Chapter Text
The world is vast; with it's never ending oceans, tall mountain peaks, freezing glaciers and ashy, burned ground. It would only make sense for there to be all sorts of people, from good to bad to neutral.
Kaeya, if asked, would say he fits somewhere along the neutral scale. He's not particularly a good man, but he never did something that would force him to accept the title of a bad man. He was truly, absolutely neutral.
Of course, the term neutral in itself is quite a tricky one to define as different cultures interpret it in different ways. In Mondstadt, neutral was a term that would fit someone like Katherine or maybe the old iron worker that owned the stand close to the city gates. Good people, but not particularly involved in the well-being of others. In Liyue, a city of contracts, "neutral" would fit the archon himself, Zhongli proudly weighting a fair outcome for his deals.
For where Kaeya came from "neutral" might as well translate to dead meat. A world so forgotten by the gods that people easily fell into their own hubris with no glider to make it easier on them was a world that would punish innaction in the most severe way. Kaeya knew the punishments well, he bowed his head down under the heavy burden of them since he was a child and he engraved each consequence deeply into his blood.
"Never forgive or forget," the first lesson he learned. Never forgive those who hurt you as they would do it again, never forget what they have done so you can give it back worse. The memory of it burns his retinas when he closes his eyes and the feeling of pure despair comes back to him. He lost a mother so he could learn this lesson.
"Morals aren't worth their cost," not when you have to choose between your continued existence and someone else's. Not when you can barely think of yourself as a real human, much less perceive others as something other than an obstacle in your path
"Loyalty is written in blood, but blood can boil," that one you learn when your father leaves you to fend for yourself in foreign lands where the sun shines so bright that you cannot open your eyes out of fear of going blind, and where the people are so warm that you start to feel like you have somehow swallowed hot coals.
"Ignore the screams," when you get out of whatever hole you found to hide yourself in.
"Ignore your screams," when you realize that the darkness you were birthed in clawed its way into your chest and nested there, for never to be taken out.
And finally: "If you see yourself out of the corner of your eye, do not look."