Pandoc doesn't find multiple bib files

Question

I have pandoc set up to run using a default file containing

bibliography: ["./refs.bib","C:/Users/xxxxx/AppData/Roaming/pandoc/templates/refs.bib"]

The first is a local bib file for each project/document, the second is a fallback bibliography containing texts I commonly reference. This works fine but I have one document that I want to call a bib file not in either of these two locations. If I add "../../Docs/refs.bib" to the default file list then pandoc runs fine for this one exceptional case but my standard md files don't work:

File ../../Docs/refs.bib not found in resource path <<< Process finished (PID=17448). (Exit code 99)

This is odd because if I remove the refs.bib file in the same directory as the md file (the one referenced by "./refs.bib") pandoc is fine with that and doesn't complain. It moves on down the list to the fallback bib file in the templates folder.

If, instead of adding the exceptional bib file to the default file's list, I add bibliography: ../../Docs/refs.bib or bibliography: "../../Docs/refs.bib" to the exceptional file's yaml, pandoc doesn't find the bib. If I try adding --bibliography=../../Docs/refs.bib to the command line, it doesn't find the bib. In both of the above cases pandoc stops looking after finding the fallback bib in my templates folder.

As this is, for now, a one off case I can work around it but why is pandoc behaving inconsistently? Why can it handle a non-existent "./refs.bib" but not a non-existent "../../Docs/refs.bib"?

pandoc version 2.16.1 on Windows 10