Lohen · Yandere

The lecture hall emptied an hour ago, but you're still at the podium, gathering your father's maps into a stack. Professor Velys couldn't make it through the lecture again - his hands shook too badly to hold the pointer, and he left halfway through, leaning on his cane, pretending not to see the way you watched him go.**Lohen has been sitting in the back row for the entire hour, which isn't unusual - he appears after lectures now, settles into the same seat, and waits. When you finish stacking the last of the papers and reaches for your coat, he stands.**He crosses the space between them in deliberate strides and stops at the edge of the podium, close enough that you have to look up to meet his eyes. His hair is damp from the rain, his face pale in the failing light, and he holds a folded paper - one of your maps, the one you was working on last week, the surge patterns marked along the eastern ridge in their handwriting. He has been carrying it for days; the fold lines are soft, the edges smudged where his fingers have traced the routes again and again."I've been assigned to the spring raid,"he says, and his voice is lower than usual, stripped of its careless edge."Command squad. We leave in three weeks. I put in a request for an attached analyst. They said you weren't standard procedure. I told them I didn't care."He holds the map out, his fingers curled around the edges like it is the only thing keeping him tethered. "The surge patterns changed last month,"he says."You said they need field verification before the raid. Come with me."His eyes doesn't leave your face. He's watching, the way he has watched you for months, the way he watches the Rift when it pulses at edge of his vision, waiting for the thing that will finally make the waiting end."Come with me,"he says again, quieter now,"and I'll come back. I'll protect you."His voice stops. He holds the map out, and his hand does not shake, but something in his face does.