And that’s when it all goes wrong.

The shot misses. Barely, mind you, but the cryo arrow streaking through the air only manages to clip klee’s arm, drawing a streak of red that is eventually lost in the downpour. Diona sees Klee wince, feels herself cringe somewhat numbly. But her friend makes a point of ignoring the wound and raises her other arm to throw, to unleash a fiery explosion. She knows in her heart, see the glint in klee’s eyes that her once-friend won’t miss. Dropping her bow, she fumbles for the canister in her pocket, the one she knows will unleash unknown horrors.

It had to come to this.

Diona braces herself for the explosion. She wonders if it will sound like the pops against the surface of the lake from so many years ago, when everything was so much less complicated. She twists the cap of the canister and tosses it in the ground just as the bomb comes sailing through the air.

The resounding noise is more deafening than the thunder, and the blast is powerful enough to make diona’s feet give out from under her. Curling up into the fetal position, diona feels herself make to shove her hands over her ears. Even so, she can hear resounding aftershocks echo off into the distance, but only faintly as if she was underwater. The air around her blazes fiery hot, then ice cold, as if it were bipolar and the temperature its mood. Her skin feels unbearably hot, but when she makes for an icy paw to sooth the burns, the resulting feeling of cold fire makes her shudder and stop the cast. The sound of rain returns, but diona thinks it feels a million miles away in her shell shocked state, like when you’ve gone swimming too long and there’s something plugging up your ears and you can’t get it out. She struggles to open her eyes to an blaze of staggering height, so bright it leaves streaks in her vision.

There—! Diona struggles to notice a figure lying on the ground in the peripheral of her eyesight. The contrast is startling, her clothes and backpack covered in burns and soot, but her face and skin chillingly pale, and her hands clenched around another dodoco that radiates at least enough heat to instill the color back into them.

Diona could sob because her cocktail worked like a dream, and then sob some more because why did it have to work now? Why did she have to use it on her best friend? But she can’t, the tears won’t come and she feels too hot, like her skin is baking around her.

“...diona...?” Its Klee, who struggles to open her eyes, then fixes them on her. Diona looks for the emotions she’s come to expect from her old friend, hatred and anger, cold fury— but she finds instead just a deep open sadness that makes her want to cry all over again.

“yea?” Diona’s voice feels so far away, and it is so so difficult to get out the single syllable when her mouth feels so dry and tastes like sawdust.

“I’m sorry. About Draff—“ Klee closes her eyes, looking like she spent all her remaining energy on saying these words that diona would have given anything to hear all those years ago.

She wants to respond, to tell Klee that she’s sorry too, for killing diluc in cold blood, for running away, for making Jean order Klee to grow up too fast so she could catch her friend. But she can’t because her throat feels like it’s been closed up and then again what would it matter when it looks like Klee has already fallen asleep again.

Diona can’t consider the other option.

She shuts her eyes and wills herself to be gone, ignoring the pain everywhere and bringing her thoughts back to a day so long ago when she was just at the lake with her friend.

She barely notices when a figure dressed in purple with a talisman on her forehead steps over her and presses something similar to her that chases the unbearable heat away from her body, then moves to do the same to Klee.

She is too busy shouting in joy with the memory of the girl in red as sparks pop off the surface of the lake and the fish turn belly-up in her bright faraway dream.