Chapter Text
The very audible thuck sound at Jean's window wakes her up from her sleep. She turns to look out. The branches of the tree outside swayed rigorously as raindrops pelted her window glass in the midst of a thunderstorm, and sometimes it would hit her window. She is about to pull her covers back over herself when she hears another thuck sound.
Thuck. It is the third time now, and now that Jean has been awake for more than a minute, she notes that the sound is more crisp than the sounds that branches usually made when the winds makes them knock on her window.
She gets out of bed and walks to the window.
Thuck. A stone flies towards her face, causing Jean to flinch, before realising that the glass window is still between her and the projectile. She picks up her sword and vision, then opens the window and looked. Who would be outside her home in the dead of the night during a thunderstorm?
"Hey." The voice came from below. She looks down.
Kaeya!?
She grabs her keys, but swings herself over the window sill, jumping down from her apartment on the third floor. She lands besides Kaeya with practised grace and ushers him under shelter immediately.
In the glow of the flicker lamp at the porch, she can see that Kaeya is drenched in more than just rain. Dark splotches of red are visible through the grey cloak he has on, and Jean does not want to think about where they came from.
"Sorry about the sudden late night visit. Or maybe I should say, early morning?" Kaeya smiles, but his lips are missing its usual hues. "Unfortunately, I am in need of a little help here."
Jean nods and unlocks the front door to let him in. She leads Kaeya up three flights of stairs to her apartment wordlessly. Once she has shut her door, she turns to him.
"Kaeya! What is going on!? Is that your blood-?" she wrests the cloak off him and gasps.
Parts of Kaeya's clothes are singed and burnt off. She sees exposed flesh, pink, red, some areas glistering with oil, the pungent smell of iron and charred meat wafting off him. The whole of his left arm looks like leather, only it isn't. There is a flap dangling from his hand that Jean isn't sure whether it is his skin, or whatever is left of his glove.
The severity of his injuries sapped the strength out of Jean's legs and drops her to her knees, mouth agape.
As though taking the cue from her, Kaeya grunts as he lowers himself to the floor. Jean tries to support him, gingerly putting her hands on his shoulder, and she gulps when she realises that he does not react even though she is certain that her fingers grazed a slippery open wound. Third degree burns, damage to hypodermis, she noted.
Kaeya gives her another weak smile. "Oof- held by the Lionfang knight...? Well today's... a good day..."
Jean wants to cry out at how Kaeya can still make flirtatious jokes with his body is in such a state. Calm, Jean, calm. She has known Kaeya long enough to know that he is doing all he can to keep himself crumbling. So she will have to keep herself together for both of them.
"Okay, stay here," Jean gets up, she pulls open a nearby drawer and withdraws a pair of scissors. "Let's get all this cloth out of the way."
"Eager to get me out of my shirt too..." Kaeya grins.
Jean shoots him a glare. Kaeya lets out a soft chuckle.
She began to cut away the fabric over Kaeya's upper body. Those she can remove with a gentle tug she removes, earning a wince or an ouch from Kaeya each time. Those stuck to his wounds, the fibres melded with bubbling flesh, she leaves there.
When she is done removing the last remnants of his shirt and vest, Jean fingers stop at the waist of his pants. She looks up at him, putting on her sternest facial expression of If you speak one more horny remark I will stop helping you and thankfully Kaeya does not. He just nods at her. So she unbuckles his belt.
Clunk.
Jean's eyes dart immediately to the floor the left side of his hip. A pale blue gem, embedded in a familiar metallic casing moulded in the shape of a pair of wings, light cyan snowflake glyph glowing in the middle of the gem.
"Oh, Kaeya!" on any other day, she would have hugged and congratulated him on being recognised by Lord Barbatos and granted a Vision. Today her heart stops at the realisation that Kaeya's life had been endangered to the point where he might not have been in her home right now had the Archons not thrown him a stick.
Kaeya looks at his Cryo Vision, then looks towards Jean, although not quite at her. "It's... pretty."
He does not say anymore, so Jean stands, goes to her water closet to fetch two buckets of water back to the living room where they were. With her help of her Anemo, she slowly swirls the water around his chest and arms, disinfecting the wounds on the man. Kaeya grits his teeth through the feelings of pain and relief as the cool water comes into contact with his flesh.
Then comes the smell of grass and spring, and for a second Kaeya recalls the green expense that his child self used to play together in with -
Jean's Dandelion Breeze activates the cells in his body to repair and regenerate themselves, and Kaeya watches in wonder, holding out his arms to observe the bubbles of clear pus expand and to form a thin membrane over his blackened epidermis, then looks down to his chest at the trickles of blood seeping out of his pink raw flesh to coalesce into patches of maroon scabs. He has seen Jean do this before, but never at this range nor on himself.
He turns his palms over to admire how while still numb, are no more offering a peak show at his phalanges and metacarpals. Instead, a soft yellow and red padding had grown over them with a sheen.
"Please try not to move your fingers yet."
Kaeya nods gratefully. I can't even if I tried.
The room is slowly brightening with the dim glow of the rising sun. Some time during Jean's tending to him, it had stopped raining, although the sky remains overcast.
"Do you think I can take a sick leave today, Master Jean?"
Jean lets out a sound between a groan and a sigh. "Of course you can. In fact, I am going to prescribe you with bed rest now. Here, take my bed." She herds him by the shoulders towards her room and bed.
"First time I'm in your home, and we're already going into the bedroom?"
Jean would smack him if he was not already injured. She settles for sweeping him off his feet with a gale that dumped his butt inelegantly onto the bed.
"Oh, impatient...!" he laughs as he lies back on the padded mattress.
Jean groans again as she leaves the bedroom, and returns with his new Cryo Vision, placing it by the nightstand. She picks out her knight uniform from the wardrobe.
"I'm going to work now, Sir Kaeya, but you are going to fill me on what happened when I am back."
"Sure, Master Jean.
"Please don't tell anyone else about me though," he adds.
"Okay." She moves to leave again.
"Jean."
"Yes, Kaeya?"
"Thank you."
Jean fights back her tears. "No, Kaeya. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for being alive."
When he hears the door of apartment lock, Kaeya lets his tears flow.