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Eula opens her eyes and sees dandelions. They dot the lazily rolling viridescent planes, standing tall and firm in rows upon rows as their glowing white pappus scatter across a serene azure sky. She hears nothing but the shimmer of the grass as they lean to and fro in waves. The floral aroma that reaches her nose is bitter but pleasant, like a rustic cup of afternoon tea, and she revels in the warmth for fleeting moments before her blood freezes and runs cold.
The awareness strikes like a heated nail through wood. Memories flood in, a torrent of visions, sensations, and panic that assault and overload her senses, drowning her in flashes of a life she has a hard time calling her own. They play in the front of her mind over and over, looping like those film tapes from Fontaine.
They show her the day the world ended.
She sees the time when hellfire rained, when the sky filled with metal, when the clouds ran black and the trees and grass alike burned to ash. She feels a ghost of that chill which shook her soul when the songs of Mondstadt’s street bards were drowned out by the citizens’ screams. She remembers the looks of abject terror on the faces of her team as they scrambled to their posts, trying to erect any semblance of a defense for the city yet woefully under-equipped, with an early, unspoken acquiescence that their doom had long been decided.
Hundreds of ancient machines had encroached upon their home. They lined the burning horizon as they walked, blocked the light from the sun as they blotted the sky, flattened entire villages to rubble as they crawled and tunneled through the earth. Between them marched ranks upon ranks of monsters, whose appearances defied the bounds of reality itself, staring at Teyvat’s paragon of freedom with glowing, hateful eyes. What use were swords and spears and bows when you look up and around, and you realize that your foe is the full hatred of the Abyss itself?
Eula’s memory shatters after this point, but one event she remembers with absolute certainty. She recalls a distraction, a single mistake, a sole, stupid lapse in judgment. The pain that wracked her chest as a streak of obsidian found its mark in her open back and pierced her heart. The detachment with which she watched her own blood spill off the spike jutting out of her chest as her heart sputtered and slowed. The cackle of some demon or witch or some other incomprehensible abomination she couldn’t name that reached her ears. The loss of strength in her limbs as she was hoisted in the air like some kind of humiliating trophy…
As her consciousness failed and her strength withered, she saw a streak of golden hair, a pair of storm blue eyes widening in horror as it began a desperate, flailing run, tripping and falling as it attempted to close a distance that seemed to grow only wider with every panicked step.
A worried, desperate, fearful Jean was not something Eula ever thought she would see.
“...That’s not a good look for you, Gunnhildr…” thought the fading Spindrift Knight, in final moments that she was alarmingly all too calm about. Jean was supposed to stand tall and firm, gazing at the horizon beyond while Eula enjoyed the security of the long shadows she cast behind her.
“EULA!”
And now she's here. She stands amidst this field of dandelions, idyllic currents of wind cupping her cheeks and ruffling her clothes. She takes in her own appearance and finds she’s in perfect condition. No wounds, no blood, no hole in her chest. Just herself, the breeze, and this impossibly nostalgic space straight from The Fox in the Dandelion Sea that felt so achingly familiar despite never having been here before.
It’s a certain thing, and she has come to terms with it with little thought nor reluctance. On the day when cataclysm struck and Mondstadt erupted in roaring flame, Eula Lawrence died.
So why does she not feel like it?
“Oh, Eula… Thank goodness you’re okay.”
Stunned, Eula turns and sees the love of her life, and the sight fills her with dread. Jean Gunnhildr stands there, battered and bruised, blood dripping over an eye and sealing it closed, clasping one limp and dangling arm with the other good one. Her hair is frayed and gray, having lost its sun-kissed sheen, and she takes gingerly half-steps with her left leg while dragging her right.
Eula is unable to find the words. Never has she seen the Acting Grandmaster look so… weak.
“...That makes one of us, Gunnhildr. You look terrible.” Her retort is quiet and weak, with none of the bite she would otherwise intend, and she realizes that Jean struggles to meet her gaze.
Jean only smiles, that inner radiance always manifesting to light up what little of a world they have left, because even when visibly beaten to hell and back, of course that’s what she does. Just another notch in the endless list of inimitable qualities that Eula hates to love.
They stand there, wordlessly in deafening silence, for a few protracted moments. As the seconds continue to stretch on, to Eula it’s evident they’re not simply enjoying each other’s company. Jean’s countenance is one of inexplicable guilt, like a child caught red-handed and preparing for a scolding.
There are few matters that could compel her to act this way, and Eula fully comprehends the annoyingly self-sacrificial pattern that runs through all of them. When she stays at the office too late and forgets to come home. When she works too long and forgets to eat. When the undermanned Knights leave a riskier patrol route to her, and she returns hiding a wound she neglects to report. Jean never puts herself in the equation of any of her choices, and Eula observes her current state and begins to fear the worst.
The thoughts germinate in her mind, and they sprawl into an all-encompassing unease that tightens her chest. A sense of foreboding crashes in with the cacophony of her own beating heart in her ears.
Eula is the first to break the silence. “...What is this, Jean? Where are we? What’s going on?”
Jean only continues to smile back, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Eula narrows her own and sees that they’re red and swollen, ducts inflamed by a wash of shed tears that have not yet dried away.
Eula’s stomach sinks. “Jean, look at me,” she pleads. “What did you do?”
Jean sighs. “...I never ran so fast in my life, you know.” Her voice falters and breaks as she strains, as if the mere act of speaking has become the most arduous task in the world.
“When they…got you…I stopped thinking straight. I couldn’t hear anything else. All I saw was you being impaled like that and I –” She chokes on a sob. “All the death and destruction around me. All those lives I failed to protect… they didn’t matter anymore. All I could think about was getting to you, saving you.”
Eula feels the phantom of her wound creep up, and her hand subconsciously rests on her chest. The pain is dull and muted, like she suffered it tens of years ago.
Deep down, she understands that it has only been a matter of minutes.
“When I finally reached you, you were so still. Not even a struggle or a cough. I couldn’t feel your breath.” Jean squeezes out tears as her voice quickens in panicked fervor. “I seeked your pulse and felt nothing! I felt your skin go cold! And when I looked into your eyes and found they no longer saw me…”
The surfacing mania rolls back to a low, humming simmer. “...I couldn’t accept it. The thought that I failed to defend Mondstadt and let it fall. How I failed to protect you, and that you paid the price for my weakness.”
Eula can only stare back. “That was me being stupid. Don’t you dare take blame for something so trivial.”
“Trivial? Eula, I watched you die!" Jean yells, as she reaches forward and grips Eula's shoulders in her hands, shaking all the while. “I watched everybody lose their loved ones around me, and I couldn’t protect even one! I could only kneel helplessly by your side, watching my friends and colleagues turn to ash.”
Eula observes Jean carefully. Children of the Gunnhildr lineage are born and raised as Mondstadt’s sentinels, so for the model scion of such a proud clan, witnessing its fall would be a fate worse than death.
"Jean, we were all unprepared. There was nothing more you could have done. Our foes were the complete legions of the Abyss itself."
“So what?! ” Jean screams, and Eula recoils in shock and with a slight semblance of fear. The clutch of Jean's hands on her shoulders has become painfully intense, and she struggles and fails to break free.
Jean realizes. Her eyes widen as she collects herself, appalled at her lack of decorum, until her expression softens and she releases her grip. "...So what? I don’t care if my enemy is the Abyss, or the Seven, or even Celestia itself! What have I lived for all these years if I'm to watch my home burn around me at the end of it all? What good am I if I can't protect those I love?"
Eula’s gaze hardens, and she insists. “We were hopelessly outnumbered and impossibly outgunned. You gave us our best shot—that was enough.”
Jean only laughs. It is bitter and empty, and it terrifies Eula to her core. “No, not enough. Never enough. Not until I give everything I have—not until I can give nothing more.”
Jean’s hand travels to the chain around her waist, unclips the Vision that hung from its end, and presents it to Eula within a gloved palm.
It’s cracked, gray, and cold. The Anemo energies that once flowed within its shell and emitted the glow of the stars are no longer visible. Eula cannot feel even a trace of the splendor it once had. Jean’s Vision, once a symbol of her status as Mondstadt’s trusted protector, is now little more than a broken ornament.
“So I did that. I channeled all I had left into one last burst—one last bid to save everyone. A way to vanquish the evil that invaded our home. To bring back those who fell for my failings. I turned within myself, to the heavens, to my ancestors, to seek something, anything , that could save you—that could save us.”
Eula doesn’t take long to put two and two together. Oh no.
Jean knows it, too. There’s no pretense anymore, no hiding the choice she made. “I was requested of my power, so I used every drop. I was required of my Vision, so I gave it away. I was demanded of my life in exchange, so I gave that too. I gave up my entire body and soul with no complaint as it meant I can bring you back. To bring everyone back. To restore peace.”
Her words set in like a ton of bricks, and the pit in Eula’s stomach becomes a void that saps her entirety. She falls onto the grass, staring at nothing in particular, desperately trying to come to terms with it all.
Eula is incredulous at the impossibility of it all. “So that’s it, then? I die only to come back to life, and you’ll be gone, just like that?”
Jean closes her eyes and nods. By the favour of some mystic twist of fate, or by the whimsy of some unknown deity, she conjures a miracle. It saves Eula from death, restores their people, annihilates their foes.
And she has gladly paid its toll in full.
“...You fucking idiot,” Eula mutters from under her breath, her fists clenching
“Eula?”
It’s all horrendously unfair. How does Jean do this every time? Because of course in such desperate moments, when the world conspires to break her, she acquiesces to its machinations in order to balance the scales. It’s a laughably easy decision to make. One life for thousands more? Herself for her country? Such simple choices and easy sacrifices for Jean—for any Gunnhildr, it may well have come as naturally as breathing.
But for Eula, insulting is all it is. She hates watching it happen, how Jean continually burns herself out for others, like a lone campfire on Dragonspine’s peak, exhausting itself against the merciless cold and wind. But perhaps even moreso, she hates herself for revelling in its warmth, enchanted like everyone else by its radiant glow. She excuses it away every time: she satisfies herself with the remaining embers when she brews Jean tea, or nurses her fevers from overexertion, or straightens her frazzled hair when she falls asleep at her desk.
But now…
“Why must you insist on playing hero?” Eula cries. She can hardly hear the sound of her own voice over her aggravated heartbeats, and before she realizes, she’s screaming at the top of her lungs. “Why must you give everything to a people who blindly follow you, only then to cast you aside?”
Jean frowns, but no response comes as she continues to merely listen. Eula doesn’t really care—she has long lost self-control, and the venting continues.
“You give, you give, and you give, over and over again, and I can only watch as you fall further and further away from me! And for what? For a country that doesn’t even love you like I do!”
There is no rationality to her words. They come out in unstoppable waves, straight out the depths of her chest in one long outpouring of grief. She hates that she makes it a competition—she is no superior to any other villager or knight when in truth she worships and depends on Jean in all the exact same ways. But she finds ugly, momentary pleasure in blasting Jean’s commitments to her subjects in some kind of petty, vain attempt at… what exactly, she doesn’t know.
“It’s because I love them, Eula. I gladly give myself to this land as its shield, for it’s my home. I love its people just as I love you.”
The shouting ceases there. Crested over the emotional peak, Eula feels no relief, only numbness as she slumps in an utter loss of words and will.
“Then why won’t you let me have you? Why must you leave me behind?”
For Eula, Mondstadt without its Grandmaster would be no home at all. Jean may have returned her to life, but would she truly ever be able to feel alive?
“...I-I swear I’ll hold this grievance until–”
Her voice fails and the bawling begins. It’s so pathetic, that she has so many things she can possibly say, yet what materializes makes her sound like a spoiled brat.
“Forgive me, Eula,” Jean consoles, as she bends down and embraces Eula’s kneeling form. “You know I never wish to abandon you. But our duties are bigger than the both of us.”
Eula feels Jean’s hand rub the back of her head, slim fingers running through her hair. She’s too busy sniffling tears to protest being treated like some kind of child.
“...Don’t leave me, Jean.”
“I entrust the future of Mondstadt to you.”
“Can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself? Every day I lose a bit more of you! Every day this damned city takes another piece of you away!”
The two knights laid in their bed in a tangle of hair and limbs, nude under its luxurious covers, as Eula clinged to Jean from behind as if for dear life, weeping freely into the back of her neck.
"Soon there’ll be nothing left. Nothing left for us. Nothing left for me.”
“...I’m sorry, Eula.”
“How much longer must you suffer this? When is the cost ever fair for you to pay?”
Jean swallowed, and Eula knew the answer to come before it was even uttered.
“For Mondstadt? Always.”
Eula opens her eyes and sees a single dandelion. It delicately lines the palm of her semi-open hand—wilting, weak, and alone—as she looks around and sees neither fire nor death. She hears no chaos, no carnage, no destruction, only the growing stirs and chatter of her fellow Knights, waking from their shared nightmare that was no dream at all. The landscape around her is sleepy and peaceful, like Mondstadt has always been.
A breeze that carries the wistful fragrance of fresh ink and dark coffee grazes her skin and embraces her face—its agonizing warmth clouds her mind and shatters the remains of her broken heart. She climbs to her knees and wails for her lost love, screaming into her hands, cursing the stupid, selfless fool who left her behind, hurling venom at the cruel, uncaring world that tore them apart.
Blood and tears flow as one onto the now deceased flower, as the vitality of its final seedlings drains away.
~ End ~