Ruin | Yandere Dainsleif x Reader
CW: Stalking, unhealthy relationships, yandere themes, implied murder.
Word Count: 658
Dainsleif has never known a ruin quite so undoing as you.
To be entirely fair to you, and truthful to himself, it’s not wholly you. Rather, it’s him, with you acting as the unwitting catalyst.
You’re none the wiser to the new shadow you’ve gained. Sure, you might feel eyes on you, late at night, as you walk a little faster home than you normally do. Or you might notice the occasionally misplaced item on your nightstand, earning what’s a little longer than a passing glance as you try to figure out what’s wrong with what you’re looking at.
But it’s nothing concrete. Not yet. Nothing you can take to the Knights, nothing to make you do much more than double-checking the locks on your window every night before bed. You used to sleep with the window open, letting the wind carry the gentle ambience of sleepy Mondstadt evenings in with it. Not anymore.
Dainsleif knows that he’s the cause of your newfound paranoia. The guilt that is brought with it eats at him, worse than his curse, cutting deeper than any knife ever could.
The guilt eats at him, and yet…
He still finds himself sitting beneath your windowsill, pretending he can hear your soft breaths, watch the rise and fall of your chest, see the peace in your expression as you sleep– even though your back is turned to the window, and it’s too dark to see with the moon hidden behind dark clouds, anyway.
Eventually, standing guard at your window–a self-appointed duty, if only to disguise the ugly truth of the act and soothe what little of his conscience has not yet rotted and died– isn’t enough.
Dain moves from nights spent under the stars outside your home to nights spent standing sentinel in your home. It’s for your safety, he tells himself, a paper lie through gritted teeth, it’s for your own good.
He never touches you, of course. But it never stops him from looking, from standing across from your sleeping form and memorizing the gentle, quiet peace that finds you in dreams. You’re like the brightest star in his sky, blazing bright and fast across the backdrop of the universe. And Dain knows better than anyone that the brightest flame burns the fastest.
So he holds you as close as he can without holding you. Stands guard while you sleep, kills any wayward monsters that wander a little too close to you, keeps as much of the darkness at bay as he can manage despite being made of rot and pitch himself.
You will never know your shadow, but he knows you. It’s enough.
It’s enough, he thinks, to stand guard, to protect you, to slump against the windowsill bruised and battered and know you’re safe, making the blood on his hands worth the sin he’ll never scrub them clean of.
It’s enough, he thinks, as in a moment of weakness after hundreds of nights spent silently standing guard by your bedside, he breaks the very promise he’s sworn to himself– to you– with only the stars as his witness, and kisses the inside of your wrist.
It’s enough. And Dainsleif knows soon it won’t be, desires sparking like hunger pains, unbidden, in his gut.
He knows he’s damned. Knows the blood on his hands isn’t entirely for you, that if you knew the things he’s done under the guise of your protector, you’d think him a monster.
But if he’s a monster, then so be it. Let his feet fall heavy as he returns to your bedside each night. Let you stir and see him for the monster he is, let you know your shadow. May you never forgive him for what he’s done, for what he’s yet to do.
Dainsleif brushes a thumb over your knuckles, knelt at your bedside enraptured like he has for months now, and thinks that perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to damn you, too.
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