lohen x reader x abyss!lohen
summary: Lohen was born with something wrong inside him. A part of abyss, clearly. And for most of his life, blood, chaos, and the thrill of a good fight were the only things keeping it from taking over completely.
Then she walked into his life with her tired eyes and her complete, infuriating refusal to be afraid of him.
Now his abyssal self wants her.
So does he. That's the problem.
warnings: obssesive behaviour, sexual content
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"Isn't she truly a saint?", a low voice asked playfully. "An angel, even. Look at her, taking care of her little cadets. Oh! That one is blushing. He likes her, doesn't he? Does he know I claimed her as my prey a long time ago? Should I go there now and—"
Shut up, Lohen responded, annoyed, trying not to look at you. But although he was a man of — ironically — strong will, he couldn't stop his gaze from drifting toward your comforting smile directed at the wounded knight you were currently tending to. You were saying something in a tender tone, perhaps one of those medical but clumsy little stories meant to distract him from the painful process of disinfecting his wound. It was apparently working: the man didn't even notice when you finished dressing it and patted him on the shoulder to confirm he was free to go.
You rose from your knees, brushed the dust off yourself, and sat down heavily in the spot the cadet had just vacated. The curve of your body became more pronounced as you raised your arms, grabbed your elbow with one hand, and stretched to straighten your tired back. Lohen swallowed as the fabric across your chest pulled taut, revealing the shape of your nipples stiffened by the wind. He imagined your trembling, bare body lying in his tent on one of the coldest nights in Nordkrai, asking him to hold you as quickly as possible, to cover you with his own, larger body.
Your pleading, humiliated, and flustered expression, which he would cup in his hands as though meaning to carve that sight permanently into his mind. He felt a twitch in his pants.
As his Lady Captain, you never asked him for anything — you never had to, because it was always enough to use your firm, cold tone, and he always listened like an obedient, faithful dog simply waiting for your command. He loved when you did that — when you weren't afraid to scold him for bad behaviour, for coming back to camp again with a deep wound, laughing that it was just a scratch. How satisfied and hard he would be at the sight of your tear-filled eyes desperately begging him to make you feel better, even though that very same morning you had sharply reprimanded him once again for breaking the expedition's rules.
Are you fucking insane?, Lohen asked, heat rushing to his face. Have some fucking shame.
"You know damn well that wasn't my thought, you fucking freak", he chuckled with satisfaction.
Lohen shook his head in frustration, cursing under his breath. God, if only he could, he would tear that part of himself right out of his own head. That corrupted, abyss-infected curse — or whatever it was — he had been born with. His fucking own shadow, which over the years had grown louder and louder instead of sinking deeper into the darkness of his mind.
"But, since we are the same person, and don’t say again that we are not, I would like to see her in that state as well. May I suggest, politely, to imagine her in—"
A female, worried voice pulled him out of his battle with himself. Literally.
Lohen, who had long since mastered how to act naturally when someone yanked him out of an argument with his second voice, smiled at you with that playful gleam in his eye that never failed to give you a headache.
"Is everything alright?", you asked, stepping closer to him. His gaze dropped again to your chest, and he couldn't forget that on this particular damned day you had worn nothing underneath. As though you had deliberately set out to provoke that freak living in his head. "I hope you're not hiding a wound again? Do I have to, again, forcibly pull your shirt off to check—"
"Yes, please, fucking do that."
"My lady, everything is perfectly fine. Thank you for your concern", he replied in a warm tone, feeling a pleasant warmth spreading through his insides — a reminder of how much it meant to him that you worried about him. Sometimes he dared to dream that he was the only person who you waited for to return to camp.
You never slept — not even when he came back at ungodly hours, on the nights of his missions.
The first time, he had thought you were simply someone who preferred working at night, when he found you in the medical tent at one in the morning, having gone there to disinfect an ugly scar on his lower abdomen. The second time, when he went there for the same reason, he told himself it was a coincidence. The third time, he joked that his lady was waiting for him as eagerly as a wife waiting for her husband to come home from work. The fourth time, he felt almost shy, and in complete silence let you dress his wounds — which, for you, was a pleasant novelty, since he always teased you terribly; and once, to get back at him, you had deliberately tightened the bandage around his ribs harder than you should have, only to brutally learn never to do that again.
The erotic sound he had made at the time haunted your nights to this day.
The fifth time — on a day when someone else was supposed to return late from a mission — he quietly crept to your medical tent, only to find you weren't there, and spent the rest of the night longing for you as though he hadn't seen you just a few hours before.
You tilted your head like a small animal encountering something very interesting and entirely unfamiliar. He loved when you did that, and a smile appeared on his face involuntarily.
"Sometimes I worry you'll drift away on those thoughts of yours somewhere too far", you replied with your arms crossed, this time in that lovely, neutral captain's tone of yours.
Me too. / "When that day comes, the first thing I'm going to do is you."
Lohen smiled even wider, his expression purely roguish. He took a step toward you and leaned down slightly. A normal person — because normal people feared Lohen and his unpredictability — would have stepped back. You, however, as always, stood completely unmoved. And that was precisely what he wanted to break in you.
"Do you promise you won't let me?", he asked in a tone that seemed like flirting, but something in his voice carried a quiet, undisguised hope.
"I already regret speaking to you first, you know?", you flicked him on the nose, making him recoil instinctively. Lohen let out a small laugh, head bowed, rubbing the reddening skin as though you had at least broken his nose. "But yes. Even if I have to drown doing it, I promise I won't let you, Lohen."
He straightened up instantly, as if something had just struck him, but before he could look at you, you were already walking away in the other direction, as though completely unmoved by any of it. But of course — how could you have known that every single day he was so terribly afraid to fall asleep, because what if he woke up instead? What if one day, Lohen existed only as his own voice inside someone else's head? What if, through his own eyes, he were forced to watch what those hands did — hands he could no longer control?
What if those hands closed around your throat?
"Awww, she doesn't know what she misses", abyssal voice said playfully.
He was so fucking hungry for her it made him feel sick.
"Ah, Lohen — I forgot to tell you", you turned to him, holding the flap of the tent you were about to enter. "I'm going to collect some herbs near your sweeping area. Try not to splash me with the blood of your 'poor' preys, okay?", you chuckled.
"Why would you choose to collect herbs while I'm on duty?" he asked, confused, arms crossed, looking at you with a slight grin.
"Because most of the monsters are going to be focused on some masochistic vice-captain instead of me, which makes it a perfect opportunity to collect resources in a highly dangerous area without being annoyingly picked off by them", you said with a little charm in your voice, which made his heart twitch.
"You could just say you want me to protect you, my lady", he said gallantly, placing his hand on his chest, the honourable man that he was.
"Fine. I want my dear vice-captain to protect me, as the chivalrous and strong knight he is, so I don't have to draw my weapon", you rolled your eyes.
But then, for one second — maybe not even that long — you saw his eyes darken to a crimson hue, more than usual, in an alarming way, the corners of his mouth rising ever so slightly in a manic curl. There it was.
"You really trust me, don't you, my lady?" Lohen said. "That's good. I would never let anyone touch you." His hand rose to his chin, partly covering his mouth, and he whispered so quietly you could not hear him, his voice cracking with obsession, "Besides me, of course."
You frowned, somehow paralysed by his sudden shift in demeanour. Well, perhaps not that sudden — it wasn't the first time you had noticed something strange in his behaviour. If you looked directly at Lohen, you could always catch that bizarre change. Change was what you would call it; there was no better word for it — even when you were perfectly certain that this was Lohen standing before you, flesh and bone, the same face, the same body, the same voice, something was dangerously wrong. And every time, it made sure you could feel just how hungry it was. Hungry for killing. Hungry for blood. Hungry for chaos.
"How generous of you, vice-captain", you said in your normal tone, not letting on that you knew. Had known for some time. "But I only asked you not to spill blood on me", you pointed and smirked.
"Well, as much as I hate to refuse my captain…" And there was your Lohen again. "...I cannot make such a promise, I fear", he laughed.
"If even a single drop of blood lands on me…"
"I will gladly lick it off."
"...you can be sure I won't let you into my medical tent for a week", you finished, your tone serious.
Lohen looked devastated. "No, my lady, wait—"
And you disappeared into your tent without another word. Lohen sighed. A nervous but somehow happy smile spread across his face. He really loved how easily you could tease him into actually listening to you and your requests. You had told him — a bloodthirsty fighting maniac — not to torment his opponents too much. At least this time, because you were never unconcerned about it entirely. He knew damn well that you accepted how much he yearned for a good fight, to feel the adrenaline, to indulge his sadistic ambitions.
You never told him it was disgusting. Unnecessary. Terrifying. Evil. Chaotic. Heretical, even. He had heard all of that plenty of times throughout his life.
But you never judged him.
Maybe that was the reason he had fallen in love with you. No, wait — it was because you never feared him. Well, it was almost the same reason. But the way you first showed it — when he was too bored at camp and Barbatos had forbidden him from pestering the sparring partners in your squad. It was his own fault he hadn't cared that they were scared of him. After all, everyone was, weren't they? He didn't even remember how you managed to sneak up on him, grab him by his choker, and pull his face down to yours, demanding in a furious voice that he has to leave your fresh Lightkeepers alone and find someone else to annoy — and he had felt a burning, lovestruck jolt surge through his entire body and mind.
"Fuck, that was hot", his second voice had said that day, down absolutely bad.
"Yes, it fucking was", he had agreed — for the first time in his entire life. That was the only and last time they had ever managed to be in harmony with each other.
Lohen's polearm appeared in his hand and he sighed, gazing at your tent with longing. Oh, how miserable he was.
His energy surged as he began walking toward his sweeping area. He had a job to do, and while you were still in camp, he didn't need to be careful about spilling blood across all of Nordkrai.
"That's a good boy, huh?" the voice chuckled.
And Lohen could only release a long sigh — but the moment he spotted an opponent approaching, his body lit up with frantic enthusiasm. His eyes crimsoned again and he felt his whole being ignite as he leaped at the enemy, cutting him down on the spot, blood immediately spattering across his face. And as always, it felt so good to release that restless spirit of his — knowing that you would wipe it clean for him, with the softness you hid beneath your annoyed, ethereal eyes; eyes he would love to make look only at him.
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english is not my first language and i don't have a beta reader — please be aware of that and feel open to correct me anytime. thank you!
and i want to apologize if you confuse abyss!lohen sentences with lohen — when i was writting it, I used red and blue to distinguish them. but i don't know to do that on ao3 yet, tumblr too (embarrasing, but i haven't used those sites in years), so it might be confusing and i'm really sorry for that. please let me know if it was legible after all.
i am incredibly stressed about posting this publicly. i haven't written in years, even though it used to be my whole life — but then the pandemic came and I fell into depression, and now... well, I'm in an even deeper depression following the death of my dad, but! i've gained a little will to live through, haha, Lohen. fangirling is really saving lives.
above all, I would like to thank @/8Honey_Lemonz16 and @/heartvexing, because these are the people who inspired me to post my own story. the phrase Lohen uses for the reader — "my lady" — is inspired by the first person's story in particular! and if you prefer something more on the erotic side, the second writer produces truly excellent work. highly recommend both, though I'd guess most of you may have already done so.
and about abyss!Lohen... i cannot stop thinking about him since I saw fanarts of his selfcest made by @/sailunadoods. my interpretation of him is very simple — Lohen was born with the abyss inside his body and mind, and he keeps it deeply suppressed. but every time he fights, it slips through. it wants to take control — and it has every right to, because at the end of the day, the abyss is still him.
so that made me think about my dear Seele from Honkai Impact rd3! ehat if abyss!Lohen is just someone like Veliona is to Seele? Veliona is not Seele's evil side — she simply wields the power of the Death Stigma, which appears dark and corrupted, but Veliona has no desire to hurt Seele or her friends. She do really loves Seele and she loves to fight, cause chaos, and make people fear her. dhe loves feeling needed, being let in during dangerous moments. fespite pretending otherwise, she deeply loves everyone Seele loves — Bronya most of all, in that same obsessive way Seele does, even if she'd never admit it.
abyss!Lohen is the same. but unlike Seele, Lohen refuses to understand his other side — he sees him only as a threat. and abyss!Lohen doesn't mind at all. he simply smiles and reminds him that if he ever does take control, the first thing he'll do is get his hands on everything Lohen holds most dear.
do you see the pararells now? because I am really excited to share this thought. if anyone will read this, even it's bad written and I don't know if anybody it interested in that concept... I can tell that I will try to expand it to more chapters! <3
ps. this story will be also publicated as Illuhen fanfiction, because It's first time in five years I ever shared my fanfiction and I want to try something. I hope it's okay.