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Varka stops at Stone Gate.
For years he’d dreamed of this moment, awaited the day he’d finally be able to come home, to breathe the air of his youth and walk the paths of his past. Nights spent awake missing Mondstadt so fiercely it’d hurt in his chest like a wolf pup digging its claws between his ribs. Days thinking of home, yearning, aching, longing, and now it is mere steps away, and he pulls at his horse’s reins and stops.
“Grand Master?” Lohen asks, coming to a halt next to him. His horse shifts nervously at the change of pace.
Varka stares at the border to Mondstadt that’s not really there because there are no de facto borders between the neighbouring nations.
“You should continue on,” he says, forcing a smile onto his lips. It comes easy, as do all things with enough practice. “It’ll be more of a surprise that I have returned already if I do not arrive together with the lot of you. My great entrance is more effective if I’m alone.”
Lohen considers him for a moment and Varka wouldn’t be surprised if he saw right through him, perceptive as he is.
“Should we take a break?” he suggests, even though the rest of the company is eager to keep moving. So close to the city, so close to home, and Varka hesitates.
“No,” he says, “you go on. I’m sure you’re eager to see your families.” He nudges his horse and gently guides her to the side. “I will follow in a couple days.”
“Grand Master,” Lohen protests, following suit. Push-and-pull. Expected.
“Go on,” Varka repeats, louder. The Knights shuffle past them. “My arrival is going to be a grand surprise, so don’t go spoiling it!”
Slowly, his Knights move forward, heading into Mondstadt, returning home.
Lohen waits by his side, eyebrows drawn together. “Grand Master,” he says, when the Knights have passed them, out of earshot. “You seem a little pale.”
“Nonsense,” Varka protests, patting his horse’s neck. “Don’t you want to return home? What is stopping you?”
Lohen huffs and retorts, boldly, “What is stopping you?”
Varka allows his gaze to wander over the land, the riverbanks and the windswept grass, over to tall, tall mountains. “Sentimentality,” he answers.
The Knights march forward and he sighs. It is much easier to face the Wild Hunt, monsters of the Abyss, megalomaniac Gods, the threatening apocalypse.
He’s excited, of course, to come home, to see what Mondstadt has been up to in his absence. To see how it has prospered and grown. And to return and see all the places from his youth again. It would not be the same, of course. He’s changed, and so has Mondstadt without him.
“Come on,” Lohen says warmly, “let us return home.”
They stay at the back of the group. Varka isn’t oblivious to the glances Lohen keeps sending his way, the concern he’s barely hiding. “Speak your mind,” he prompts when they’re riding up to Dawn Winery, and his resolve threatens to crumble to dust.
He feels younger glancing over, reminded of carefree days and warm hands. A familiar, redheaded figure oversees the wine barrels, the preparation for delivery, out on the porch. Varka feels much, much lighter, free from weights on his shoulders and responsibilities. Nostalgia finds home in his veins the same way the wine does, dry and rough and intoxicating.
In the distance, Diluc Ragnvindr turns, and at his side within reach, Lohen clears his throat.
“Varka,” he says.
The spell breaks, and his childhood fades away into emptiness and a present that has no place for past regrets and grief, because the world keeps turning anyway, and the sun keeps rising even if it felt colder half a decade ago, after everything.
“I’m quite concerned,” Lohen adds, quietly.
“There is no need,” Varka promises, lies, heart aching. Returning home to family like the other Knights—it is not a luxury reserved for him. His family is long gone, and so he returns home to no one except his colleagues.
“Would you rather stay and greet Mister Ragnvindr?” Lohen asks, because he’s always been good at reading Varka.
“I’m not sure my presence is welcome,” Varka replies. Not self-deprecation, mere observation. Diluc and him haven’t parted on bad terms, but with everything that’s been happening in his absence, it’s hard to predict.
Lohen huffs. “He’d be a fool to deny you,” he says. Varka doesn’t tell him that it’s not about that, doubts that Lohen would understand or care to.
As Lohen said, Diluc Ragnvindr would’ve been a fool not to invite Varka in. Varka doubts it has anything to do with that though as he steps into the mansion that once felt like a second home. Now, it feels warm, familiar and nostalgic. Stepping into the entrance and there’s ghosts and memories of simpler, long gone times. Crepus, his father Mr. Ragnvindr, Elzer in his early years of managing the winery. The smell of Dandelion Wine is the same, and that, too, is nostalgic.
“I hear the expedition was supposed to come back in groups,” Diluc says, pouring Varka a drink. “Changed your mind?”
Varka grins. “Something of the sort. Don’t go telling the city yet, would you? I plan to make a grand entrance a few days later. They don’t expect my return so early, and I want it to be a surprise.”
Diluc doesn’t sit at the end of the table as his father before him had.
“A risky endeavour,” he says, not a hint of a smile on his face. “Considering your Knights are likely getting to enjoy Mondstadt’s finest tonight. People do tend to become chattier after a couple drinks, as you sure know.”
Varka laughs, raising his cup. “Is that what you’re hoping for with this?” He takes a sip of the Dandelion Wine anyway. Freshly opened, the taste of home.
Diluc watches him, unmoving. “I doubt you are such a light-weight, Grand Master. You’ve never been, I heard.”
“You heard,” Varka muses, “the Knights that stayed still like to share old stories, hm?”
Something flashes over Diluc’s face and he shakes his head ever so slightly. “Was there a reason you came to seek me out?”
Silence stretches through the manor in a way Varka has never experienced before. Crepus had also had the habit of sending home his staff, but there’s always been noise. The boys or Diluc’s tortoise or one of the birds nagging insistently at a window pane.
Varka wonders if the liveliness of the house had died with his friend, then pushes the thought aside. Diluc has made himself a home here just fine. It must be the heaviness of their last correspondence, half a decade ago.
“I must say,” Varka replies, easy and light, and the taste of the wine on his lips helps, “I have missed this place. Not much has changed, but it feels like everything is different regardless.”
Diluc lowers his head into something akin to agreement. “You’ve been gone for a long time.” He gets up, then, and gestures to Varka to remain seated, so Varka takes another sip.
“Thank you for writing,” Diluc says, “that day. A lot of things had been difficult, but I was glad to hear from you.” Varka is glad, too, to hear that he had been able to offer a sliver of comfort to Diluc in that hard time.
“There is something I want to give you,” Diluc says quietly. Varka watches him disappear around a corner and takes another sip of the wine. It’s reassuring to know the Ragnvindrs stayed true to their unique recipe. It tastes better here than it had in Natlan, Snezhnaya or Nod-Krai, though the reminder of home was always welcome.
When Diluc returns, it’s with a journal bound in thick leather. He offers it to Varka, who takes it with careful hands. “It belonged to my father. I think he’d like knowing it in your hands.”
He sits down again, quiet and with an age old ache in the corners of his expression. Varka sometimes has his own difficulties talking about long gone comrades and friends, too, and he knows that grief is like the tides.
“Thank you,” he says softly, palms running over the elegant, smooth cover. “Have you read it?”
Diluc nods, his eyes darting over when Varka carefully opens the journal “It’s a lot of personal stuff from the time when you went on your expedition. Then, lots of research on the Fatui, as well. Perhaps it might be useful for you. And if not…” He shrugs slightly, tapping against the wood of the table. “It might still be a nice keep-sake. If you want it.”
“I do,” Varka says, without having to think about it. Of course he’d like to keep it. “Thank you,” he adds, slower, “are you sure you don’t want it?”
“Yes. I don’t need it anymore,” Diluc nods and Varka doesn’t ask if it’s because Diluc is done with his revenge trip, or if he’s copied all the information. It doesn’t matter anyway, and Varka doesn’t ask.
“Thank you,” he says again, smiling. “It means a lot.”
Diluc nods, curtly, clearly still as uncomfortable with gratitude and pleasantries as he used to be as a teen. “I thought it would,” he says, trying. He’s grown, too. Varka resists the urge to pull him into a hug. Like his presence, he’s not sure if it’s entirely welcome.
Diluc hands him the opened bottle of dandelion wine when Varka bids his farewells. He keeps it gladly and promises to come by again soon – after his return and all the work and meetings that come with it are dealt with – and Diluc doesn’t outright recoil at the suggestion, so Varka considers it an invitation.
He spends the first night back in his home country camping under the giant tree by Windrise. He thinks about visiting Wolvendom, seeing how Razor is doing, but then decides against it. With the Wild Hunt’s activity in Nod-Krai, he doesn’t doubt that Mondstadt has become more dangerous as well. A sobering thought, and he hopes that he’s wrong about it. Still, it’ll be better to pour over reports and current maps of activity before he goes off on a solo mission.
The wind keeps him company that night, and the following day on his trek to Starsnatch cliff. It’s a gentle breeze, not at all different from the ones in Nod-Krai, and yet, inexplicably, it feels like home. The sentimentality must really be getting to him these days.
He visits familiar places and finds them not much touched by time, but perhaps his absence from Mondstadt feels longer to him than it had actually been.
“Every lost child will eventually find their way home,” the wind whispers to him that night, when Varka set up camp. “How many days do you plan to procrastinate your long-awaited return?”
“I’m not procrastinating,” Varka says, like a petulant child, and turns his head.
Barbatos laughs, melodic and carefree, and settles down next to him. “Are you not? How else shall this be interpreted then? Are you doing some soul-searching?”
“Something of the sort,” Varka agrees, and offers him the bottle of Dandelion Wine.
They share drink and stories, and Varka does not tell his God that he is afraid of what awaits him when he gets to the city, and that he didn’t expect coming home to feel so scary, when he’s missed it and ached for this for so many years.
True to his word to Lohen, he follows the company a couple days later. By now, they should’ve mostly settled back at home, gone through greetings and reunions.
The city is happy to welcome him back. Varka thought they would be, waving and stopping him in the streets as he tries to make his way to the headquarters. He’s glad the company took his horse along, she would not be all too happy stopping every few moments to chat and laugh and smile. He enjoys the attention, the camaraderie. Mondstadt, his people, his home.
It takes a while until he makes it to the doors, exchanging pleasantries and stories and one-armed hugs with everyone. It does feel like home. He doesn’t know what he was worried about.
Noelle smiles at him in the foyer and he smiles back and promises to take the time to talk to her properly later. How her training has been, how she has improved, if there’s anything she’s having troubles with – but first he has to talk to the Acting Grand Master, and assure her that her parents did not get into petty fights on the expedition. (None that jeopardized the mission, anyway.)
Despite Jean’s many assurances that they don’t have to go over reports and work documents a few hours after his return – a consideration for taking a break that she’d do well to extend to herself – Varka insists on catching up anyway. There’s so many things to talk about between the expedition and everything that’s been happening in Mondstadt, and it’s sunset by the time he leaves her office. The perfect time to head to the tavern for drinks and sharing insights, stories, catching up.
With Crepus’ journal in his bag and the dying noise in the headquarters at this time, he turns to the stairs first, though. There’s still many people to catch up with, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.
To his surprise, Lohen is still at his desk, moving papers from one side to the other.
“Unlike you to be here at this time,” Varka observes, leaning against the doorframe.
“Grand Master,” Lohen says. He looks up from the papers, a deadpan expression on his face. “Did I look like I was working?”
Varka grins. “Yes.”
“Good.” Lohen gets up from his chair and his gaze falls on Varka’s bag. “Haven’t you been home yet?”
“I am home,” Varka replies, because he has everything and everyone he needs here, and that is enough. There are people and an entire city who awaited his return and welcomed him with open arms as they do with everyone who comes to Mondstadt.
The next few days, he will seek out his colleagues and friends and Rosaria, Razor, Noelle, and Barbatos again, and he will listen and remember what it means to be back home.
Lohen rolls his eyes and takes Varka’s bag. “I’m serious. Let’s bring your luggage home.”
Varka follows him without hesitation.