Chapter Text
Jean was struggling. Lisa could tell.
Jean held her pain in the crooked bends of her gait. Stiff steps and angled wrists and tensed shoulders alongside trembling breaths and sunken eyes, all shielded from view by a nearly flawless mask of immovability. She was the Acting Grandmaster, afterall. She had spent a lifetime beneath Mondstadt’s watchful gaze, and it paid off: the cracks were visible only when the burden of her position weighed unbearable.
(Lisa liked to think she had gotten better at reading her wife's tells, but she knew Jean had just gotten worse at hiding them. It was the one thing in Jean's life she hadn't mastered with age, and Lisa was grateful for it.)
There was no melody of victory in the clamor of Jean's heavy armor, only donned in preparation for the most dire missions. There was no song, no sweetness, no celebration of good fortune and a job well done. There was only grief and sorrow, anguish and strife, and loss and pain. Jean's pain. That, at least, Lisa could address.
Lisa beckoned her through the doorway of their home, the rattling of Jean's armor intermingled with her shaking breath. The dents in her armor were filled with pure, reflective starlight that cast her body in shadow. Her eyes were dark, hair matted with blood that had long dried and turned black. Lisa stared at Jean, but it was the Dandelion Knight who stared back.
There were no words— none would be able to capture the enormity of everything, anyway. Lisa could only hope that this routine of theirs was familiar enough, comforting enough, to bring her Jean home.
Lisa started with her hands. Always. Lisa interlaced her fingers between clenched fists, gently prying the iron grip from shaped steel. Finger by finger she pulled the deep blue gauntlets from her wife's calloused skin. Dry and cracked and blistered; she knew these hands. They were the hands of a devoted friend, a gentle partner, and a hopeless romantic. They were hands not meant to draw blood, but they did, without protest, in defense of all Jean swore to protect. Jean's hands carried with them the kindness of hope and judgment of freedom. Lisa squeezed them tightly. She tried to infuse every moment of contact between them with adoration and warmth.
Lisa let go. She shifted her attention to the heavy pauldrons decorating her Jean's shoulder. Elaborate gold and engraved filigree spoke of the status and wealth of the Gunnhildr clan, but in a battle they were as functional as any common knight's. She untied the leather knots that held them in place, first the right side and then the left, and held them each for just a moment. Jean had once said that combat was the most cruel of equalizers, and Lisa agreed, staring at the massive dent inlaid alongside the lion head design. She gave her praise to the Archons, and to Wagner, for protecting Jean. She set them aside.
From there, she set to work on the vambrace upon Jean’s arm and forearm. The rivets attaching leather to steel were polished in grime. Lisa separated the knots with the edge of her nail, and unbuckled each strap as they laid against Jean’s underclothes. The hinges murmured as she pulled the heavy piece away, revealing a thin, off-white undershirt stained with sweat and blood. Through the thin fabric, she could see the testament of Jean’s lifetime of service with knights: a mosaic of faded scars that criss-crossed along her arms. Lisa laid a kiss on every one.
She unclipped Jean's cloak, carefully folding the richly embroidered—now, bloodstained—material into a tight square and set it aside. As she unbuttoned Jean's collar, she pressed a kiss against Jean’s parted lips, then pulled away.
Across Jean's torso, the heavy plackart and breastplate bore the same golden inlaid as her pauldrons. The lion’s maw that decorated it was obscured under the cacophony of chips and dents, but Lisa found it beautiful in the damage it endured in Jean's stead. For now, it's job was done.
With deft fingers, she unbuckled the four straps across her shoulders. Then, Lisa trailed her hands down Jean's waist, untangled the skirt of maille at her hips, and folded it beside the other fragments of armor strewn about the room.
Jean leaned forward, and pressed her head to the top of Lisa’s chest. She breathed, for the first time that evening, a long, steady breath. Lisa held her face, and peppered it with kisses across her eyes, her nose, her cheeks, anywhere she could lay them. She tasted the salt lines on Jean’s cheeks. She nudged Jean forward and pulled her down to sit at the edge of their bed.
Lisa kneeled, lifted up Jean’s right leg, then her left, and tugged apart the leather clips, steel pins, and cloth tassels that held the cuisse in place. Once off, Lisa smoothed the creases in her pants with her hand, dusting along the blackened charcoal from where they were not covered. She unfastened the greaves, unceremoniously light in face of the weight of the evening, and removed the layered plating on Jean's shoes.
Lisa stood up, and held out her hand. Jean took it, pressed her face into it, and then pulled herself to her feet.
Lisa knew the weight of responsibility that rested in every rivet and tie of the Gunnhildr armor, yet she could not help carry it. Lisa watched as, piece by piece, Jean remade the visage of the Dandelion knight on the desolate armor stand in their bedroom. When Jean finished, there were two knights: the first, an empty shell of armor and the second, Jean herself, full of words she could not utter.
Lisa sat beside her. She reached for a bottle of clear oil, tucked into her bedside table, and warmed it in her hands. Then, she took each of Jean's hands and massaged them, seeping the oil into the cracks of dried skin until they were made smooth.
With two taps to Jean’s underarms, Lisa peeled her shirt up and over Jean’s head. Lisa followed the contours of thin ribs and taut muscle, of scarred flesh and discolored burns with the oil. Every ministry was a pull away from the Abyss, every hum was a pleading to come home. Lisa could not brave the journey for her, but where Jean’s muscles hissed, Lisa dug her knuckles in, quelling simmering tissue and swirling mind in equal measure. When the angry pain subsided, and left only numbness, Lisa righted herself beside Jean, knee-to-knee, and stared at the darkness of their doorway.
“Hey,” Lisa said as she nestled beside her. She brushed aside a stray lock of golden hair, so much like the blooms Jean's title evoked, and tucked it behind her wife's ear with a ghost of a smile.
“Hey,” Jean’s voice was hollow, but loud. It filled the silence of the room to the brim, and threatened to overflow. Jean looked at her, her eyes wide and distant. Lisa waited, and rested her hand atop Jean’s balled fist, again, snaking between her fingers to pry nail from bruised palm.
“You’re home now,” Lisa said, quietly, affirmatively. A statement of fact as well as a declaration.
Lisa squeezed her hand, hard, and Jean, her Jean, slowly, weakly, squeezed back.