#luckaejean

Even when there's no recognition in them. She rears up, roaring and flaring her wings in a threat display. Diluc has taken advantage of that draconic instinct a hundred times, lunging in to slash at the exposed underbelly. Hers is soft off-white. This is *Jean*, though, so he can't. Instead he raises his sword high, a threat display of his own, and wills it to pulse with its dragon-slaying power.

Dragons can sense magic far better than humans can. She roars again, twisting away in terror, and then turns and scrabbles out of the dank den in which he'd brought the dead dragon to bay and goes skittering off the cliffside. Diluc charges after her, his heart thudding in his chest. For a long terrifying moment she falls towards the trees below, flapping without nearly enough coordination to get any lift. Then she straightens out her wings and pulls up, just shy of the treetops, soaring away as fast as she can from the reek of dead dragon and the human who had killed it.

The human she doesn't know. How could she? For all their magic, dragons are beasts, beings of instinct who differ from wolves only in being far harder to kill. Diluc watches her go with his heart in his throat, thanking the wind that she's going north, away from human habitation. That buys him time to find out what happened, and get her back.

He can't contemplate a world in which he doesn't get her back.

***

He comes perilously close to having to hurt her to do it. She's found herself a den, but she fights at its entrance, refusing to retreat inside, as if she's determined to protect her home to the death if she has to. It's how Diluc would have expected her to fight, as a human, for the defense of the Dawn Winery and Mondstadt. But it means that he can't hold back nearly as much as he wishes to, and in the last moment, when her head arches down, jaws wide, he has to angle his dragon-slaying blade to hold her mouth open without being snapped up. He *has* to. Unenchanted metal couldn't stand up to a dragon's teeth.

But it gives him the proximity he needs to fire off the spell that the sorceress Alice had wound into an amulet for him. Hold it against her scales for the space of three breaths, she'd said, and this is the only chance he'll get. He presses it to her nose and breathes in and out, shakily, terrified and desperate. A fourth breath during which he would swear his heart stops, and then the wind is whirling around them, and the magic unwinds itself from Jean's bones, and the scales and wings and massive bulk go with it.

Her mouth is red with blood when she falls into his arms, but she takes her own three breaths, eyes wide as she gasps, and then sinks her hand into his hair and pulls him down and kisses him ardently. She tastes of blood and salt and raw meat, but Diluc doesn't care. His blade drops to the ground.

As Jean pulls herself upright, there's a low growl from within her den. Diluc pulls away, starts to dive for his sword, and has to stop as Jean nearly falls without him to steady her. He pulls her close, ready to run, watching the draconic outline padding out of the shadows.

This dragon is far smaller than Jean was, either very young or- male, Diluc determines, as it steps far enough into the light to see its forward-curved adult horns and the line of spines down its back. Its colors are a striking contrast to Jean's draconic ones, its blues dark while hers were pale, black stripes along its sides and down its back instead of gold, the glimpse he gets of its soft underbelly pale grey instead of her off-white. It's also crouched low, wings half-folded against its back, tail trailing low, as wary of them as they are of it.

Of course. Until moments ago, it thought it had a defender, and suddenly she's gone.

Which gives Diluc time. He lowers Jean carefully to the ground and reaches for his sword, snatching it up and rising in the same movement. Before he can step between Jean and the dragon, though, she's catching at his coat.

"Diluc, don't! He's- he didn't hurt me."

"If he lets us back away, I won't hurt him," Diluc tells her, never looking away from the dragon. They can be *hellishly* fast, and if this one realizes that Jean is vulnerable.... Males are rarely human-killers, preferring smaller prey like sheep and dogs, but like any hunter they're opportunists that target the weak, and this one is almost double the size of a draft horse. On the other hand, Diluc doesn't hunt dragons just because they're dragons, only if they become a threat to humans. These are wild lands, and he's the intruder here.

The dragon takes another step forward, and he stiffens, taking a ready stance. He can feel Jean using his coat to pull herself up. If she can get upright and they can back off before it attacks, that would be the best outcome for everyone. He braces himself to hold the sword one-handed and her with the other. It's a heavy blade, but he can use it that way for a short time.

Instead of leaning on him, though, Jean takes an unsteady step away. Then another, and then *forward.* "Jean," he protests, starting after her, then stopping when the dragon tenses and she puts a hand out.

"No, no, it's all right," she says. Diluc thinks she's talking to him until she crashes to her knees again--no, doesn't crash, deliberately kneels, putting her head at the height of the dragon's head and reaching out to cup its nose. "This is my true form. I... I'm so sorry." Her voice cracks, and she looks back at Diluc. "I'm sorry, Diluc. I didn't know who I was, and.... I'm *sorry*."

*Oh.* He should have realized the moment he knew it was a male. A male that Jean was defending, fighting as if willing to protect their den--to protect *him*--to the death. As female dragons do when they take a mate.

Jean looks heartbroken, hollowed-out with guilt and grief. Diluc very carefully swallows down the jealous rage that tries to surge up the back of his throat.

"Is he gravid?"

"Yes," Jean whispers, her face crumpling further.

Diluc swallows again and lowers his blade. Doesn't sheathe it, but lets it hang low at his side. The dragon is hardly a threat to him at all, then, unless he approaches it in a way that makes it feel threatened.

"It's not your fault," he tells Jean. "You were cursed, and I could tell when it happened that you'd lost your mind. Beasts act on instinct. You did what was in that form's nature."

"I wasn't a beast. I could think clearly. I simply didn't remember anything from before I became a dragon, and I couldn't speak-"

"It's not your fault," he tells Jean again, more emphatically.

He can tell from the look on her face that she's not convinced. He can see, too, that she's still concerned for the dragon, cradling its jaw with her arm while she strokes its nose. It's dipping its head lower and lower, still eying him warily, but submitting as if she's still a female pressing it down under her weight. And with a certainty like a stone in his stomach, Diluc knows what has to happen next.

Jean had taken a mate--and he knows dragons well enough to know that *take* is the word, that males carry the eggs and fertilize them internally before laying them, so this one is burdened and flightless and weak, dependent upon its mate for its defense. It's a burden that Jean had placed upon it, and Jean is already a defender by nature. It doesn't matter that this is a wild creature. If Diluc asks her to come away from it, she will. He's her husband. But the same sense of responsibility, and guilt, that will make her follow Diluc away will make her regret doing so until the end of her days.

"I have a wagon at the base of the mountain," he tells her. "It should fit, if you can get it down there in peace. We'll have to confine it, but we can tend it at least until it lays."