Chapter Text
Jean stands at Varka's desk--or rather her desk, at least for the time being--as she packs her small leather suitcase. Blouses, books, and brooches. Lisa leans over the railing next to Jean, watching.
"If I didn't know you only plan to stay the weekend, I would've thought you'd be travelling for weeks." She hums, rolling her eyes. Lisa walks down the three steps from the Grandmaster's personal library, turning to the windowsill behind the desk. She plucks a few flowers from a delicate ceramic planter. "You'll be wanting some of these like always, right?"
Jean nods as she clicks and locks her suitcase shut, hefting it from the desk. Lisa hands her a bouquet of colorful flowers, all crossbred by the librarian in her spare time. Fluorescent asters that glow a bright blue, dandelions that smell like cecilias baking in the sun. Jean smiles up at Lisa fondly, holding the flowers tight to her chest. She leans forward, before being interrupted by the sharp rapping of knuckles on a wooden doorframe.
Kaeya smiles, entering the office with his arms crossed. "My my, I hope I'm not interrupting anything too intimate between you ladies." He laughs
Jean flushes, clearing her throat. "No, nothing of the sort." She looks at Lisa apologetically. "I suppose I should be going now."
"We should've left a couple hours ago, Master Jean." Kaeya smirks, taking the Acting Grandmaster's bag from her. "It takes a couple hours to walk to Dawn Winery, and at this rate we'll be there by nearly nine o' clock." He looks towards Jean, leaning down at the waist to face her. "Surely you don't want to have a run-in with the monsters that lurk in the forests of the Windwail Highland?"
"You can't tell me you actually believe in those stories." Jean rolls her eyes, walking to the door.
"They do have some credence to them, cutie." Lisa purrs, standing behind Kaeya--both in a metaphorical and literal sense. "In the past day or two there have been quite a few reports from Springvale."
Jean sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Surely you don't actually believe that, Lisa? They're all just misidentified hilichurl sightings. Humanoid form, hunched posture, active at night." She thinks for a moment. "Although it is concerning that a hilichurl would linger so close to civilization."
"That concern," Kaeya says, walking to Jean, hefting Jean's suitcase over his shoulder, "is exactly why we should've left hours ago. Now come on, say goodbye to your girlfriend so we can go mourn your boyfriend."
"Lisa is not my partner in anything other than business!" Jean yelps.
Kaeya howls with laughter as he exits the office. "But Diluc was?"
Jean furiously refutes Kaeya as they leave the Knights of Favonious Headquarters, leaving Lisa to giggle by her lonesome.
. . .
The stony beach of Cider Bay disappears as they walk swiftly past Springvale. The sun begins to dip along the horizon--it was getting late, and would be even later by the time they arrived at the Winery, just as Kaeya had predicted.
Kaeya walks ahead of Jean with his hands behind his head, Jean having since reclaimed her bag. Her eyes drift to the Cavalry Captain's hip where Crepus Ragnvindr's false pyro vision sits on a chain. Jean purses her lips and her grasp on her suitcase's handle tightens.
"Why don't you ever talk about Crepus or Diluc?" She asks.
Kaeya stops in his tracks before shaking his head and carrying on forward, slower than before, almost as if a weight now hangs from his hip instead of his father's delusion. He shakes his head. "No use dwelling on the past."
"Then why do we go to the Winery every other week?" Jean looks up at Kaeya.
He looks away. "Respect? I don't know." He sighs, shrugging. "We only go to clean the place up. It's like their gravestone, I guess."
Jean nods.
They both continue on in relative silence as if reenacting that morbid funeral parade from years ago. Trees and sheer cliffs sprout around them as they approach Drunkard Gorge, the longest leg of the nearly two and a half hour journey. A rustling come from behind a bush.
Jean and Kaeya both draw their swords, standing against each other's back. At the Acting Grandmaster's hip, a verdant aqua glows. At the Cavalry Captains, a neon glare that is somehow both an abyssal purple and smoldering red. Both are taken aback when a child emerges from the foliage. Pink hair, blue berret, feline calico ears and tail.
Kaeya is the first to lower his weapon. "Diona?"
Jean follows suit. "Are you okay? Why were you hiding in the bushes?"
"My dad told me to find you guys since one of the hunters said they saw you passing Springvale." Diona huffs, bending over to catch her breath.
"We don't have time to investigate the monster sightings right now." Jean sheathes her weapon.
Diona has her eyes shut tight as she shakes her head, waving her hands as well. "No-no, no-no, no! This isn't about the waldmonster."
Kaeya looks at her. "You named it?"
"No, my dad and all the other drunkards did." She huffs, crossing her arms. "I'm surprised you don't know considering how much time you spend at the bar." Diona hisses.
"That doesn't matter." Jean sighs, crouching down in front of Diona. "If it doesn't have to do with the... waldmonster... what is it?"
"It's a boar."
Jean looks over at Kaeya, and they both stare at the little bartender. Kaeya holds a hand to his mouth, giggling quietly.
"A... boar?" Jean clarifies, glaring daggers into her lanky company.
Diona nods. "It's dead, but in a real weird way. Looks like a raisin."
That was enough to get Kaeya to fully laugh, and he turns his back to the girls, hysterical.
"What do you mean by that?" The Acting Grandmaster asks, still looking directly into the Cavalry Captain's soul, only now it's through his back.
Diona makes a big circle with her small hands, before crushing it into a flat clasping of fingers. "No blood inside of it, it's all in a gross puddle a few meters away. Dad can't find a cut on it, so whatever it is had to be small."
Kaeya wipes a tear from his eye, gasping out the last of his laughter. "So, do you have any idea what could have caused the raisin-boar?"
Diona shakes her head. “That’s why dad asked me to find you guys. He thought you might be able to figure it out.”
Jean picks her bag back up from the packed dirt path. “I’ll come investigate-“
”-No, I will.” Kaeya insists, patting Jean on the shoulder. “You go on ahead to the Winery. I doubt it’ll take me too long to take care of this little anomaly. Now then, where did you find this raisin-boar?”
Diona sneers at Kaeya, watching him stride back towards Springvale. She pouts, flattening her ears as she reluctantly follows him back down the path.
Jean continues in the opposite direction, hiking her way through Drunkard Gorge.
. . .
The brush around Dawn Winery has grown ten fold in the years following the disappearance of the Ragnvindrs, almost as if the dying memories around the mansion nourished the soil with their decay. Trees frame the property in an ominous light, the creamy light of the moon coating everything in a ghost-like sheen. The cedar arbors have yet to rot, bursting with leafy grapevines.
Jean stands in front of the door, remembering all the times she would walk for hours just be with Kaeya and Diluc. Master Crepus would always open the door with his tired smile and crinkled eyes, welcoming her in for lunch. But those days were well over.
Crepus died three years ago, and Diluc had been missing for just as long. Kaeya hadn’t lived in the mansion since they found his adopted father’s body, beaten, bruised, and bleeding. The Winery hadn’t been in operation since a few months after the incident, leaving the alcohol industry to small brewers in Springvale and the Cat’s Tail.
She opens the door, immediately struck by the uncharacteristic emptiness of the place. Jean misses the days where she would get into wooden sword fights with Diluc, dangling over the balusters before being scolded by Crepus with Kaeya hiding behind him. Or when she and Barbara would sleep over on holidays. Or on cool summer nights when Jean and Diluc would climb to the roof from the second-story balcony and spend the night together.
Jean shakes her head, closing the door behind herself. She throws her leather bag on a loveseat as she enters the foyer, grabbing the bows of her hair tie and pulling tight. She removes her gloves, tossing them next to her bag.
Just as Jean settles down on the couch, something—or other someone falls through the unlocked door. She rushes to the entrance, expecting to see a drunken Kaeya celebrating after a successful investigation.
Oh, how wrong she was.