Work Text:
It took a couple of months for the nightmare to cede. Night after night, as the steady light of the candles wavered, Diluc’s body tensed. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. His jaws tightened. The neatly made bed sheets tangled up around his writhing body.
Another nightmare.
A recurring scene etched forever in his mind; haunted him and held his mind captive.
Jean leaned against the doorframe leading to his room, her arms hugged her body in a protective embrace, her face wrought with worry. Even as the door swung open, Diluc remained entrapped in his dreamscape—of the Abyss Herald… of her death.
He tossed and turned, his frowns deep and his eyes sealed shut.
It hurt her.
She was to blame for his endless nightmare.
Had she not shielded him then—
No. She did the right thing. She, Jean Gunnhildr, was the Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. She was the beacon of hope, Mondstadt’s hope. She would protect those who she held dear at all costs, even her life.
She hadn’t expected to survive that fight, nor did Diluc. For if he knew she would, the nightmare would not creep into his dream, would not torment him as it did now.
***
When the blade ran through her middle—she instinctively brought her hand to her abdomen—and when her life flashed before her, all she could think was Diluc. Too exhausted to even cloak her hand in the turquoise veil to heal herself. Even as she laid in his arms, even as she saw Diluc’s eyes, of those tears he tried to choke down, she still reached up to him, touched his face. To comfort him. But she had no words of reassurance, nothing to make it less painful for the two of them. No one to blame.
It wasn’t his fault the Herald ran his blade through her. She decided that herself. Upon seeing how exhausted Diluc was, how, despite all these years, he still took things into his hands without care, her body moved on its own. He said he’d trusted his back to her, and she trusted hers to him. And so when the Herald threatened to kill Diluc, rushed towards him with a final attack, she would protect him. It was natural, dying was.
But why did he look so sad? Why did he whisper words with a voice so low and so broken? Why did he beg her not to leave him?
“Jean, no, we’ll—”
She barely heard the words that followed after. Her light was fading, after all; her pale blue eyes lost their shimmer. But she heard it. Heard the pain of his voice.
***
“Oh, Diluc—” Jean pursed her lips as tears welled up.
How was she alive?
She closed her eyes and tried to remember what happened.
***
Before her consciousness faded, she stood by Death’s door in a dimly lit void. Only to be turned away, her entry denied.
Why? She asked no one.
Stillness.
Empty. Alone. Save for one ornate door made out of stone of the finest quality in front of her.
Of course. What was I thinking? Jean paced back and forth in front of the door to wait for someone to escort her to… wherever she might end up going.
Is this what dying feels like? She pondered. She knocked the door again and called out to whoever it was on the other side and only received silence.
But voices broke the stillness, echoing above her. She tilted her head upwards, towards the voices. Voices she recognized. Words overlap one over the other and Jean strained to make heads or tails of it.
“Sis!”
“... please—”
“Big bro… don’t worry… heart—it's…”
“Can… she be…”
“Jean!”
“... back… Church of—”
“... Herald… blade… blood… she was—”
“... be okay, Diluc… down…”
Barbara. Jean brought her hand to her chest, crestfallen when her heart was still.
She truly has died, hasn’t she?
She’d recognize the other voices too. That of her comrade, and that of her lov—friend.
She looked up.
Kaeya must’ve been the one who called out her name, who calmed Diluc down as recounted the encounter they had inside the Domain, and of her death. Of the blood that ran down the Tidal Blade, and of her death.
And Barbara. Oh, how she must be hurt seeing her big sister’s limp, bloody corpse in the arms of her lov—
She stopped her thought. What was she going to say about Diluc? She meant how Barbara must be hurt seeing her in the arms of her former superior. Yes. That’s it.
She sighed.
Even at Death’s door, her feelings were reserved.
She shook the thought aside, sifting through the voices again.
“... alive—”
Jean’s eyes widened at the word. Alive, she repeated. I thought—
Suddenly, a powerful whirlwind plucked her off her feet away from Death’s door towards the sky—if one would call a dull space above the door a sky. There were clouds—or smoke, Jean couldn’t make up—that parted open and beyond the mass was a door of gold and light. As the tempest pulled Jean nearer and nearer to the door, a loud, rhythmic pounding hammered her head.
Ba-dump.
She brought her hands to her head to try and still the headache that threatened to come, when voices rang in her ears again. Louder and louder, and Jean knew each of the voices that cried out for her name.
Barbara. Kaeya. Oh, little Klee called out too? And… Diluc. She heard the desperate yet hopeful tone of his voice when the door before her opened slowly. Light poured into the space, illuminating the darkness. Her shoulders rose, inhaling the air she thought she’d never breathe in again and exhaled, through her mouth.
Open your eyes.
Life.
Has she returned? Was that the reason why Death denied her entrance?
Open your eyes and see those which you love.
Jean obliged.
She willed her eyelid to slide open, to let light blind her and for her sight to return. She parted her lips and coughed. Dry. Parched. She twitched her fingers and attempted to raise her arms but they refused to listen to her will.
Life.
Her ears picked up voices, incoherent at first but the haze surrounding her cleared.
“Welcome back, Jean.”
One voice stood up above the others and she was instinctively drawn to it. She searched for the one who spoke, her eyes flitted left and right, through a series of familiar faces. The relief etched in their face made her smile and she did.
And when she locked her gaze on the man whose eyes were that of a sunset, she let the tears fall.
“I’m home.”
***
Diluc sprung up, sweat-soaked. He looked around and noticed that he was still in his room, in his bed, in the dark. The candle had long stopped burning, in its place, a hardened wax. He wiped his forehead of the sweat that gathered.
Jean’s eyes glistened, of the tears that threatened to flow. Of how Diluc patted the empty space next to him, alarmed.
“He was always like this ever since you two got returned”, she remembered Adelinde’s words. “Woke up terribly sweaty, eyes terribly swollen. The black under his eyes got deeper too. I’m not sure if Master Diluc has had enough sleep at all since that day.”
This was the first time she’d witnessed it herself after finally getting discharged and deemed ready to resume work. But hearing about and seeing it happen before her were two different things.
Diluc had the same nightmare over and over and over again.
She pushed his door wide open, intentionally letting the door creak.
“Diluc?”
He flinched.
“Diluc, can I come in?” she asked. Her voice soothed him, calmed him.
“Mm,” he replied, the nightmare was all too real.
It was, for both of them.
And so she ambled towards the bed, towards Diluc, who sat by the edge of his bed with a face haunted by his invisible demon, to wrap her protective arms around him, to bend down, to apologize.
“I wish I could banish the nightmare but—” she paused to still her cracking voice, to swallow down her sobs.
Diluc’s head leaned against her middle, where the blade pierced her through. With trembling arms, he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her nightdress.
Jean leaned down and nestled in his hair—to inhale the pleasant smell of grapes and sunshine—and brought one hand to stroke the width of his back and to entwine her fingers around his crimson locks.
Oh, how she loved him.
Jean stiffened.
Love? Diluc?
“—stay,” he begged, his voice muffled. She started when the sting of coldness as the wind blew, wedging itself between her and Diluc, whose shoulder rose and fell, whose nose nuzzled against her middle, sniffling.
Yes.
She loved this man.
Despite his shortcomings, Diluc was the little boy she fell for when they were young, and despite everything, Diluc would always be worth fighting for, worth risking her life for.
A reason to wake up with a smile.
Jean nodded, and with a whisper, she took away all of his dread, all of his hauntings.
With four simple words.
Four simple words, reserved only for his ears to hear.
“I’m here, my Dawn,” and that was all the affirmation Diluc needed to brave through the night.