Archive of Our Own

Everything is a blur after the Wolfhound lands its first successful hit.

Lohen parries a grand total of half of it, but the abyssal energy contorting the Wolfhouds’ continence is even thicker than the scouts reported. The thing about abyssal energy that most people don’t consider—too preoccupied with the abyssal energy and all—is that it negatively impacts its host, too, in that its body begins to deteriorate, in that when Lohen is successfully slashed by the other half of the Wolfhound’s attack—all bite, no bark—shards of its canines snag Lohen’s tendons, snaring his muscles violently and pumping his blood with darkness and venom.

And everything is a blur after that, in that Lohen’s mind shucks the before and shuns the after and pours every available seed of adrenaline into now now now. Because getting literally chewed out is fun on a solo day, but his entire company is here, and while he has some built-up resilience to abyssal energy, the rest of his Land of Wine And Freedom idiots definitely do not.

And this reminds him that he needs to start building that resilience with them as soon as possible, really, because even if they’re halfway resilient to the top ten most lethal poisons thanks to months of ‘training,’ one gulp of abyssal energy is a hundred times the lethal dose, and the Abyss loves nothing more than a cheap shot.

Speaking of cheap shots, the Wolfhound’s jaw is still hitched to Lohen’s ribs, which gives Lohen the perfect advantage to flip his polearm around and drive the business end of it in between the Wolfhound’s eyes. The blade pierces flesh, then muscle, then skull, and then the monster roars and flings him, teeth tearing from jaw.

“Lohen!”

His company is still here. Lohen hears his name the moment before the back of his head makes close acquaintance with the side of a cliff. Stars explode behind his eyes. Above the climbing roar of the beast, still with a polearm jutting from its skull, he hears the tightening of a crossbow.

Lohen picks his head up off the sand and screams, “Fall back!”

“But, Lohen—”

The Wolfhound shouldn’t still be able to move, but it does (thanks, Abyss), and just as it turns its hulking head toward the sound of Lohen’s subordinate, Lohen hurls his dagger at it. The blade is laced, not that poison does much against Wolfhounds, but it’s plenty sharp. It sinks into the Wolfhound’s shoulder and draws  attention at once. Lohen grins.

“Over here, big guy!” Lohen hollers. “You didn’t seriously think that little slap was gonna keep me down, did you?”

The Wolfhound roars. Lohen’s ears pop, but he keeps grinning against it and staggers to his feet. Blood pours from the open wounds in his side and gushes around the ones still plugged with teeth and claw. He looks around and finds that his company is nowhere to be seen. Good; all-out it is.

At least his company knows how to follow some orders. They wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if they knew how to follow all orders. But then again, if they knew how to follow orders to a T, they wouldn’t be Lohen’s company, would they?

When Theodore finds out that Lohen took a blow in his subordinate’s place, though, Theodore is gonna punch both of them. 

Lohen draws a second dagger from the sheaths tucked under his cloak, against his belt. The Wolfhound ogles him, its body swaying like a cobra as blood gushes around the blade between its eyes.

“Alright,” says Lohen, “be a good sport and give me my spear back.”

The Wolfhound is the first to lunge, but Lohen is the first to strike.

None of this would have happened if Lohen’s company was better trained. They’re still feeling the loss of Adorno, still missing a real Captain. Varka seems to think it best to wait for someone within the company to step up to the role of Captain, but Lohen thinks the guy is just stalling the inevitable mound of paperwork it would take to reinstate a Captain.

This means Vice Captain Lohen is the highest in command in the fifth company. Which means they all listen to him. Which means even if it was his subordinate’s fault that it came down to this—one disobeyed order in the name of guts and glory—it is ultimately Lohen’s responsibility.

The fifth company needs work.

A lot of work.

And a lot of time to get it done.

So Lohen leads the fight away to give them ample time to retreat.

The Grandmater’s first company isn’t far from here. Lohen should keep this Abyssal abomination away from them, too.

The fight stays on the beach. Lohen uses the sand to divert the Wolfhound’s attention (amazing what a fistful of grit will do to your eyes) long enough to get his polearm back. It takes no small amount of wrenching to free the blade  from the bone of its skull, but he manages. The Wolfhound thrashes, throwing him again. Black and red blood covers the sand in globs.

Despite the hole in its face, the Wolfhound continues to attack. It must’ve done some serious damage with its venom, too, because Lohen is starting to feel dizzy, and usually Wolfhound venom doesn’t do much for him. Oh, it could be the bloodloss too. He’s been bleeding for a while.

He takes the Wolfhound’s next attack in stride, but it sees him going for another handful of sand, and Wolfhounds aren’t supposed to be clever or devious but Lohen swears it sees him and knows exactly how his weight is distributed in that moment, where it would be most difficult for Lohen to defend, how heavy his weapon is in a grip strained by bloodloss, and—

The Wolfhound’s jaws snap around Lohen’s leg. Two rows of teeth pierce his upper thigh. The other two rows pierce his calf.

Lohen doesn’t scream. If the Wolfhound is smart enough to plot, then it’s smart enough to understand satisfaction, and Lohen refuses to give it that. He does smile, though. The smile comes to him like the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy and not something he has any actual control over.

With his dagger in one hand and his polearm in the other, Lohen takes out the Wolfhound’s eyes.

The Wolfhound throws him. Again. As the teeth are ripped from his leg, Lohen chokes. His vision goes black. It comes back just in time for him to hit the shoreline, right in the space where the water meets the sand. The ground throws him another four times before he finally rolls to a stop, coughing on saltwater and sand. His wounds scream. He can’t feel his leg.

He looks back over his shoulder at the wailing Wolfhound. Great, it’s got his polearm trapped in its face again. But it is still bleeding, and its movements are starting to slow down, which means—

Lohen gets up one more time.

With the Wolfhound preoccupied with its newly acquired blindness, Lohen cuts all four of its Achilles’ tendons with his dagger and some well-timed dodging. He thought maybe there was a chance the Wolfhound could smell him, but its sinuses must be blocked with blood already. Bummer. Once its tendons are severed, though, it falls to its knees in the sand. Lohen uses the last of his strength to free his polearm from its eye socket and slits the largest artery in the side of the monster’s neck. The monster flinches, but doesn’t strike.

Lohen pants for air, staggering just a little ad he stands dizzily over his fallen opponent, grinning dazedly. “Thanks for the exercise. You… really knew how to fight.”

He collapses to the sand beside the Wolfhound.

Lohen learned a long time ago that his adrenaline is too much for his body to handle. The Wolfhound venom floods him, spun with abyssal energy. The sea laps at his wounds, foaming in the blood and the dark, sleucing venom. It burns. He squeezes the grip of his polearm. Laughter bubbles in his chest, but he can’t seem to get a breath deep enough to let it out. The sky is dark. Clouds part, revealing the white winter moon and its smattering of starry speckles.

Lohen thinks of something. He unclenches his hand, and a thin layer of ice cracks with it, flaking from his joints. His hand was practically fused to his polearm with frost. He can’t remember the last time that happened.

He overdid it.

The ocean isn’t as cold as it would be if he didn’t have a Cryo Vision, though.

Oh. He has a Cryo Vision.

Lohen shoves his hand against the bleeding holes in his side and fills them with ice. His vision whites out. Once he’s sure the wounds are plugged, he reaches as far down his leg as he can and does the same thing.

The moon turns the sand white, and the ocean turns the shadows blue. 

The pain climbs.

His nerves are on fire.

He stares at the sky.

A flake of something brushes against his cheek, taken by the wind. It is the color and texture of charcoal, whispy like a feather. He turns his head as much as he can to find the Wolfhound’s body, slowly disintegrating, finally dead. The abyssal light flickers feebly a couple more times, but it’s over.

Lohen watches until there is nothing left of the Wolfhound but the indent it left in the sand.

Lohen coughs. His mouth fills with blood. He watches the frost flake from his fingers, feels particles of it brush his cheek as the wind sweeps them away.

He still can’t feel his leg.

“—hen! Lohen! Lohen!”

Sand sprays his face as a shadow blocks the moon from his line of sight and Varka drops to his side.

Oh, good. His idiots found the first company after all.

Varka reaches for the source of the blood and seems to realize it’s been frozen over. Lohen watches a whole theatre’s production worth of emotion take turns on Varka’s face; there's the initial panic, the residual fear, some disgust, then lots of rage, something almost like pride or respect, then something new that Lohen doesn’t have an emotion for, per se, but has previously dubbed The Grandmaster Face, which is less an emotion and more a lack thereof.

“You’re insane,” says Varka.

Lohen grins, then chokes, and blood dribbles down the corners of his mouth.

Varka throws his greatsword into its pocket dimension, says something under his breath about “not having time” and gathers Lohen into his arms. It pulls the wounds, all of them. Lohen shrieks.

“I’m sorry, Lohen,” says Varka, and he at least sounds like he means it, “bear with me.”

Varka begins to run.

Lohen feels every footfall as Varka’s heels crash into the sand like waves. Eventually, he gets used to the sensation of ‘full-body agonized heartbeat’ enough to croak, “My spear…”

“Someone’ll grab it later.”

“My knife…”

“Don’t worry about it, Lohen.”

“M-My other knife…”

Varka gives him another theatre production of emotion, but this time it’s wrapped into a chuckle, not a face. Lohen didn’t think a chuckle could have a range like that.

“Survive this,” says Varka, “and I’ll make sure you get your weight in knives.”

“T-Tied in pretty little bows?”

“Don’t push it, kid.”

Lohen tries to snark back, but a visceral heat swells up his throat, flooding his blood, and he must have made some kind of sound because Varka is asking him what’s wrong. It’s the Wolfhound venom, imbued with abyssal energy. The wave passes, but Lohen can’t breathe, and Varka’s thudding heartbeat is so, so fast.

“Keep talking,” says Varka abruptly. “Just keep talking, Lohen. Talk about your knives, your latest mission, how much you hate kids—anything.”

Lohen tries to think. The moon is so bright.

“Lohen,” stresses Varka.

“My name is Lohen,” murmurs Lohen. “Vice Captain of the… Fifth Company of the Knights of Favonius.”

“Captain.”

“Huh?”

“You were promoted.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

Lohen snorts. “Doesn’t sound like me.”

“Yeah, well, full of surprises and all that.”

Lenient, Lohen thinks. Good old useless Grandmaster Varka, saying nonsense in the heat of the moment just to keep him talking. Well, can’t hurt to play along. Lohen shuts his eyes, but it doesn’t keep the world from spinning. “My name is Lohen,” he says when he remembers he’s supposed to be talking, “n-newly appointed Captain—Captain of the Fifth Company of the Knights of Favonius.”

Varka actually chuckles, for some reason. “I know I told you to say anything, but did you have to go with interrogation protocol?”

“You said to say anything,” says Lohen. Truthfully, it’s the only thing that comes naturally to say. He hasn’t been hit that hard since Rerir, and it’s not like Rerir, like, took a bite out of him or anything.

“Hey,” says Varka, “I didn’t mean for you to stop talking.”

Lohen breathes, chokes on it, and, yeah, the interrogation protocol is all he’s got. “My name is Lohen. Captain—Captain of the Fifth Company of the Knights of Favonious. M-My name is Lohen, Cap—C-Captain of the Fifth Company of the Knights of Favonius. My name is… Lohen, Captain of…”

“Keep going, Lohen.”

“Did they make it?”

“They did. I’ve sent them ahead of us to regroup, they’ll be at camp.”

Good. Lohen can chew his stupid company out when they get there.

“Lohen,” says Varka.

Right. Talking. Why is he doing that again? “M-My name is Lohen, Vice Captain of the F-Fifth Company of-of the Knights of Favonius.”

“Captain.”

“Huh? Oh. Right. Mm…”

“Hey,” says Varka.

The abrupt urgency in his voice makes Lohen shake himself. “M-My name is Lohen, Vi—Captain of the Fifth Company. Of the Knights.”

“Give me something else. Tell me about the title of Benevolent Knight.”

“It’s mine.”

“Expand on that.”

What’s the point? It’s not like he earned it.

“Expand on that,” says Varka. “That’s an order from your superior.”

“It was… passed on. By… a friend.”

“When?”

Lohen doesn’t remember. Time doesn’t exist right now. “M-My name is Lohen, Captain of the Fifth…”

He babbles on like that, like an uninspired bird recycling the same melody. Thunder shakes the sky, rattles his bones.

“I don’t hate kids,” says Lohen.

Varka trips a little. “What was that?”

Lohen responds by sinking further into Varka’s chest, enveloped by his heartbeat and expanding-retracting lungs. “They’re, just… loud. And needy.”

Varka snorts. “I’d have thought that would give you some common ground with ‘em.”

Lohen wants to pinch him, but his arm won’t move.

“And maybe you’ve got that much in common with Mondstadt, too,” says Varka, “because we need you. So you have to survive this, alright?”

Crazy.

Lohen thinks about what to say next. What was he talking about?

“Lohen—”

“Vice Captain,” Lohen slurs, “of—the Knights of Favon…”

“Captain,” Varka corrects with another fond-afraid-firm slush of emotion.

“Captain,” Lohen echoes.

There is a difference between a limit and a wall, and Lohen has had plenty of practice learning which is which. He can push limits. He can even break them. But he’s never been able to break a wall.

Like this, in Varka’s arms listening to Varka’s heartbeat as his chest suffocates his lungs and the blood in his throat turns to clogs with frost on his fingertips and sand under his fingernails and his skin seared to ice and blood and venom, Lohen’s body hits a wall.

He goes limp.

“Hey—Hey, Lohen!”

He can’t speak. He can keep his eyes open, and he can see, but he can’t move. He feels his breathing slow, feels the venom creep through him, up on him.

Varka gives him one very brief, very tight squeeze and keeps running. He’s saying stuff like “Hang in there” and “Should’ve brought the healers” and “Come on, come on, come on” and “Say something, Lohen,” and Lohen stares at nothing, barely conscious of his breathing, listening to Varka’s footfalls, heartbeat, voice—everything.

The moon is bright.

Then the moon isn’t, and instead Lohen finds himself looking upward at a leather-colored canopy as he’s laid on his back. The surface beneath him is soft, padded, smells like it’s been in someone’s backpack for a few weeks, but it’s clean. Orange light dances around the tent.

Varka is still here. Others are here, too, but all he recognizes is the silhouette of the Knight’s armor. He can’t see their faces but context says that these are healers, and that Varka has set him underneath their care because somehow even after all of that he is still alive.

Varka hunkers down beside him and the healers begin their assessment. Lohen tries to breathe. The movement and the change in gravity and the warmth of this space woke him up a little, set him back from the wall by just a couple inches. He can wiggle his fingers. The frost is melting.

“You with me?” says Varka.

Lohen swallows. It tastes like iron and bile and salt. “G…”

“No, I’m needed here, Lohen.” Varka settles his hand gingerly on the inner crook of Lohen’s elbow. “I’m not leaving, not until you’re stable.”

There is a joke to be had there, one Varka must see because he puts on a stern, furrowed-brow look and Lohen smiles weakly back.

The agony finds him again, of course, and he takes shallow, whistling gasps while Varka squeezes his arm. 

“The anesthesia isn’t working,” says the voice of someone Lohen recognizes vaguely but can’t put a name to. One of the healers whose faces he still can’t seem to see. “We’ve given him as much as we can, I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline, or if he’s just—immune, but, there's no effect.”

“Damn it. I was afraid of that.”

The basic treatment for Wolfhound bites involving venom and shrapnel (teeth and pieces of talon) is simple: anesthesia first, then remove the bone fragments, then administer medicine for venom, then stitch and disinfect and bandage wounds. Ride out the pain with anesthesias and medicines. Lohen’s done it plenty of times for himself (minus the anesthesia, sometimes by choice and sometimes by proximity). It didn’t occur to him that anesthesia just straight up wouldn’t work on him.

“We’ve gotta get the wounds dressed,” says a different almost-familiar healer. “The ice is only going to hold so long, and once it melts, he’ll be losing blood again.”

“What’s the state of the injuries?”

“It’s sort of hard to make out around the ice, but if it was a Wolfhound, we’re dealing with puncture wounds. Maybe some tearing. They’ll need to be plugged first and gone back over and stitched one at a time.”

“While he’s unmedicated.”

A beat.

“What would you have us do, Grandmaster?”

“Whatever you need to.” Varka’s hand presses over Lohen’s forehead, and when he continues, his voice is gentle. “Lohen—”

“Do it,” says Lohen. He’s surprised at the steadiness of his voice, alarmed he can even speak at all. His voice is tight from blood, from yelling at his company, from the congestion in his chest. “Believe it or not I’m not actually as weak as I look. So—save your breath.”

“I should be telling you that.” Still, Varka doesn’t argue. He turns back to the healers with his ‘I’m the Grandmaster’ voice and face and says, “I’m at your disposal. Don’t let him die.”

“Understood. Leroy, bring the straps here. We’ll need to restrain him.”

“Don’t bother,” Lohen gasps. All eyes zero in on him in an instant, and the attention at a time like this makes his skin crawl. “I won’t move. Don’t bother, with—restraints.”

“Sounds about right,” says Varka, “but we’re doing it anyway. Thrash, scream, bite, do whatever you need to do to stay grounded.”

Lohen suffers a laugh.

One of the healers hands Varka a wadded-up roll of gauze, and Varka makes Lohen clamp it between his teeth. They’ve laced it with something strong—some kind of alcohol? It’s bitter, though, so, probably an herbal tincture that uses alcohol as a base. If it’s meant to distract him from what’s about to happen, it’s kind of working. Or, it was, anyway. Now that he’s thought of it as a distraction, it isn’t distracting him much. Probably for the best.

He just hopes the healers have the brains to at least not warn him when they’re about to start—

They have the brains.

Lohen does not have many early childhood memories, except for being rescued by Adorno and maybe a couple brief flashes of syringes and lab tables and expensive-looking, tubular equipment, but he does have one memory that stuck with him. He’s pretty sure he was with the Fatui, and he’s pretty sure there was some kind of farm inside the facility, and he remembers watching a pig be hauled from its pen and dragged up to the stake. It was just, this, giant hook suspended by a giant chain, rusty and rugged with years of cakey blood, set in between two enormous stakes of wood. The same two black-clad men that hauled the pig from its pen heaved the pig onto the hook. It squealed until it couldn’t anymore, and then it died.

Lohen used to imagine what it would be like to be put on a stake like that. That was probably the point; no one did cruelty like the Fatui’s Dottore, or so he’s been told, because he doesn’t actually remember much of anything before Adorno found him and Theodore and saved them from what he’d, again, been told was hell. But it was on purpose that he saw it. He knows that. He was supposed to think the next one could be him. It would keep him in line.

He remembers the sounds that pig made, though. There are memories, and then there are things that fundamentally rewrite something in the functional canals of your psyche.

Lohen feels the sounds in himself more than he hears them: the wad of gauze acts like a gag, and he sinks his teeth in so severely he can feel his canines grind through it. His jaw simmers beneath his teeth. He can tell he was drugged, because even if the anesthesia doesn’t work it’s still inside of him, probably swing-dancing with the painkillers along their shared, merry way to do absolutely nothing for his nervous system. He squeals and chokes around the gauze, feeling the restraints saw into his skin. The noises inside of him feel grotesquely primal, and he has no idea how many of them successfully scratch and claw their way up his throat and out into the air.

The healers must stop at some point, because Lohen gets a brief, gasping reprieve of clarity as cool water is trickled over his forehead and down his neck. A hand tries to remove the gauze and Lohen almost bites it, so, the gauze stays put between his teeth. His ringing ears give way to the exhausted voices of the healers and his own desperate gasps. He’s not being nearly as quiet as he thought he was capable of; he inhales and it’s noisy, he exhales and it’s noisy, and there's this undercurrent sound beneath all of it like a whistle run through gravel.

He knows it isn’t finished, though, because he’s still restrained and the tension is so thick he can taste it through the medicine in the gauze and his body is still one big open wound, exposed to air and elements and eyes.

He doesn’t have solid memories of what happened to him while he was with the Doctor, but he has concepts of memories, vague snippings of emotion, and he remembers being exposed, limbs pulled apart. He remembers being watched.

Varka still has one hand on Lohen’s shoulder. Lohen only realizes when Varka squeezes and says, “Breathe.”

“N-No.” Above the threshold of shame and agony comes a rage Lohen is almost completely unfamiliar with. “Get it over with.” 

It’s a miracle Varka can understand him through the gauze, through his teeth. “We’re giving you a break,” says Varka heavily. “Healer’s orders. Your body’s working too hard against the drugs and now it’s got you doped on adrenaline.”

Lohen can feel his breath picking up, birdlike, each inhale and exhale like thrashing wings against a barbed cage. “Keep—Keep—”

“I’m not arguing with you on this, Lohen. Lie back.”

Lohen scrounges up just enough strength to spit the wad of gauze onto the blanket beside him, grab ahold of Varka’s wrist on his shoulder and snarl, “If you make me go through this, any longer than I have to, I’m gonna tear you to—to—”

He doesn’t have enough strength to finish the threat, just to start it. He goes limp and Varka jolts and tries to steady him.

Relishing pain after a well-won battle is one thing, but right now all Lohen can see is that crusty hook, the mounted pig, the squealing. He remembers the heaving chest more than he remembers the sound.

He remembers feeling small.

Maybe that’s really the strongest memory he has of his time with the Fatui: he was small, and they never, ever let him forget it.

Varka’s hand settles over Lohen’s chest.

“You heard him,” says Varka, in a new tone Lohen has never heard before, settled and stone and trembling all at once. “Don’t stop until it’s finished.”

“But Grandmaster—”

“That’s an order.”

Every tension left in Lohen’s body collapses, just like that. He sucks in a breath, heaves it out and lets his head loll, eyes shut. He barely gets the chance to breathe a thank-you to Varka before Varka is forcing the lip of a water canteen to his mouth. It isn’t water, though, it’s wine, Varka’s good stuff, too, the rich taste almost unpalletable. Lohen gets about two sips in before his throat closes up. Varka pulls away.

“I don’t expect it’ll make you feel all sunshine and rainbows,” says Varka, capping the canteen, “but it might take the edge off.”

“A-Awh, the edge is m—my favorite part.”

Varka huffs and shakes his head. A conversation with the healers happens over Lohen’s head, which is somehow still farther away than he can hear, and then Varka is wedging a fresh wad of gauze between Lohen’s teeth. He tightens his jaw around it, already sore again. This wad is thicker than the first. The taste and smell is thicker, too; the healers must have given up on the medicinal herbs and doubled down on the alcohol, like Varka.

The healers get back into position, and Lohen shuts his eyes and tries not to think about the hook. It shouldn’t be bothering him, anyway, it was a long time ago and it’s not like he remembers much else about his time with the Fatui, so it shouldn’t affect him.

Varka’s hand pushes Lohen’s hair off his face, unsticking it from his sweaty skin. “When all this is done,” says Varka, “I’m treating you to lunch.”

Lohen forces his eyes open to stare at him.

“Yes,” says Varka, “it can be with imported ingredients.”

Lohen keeps staring at him.

“Yes,” says Varka with no small amount of longsuffering, “that includes wine, too. Dawn Winery’s finest.”

Lohen narrows his eyes.

“Yes.” This time, Varka has ditched the ‘long’ and fully embraced the ‘suffering.’ “I’ll let you challenge me to a duel first, and I won’t go easy on you. But you can’t die. That’s the deal. Got it?”

The grin that spreads across Lohen’s face in response to that is, again, less a conscious action on his part and more of an inevitable, cosmic event.

Varka ruffles his hair. His smile seems forced, though, and that’s no fun. The alcohol burns Lohen’s throat.

“Need anything before we start?” says Varka.

Lohen doesn’t have the chance to even fathom the question before the healers are already starting and he’s heaving into the gauze between his teeth, ribs closed around his lungs and heart like fists around a hamster.

“Don’t hold your breath, Lohen, breathe through it.”

Breathing through his nose smells like blood and breathing through his mouth tastes like bitter herbs and ethanol. He tries to breathe anyway, but it keeps hitching on what feels like a solid mass inside of his chest, and all he can manage is a couple of shallow shreds of air that sound and feel like sobs. He heaves for it anyway, even when the effort makes him dizzy. Even if it hurts, there is something reverently relieving in that he can still defy his own body, his own agony. He feels Varka squeeze his shoulder and forces his eyes open long enough to glare at him.

“That’ll do,” Varka says.

Lohen squeezes his eyes shut to ride out the next wave of stitches.

It goes on like this.

And on.

And on.

Finally, Varka pries the gauze from his jaws. Lohen is about to scream—don’t stop again, don’t you dare leave me there, don’t—but Varka must see it coming because he shushes Lohen and smooths a hand over his hair and says, “No, we’re done. We’re done. Healers just finished up, last step’s just to bandage everything and then you’re good.”

Lohen is so confused that he chokes, actually, between a sob and a gag as he tastes the alcohol behind his molars. It didn’t occur to him that the pain could end. The restraints are undone from his wrists, and Varka is lifting Lohen with one hand between his shoulder blades so that the healers can wrap his chest and stomach. The straps are loosed from his ankles, too. And from across his hips. The lip of a canteen bumps Lohen’s teeth again, and this time it is water, and Lohen drinks until he’s nauseous and Varka pulls away.

“All good?” says Varka.

Lohen nods. His stomach is unsettled, but he doesn’t think he’s in danger of throwing up. That’s something. He enjoys the feeling of a dizzying fight, but not so much throwing up.

He hears the thunk of Varka setting the canteen aside. He’s expecting the healers to start up again any second, bracing himself for it. But the restraints really are gone, and the tent isn’t suffocating in tension. It must really be over. He can barely believe it.

“That’s the wounds taken care of,” says one of the healers to Varka, “but we still need to ride out the Wolfhound venom and any potential infection. If he can survive the first night—I mean, that’s what I was taught by my master, anyway. He said the first night is always the toughest when you’re dealing with Wolfhounds.”

“Right,” says Varka. “Well, let’s hope that’s true. I don’t think my heart can take much more of this.”

“The Grandmaster is weak,” sings Lohen flatly.

“That’s about enough out of you,” says Varka, but he’s smiling. “No additional comments from the peanut gallery.”

Lohen laughs. It’s airy, high-pitched and vibrato-ish, but it’s not forced.

Varka refocuses his attention on Lohen, shaking his head. “Remind me not to give you alcohol again. How’s the pain?”

“Painful,” says Lohen. He’s not even trying to be defiant this time, it’s just the only word he’s got to describe it. The pain has a bone-deep insidious tone to it that he doesn’t like, but he can’t string that many words into a sentence for Varka right now. “The alcohol… helped. Little…” He sways his hand into the air and pinches his thumb and index finger together. “Little bit. But no more.”

Varka was already reaching for the canteen. “Are you sure?”

Lohen nods. “Weird dreams.”

“Alright.”

Lohen drops his hand. His fingers are warm, no longer caked in ice.

“I’m sure we have him from here, Grandmaster,” says one of the healers, “if you want to return to the others.”

“No need. I said I was at your disposal, didn’t I? And we still haven’t made it through the first twenty four hours.” Varka’s hand finds Lohen’s shoulder again with such effortless accuracy, he’s starting to wonder if it hasn’t become some sort of homing device for Varka’s grip. “Until we’re sure he’s good, I’m staying.”

“Yay,” says Lohen. “Sl-Sleepover.”

Varka tousles his hair some more. “What did I say about the peanut gallery, Lohen?”

“It should have m-more alcohol?”

Varka does that thing with Lohen’s shoulder again, squeezing heartily, but the softness in his face doesn’t match the intensity of the grip. “Think you can get some rest?” says Varka.

Lohen nods, but it’s not the truth. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to rest between the venom and the pain and the adrenaline still spritzing across his skin. Feeling is returning to his leg, slowly, and the pain is so intense it’s making him shiver.

Varka shifts, and then a blanket is being spread overtop him, one of the thin, woolen blankets they bring with them on expeditions. Lohen could tell Varka that he isn’t cold, but the blanket is actually a nice touch.

“And you’re sure we’ve cleaned the wounds thoroughly,” says Varka to the healers. “We’ve eliminated any extenuating risk of infection to the best we can do here?”

“To the best we can,” says the healer, a slight wobble to his voice. “We removed all the debris we could see and feel, but, Wolfhounds start falling apart from the moment they touch the Abyss. It’s possible we missed something.”

“But you did everything you could.”

“With our strongest disinfectants and most meticulous eyes, Sir.”

“Alright.”

Lohen can tell by Varka’s voice that he isn’t happy with that, but what can he say? His title as the Grandmaster doesn’t mean much to infection and blood and whether or not the body can fight venom. He shivers again and Varka removes his own coat to add to the blanket.

“Lunch?” murmurs Lohen.

“Sure, kid,” says Varka, patting his head. “Lunch.”

Lohen doesn’t sleep, but he does drift. The pain keeps him up while the slew of medications and alcohol try to keep his brain at least somewhat unaware of what is happening in his body. The sensation of useless medication making its way aimlessly through his blood is godawful. He feels the side effects without the benefits, the brain fog without the relief, the dizziness without the sleep. It’s terrible, but without the healers actively sifting through his wounds, he’s able to close his eyes and breathe and pretend he’s somewhere else.

Varka had better keep his promise about sending someone to fetch Lohen’s polearm. The knives, too. Those weapons have been through everything with him, and it would be a shame to replace them for no good reason.

He keeps breathing. The pain is, if nothing else, grounding now in a way it hadn’t been before. Thanks to the crippling fire in his limbs, he knows where he is and where he isn’t. He can drift to that.

Varka makes him sip water every so often. The healers peel back bandages and prod at his stitches. Conversations come and go.

Time is passing.

All at once, Lohen is too warm. He tries to kick the blanket off. His bad leg reminds him that it’s bad, and his teeth clamp down on the inside of his cheeks to keep any sound from leaving his lips. He’s made enough noise for one day, thanks. The pain is fresh when it hits him, and the not-quite-comfortable-but-at-least-quiet illusion of ‘drifting’ completely shatters over his head. He is aware of his surroundings, of his body, of the fact that something is wrong.

He forces his eyes to open, squinting. The voices have started up again, and the oil lamp is turned up as the healers and Varka shuffle and shift around him. Lohen feels the restraint tighten over his leg again—just his leg—from one across his ankle, another across his thigh, the works.

Varka is trying to put gauze in his mouth again.

“What is it?” Lohen says through his teeth.

“Your leg is swelling.”

“S’Supposed to do that.”

“Not like this. There's still a shard of something in there, healers missed a spot.”

Lohen doesn’t have it in him to feel either dread or morbid curiosity. He shuts his eyes again and tries to inhale without throttling himself on the thickness in his lungs. “D-Does this mean… my twenty four hours starts over?”

“What twenty four hours?”

“For… Wolfhound bites.” The clarity sharpens to a fine point, and Lohen sees the dark shadows under Varka’s eyes, the lines on his face accentuated by the warm hues of the oil lamp, and he thinks he looks about ten years older. “The first company will be wanting a report,” Lohen manages, “from you. You have to…”

“How many times do I have to say it? I’m staying until you’re stable, Lohen, at least. Probably longer now that you’ve got this infection thing going for you. Stop worrying about that.”

“My company,” says Lohen. “They—need a leader, too. You… They’re left, vulnerable, without…”

“My knights can handle the fifth company until you’re back on your feet to lay into them yourself. Now,” Varka pushes the gauze onto him again, “take a deep breath, and bite down. In that order.”

Lohen unclenches his jaw to take a deep breath. His teeth broke the skin of the inside of his cheeks, and the blood tastes like metal, but he does manage to get a breath in. He sinks his teeth into the fresh roll of gauze. This one tastes and smells of mint. He thinks up a joke about being a guinea pig for some wannabe mixologist whose parents forced them to become a healer instead, and it makes him laugh. And laugh.

“Yeah, okay,” says Varka over his head, “remind me to ask what’s so funny when this is over.”

Lohen shakes his head, dizzy from the air the laughter took from him, and the healers move in like vultures. Fingers push and poke at the inflamed skin of his leg. They must find what they’re looking for, too, because a sudden, blinding pain wrenches Lohen from muscle to marrow, and he gasps so desperately he nearly swallows the gauze.

“—here, I can feel it.”

“—makes the most sense to start a new incision to get it out. A clean cut will be easier to stitch than trying to restitch—”

“—whatever you have to do. It’s your call.”

Varka relays the information to him, but Lohen already caught the gist. He hates that Varka’s voice has all the trappings of an apology without the literal words. He chose this, didn’t he? He chose to step between his insubordinate subordinate and the frothing Wolfhound. When the monster sank its teeth into his side, Lohen might as well have signed on the dotted line: unprecedented excruciating torment, please, with extra sauce. He’s a genius.

Lohen feels the moment the new incision is made. It’s… painless, mostly, compared to everything else. Sharp knife, precise hands. It stings, but he’s familiar with this kind of cut from days training with the knights. From days training with Adorno, back in the day.

Then the precise hands start digging around the precise cut and the feeling is like that of being shredded by jagged teeth all over again.

It isn’t the worst thing he’s felt. He doesn’t know what the worst thing he’s felt is, but he knows this isn’t it.

The insatiable, damning curiosity in him to look is stopped only by Varka’s firm hand placed over his eyes.

“Not now,” says Varka. “Deep breath.”

The healer’s hand jerks again and it is very, very hard to breathe.

“Sorry, sorry,” says one of the healers, “we have it, but it’s hooked, just, hang in there.”

Hooked. Hooked.

Varka shakes him a little. “Breathe through it, Lohen. Don’t hold your breath.”

Trying. Stupid body, stupid body, he can’t—it won’t do what he tells it to, it won’t—

—breathe—

—and the healers just, keep, pulling, and—

Lohen tries to be quiet. He isn’t quiet.

Time passes some more. He can’t drift. He tries to focus on the venom, but his attention keeps getting grappled by the hands grappling whatever is stuck in his leg.

Varka is praying. Which isn’t a thing, Varka doesn’t “pray,” not like this. Usually Varka’s prayer looks like “Thank Barbatos” or “Barbatos help us” in the heat of the moment. But not this. This is an earnest, hands-clasped-head-bowed supplication. Lohen wants to tell him to knock it off, but then the healers tighten the row of stitches in his gut and he chokes on a scream behind the gauze. Varka’s arm presses heavily over his chest and shoulders, pinning him. The strap keeps his leg in place.

He feels Varka’s hand on his head again, in his hair. “Pass out,” Varka is saying. “Please just pass out.”

Lohen doesn’t know who Varka is talking to. If it’s a prayer, it’s not effective. Lohen has never been more inside his body than he is in this moment. He can feel the deft, skilled fingers of the healers methodically checking his wounds for grime or gristle. He feels the barbed tug as one of them finds a chipped piece of monster canine, and Varka keeps his hand pressed hard against Lohen’s chest as it’s removed. The restraints are slick with sweat, and beads roll down Lohen’s face into his collar and hair.

A half-memory sparks in the base of his mind, an old memory of dark coats and masked faces and tables and bars and Fatui insignias. He doesn’t remember the specific moment—there might not have been one—but he remembers that, no matter what he was told or what was done to him, he was loud. For every second he spent with the Fatui, he never let them forget that he was there.

He grabbed the bars of his cage with both hands and shook it, days at a time, until the bars were loose and he was moved to a new one. He ran at the hollow, echoing metal cell door with his entire body weight until he’d turned his entire body into a single, bleeding bruise and the clang of flesh on metal rang his own ears deaf. He screamed until guards… stopped him. He doesn’t remember how they stopped him, just that screaming wasn’t a viable long-term form of defiance.

“Lohen? Lohen, you have to breathe.”

He doesn’t want to breathe. Breathing hurts, and not in a satisfying way.

Varka says something, the healers respond, and suddenly Lohen is being lifted with one arm slipped beneath his shoulders. The stitches in his chest and stomach object severely, but the pain doesn’t last as long as it might’ve if the rest of today hadn’t happened. When Lohen returns to his body, he is leaning back against Varka’s chest, the gauze still desperately clenched between his teeth, and Varka has an arm loosely trapped across Lohen’s stomach.

Lohen is so confused by what just happened that it actually makes for a decent distraction, and the new position lessens some of the pressure in his chest. And he breathes. It isn’t deep, and it hurts, but who cares?

“What,” Lohen slurs, but the gauze is still there, so it ends up sounding more like a muffled hum.

When Varka speaks, Lohen feels the vibrations of it throughout his entire body. “Little easier to breathe like this, huh?”

The straps are still tight around his bad leg, and the healers are still doing their thing, but Lohen can breathe. He can hear Varka’s heartbeat again. The guy smells like dandelions, so strongly that it overpowers the overbearing scent of blood and failed medicine. It’s… actually working as a distraction. That might not be what Varka intended, but it’s enough, and the distraction stays even after Lohen identifies it as such. Varka is warm, solid, breathing, present, and he brings the smell and the spirit of Mondstadt with him wherever he goes. The Fatui’s cells and hooks feel far away, and Lohen thinks only of home. He breathes.

“My name is Varka,” says Varka, “Grandmaster of Mondstadt and the Knights of Favonius…”

Lohen huffs.

Unlike him, Varka doesn’t drone on and on like a broken echo; he talks about Klee, about paperwork, about his early years as a knight. He talks about the time he nearly blew up Dawn Winery because he thought open-flame oil lanterns would be good company for open-top barrels of mead. Then he talks about Dawn Winery’s brief business expansion involving mead, how it was Crepus’ idea and how it didn’t even have the chance to get off the ground.

Lohen doesn’t realize he’s drifting again until he feels the snug tightening of stitches in the side of his leg, the pain like a whistle past his ear. The gauze is tugged from between his teeth. Lohen is boneless, and the faces around him are fuzzy in a way that kind of makes him want to laugh. Maybe he would, if he had the energy for it. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so tired.

The healers are talking. When Varka answers, he sounds relieved, and his hand tightens ever so slightly across Lohen’s waist in something that is almost a hug.

“A-Are we done?” Lohen says hoarsely. His voice doesn’t sound like his.

“Yeah.” Varka’s voice doesn’t sound like his, either. He doesn’t make any attempt to move. “Yeah, you’re done. It’s over. You did good, kid.”

Done. Done, done, done. It’s over.

“Can I sleep now?” says Lohen.

Varka’s chuckle settles somewhere deep in Lohen’s chest. His hand rests heavily on Lohen’s forehead, and he nods. “Rest, Lohen. You’ve earned it.”

Slumped bodily into Varka, Lohen succumbs to whatever void awaits him at the end of his consciousness.

Lohen wakes up eventually. The process of opening his eyes is a different kind of succumbing: he’s drained beyond recognition, but he knows the stinging light beyond his eyelids isn’t going away, and once his memories catch up with his body, the curiosity wins out.

He’s still in the tent. The ceiling is orange from a combination of still-burning oil lanterns and midday sunlight. His mouth is dry, and the taste of mucus and ash clings to his teeth. He throws the wool blanket off of him to check the damages. The healers stripped him down to his white undershirt, unbuttoned, revealing a chest and stomach all but completely covered in off-white bandages, stained with herbal tinctures and blood. They let him keep his trousers, at least, but cut down the right leg of one side to expose his bandaged, splinted-up leg. The splint is made of wood, secured with thin metal rods and gauze. He’s impressed Varka had healers in the first company carrying this sort of stuff around. Then again, it is Varka.

Lohen draws the blanket back over his injuries and allows himself a moment to breathe.

He hears footsteps approaching from just outside the tent. If the gait alone wasn’t already a dead giveaway, then the silhouette definitely is. Varka makes his way into the tent with a hushed quality unbefitting of Mondstadt’s Grandmaster. He’s carrying a tray of something—tea?—and he nearly drops it at the sight of Lohen staring back at him.

“Lohen!” says Varka. He drops the tent flap behind him, then sets the tray off to the side—it’s tea, he was right—and takes a knee by Lohen’s side. “We weren’t expecting you to wake up for another while. How are you feeling?”

“I think my bones flew south for the winter,” says Lohen.

Varka guffaws, which drives a spike of pain behind Lohen’s eyes and wakes him up some more. “Yep, there you are,” says Varka, tousling Lohen’s hair. “I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep that hard. You scared your company half to death.”

“Good,” says Lohen. “They—need to be shaken up every once in a while. Keeps ‘em spicy.”

Varka lays his massive palm across Lohen’s head. “Well, your fever’s gone down. Congrats, kid. You made it through the first twenty four hours. Twice.”

“Does this mean I can get up now?”

Varka gives him another whole-body laugh, the kind of laugh that explodes out of the guy like a wine skin filled to bursting. “Good to know you’ve kept your sense of humor. No, Lohen, you won’t be going anywhere for a while. Not on that leg.”

We’ll see about that. “My leg,” Lohen says instead.

“Broken below the knee,” says Varka. “The thrashing had your knee pop out of socket, too. But you’ll be able to walk once it’s healed. You might have some permanent pain, there, but the healers checked all your nerve reactions and they don’t have any reason to think you’ll lose mobility in it.”

Lohen drops his head back onto the pillow and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes to block out the light. “Thanks.”

“You’re on leave for three weeks.”

“Mm. No thank you.”

“When your three weeks are up, you can return to office work.”

“I said no thank you.”

“After that, we’ll get the deaconess to take a look at your leg, and determine when it’s best for you to return to field work from there.”

“I already said I’m not doing it,” says Lohen.

“And I’m the Grandmaster of Mondstadt and the Knights of Favonius,” says Varka, “so if you have any personal stake in any of those titles, you’ll listen.”

Lohen says nothing.

“Glad we’re in agreement,” says Varka.

“I didn’t agree.”

“You will. So,” Varka claps his hands together, “who’s responsible for what happened out there?”

Lohen drags his hands down his face with a groan. “Obviously I am.”

“C’mon, you’re better than that. You wouldn’t take on a corrupted abyssal Wolfhound head-on with your squad behind you. That’s the kind of recklessness you save for when you’re all on your own. And, your squad knows better than to disobey a direct order from you in the line of battle.”

“Yes. That’s how they’ve been trained.”

“Which means that in order for something to go this wrong,” says Varka, “one of your knights stepped out of line, defied your orders, and left you to clean up the mess. Who was it?”

“What my squad does is under my jurisdiction,” says Lohen. “Their mistakes and victories are all reflections of me. If there's a punishment for stepping out of line and disobeying a direct order, then let me have it.”

“All the Knights are under my jurisdiction first,” says Varka. “At the end of the day, you are a knight, serving underneath my mantle, who was injured by the actions of another knight serving underneath my mantle. I won’t let you shoulder the blame for this.”

Lohen says nothing. Again.

“Alright.” Varka slaps his knees as he stands. “I’ll pay your company a visit, then.”

“They know better than to talk to you.”

“I’m sure. I’ve never questioned your ability to train a competent knight. But, at the heart of it, they’re more loyal to you than they are afraid of you and whatever punishment you could dole out for the crime of ‘giving a report to the Grandmaster.’ Which means, if one of them stepped out of line and nearly got you killed, they’ll confess.”

Lohen drops his head back into the mattress with a heaving sigh. This is why he can’t deal with Varka when he puts on his ‘I’m the Grandmaster’ face and voice and whatever else it is he’s putting on right now to make himself seem more in charge than he was, like, three days ago when Lohen was dying.

“Fine,” says Lohen, “but whatever punishment you decide, I want the knight to stay in my company. That’s it.”

“I think, after this, I can think of no punishment more suitable,” says Varka. “It can be your first act as official Captain of the fifth company.”

Lohen’s blood goes cold.

“Did you think I was joking about the promotion?” says Varka. “Because I wasn’t.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s time.”

“No it isn’t. You know what I did, what I do, what I keep doing, I—”

“I know that Wolfhound was only able to use you as a pincushion because you were protecting your subordinates,” says Varka. “I didn’t get many details from the fifth company, but they were very clear that you put your neck on the chopping block for them.”

“And I lost.”

“You didn’t lose a single knight, yourself included. You sealed your damn wounds with ice, Lohen. That’s not the behavior of someone who wants to die for glory on the battlefield. We don’t need any more people that fight for glory. We need people who fight to survive, to protect.”

“I don’t have what it takes to be Captain,” says Lohen. “Whatever you saw in me that I didn’t have, when Adorno died, that-that isn’t suddenly there just because you think the time is right.”

“No, Lohen, the time is right because you have what it takes. That’s all.”

Lohen puts his face in his hands. “You’re not gonna give me a choice.”

“I’ve already told your company the good news.”

“I am going to be the least chivalrous Captain you’ve ever seen.”

“I’m counting on it. It’ll go well with your achievement of least chivalrous Vice Captain.”

“Great.” Lohen still doesn’t look at him.

Varka gets his feet underneath him in a Wellp, my work here is done sort of way. He even brushes his hands off like he’s done something. “I’ll give you some space to take it in. And I mean what I said about resting. First three weeks of your recovery, if you wanna sneak some paperwork past me, lace a few dishes for new recruits to keep them on their toes, go right ahead. But stay off the field. You’re under my banner as a knight, Lohen, the same way the fifth company is under yours. If anything happens to you, your blood is on my hands.”

Lohen sighs. “I heard you the first time, Grandmaster.”

“No harm in double checking,” says Varka. There's a smile in his voice. “You rest up. I haven’t forgotten I owe you lunch, and I expect you to bleed our expense account dry.”

“Oh, so bleeding the expense account is fine,” says Lohen, “but when I’m the one bl—”

“Don’t finish that thought.”

“I was gonna say—”

“No.”

“It was a harmless sentiment.”

“It definitely was not.”

“Why don’t you let me finish so you can find out for yourself?”

“Not gonna happen.”

“B—”

“Zip it.”

“Varka.”

“Go to bed, Lohen, before I have the deaconess put you to sleep.”

“You can’t put me to sleep in a way that matters!” Lohen shouts back at him, but Varka is already out the door. Lohen sighs, but once Varka is gone, he can sit up without being told off and survey his surroundings properly. His entire body aches viciously, and he can feel his heartbeat from his toes to his stitches to his fingertips, but it’s good to be able to sit of his own accord.

He’d been too preoccupied with regaining his bearings and entertaining Varka to notice earlier, but his polearm is here, lying lengthwise beside him on the floor next to his bedroll. His knives are there, too, but he’s only really worried about the polearm. The knives are replaceable. Varka left the weapon within reach, so Lohen reaches for it. The blade has been cleaned and freshly sharpened, free from blood and sand. A shame, honestly, because Lohen likes to let his weapon bask for a while before tidying it up himself. But it’s a nice enough sentiment.

He turns the weapon over in his hands until he finds the grooves of the engraving, polished to perfection like the day it was minted: Lohengrin of the Knights of Favonius. Lohen runs his thumb across the metal.

“Sorry, Adorno,” says Lohen. “I hope this hasn’t made you disappointed in me all over again. In my defense, it wasn’t actually my fault I got thrashed around this time. I didn’t charge into battle until after your subordinate made a fool of himself.” A beat. “Or, I guess our subordinate.” Another beat. “My subordinate.”

The silence is long.

“I’m probably gonna let you down a couple more times before I figure all this out,” says Lohen, pressing his thumb firmly into the engraving so that the imprint stays on his skin. “But I will. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He laughs to himself, and doesn’t clutch his wounds even when they throb. “Don’t hold your breath.”

Five days into Lohen’s mandated three weeks of recovery, Lohen returns to the training grounds. In his defense, that church deaconess should’ve known better than to turn him lose if she didn’t want that to be the desired outcome. He told her his plans, she implored him not to go through with them, and now he’s walking into the Fifth Company barracks with his polearm tucked securely in its pocket dimension, all his bandages wound tight and the stitches healed enough. It’ll take more than willpower to mend the broken bones in his leg, but maybe he deserves to limp around for a while.

Besides, outside of one very, very melodramatic visit after Lohen was settled in the Church of Barbatos’ Infirmary upon return to Mondstadt, he hasn’t seen his company since the incident. He imagines they’re upset. And rusty. Mostly rusty. 

The fifth company is in the middle of a self-assigned practice drill when they notice him.

“Captain!”

Lohen tries not to flinch. The fifth company has been small in number since Adorno left; he’s been trying to build back manpower with mixed results. This set-back of his health hasn’t helped. But, having a smaller company does mean that they can crowd around him like a mosh pit and he can meet each of their eyes in turn. The fifth company knows better than to talk when he’s perceiving them; after their initial cheer of “Captain,” they say nothing.

Eventually, Lohen rests his gaze on Thomas, who flinches like Lohen’s put a knife to his throat.

“You,” says Lohen. “You’re the one who ran out ahead when I told you to stay back.”

“I’m so sorry, Captain, I—”

“Don’t grovel. If you couldn’t be bothered to keep your composure and listen to your Captain in the heat of battle, then I’ve done something wrong. This is my formal apology to you. It’d be best if you just accepted it.”

“Yessir.”

“I take it you’re also the one who squealed to the Grandmaster about your role in the situation?”

“I did, Captain. I’m sorry.”

Thomas. Of course it was Thomas. The guy might’ve stepped out of line and disobeyed Lohen’s direct orders, got them into this mess in the first place, but he’s got a conscience the size of the planetary system.

“Good,” says Lohen. He summons his polearm and tosses it over to Thomas, who catches it like the bumbling idiot he is and strains under the weight of such an unbalanced weapon. “Now hand me your sword.”

“Captain…?”

Lohen gives him the come hither gesture with his fingers; Thomas tosses the sword over without another word. Lohen runs his thumb along the sharp side of the blade. It draws blood, but it’s dull.

“Captain?” says Thomas again.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” says Lohen, giving the sword a little spin to test its weight. “Clearly you think you’re more suited to be the Captain than me. That’s why you disobeyed my direct order, isn’t it?”

“S-Sir, I…”

“Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is,” says Lohen, “and show everyone here how better suited you are than me to lead the Fifth Company.”

“Captain, that isn’t—”

“Until you’re ready to follow my orders,” says Lohen, “don’t call me Captain.”

Thomas takes a deep breath. “As you wish. Captain.”

Most of the original knights underneath Adorno’s Fifth Company retired when he did. Others who were familiar with Lohen’s philosophy and temperament from his time as Vice Captain jumped ship to serve under more moderate Knights like Jean or even Kaeya (and Barbatos help their soul, because they’ll have no idea what they’ve gotten into with that guy until it’s already too late).

But their absences in the Fifth Company paved the way for Lohen to fine-tune his team.

It’s not like Thomas jumped the gun on Lohen’s orders because he got scared in the line of battle, or because the adrenaline was too much and he acted before he thought. No; he disobeyed because he wanted to fight. That is the fifth company under Lohen.

Even injured and with an ill-suited weapon, Lohen wipes the floor with Thomas. The thrill and snarling pull at his injuries was just what he needed, and there is some vindication in kicking Thomas to the floor after everything that happened. When the fight is over, Thomas lays in the center of the training grounds, coughing to recover the wind that Lohen knocked out of him with the flat of his sword. Lohen studies Thomas’ blade again, from the base to the tip.

“Who are you loyal to, Thomas?” says Lohen.

Thomas pushes himself up onto his elbows, but can’t yet muster the strength to stand. “You, Captain.”

“Nice try, but I want you to think bigger than that. I’m flattered you think your primary objective is to be loyal to me, though!” Lohen takes a knee. “Flattery’s not a bad thing to keep tucked away in your back pocket. Who are you loyal to?”

Thomas blinks, and then seems to understand. “Mondstadt.”

“Good. That’s right. You’re loyal to Mondstadt. And what does loyalty to Mondstadt mean to you, Sir Thomas? Since you’re smart, I’ll let you choose how specific you take this answer.”

“It means to defend Mondstadt at all cost, Captain.”

“Can a soldier who dies uselessly on the field of battle in the name of guts and glory defend Mondstadt, Sir Thomas?”

“No, Captain.”

“And did you have any reason to believe my orders would have acted against your well-being and the safety of Mondstadt?”

“No, Captain.”

“Be specific.”

“I acted selfishly,” says Thomas. “It was a stupid attempt to prove myself and show off what I’d been training. I knew better.”

Lohen leans on Thomas’ sword and gives him the come hither gesture again.

“I put my life at risk,” says Thomas, “and jeopardized the lives of everyone in the Fifth Company. Including yours, Captain. I betrayed the mission, Mondstadt, and its people.”

Lohen claps. “There we go. Everyone, let Sir Thomas here know what you think of his performance.”

The rest of the Fifth Company applauds, scattered and unenthused. Like Lohen.

Lohen offers Sir Thomas his hand, then pulls him to his feet when he takes it. “Oh, and you can take this back.” He hands the sword to Thomas. “And unless it’s dull on purpose because you’ve taken a fancy to bludgeoning your enemies to death, get it sharpened, Thomas, for the love of god.”

“It won’t happen again,” says Thomas. “I swear it on my honor and the honor of my family.”

“Yay. That makes me happy. You know what they say about old dogs; I was worried I’d have to teach you, and that’d just be a waste of my time, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, Captain. I’m sorry, Captain.”

Lohen shrugs. Thomas returns his polearm, which Lohen takes. His thumb dusts the engraving as he tightens his grip: Lohengrin of the Knights of Favonius.

“Betraying me,” says Lohen, facing the fifth company, “when I am acting on behalf of Mondstadt with Mondstadt’s intentions at heart… Well, you might as well just betray Mondstadt and call it a day. And with that, the only time I expect you to betray me is if I betray Mondstadt. If that happens, I expect each and every one of you to take a swing at lopping my head off my shoulders. And I expect each of you to have the strength and the willpower to do it, before I get to you first. Crystal? Or do our memories still need some polishing up?”

His company salutes in unison. “Yes, Captain.”

“Glad to hear it.” Lohen twirls his polearm idly. “Now who’s next?”