Chapter Text
Her lungs burn as she blindly weaves between trees, bare feet pounding against the ground. Drenched and frozen, the rain pelters her shivering frame with no end in sight.
It was only a light drizzle when she first went to bed, how did it get to this? One moment Kit is huddled under the blankets, scrolling down her Tumblr dash, and the next sees her hoodie soaked through, and she runs barefoot through the woods, with only the intermittent flashes of lightning to brighten the world around.
There weren’t any forests near her home.
“What’s going on?” Kit whimpers.
The roar of thunder drowns all other noise, and leaves her ears ringing.
Was the shaking due to fear, or the cold?
Is the water in her eyes from the rain or her tears?
Was there really a difference?
She finally reaches the end of the woods, gnarled trees giving away to what Kit can only assume was some plains. The world had become too blurry to make sense of her surroundings.
Kit skids to a stop, toes digging into the dirt and grass. Blood rushes through her ears, crackling in her eardrums.
Around her, the whole world seems bathed in cold blue light.
A large mass, surrounded by water, cuts an imposing, yet familiar figure between lightning strikes. A sprawling city, throning over a lake.
Large flower-shaped structures dot the streets, standing tall against the wind.
The hint of realization has her hair stand on end.
“What?”
“-LOOK OUT!”
She is abruptly tackled to the side, just as a bolt of lightning strikes the spot she had stood in just moments prior. The following crack of thunder makes her ears ring.
When had she landed on her back?
She was shaking harder now- no. Somebody is shaking heré A blur of tan and white -the most striking green eyes- and a voice she’s sure she had heard somewhere before -Where was it?-
Kit’s brain is far too fried to grant her any sort of answer.
The shadows are too dark and the lights are too bright and theSoundsAreTooLOUD.
She doesn’t fight back when the stranger pulls her up by the arms like a ragdoll, forcing her to sit up and slings her over their back.
They’re warm, almost scalding compared to the frigid rain. Kit can’t keep herself from holding on just a little tighter, taking in as much heat as her frozen body can.
Her eyes are heavy, and the stranger seems to know what they are doing. Maybe she could sleep a while. Maybe she’d wake up in bed, safe and warm, and forget this whole nightmare.
“Yeah, that’d be nice…” She slurs into the stranger’s shoulder.
“What?”
His only answer is some sleepy grumbling as his cargo nods off.
“Well, okay then.”
Bennett quickly readjusts his grip on the sleeping woman before breaking into a run. Leaping from cover to cover, careful so neither he or his new acquaintance get a sudden bout of bad luck.
“Who even goes to the whispering woods in their pajamas anyway?” He mumbles to himself.
The hand holding his collar is freezing cold.
Lightning strikes the tree he stands under, and forces him to run for the next bit of shelter, the last one he would get until he reaches the bridge leading to the city gates.
“Come on,” he gasps, “You can do this!”
Bennett races across the bridge, feet almost flying over the cobblestone. He arrives at the massive gate coughing and wheezing, only slowing down once he crosses the city wall and walks into the city proper.
While the rain still reached the streets, Mondstadt had always been protected from harsh weather since its founding. Lightning and strong winds miraculously blocked a few hundred feet in the sky, resulting in a strange, yet captivating light show. A gift to the people, from their Archon.
The boy gives himself time to catch his breath before making his way up to the cathedral, going left, then right, and up what honestly seems like an unfair amount of stairs.
Hands full at the cathedral’s entrance, Bennett has to ask the poor knight posted at the plaza to open the heavy wooden doors for him, finally allowing him respite from the cold and rain.
It isn’t long before a nun, sister Jilliana, finds him, a towel in hand, and a scowl on her face.
“Young man!” She starts. “Do you have any idea of what time it is? You barely just got out of the infirmary, and you come back not even a day later? Get those boots off, you’re dragging in the rain and these floors just got waxed. How do you even get into all these-”
Her stern glare falls the moment her eyes catch the shivering girl barely hanging on to the teen’s back.
“Oh sweet Lord Barbatos, forgive me. You poor child. Bring her here,” she gestures to the nearest pew. “Set her down and dry yourself off. I’ll get you some help.” Her gaze trails down to the puddle of rainwater steadily growing under them. “And more towels- I’ll be right back!” The nun hands over the small hand towel to Bennett and scuttles off down the corridor from which she had first appeared from.
The boy is then left alone, aside from the one fatuus happily snoring away in the corner. Bennett slowly makes his way to the nearest pew, his waterlogged boots squelching loudly against the marble floorings. He carefully sets the girl down on the wooden bench and stands back up, furiously wiping his face down with the far too small piece of terrycloth.
The moment his eyes are covered, his foot finds a patch of slippery, muddy water, and sends him flying on his back with a loud “Oof.”
The Snehnayan agent stops snoring for a moment, but doesn’t react otherwise.
“Guess it was just a question of time, huh?” Bennett whispers to no one in particular.
He’s still on the ground when he hears Jilliana’s returning footsteps, accompanied by someone else’s. It doesn’t take long for them to enter his field of view.
Ah. So the older nun had gone and fetched deaconess Barbara.
“What happened?” Jilliana shouts upon seeing the teen laying on the ground. “I wasn’t even gone for five minutes!”
“I slipped.” Bennett answers flatly.
“Oh dear,” the deaconess whispers, “let me have a look.”
Skirting around the puddle, she helps the poor boy sit up and checks his head for any injury. “I see no blood, but I’m afraid you’re going to have a nasty bruise tomorrow.”
“Meh, that’s fine. I’ve had worse.” Bennett waves off any concern. “But what about her?” He points up at the unconscious girl laying behind him.
“She has a few scratches, mostly on her legs.” Jilliana observes. “And she definitely needs some warming up, but she should be fine as long as she doesn’t develop a fever.”
Bennett nods, relieved. Things could have been a lot worse, all things considered.
The woods are not safe at night for the uninitiated.
“I think it would be safer to keep the two of you in the infirmary tonight.” Barbara’s voice pries him away from his musing. “This way, it will be easier to keep an eye on the both of you if one of you catches a cold.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.” Bennett says as he rubs the growing bump at the back of his head. “Third door to the right, right?”
“We still have some of your things from your last stay. And take those damn boots off before you break your neck!” Sister Jilliana shouts at his retreating back. “That child, I swear.”
Barbara shakes her head and turns her attention to the sleeping woman “Let’s get her more comfortable. I have her shoulders, on three when you’re ready. One. Two-”
They carry her to the infirmary, setting her down on the bed neighboring Bennet’s, and close the privacy curtain separating them. The two change her into dry clothes, drying her hair and silently wiping away any remnants of tears.
And so they leave her to rest for the night, curled in a ball with the blankets tightly held in her fist.