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Jean’s desk has the faint whiff of coffee.
It’s more familiar than pleasant, if anything—he inhales, willing it to seep into his senses. The signature ends with a flourish and a flick of his wrist, pristine, deliberately embellished—not the way he hastily signs off his field reports.
Kaeya wets the quill, repeats the same set of movements. This once, it’s not a forge; the quartermaster’s signature does hold some legal value after all. Perks of the job, though not as entertaining as penning out the letters of Jean Gunnhildr in a way more akin than her own.
The first time, he caught onto the tiny, upward tilt of her lips before Jean shook her head in a reprimand. Worth it. They'd been younger, and he'd started to dabble as her subordinate. It is now a tiny, tender memory he keeps.
It’s sunny outside. Kaeya twirls the quill in nimble fingers, taps the end of it to his lips.
Amidst the silence, disrupted only by the faint scrape of pen on paper and the rhythmic thumping of his heel against wood, he takes in the office. The stillness settles in like a thin veil, an odd feeling. Kaeya's never been one to stand still, never one to find himself in a still room, where time had run static for the last nine hundred years. And this, this secluded calm, one he could never get used to, one that would itch onto his bones—it leaves room for noise.
His thoughts always did wander on their own, heedless of his attempts to just let go —of somethings, of sometimes—and so that is what they do. The awareness that he is the one running this very city, this very moment, this very now, seizes like thick, warm fingers around his chest, closing in like a stopwatch.
He could dwell, he could, he could let the walls swallow him whole.
It's just that—, that Kaeya seldom finds himself here—in this very office, second core of Mondstadt, old and with a history that’s half as ancient as his own—alone. It’s silent without Jean, which doesn't draw an answer in of itself; she makes little to no sound in all her composure, her eyes clear and still of emotion as she devotes wholly to duty. Ah, must be the thumping isn't there.
He signs another document off, his very name embedding into Mondstadt’s core vein.
The stacks—aligned neatly when Jean first arranged them—are mussed. Kaeya works the documents in a disorderly way. He likes it this way.
The small portrait she’d kept on the table, the one he oft catches Jean’s serene, faithful gaze directed at. The frame into which she’d carved herself to be. It sits gravely beyond the spread parchments, the end of a will to render it eternal—in the end, still, a scrap of canvas that'd decay under the tides of time.
And yet.
Kaeya is pointedly aware he avoids the portrait, evades the inextricable, inexplicable gentleness of Sir Venessa’s gaze. It could not, surely, be directed at him. The similarity is suddenly too clear, blinding.
The realization reaches him with a nigh ironic edge, that this is something every body of Mondstadt ought to acknowledge and yet—it stuns him, half surprise half awe, like the kind blade of Lionfang grazing his heart.
He pens his signature out, quips his head to look at it, lets the thought go, for now. It always comes back.
He wets the quill and, this time, a blot of black trickles down onto the parchment.
Too soon, it is too silent once again. He wanders, wonders.
Kaeya could feign, pretend to be—shape his crooked ends to Jean’s fine integrity, her inherited standards. He knows her well, her stoic wording, her blade-straight bearing. But alas, that is just a silly musing. He’s always had a penchant for those.
Ever alert, he hears the faint but quick spring of footsteps. Klee .
Ah, that can't be it. The door is ajar, just enough that he catches a glimpse of a crimson headband. Close enough.
It's only the first day. Acting Acting Grand Master is dangerously making the turn from silly to cleverly funny.
It had happened like this.
Jean had called him in. He’d come in—he always did—five minutes fashionably late—he always did.
“Kaeya,” she hadn’t been bent over paperwork, she’d been pensive, mind somewhere else. Rare. Interesting.
He waves informally and, naturally, almost unconsciously, drifts to the side of her desk. Faces the window panes, but eyes her sideways.
“I trust you have heard of a certain 'Dodo-King', hailing a certain 'Dodoland' recently?” she says, and the sheer seriousness of 'Dodo-King ' ushers a snicker out of him.
“Oh, yes, she got quite excited,” he remembers the day before, a flash of red frantically parading the foyer, waving an open letter around. “I gave her pointers to keep it a super-dodoco-secret. I'd bet on a prank, but it's best we don't take it for granted.”
Jean nods, purses her lips—she does it when weighing possibilities, outcomes, an answer or a request. Kaeya already knows what the latter is going to be.
“She has been… really adamant on pursuing the letter. You are aware of the consequences an unsupervised Klee can lead to. I have decided to escort–, accompany her.”
A pause, a sigh, and then the smile that is a shared confidence between two people who've shared a straining path for a while.
“Can I entrust the Ordo to your supervision?”
Can I entrust Mondstadt to you?
The answer, Kaeya does not know—not yet. But he can , for Jean, for now. Only then, does honesty come easily.
“All you have to do is ask,” the edge of his smile is soft and fond. He means it.
Jean accepts it openly. “I know it is a lot to handle, I wish I could have informed you sooner. This archipelago the letter spoke of, I have reasons to believe it is not that far off from the mainland—I hope to be back in 4 days maximum.”
He didn't mind, he doesn't still. So long as Jean trusts him.
“Take your time.”
“Thank you.”
It’s sunny outside. He imagines Klee, tiny feet and tiny hands rummaging the sand, Jean watching her with reserved fondness. He thinks of them with that same fondness and smiles in the room’s solace.