guard dog | genshin impact

seven

CONTENT WARNING FOR: depictions of panic attacks on the reader's end, some implications of post-traumatic stress disorder, and just down-right feelsbad content. tread with caution!

...

Your eyes were heavy the moment you opened them, staring up at the ceiling. Beads of sweat slid across the sides of your face as you forcibly tamed the thundering in your heart.

Not real, you reminded yourself. They're not real.

You let out a shuddering sigh, tossing the covers off you before sitting upright. The attendants' quarters was still dark, and the rest of your roommates were sound asleep. Even Ayame, who was considerably a light sleeper, laid quietly in the futon beside yours. It's a miracle how she's yet to complain about these bouts of insomnia that have been plaguing you for the past few days. You liked to think that's her way of showing discretion—even if only a little.

The walk to the kitchen was quiet as always. None of the guards on the graveyard shift entered the mansion—never leaving their posts, as they should. But that meant you had no one to distract yourself with in a conversation either. Which was completely fine, though.

You didn't really know how to explain why you'd always sob on the kitchen floor at this hour.

The polished wood underneath you was cold against your legs, but you paid it no mind as you buried your face into your palms. Your eyes stung. Your lungs burned. You couldn't breathe. But even if there was a glass of water sitting on the counter; even if you knew one sip could make you feel more at ease, you let yourself choke on your sobs just a bit longer.

You lowered your hands, fingers trembling as you pictured each digit coated in blood.

The first night this happened, you scrubbed them down in the kitchen sink until your skin felt raw to the touch. But no matter how much you tried to wash the non-existent blood off your hands, the specters of your sins remained. Like a ball and chain you're forced to carry for the rest of your days.

What happened to you?

You were one of Inazuma's greatest mercenaries. A swordswoman who didn't forge deeper connections with other people, because connections entail vulnerability, and vulnerability was what got people killed.

Yet here you were, a pathetic mess on the cold, cold floor in the house of the woman you should've taken out a month ago.

You let yourself get caught. Let them domesticate you into someone you're not. They treated a cold-blooded murderer like one of their own as if you were above biting the hand that feeds you. As if you couldn't massacre every single person in this estate if you so wished.

...But that wasn't entirely true, was it?

Even without guards hovering around her, Ayaka could protect herself from any sort of danger. And it was evident in how long you've been stalling this assignment that your own conviction to see through the Tenryou Commission's request was beginning to dwindle. You started thinking about the aftermath. About how the Yashiro Commission would take the loss of their Lady. About how you'll never forgive yourself if someone like Ayaka had to die by your hand.

And then there was your chance meeting with Kujou Sara.

No amount of money is worth the lives of thousands.

Those weren't the words of someone who would exhaust all means to win a war. But even so...

You'd already taken the job. Even if she hadn't been the one to issue your orders, like you were first led to believe, you were going to do it. It was just as you've told Thoma that day in Konda Village. You never backed out of jobs out of guilt.