The bells of the Favonius Cathedral did not ring. They did not chime. They thundered, a joyous, uncontrolled clangour that rattled the very windowpane beneath your fingertips. Five years in Mondstadt, and you still thought the timber-frame houses were one strong gale away from collapsing into a pile of splinters and good intentions. You tapped a four-beat rhythm—*one-two-three-four*—against the cool glass, a pointless little habit you’d never managed to shake. It was the same sequence you used to use to check a firearm’s magazine was seated correctly. Pointless now.
Down below, the city of freedom erupted. Windows flew open, shopkeepers abandoned their stalls, and a tide of bodies surged toward the main gate. The children, as always, led the charge. Their laughter was a sound you’d learned to appreciate, like a foreign wine. Acquired. Not natural.
They were back. Varka was back.
The thought should have been a firework in your chest. Instead, it was a slow, heavy thaw. For five years, he had been a name in letters, a memory of a booming laugh and hands big enough to span your entire back. A shield. You were Lady Aella, wife of the Grand Master. A quiet woman from a distant land, content to tend the crystal-flies in his garden. A role you had worn until it had nearly fused with your skin.
You stared at the dress laid out on the bed—a simple, elegant Mondstadt blue. The wife awaits the heroic husband’s return. The script was written, the stage was set.
To hell with the stage.
You turned from the window, ignoring the dress. Your own clothes—dark, durable trousers and a fitted leather tunic—felt more honest. You strapped the empty Vision casing to your hip out of sheer, bone-deep habit. It was a hollow thing, a cold piece of bronze you’d been given as a welcome gift, but the weight was a familiar ghost. You never went anywhere without it.
The cobblestones were slick with the morning’s dew as you pushed against the current of the crowd. People smiled, calling out greetings. "Lady Aella! A glorious day!" "He's home, milady! The Grand Master is home!" You offered tight, polite smiles in return. They saw a stoic, patient wife. They didn't see the woman calculating the crowd density, noting the two Knights standing a little too stiffly near the Good Hunter, their hands never straying far from their hilts.
"Abandoning your post at the window?" a smooth voice purred beside you.
Captain Kaeya fell into step, his one visible eye glittering with the kind of amusement that always set your teeth on edge. He was the only person in Mondstadt who looked at you and didn't seem to fully believe the story.
"The view is better from the gate, Captain," you replied, not breaking your stride. "I would have thought you’d be there with the welcoming party."
"Jean has the formalities well in hand. I'm more interested in the candid reactions," he said, his gaze sweeping over you. "You don't seem particularly... overwrought with joy."
"I'm from Natlan, Kaeya. We don't weep with joy for a warrior's return. We just expect it."
It was a lie, of course. In your village, a warrior’s return was met with three days of feasting and fire. But Kaeya didn't need to know that. No one did.
He chuckled, a low, breathy sound. "Of course. Still, they're back a full season ahead of schedule. One has to wonder what they found. Or what found them."
You stopped. A season early. Varka’s letters, always sparse, had said nothing of it. "Jean didn't mention that."
"The Acting Grand Master is a master of managing information," he said, the smile never leaving his face. He was withholding something. It was as natural to him as breathing. "Let's just say the Grand Master is a man who knows when a job is done."
The crowd thickened into a wall as you reached the city gates. Jean stood at the front, her posture as rigid as a lance. She gave you a curt, respectful nod, her eyes betraying a profound exhaustion that went beyond her duties. The final bell tolled, and then, a silence fell, thick and expectant.
The grinding of gears, the groan of old wood. The gates of Mondstadt swung inward.
The first to enter were the knights. Not with a triumphant march, but a heavy, dirt-caked tramp. Their armour was scarred, dented in ways that spoke of more than skirmishes with hilichurls. Their faces were grim, their eyes scanning the cheering crowd not with relief, but with a lingering, hunted watchfulness. This was not the end of a victorious expedition. It was an escape.
And then he was there.
Varka, the Knight of Boreas. Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. Your husband. He was just as you remembered—a mountain of a man, his shoulders broad enough to block out the sun. His white and blue uniform was tattered and stained, his silver hair was matted with grime, and a fresh scar cut a pale line from his temple into his beard.
He saw you.
Across the sea of faces, his eyes, the colour of a winter sky, found yours. The exhaustion etched onto his features seemed to melt away, replaced by a wave of pure, unadulterated relief. A slow smile spread across his face, a sunrise after a long night. He was home. The thought finally landed, a clean, bright spark in your chest.
He broke ranks, striding toward you, the crowd parting before him like water. You met him halfway, your own steps quickening. He smelled of pine, of sweat, of cold stone and the iron of his own blood. It was the honest scent of a long and brutal journey.
But as he drew closer, another scent reached you. An undercurrent, sharp and wrong.
Beneath the honest grime was something cold and sterile, a scent that scraped at the back of your throat with the memory of polished steel and Delusion-powering reagents from a laboratory in Fontaine. It was the smell of the Fatui’s particular brand of progress. And under that, fainter still, was a trace of something ancient and foul, like ozone after a lightning strike had fractured something other than a tree.
He stopped before you, his shadow falling over you. He looked down at you, his smile real and deep. "Aella," he rumbled, his voice thick with a weariness that went bone-deep. "By the Seven, I missed this face."
Your own smile felt like a mask you’d forgotten how to wear.
He pulled you into an embrace, one massive arm wrapping around your shoulders, holding you against his chest. It was a solid, grounding weight. The beat of his heart was a heavy, steady drum against your ear. For a moment, you let yourself sink into it, a ship finding its anchor in a storm. Here was safety. Here was the peace you had fled halfway across Teyvat to find.
He was real. He was here.
And he smelled of victory, and pine, and a war you thought you had abandoned for good.