#tbh i’ve never been able to make jeanlisa work properly in my head but i read a really good fic recently and i think something clicked

[leifyposting]

“Will you be back?” Jean asks. 

She’s sitting straight-backed on Lisa’s bed with her hands folded in her lap, her hair plaited tightly along her skull in preparation for training. She looks ill at ease, as she does often these days — the inescapable consequence of clawing her way out from under her mother’s shadow, trying to refit her skin to the role of an infantry captain, navigating the unwanted attention that comes from being 16 but looking older. 

“Oh, probably,” Lisa says, and watches Jean’s face go blank like it does when she’s trying not to show that she’s upset. 

It’s a little cruel, her flippant answer. She should feel guiltier about it, maybe reassure her best friend that she’ll be back as soon as she’s able. 

But Lisa has ambitions, gods forgive her: dreams bigger than sleepy Mondstadt and its placid people. If Jean loves her — which she does, Lisa knows this without asking — then she’ll have to let her go. 

“But you’ll write,” Jean says, sounding uncertain. 

“I’ll do my best,” Lisa says. She does feel guilty, this time — Jean’s stoic silence does nothing to hide her disappointment. “I hear the Akademiya’s workload is intense. But I’ll try.”

“You can handle it,” Jean says, with a faith that borders on fealty. “You’re brilliant, Lisa.”

Lisa grins. She is brilliant — she knows this well. It is the one thing she has going for her: she is not charming like Diluc, funny like Kaeya, or diligent, courageous, and radiant like Jean. But the Akademiya had sought her out for her mind, even though, at 18, she is much older than the vast majority of novices scouted from outside Sumeru. 

Lisa is smart. She doesn’t intend to squander that. 

“You’re too kind,” she says, throwing one last cardigan into her suitcase and then kneeling on it to zip it up. In a flash, Jean is on the floor in front of her, long swordsman’s fingers pressed to the top of the suitcase as she reaches for the zipper on the other end. Together, they wrangle the suitcase shut. 

Lisa looks down to grin triumphantly towards where Jean is kneeling before her. They are very close, like this, Jean’s face tilted up towards her own. If Lisa were to lean forward just a little, she could—

Jean stands abruptly. She extends a hand to pull Lisa up, her grip betraying the strength concealed in her wiry frame. 

When they both have their feet firmly planted on the floor — and Jean has genteelly let go of Lisa’s hand within an appropriate time frame rather than holding on to it a moment too long like Lisa almost wishes she would — Lisa looks up and finds herself surprised, as she always is, at how tall Jean has gotten. 

Despite being two years her junior, Jean is already half a handbreadth taller than Lisa, and fixing to grow taller still. Lean and broad-shouldered, she carries herself with a poise devoid of pretense or affectation; she hasn’t quite mastered the Gunnhildr presence that Frederica wears so well, but Lisa can already tell that it won’t be long until Jean too wears it like a second skin. 

Lisa wonders, not for the first time, what happened to the quiet, wide-eyed child who’d looked to her for comfort during storms as if the lightning itself heeded her words. And then she puts those thoughts to one side, because she is leaving for the Akademiya tomorrow, and she cannot afford to second-guess.

Lisa has never known her father, you see, and her mother passed away a year ago. There is nothing more keeping her in Mondstadt.

Well. Nothing except Jean.

“I can’t come to bid you goodbye tomorrow,” Jean says suddenly, breaking the silence. 

“Oh?”

“I’m taking my Company on a training exercise in the field. I won’t be in town when you leave.”

Reschedule your training, Lisa doesn’t say. Aren’t I more important than your Company? 

She bites her tongue and holds back the mean-spirited question, because she is a good friend. (And because she is afraid she already knows what the answer is.)

“That’s okay,” she says instead. 

“I am sorry,” Jean says. 

She looks penitent enough that Lisa abandons her resentment and reaches up to tweak her nose. “Oh, don’t look so sad, darling. I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”

“I’m not sad,” Jean protests, going a little pink in the cheeks. 

Lisa feigns offense. “You’re not sad that your best friend is leaving?”

“I-I—” Jean stammers. “That’s not—” She catches the mischief behind Lisa’s eyes and glowers at her. “Stop teasing.”

Lisa pouts and throws her arms around Jean’s neck, dragging her down into a hug. “Oh, but you make it so easy!”

Jean snakes her arms around Lisa’s waist and leans only a little awkwardly into the hug. “You’re lucky I like you.”

Emotion, strange and cloying, chokes off Lisa’s windpipe. She squeezes Jean a little tighter. “I will miss teasing you,” she says, in lieu of the myriad other confessions that linger at the tip of her tongue. 

Jean doesn’t respond — only sighs, and presses her cheek wordlessly into Lisa’s curls. They stand there for a long moment. 

Eventually Jean shifts, glancing at the clock on Lisa’s wall. “I should go,” she says regretfully. “I have preparations to make before my field excursion tomorrow.”

Selfishly, Lisa holds on for a fraction of a second more. Then she disentangles herself from Jean and offers her a brilliant smile. “Of course. I wouldn’t want to keep the Lionfang Knight from her duties.”

Jean’s answering smile is a small, wistful thing. “Have a safe trip, Lisa. Write me when you get there?”

“I will,” Lisa promises: her one concession to sentiment. 

“I would wish you luck,” Jean says, “but I know you won’t need it.”

Lisa smiles. “Same to you.”

Jean stares at her a moment, as if committing the lines of her face to memory. Then she nods. “Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye, Jean,” Lisa says. 

Jean turns and lets herself out of the room, the doorknob as accustomed to her hand as to Lisa’s. The door shuts noiselessly behind her. 

Lisa allows herself 10 ridiculous seconds of staring at the door, hoping against all her better sense that it will open again and reveal Jean in the doorway. 

When it does not, as Lisa had known it wouldn’t, she throws herself back into putting her room to rights, packing everything that will fit into her suitcases and leaving the nonessentials in boxes. 

She has no time for frivolous, unscientific sentiment. She has so much to do. She is leaving for the Akademiya tomorrow, she reminds herself. 

And she tries not to think too hard about why it feels like she is the one being left behind, instead.