrong with him, it was obvious to everyone that even in times of health he was weak, struggling to run as fast or as far as the other children.

Crepus did everything in his power to overcome his physical challenges, but when it came time for the squirehood tests at age 12, he struggled greatly and was rejected. He continued to try every year for the next four years before finally accepting his fate at age 16 and agreeing to begin studying with his father to prepare for taking over the winery. He took well to his new duties, but he was still dissatisfied and restless.

During his training and attempts to join the Knights, he had caught the eye of the Captain of the 8th Company who offered to take Crepus under his wing. He found that the captain provided the support and encouragement he was missing from his own father, and the two became very close. Unbeknownst to him, however, the captain was also serving the Fatui, and, believing that his repeated disappointments would leave him open to suggestion, the captain approached him soon after his final rejection with an offer to join the Fatui.

At first Crepus was taken aback at the revelation that his mentor was acting as a Fatui spy, but it didn't take long for him to grow used to the idea. The Fatui, as the captain put it, was really no different from any other military organization in Teyvat. Even the Knights of Favonius often operated in the gray zones of morality. What really mattered was the results. The Fatui was going to destroy the Abyss, and if Crepus wanted to help protect Mondstadt and participate in a great cause, he needed to be a part of them. The Knights of Favonius weren't willing to work with his weakness, and the gods refused to recognize all his hard work and ambition with a vision, but the Fatui could see beyond all that. In fact, they could even make him stronger -- a delusion, they called it. The power of the elements right at your fingertips without having to wait on the fickle minds of the heavens.

Ultimately, Crepus agreed, and before long he was provided with a delusion, a rank, and a code name -- Brighella. It felt odd for a while, operating in secret, communicating with an organization that had been deemed an enemy of Mondstadt by so many for so long, but he was doing something, and more importantly, it was making a difference. Through the missions they sent him on, the Abyss monster activity took a sharp decline, and children that had once been kept inside by their fearful parents returned to the streets, happy and carefree. He even began using his position as the Dawn Winery owner's son and its associated business travels to take his efforts to the other nations, and he was quickly promoted and commended by his commanding officers.

Surprised they had even managed to recruit a high society Mondstadtian, Crepus' commanding officers were careful in their use of him. They kept him away from Snezhnaya and as disconnected from the main body of the Fatui as possible, focusing him on Abyss related plots in fear that being involved in more intensive Fatui matters would let his nobility get the best of him. But Crepus' enthusiasm for his newfound calling was an opportunity that couldn't be missed, and the more he accomplished, the deeper they pulled him in.

By age 18, Crepus was recognized as a full fledged Lieutenant in the Fatui, leading his own Special Forces unit in secret comprised of other non-Snezhnayan agents and spies. His mentor's words about the Fatui's results had largely proved themselves true as well; crime in Mondstadt and the other areas his unit operated was at an all-time low, and Abyssal activity continued to fall similarly. But the price of his successes was higher than Crepus realized. Though his superiors remained careful enough to not arouse his suspicious, they found that his position in Mondstadt gave them access to valuable information that he gave willingly, not realizing the importance of what he knew, and he gradually began taking missions more and more blindly, not realizing he and his unit were being used in increasingly nefarious schemes. Before long, Lieutenant Brighella's Special Forces unit had become one of the most dangerous branches of the Fatui, primarily due to just how few people even knew of their existence.

Eventually, Brighella and his unit became a point of interest for an underground network of anti-Fatui intelligence and rebellion, and realizing just how powerful the Fatui could become if they expanded their efforts, they sent one of their most powerful members to capture the Lieutenant: a young Hexenzirkel witch named Selene.

Expecting a cold-hearted, ruthless Fatui brute, Selene was quite caught off guard to find a charming, lighthearted, clever young man, who was even so bold as to outright flirt with her as she made her kidnapping attempt. There was an instant chemistry, and Crepus took the confusion it caused as a means of escape, thus thwarting his would-be captor.

Selene tried again many times after that, but Crepus found a way out every time, and somewhere along the line, the pair found their respective attempts at capture and escape rather half-hearted, instead using them as excuses for playful banter and even eventually meaningful conversations.

As Selene came to understand Crepus' reasons for joining the Fatui, she realized that he was completely unaware of the way his commanding officers had been manipulating him, and her attempts at his capture were soon replaced by more earnest attempts to get him to see just how bad the Fatui truly were. And as Crepus begin to fall more in love with Selene, he started to see past his youthful need to find meaning in his life through the Fatui, but didn't fully realize the magnitude of his mistake until one fateful day he would never speak of again.

Selene almost panicked that day to find Crepus at her doorstep, bloody, breathless and terrified, but her resolve soon took over and she put her magic to use in concealing him from the Fatui and ensuring that so long as she lived, they could never harm him.

Determined to do everything he could to right his wrongs, Crepus turned himself in to the Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius -- his newly-promoted childhood friend Varka -- fully prepared to serve prison time for his treachery.

Though distraught by the news of his friend's betrayal to Mondstadt and concerned at how far he had been misled, Varka truly believed that Crepus' heart had been in the right place, and ultimately made the decision to keep his records sealed and privately pardoned him for his crimes.

Shortly after, now a little over a year after their first meeting, Crepus proposed to Selene. Unaware of what their son had been doing in secret for the past 3 years, Crepus' parents were confused and upset by the news of his engagement to a woman they had never met, so they were forced to elope. With no place to stay in Mondstadt due to his parent's disapproval, they decided to volunteer in Selene's network for a time.

Two years later, Crepus finally reconciled with his parents. He returned to his duties in preparing to take over the winery, and for once in his life, finally began to find joy in them. Pleased by this, and now eager for Crepus to settle down with his wife and start a proper family, his father decided to retire and pass the Winery on to his son early.

Though all was well for a time, and it seemed as though Crepus had successfully escaped his past, shortly after giving birth to Diluc, Selene fell sick with a rare disease, and while she recovered from her symptoms well enough to begin caring for their new baby, she was informed that she could no longer have any more children as she had hoped. Over the next few years they sought help from the best healers in Teyvat and even Selene's Hexenzirkel sisters, but her disease continued to progress and she passed away when Diluc was only five years old.

Beyond his devastation at losing his wife, Crepus once again had to worry about the Fatui. The Hexenzirkel provided some protection for him, but without the constant presence of a witch in his home, they were still somewhat vulnerable, and now he had a son to protect. Although they had wanted to destroy it altogether, Selene was worried what the consequences of doing so would be, so they decided to hide Crepus' delusion in Dragonspine. Despite his promise to her to never touch the dangerous artifact again, Crepus retrieved the delusion a few weeks after Selene's funeral.

His determination to protect his family only grew after taking in Kaeya, and while he was never forced to use the delusion, he often carried it with him, particularly while traveling. He debated for many years about if or when he should tell his two sons about his troubled past, worried that simply knowing about his life as Brighella could put them at risk. He finally decided that when both boys were 18, he would have the difficult discussion, but before Kaeya could join his brother in coming of age, Crepus was killed in the incident on Diluc's birthday.

With no letter left behind from Crepus and no instructions given on what to do in the event of his death, Varka debated on whether or not to tell his sons about his Fatui involvement, but before he could make a decision, Diluc suddenly left Mondstadt and Kaeya renounced both his inheritance and ties to the Ragnvindr family. Feeling that it would not be best to try to find a way to inform both boys at that point, Varka kept Crepus' records sealed, even through the investigation of his death and Eroch's removal from the Knights

It wasn't until Diluc was saved from the Harbingers by the same network his parents worked in that one of the members recognized him as Crepus' son and told him the story of his father's past and how his parents met. Diluc then recounted the information in one of his few letters home to Kaeya, and despite the initial shock of the information, both boys found some peace from it. Diluc had finally found the truth he so desperately sought, and was pleased to learn that so many, even those who knew of his darker side, had considered his father to be a truly good man. And Kaeya, still struggling with Diluc's reaction to his revelation of his own troubled past, found a sense of comfort knowing even his adoptive father he looked up to so dearly had secrets, and that perhaps he may have accepted the truth about the son he had taken in after all.

TL;DR: A mentor convinced Crepus to join the Fatui after he got rejected from the Knights and had to be dragged out of it by a Hexenzirkel witch that worked in the same network that saved Diluc from the Harbingers

#crepusweek2024 #ragbros #ragfam #genshin kaeya #genshin diluc #genshin impact #genshin crepus #Selene Ragnvindr #genshin oc #genshin original character #does she count as an oc? i feel like she kind of has to

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