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“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Jean said, hastily dropping into the chair across from Kaeya.
The Cat’s Tail was surprisingly busy this time of day, drinkers and card players alike whiling away the hot afternoon hours in the tavern. The little Kätzlein bartender, ensconced behind a bar counter only a touch shorter than herself, had barely taken notice of Jean when she walked in, preoccupied as she was with the suite of cocktails she’d been making.
Kaeya was set up at one of the tables on the main floor, cards laid out in front of him and dice lined up in a neat row. He waved off her apology with an easy smile. “Honestly, I’m surprised you made it at all. When you ran off to Springvale this morning, I more or less resigned myself to versing myself like the last time.”
Jean winced. “Sorry,” she said again, and he laughed.
“I took the liberty of ordering us both drinks. Tea for you,” he added at her frown. “I know you’re not a day drinker.”
“And alcohol for you, I gather.”
He grinned. “You know me so well.”
An approaching chill caught Jean’s attention, and she turned to see the little bartender bringing a tray to their table. The girl’s ears were twitching miserably, her entire posture harried and her mouth downturned in a frown.
Jean straightened instinctively. “Good afternoon, Diona.”
Diona looked up at her, her frown easing slightly. “Good afternoon,” she said, with a begrudging politeness.
“Ah, little Diona,” Kaeya said. He reached for the tray, which Diona pulled out of his grasp with a scowl and a swish of her tail. “I’m excited to try today’s special.”
“Hmph.” Diona set the tray down on the table, placing first a teapot in front of Jean and then a cocktail glass in front of Kaeya. “You did mean it when you asked for the worst thing I could put together, right?”
“Of course,” Kaeya said cheerfully, as Jean squinted at him in confusion.
“Good,” Diona said. “This is a curdled milk gin and tonic with slime condensate.”
Jean stared at her, and then at a still-smiling Kaeya. “What?” she asked.
“Sounds delicious,” Kaeya said.
“What?” Jean said again.
Kaeya glanced over at her, a mischievous twinkle dancing in his visible eye. “Do you have so little faith in our mixologist’s talents?” He put the glass to his lips—and, to Jean’s horror, took a long sip. “Ah, wonderfully refreshing. My compliments, Diona. You’ve truly outdone yourself this time.”
Diona’s face crumpled. “You’re lying! You’re just saying that to spite me!”
“I would never,” Kaeya protested. “The Acting Grand Master will back me up, won’t she?” This last he directed towards Jean, holding his cocktail glass out to her.
“I,” Jean said slowly, “don’t particularly have an appetite for curdled milk at the moment.”
“You’ll like this,” Kaeya promised. “One sip?”
Jean took the glass with significant trepidation, peering into the murky liquid. “I don’t know, Kaeya.”
“He’s lying,” Diona said. Her voice trembled slightly. “It’s awful. I used the worst things I could think of. There’s soy sauce in there.”
Jean stared at them both, then put the glass to her lips and sipped gingerly.
To her boundless surprise, the drink did not taste like curdled milk at all. Rather, it was light and refreshing, sweet with an undercurrent of spice, and put Jean in mind of summer afternoons at the Gunnhildr mansion before her parents’ divorce.
“It’s excellent,” she said, unsure if she should be apologetic or not.
Diona looked like she was about to cry. She puffed out her cheeks and screwed up her face. “Just you wait,” she snarled. “I’ll show you all!” Then she turned on her heel and fled back to the safety of the bar, where only her trembling ears could be seen above the counter.
Kaeya took his drink back, laughing. “Never gets old.”
“Explain to me what just happened,” Jean ordered.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you know? Little Diona there is incapable of making a drink that tastes bad. It does get in the way of her quest to destroy the Mondstadt wine industry, but I can’t say I’m upset to have such a talented mixologist in town.”
“So she intentionally uses terrible ingredients for her drinks, but they still taste good?”
“Right.” Kaeya took another long sip of his drink, closing his eyes in pleasure.
“And you knew she was going to be disappointed in the result of her cocktail, and yet you strung her along.”
Kaeya opened his eyes to give her an affronted look. “Strung her along? Jeanie, come on. This has been going on for years—it’s hardly my fault she can’t accept reality.”
Jean crossed her arms, glaring at him. “Still, it was cruel of you to make her cry.”
“If I recall correctly, you made her cry.” At her unimpressed look, Kaeya sighed, dropping his offended air. “I don’t see why you’re suddenly taking an interest in little Diona. You’re years late to the party, I fear; Margaret’s been turning a profit on her talents for half a decade.”
“What, so everyone knows about this?” Jean demanded. “And everyone is happy to let her proceed on her futile quest and enjoy the… fruits of her fruitless labours?”
“What else do you want us to do?” Kaeya asked, serious now. “Fire her? Send her back home to live with her drunkard of a father and a mother who’s never around?”
“That can’t be the only other option.”
He shrugged. “Well, the curse isn’t going away, and I doubt her determination is either. Let me know when you see another way out—but until then, I’ll be here, enjoying her cocktails.”
Jean paused, her attention caught by his phrasing. “It’s a curse? But no one would curse a child, surely.”
Kaeya smiled crookedly at that. The motion drew her gaze to his eye: the covered one, the one she’d seen uncovered only once, on a rainy April evening many years ago, and had never asked him to explain. “No, surely not.”
“And no one should exploit a child for their curse,” she added more gently, knocking her foot into his under the table.
Kaeya’s smile softened. “It’s a nice thought, but what we do and what we ought to do are often very different things.” He nudged her foot back. “Even as things stand, though… I wouldn’t worry too much about Diona. There are worse ways for a child to live, Jean.”
Jean glanced past him to the bar, where Diona stood hunched over her cocktail shaker. “But there must be better ways, too.”
“It just doesn’t seem right,” Jean said, for the third time in as many minutes.
Diluc was kind enough not to sigh, although the cadence of his exhale told Jean that he probably would have if he could have brought himself to forsake his manners long enough. “I’m afraid I’m still unclear on your concerns.”
“She’s only a child,” Jean said. She kicked at the rung of her bar stool before catching herself and stilling her restless feet. “Did you know she’s only 12? She can’t even legally drink the cocktails she serves.”
“I think 12 is more than old enough to make her own decisions.” Diluc put a hand to his Vision, running his thumb over the wings of its casing so absentmindedly that she doubted he even realized he was doing it.
“Hardly,” Jean said. “Don’t you remember what we were like when we were her age? I wouldn’t have wanted my mother letting me run off into bars.”
Diluc smiled: barely a smile, only the corner of his mouth twisted up. “I killed a man for the first time when I was 12.”
“That’s—” Jean said, and stopped.
“You did too, if memory serves. I held your hair back as you vomited into the ditch.”
“That’s different,” Jean said. She too remembered that terrible afternoon: the man’s wide, glassy eyes, the smell of excrement, his blood trickling down her sword and into the soil—a sight she’d seen countless times since, but none so unimaginably horrifying as the first. “We… That’s different. That was necessary.”
Diluc shrugged. “Of course that’s what we tell ourselves. But you raised the combatant age to 14 when you became Master of the Knights, didn’t you? I’m sure you didn’t do that for no reason.”
“It just—” Jean said, almost desperately. “I didn’t feel right about having children on the field, but that doesn’t make what we did any less necessary. It was good for us. Wasn’t it?”
“We wouldn’t be who we are without the blood on our hands,” Diluc said, neatly sidestepping the question. “I don’t regret it. But compared to that… Diona’s not out there killing people, Jean. She doesn’t have to live with the guilt, or the nightmares. Isn’t that better than what we had?”
Jean quelled the unnamed emotion that coiled tight in her chest. “Better doesn’t mean good.”
“No,” Diluc agreed. “It means better.”
“You could at least pretend to be paying attention to our game,” Eula sniffed.
Jean came back to herself with a jolt. “My apologies,” she said, peering at the TCG board to find Eula winning by a significant margin.
“You’ve been glowering at the bar counter since we got here,” Eula said, raising a haughty eyebrow. “Is the scene behind me truly that much more compelling than my company?”
“No…” Jean said, and trailed off. “Only…” She jerked her chin towards the party seated at the counter. “Those gentlemen have been giving Diona a hard time all evening. I can’t hear what they’re saying to her, but she doesn’t seem comfortable with their attentions.”
Eula glanced over her shoulder. “That’s Richard and his cronies—regulars here. They’re cretins, I’ll grant you, but they wouldn’t hurt her in full view of two Knights.”
“I’m not simply worried about them hurting her,” Jean said, watching as Diona made her way out from behind the bar counter, her ears flattened against her head.
As if on cue, one of the men nudged another enthusiastically. The two exchanged gleeful looks—and then the first reached out and grabbed Diona by the tail.
The party erupted into raucous laughter as Diona shrieked and wrenched herself away from the man’s grasping fingers. “It really is real!” he gasped out, shaking with mirth.
And that was all he had the opportunity to say, because Jean’s sword was at his throat.
The laughter died instantly as his comrades registered Jean’s presence. Wind whipped violently through their hair, rattling the decorations behind the counter; she reined it in before it could blow them off their stools. “Your name, sir?” she inquired.
The man swallowed, his throat working against the edge of Jean’s sword. “G-Geoffrey, Master Jean. I—”
“Geoffrey,” Jean repeated. “You just paid a grievous insult to Miss Diona. Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said quickly. “I only wanted—”
“I did not ask you for your excuses,” Jean said evenly. She sheathed her sword, feeling Eula’s frosty presence come up behind her. “Please settle your tab and leave the establishment.”
Faced with two Knight Captains, none of the men had the courage to do more than grumble. Jean saw them to the door once they’d paid up.
“Have a good evening, gentlemen,” she said, and they turned to look at her. “Also: try that again, and I’ll cut your hands off.”
She closed the door behind her, turning back to Diona. “Are you alright?”
“You didn’t need to do that,” Diona hissed. She held herself taller, now, than before the men had left, although her tail still curled protectively around her waist. “I can take care of myself.”
Jean swallowed her fury. “I’m certain you can,” she said carefully. “Still, I will not let behaviour like that stand in my city.”
“Ever the white knight,” Eula muttered. Jean shot her a quizzical look, which she ignored with the ease of long experience until they were seated back at their table. Then she leaned forward, and, in a low tone, said, “You think you’ve done a good thing tonight, don’t you?”
Jean felt the anger rise again and tamped it down. “You can’t seriously be condoning that behaviour.”
“Who do you think I am?” Eula demanded. “What they did was disgusting, but you and your saviour complex aren’t doing her any favours. She’s got to grow up at some point, Jean—she can’t keep expecting the big strong Acting Grand Master to come swooping in to save her.”
“She’s a child,” Jean hissed.
Eula crossed her arms, leaning back sullenly. “All I’m saying is that children need to learn to look out for themselves.”
“They shouldn’t have to. That’s our job, as adults. Even we have people to look out for us.”
Eula smiled wryly. “Not all of us.” She held up a hand to cut off Jean’s rejoinder. “I’m not disagreeing with you. Barbatos knows I wish every child had someone to watch their back. But even children will have to stand alone one day—best they learn that now than later.”
The smell of cigarette smoke clued Jean in to Rosaria’s presence even before the telltale chill, which meant she was unsurprised when she rounded the corner by the Ordo and caught a glimpse of a burning ember in the alleyway.
“Sister Rosaria,” she said, inclining her head.
Rosaria raised her chin in greeting. “Heard you threatened to chop a guy’s hand off.”
Jean winced. “It was in a moment of pique.”
“Hey, I’m not judging. In fact, if you need any help with that…” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
“Please don’t cut his hand off on my behalf,” Jean said firmly.
Rosaria rolled her eyes. “Fine. I won’t hurt him,” she said, and Jean barely had time to feel relieved before Rosaria added, “on your behalf,” and grinned. “Why’d little Diona suddenly trigger your saviour complex, anyway?”
“I…” Jean said, and sighed. “Do you know, I’ve been fielding that question all week? I would have thought it was obvious. The life she’s been living… It’s not right.”
“It’s admirable that you still believe in right and wrong,” Rosaria said, and didn’t even sound like she was making fun of Jean. “I don’t think her life’s that bad, to be honest.”
Jean slumped against the wall next to Rosaria. “She’s 12. She works in a bar. Her father’s an alcoholic and her mother’s never around. People touch her tail and ask her to meow for them.”
“She’s safe,” Rosaria cut in. “She has a family. She has a roof over her head and three square meals a day. She doesn’t have to hurt anyone, and no one’s hurting her. The life she’s living is the life I wanted when I was her age.”
Jean watched the ember of Rosaria’s cigarette burn brighter as she took a drag. “Is that all we can ask for?”
Rosaria slanted a glance at her. “You tell me. I’m not much of an idealist, myself.”
“It just seems,” Jean said, “that we ought to be able to dream a little bigger, you know? To dream of something more than mere stability for our children.”
Rosaria’s teeth cut a slash of white in the shadow as she smiled. “You’d think, wouldn’t you?” She dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it with her heel. “I dunno, Jean. It seems kind of a futile pursuit.” She patted Jean’s shoulder with surprising gentleness as she pushed off the wall. “But hey—if anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”
The Cat’s Tail opened at 2, which was why, when Jean let herself in at 1, she found the tavern empty save for Diona.
The girl blinked suspiciously at her, her eyes and nose barely peeking out from behind the bar counter. She looked very young in the light of day, with none of her usual hostility to make her seem older.
“We’re closed,” she said, drawing herself up, tail swishing imperiously. “I won’t make an exception just because you’re a Knight.”
“I’m not here to drink,” Jean reassured her. “I come with a proposal.”
“I charge a hefty fee for private events,” Diona warned.
“It’s not a private event,” Jean said. She drew out a sheaf of paperwork and laid it on the counter. “I have a job offer for you.”
Diona’s face scrunched up like she’d swallowed a live lizard. “I won’t go work for the Dawn Winery! You can’t make me just because you’re Diluc’s friend!”
“It’s not— It’s not for the Dawn Winery,” Jean cut in. “It’s not a bartending position at all.”
That stopped Diona short. She eyed Jean with renewed interest. “Not a bartending position?”
Jean shook her head. “As I understand it, your ultimate goal is to destroy the Mondstadt wine industry, yes? But you’re having limited success as a mixologist here.”
Diona hunched in on herself, pouting. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“The Ordo functions as a kind of oversight body for the Guilds, which includes the Wine Guild,” Jean continued. “We currently have an entry-level position open in our regulatory arm, and I thought that you might be interested in it—you’d be part of the department that keeps the wine industry’s biggest players in check.”
Diona snatched up the offer letter so quickly that for a moment Jean feared her claws would puncture the paper. “So I’d be able to… what, regulate the wine industry to death?”
“I can’t promise that. But you’d play an important role in curbing its excesses. And I think you’d find that you’d have a higher chance of success in your ultimate goal than you do at your current position.”
“Hmm,” Diona said, ears twitching. “What’s in it for you? If you’re offering me this because you pity me—”
“No, not at all,” Jean said hurriedly, reaching for the answer she’d prepared in advance. “I thought it would be beneficial for our regulatory arm to draw on the insight of someone with industry experience. This is a purely strategic decision—no pity involved.”
Diona sniffed, apparently satisfied. “I’ll think about it,” she said. Then she shooed Jean out the door.
Diona moved into the Ordo’s dorms a week later, much to Klee’s delight. Jean watched the two of them run around their room, shoving furniture into fascinating new positions, and felt something in her chest loosen ever so slightly.
“They look like they’re having fun,” Kaeya murmured, leaning into the doorframe.
“We’ll see how long that lasts when Diona actually has to go to work,” Jean returned, mouth twisted.
Kaeya elbowed her gently. “Hey, none of that. You did a good thing.”
“Did I? All I did was move a child from one adult job to another.”
“It’s better than what she was doing before.”
“Better doesn’t mean good,” Jean said.
“No,” Kaeya agreed. “It means better.” He grinned, the corner of his eye crinkling. “And hey, if every generation gets just a bit better—maybe in a couple hundred years we might actually get a child who’s halfway to well-adjusted.”
Jean laughed despite herself. “I only hope Klee and Diona will be kinder to the next generation than we have been.”
“They will,” Kaeya said confidently. He jerked his chin towards where the children in question were scuttling under the bed. “You’ve made sure of that.”
It was at this point that Klee noticed Kaeya in the doorway and dragged him down to the floor to play with them, which put an unceremonious end to the conversation. In seconds, the bedroom transformed into a battleground before Jean’s eyes: Kaeya the evil dragon come to tear down the fort, and Klee the brave Knight standing her ground against his encroachment. Even Diona, who had seated herself to one side after proclaiming that she was far too old for such absurdity, was eventually coaxed into joining the fray—as a mage of sorts, from what Jean could gather.
Jean watched the chaos unfold around her and, for the first time in several weeks, felt… not right, exactly, but better.
At Klee’s age, she herself had been a squire, and at Diona’s age, a Knight, with no time or capacity to participate in such tomfoolery, no matter how much she might have wanted to. Still, she found that she could not regret her sacrifices—not when they had contributed to giving the next generation the opportunities she’d lacked.
She thought, as she slipped out of the room, that she might not be able to go back in time to do right by the child she had been, nor by the children that Kaeya, Diluc, Eula, and Rosaria had been.
But she could dream a little bigger for the children who had yet to grow up—for Klee, Razor, Bennett, Fischl, and Diona—and hope that they too would dream a little bigger, and a little bigger still, for the generations to come.