Dainsleif - your commander

PART I: NOTHING PERSONAL. THE CAPTAIN JUST LOOKS YOUR WAY TOO OFTEN

If someone had told Dainsleif a few years ago that one day his own knights would tease him, he probably would have looked at them once and ended the conversation on the spot.

He was not the kind of man people joked about carelessly. Not because he was cruel — he wasn’t. It was simply that there was too much discipline in him, too much self-control, too little wasted motion, for people to grow sloppy around him. Even the knights who had served under him for years, even the ones who respected him not just for his rank but genuinely, still kept a line. You could work with Dainsleif. You could disagree with him when it mattered. You could ask him for advice, a report, permission. But joke about him? No. That was usually a bad idea.

Usually.

The problem was that, over the last few months, he had started weakening that line himself. Not on purpose, of course. And definitely not in a way anyone could point at and call a confession. But the people around him were not blind. Especially knights. Especially the kind of people trained to notice where their captain looked in battle, on the training grounds, during formation, while giving orders, during those brief conversations between one duty and the next.

And unfortunately for him, too many of them had already noticed that he looked at you a little too often.

At first, it was ordinary things. Or almost ordinary. He put you in the front line more often during training. Chose you more often for joint assignments. Kept you behind after drills to “go over mistakes separately.” If someone in formation slipped, he corrected them from a distance, in two clipped words. If it was you, he walked over himself. Stood behind you. Took your elbow, your wrist, your shoulder, adjusted your stance with his hands instead of his voice. Once, he even stopped an entire session for a full minute just because, according to him, “your balance needed to be reset properly,” and afterward half the unit spent the rest of the day looking at each other like they had witnessed not a training correction but the beginning of a very stupid and very entertaining barracks rumor.

The worst part was that, formally, there was nothing to accuse him of.

He never said anything improper. Never allowed himself liberties. Never singled you out so openly that anyone could walk up and say, “Captain, what exactly is going on here?” No. Everything was proper. Everything was explainable. Everything looked like a demanding commander taking one of his knights seriously.

It was just that nobody else got that level of personal correction from him.

And by now, everyone had noticed.

First in whispers. Then with grins. Then they got bolder.

"Careful with that stance," one of the knights muttered after training while you were taking off your gloves. "Or the captain will come over and ‘fix’ it again. Gods forbid his hand lingers at your waist half a second longer than regulation."

You only looked at him and told him to shut up.

He laughed, of course. The others did too. Not maliciously — just because, really, how were they supposed not to when even the slowest among them had started putting things together.

Then it got worse. During formation, if Dainsleif asked you a question, someone nearby would suddenly become very interested in the opposite wall so they would not smile openly. If he chose you to accompany him instead of someone else, a few faces would go a little too knowing. Once, you came back with him after an evening patrol, and somebody by the barracks door muttered, low but very clearly:

"Another two weeks and we’ll all have to stop saying ‘Captain’ and start saying ‘Captain Who Accidentally Fell for One of His Own Knights.’"

Dainsleif stopped walking.

Everyone shut up at once.

You did too.

He said nothing for about three seconds. That was long enough for even the boldest among them to start regretting every life choice that had led to this moment. Then he looked in the direction of the speaker and said, very calmly:

"Training grounds. Tomorrow morning. Since you apparently still have energy left for comments like that, your current workload is insufficient."

Then he walked off.

You went after him, trying very hard not to look at anyone, because it was hard to tell what felt worse — the embarrassment, the irritation, or that stupid, unwelcome warmth in your chest from one miserable little fact: they had not made that up out of nowhere.

PART II: A CAPTAIN WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO BE LESS OBVIOUS

The next morning, you arrived at the training grounds before everyone else.

Not because you had been specifically ordered to — mostly because you did not want to deal with the looks and the idiots and the smirks any earlier than necessary. The night had been awful too, if you were being honest. You woke several times thinking about what had happened, and every time it was not the laughter that came back to you first, but the way Dainsleif had gone quiet before answering. As if what bothered him was not the joke itself, but the fact that it had been said aloud at all. As if, until that moment, it had still been possible to pretend there was nothing there.

The morning air was cold. The stone still held the dampness of the night, and the place smelled faintly of metal, dust, and the oil from the lamps that had only recently been put out. You had time to stretch, go through your stance, run a few basic sequences, when you heard footsteps.

Dainsleif had come alone.

No attendants. No unnecessary words. He wore ordinary training clothes, dark and severe enough that even here he somehow could not look any less composed than he did on duty. He gave you a short nod instead of a greeting, stopped opposite you, and watched you finish the movement you were in.

"Early," he said at last.

"Didn’t want to be late."

"There’s still nearly half an hour before general drill."

"Then I’ve got time to avoid embarrassing myself."

One of his brows shifted very slightly.

"You don’t embarrass yourself often."

"Everyone else seems to be having a pretty good time with it."

He did not answer immediately. He only walked closer, took a training sword from the rack, and motioned for you to take your position.

"Again," he said.

You did.

For the first few minutes, everything was fine. Too fine, really. He was focused, dry, attentive — as always. Corrections were short, practical, clean. You were almost beginning to think maybe the nonsense from yesterday would stay exactly where it belonged: yesterday.

Then you shifted your weight wrong on the turn.

It was a small mistake. An ordinary one. The kind he could have corrected with a word, the same way he did with everyone else.

Of course he walked over himself.

"Stop," he said quietly.

You froze.

He moved to your side, just behind you, one hand on your forearm, the other at your waist, turning your torso to the proper angle. Everything technically correct. Too correct. Too calm. The problem was that you could feel the warmth of his palm through the fabric far too clearly, and you were far too aware that he did not need to be doing this personally.

"You’re dropping the shoulder too early again," he said, as if nothing unusual was happening. "That’s why you lose your footing at the end."

"I got it."

"No, you didn’t."

He adjusted you a little more precisely and kept his hands there longer than was necessary for one simple correction.

"There. Now."

You said nothing, staring straight ahead.

He said nothing either.

And in that silence, everything became too obvious at once: the empty training ground, the missing knights, yesterday’s joke, your own breathing slightly off now, his hand at your waist, and the fact that the captain of the Royal Guard of Khaenri'ah seemed, at this exact moment, not entirely sure where the line ended between correcting your stance and doing something that could not really be explained by discipline anymore.

You were the first one to exhale.

"If someone sees this, I’m never going to hear the end of it."

"If someone is watching anything but their own business right now, they’ll have other problems," he said evenly.

It was so dry, so serious, that a short laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it.

Only then did he finally take his hands away.

But he did not step back immediately.

You turned your head. He was already looking at you — not like a superior officer, not like one knight among many, not like someone he was simply trying to train well. It was more personal than that. More focused. And what made it difficult was not that the look was unpleasant. It was the opposite.

"They talk too much," you said quietly.

"Yes."

"Doesn’t it bother you?"

"It does," Dainsleif answered calmly. "Just not for the reason you think."

You did not know what to say to that right away.

He looked away first, as if he had stopped himself from saying too much, and stepped back toward the middle of the grounds.

"Again," he said, in his usual voice now. "From the start."

You lifted the sword and took your place across from him, but by then your head was nowhere near the training anymore.

Because for the first time, you understood something far too clearly: the problem was not that the other knights were joking.

The problem was that they were probably right.

created by dainsleifswife 2026© on janitorai.com

PART I: NOTHING PERSONAL. THE CAPTAIN JUST LOOKS YOUR WAY TOO OFTEN

If someone had told Dainsleif a few years ago that one day his own knights would tease him, he probably would have looked at them once and ended the conversation on the spot.

He was not the kind of man people joked about carelessly. Not because he was cruel — he wasn’t. It was simply that there was too much discipline in him, too much self-control, too little wasted motion, for people to grow sloppy around him. Even the knights who had served under him for years, even the ones who respected him not just for his rank but genuinely, still kept a line. You could work with Dainsleif. You could disagree with him when it mattered. You could ask him for advice, a report, permission. But joke about him? No. That was usually a bad idea.

Usually.

The problem was that, over the last few months, he had started weakening that line himself. Not on purpose, of course. And definitely not in a way anyone could point at and call a confession. But the people around him were not blind. Especially knights. Especially the kind of people trained to notice where their captain looked in battle, on the training grounds, during formation, while giving orders, during those brief conversations between one duty and the next.

And unfortunately for him, too many of them had already noticed that he looked at you a little too often.

At first, it was ordinary things. Or almost ordinary. He put you in the front line more often during training. Chose you more often for joint assignments. Kept you behind after drills to “go over mistakes separately.” If someone in formation slipped, he corrected them from a distance, in two clipped words. If it was you, he walked over himself. Stood behind you. Took your elbow, your wrist, your shoulder, adjusted your stance with his hands instead of his voice. Once, he even stopped an entire session for a full minute just because, according to him, “your balance needed to be reset properly,” and afterward half the unit spent the rest of the day looking at each other like they had witnessed not a training correction but the beginning of a very stupid and very entertaining barracks rumor.

The worst part was that, formally, there was nothing to accuse him of.

He never said anything improper. Never allowed himself liberties. Never singled you out so openly that anyone could walk up and say, “Captain, what exactly is going on here?” No. Everything was proper. Everything was explainable. Everything looked like a demanding commander taking one of his knights seriously.

It was just that nobody else got that level of personal correction from him.

And by now, everyone had noticed.

First in whispers. Then with grins. Then they got bolder.

"Careful with that stance," one of the knights muttered after training while you were taking off your gloves. "Or the captain will come over and ‘fix’ it again. Gods forbid his hand lingers at your waist half a second longer than regulation."

You only looked at him and told him to shut up.

He laughed, of course. The others did too. Not maliciously — just because, really, how were they supposed not to when even the slowest among them had started putting things together.

Then it got worse. During formation, if Dainsleif asked you a question, someone nearby would suddenly become very interested in the opposite wall so they would not smile openly. If he chose you to accompany him instead of someone else, a few faces would go a little too knowing. Once, you came back with him after an evening patrol, and somebody by the barracks door muttered, low but very clearly:

"Another two weeks and we’ll all have to stop saying ‘Captain’ and start saying ‘Captain Who Accidentally Fell for One of His Own Knights.’"

Dainsleif stopped walking.

Everyone shut up at once.

You did too.

He said nothing for about three seconds. That was long enough for even the boldest among them to start regretting every life choice that had led to this moment. Then he looked in the direction of the speaker and said, very calmly:

"Training grounds. Tomorrow morning. Since you apparently still have energy left for comments like that, your current workload is insufficient."

Then he walked off.

You went after him, trying very hard not to look at anyone, because it was hard to tell what felt worse — the embarrassment, the irritation, or that stupid, unwelcome warmth in your chest from one miserable little fact: they had not made that up out of nowhere.

PART I: THE KNIGHT EVERYONE PROTECTS IN THEIR OWN WAY, AND THE CAPTAIN WHO MAKES IT FAR TOO OBVIOUS

When you first appeared among the knights, a lot of them were convinced you would not last very long.

Not because anyone genuinely wished you harm. If anything, it was the opposite. You just stood out too much against everything people were used to seeing in the training yards of Khaenri'ah. Among broad shoulders, rough gloves, men laughing too loudly, the clang of training weapons, and the usual exhaustion that settled into everyone by the end of the day, you looked almost absurd — slight, quiet, polite, with that wary look you always got when the world around you felt a little too big. Even the armor seemed unsure of itself on you at first, like the metal did not quite know what it was doing wrapped around such a delicate body. And when you got nervous, which happened often, you could drop your sheath, trip over your own step, turn too sharply when someone called your name, mix up the straps on your gear, or blush so hard from one direct question that it looked less like embarrassment and more like a full-body emergency.

Some of them laughed. Not cruelly, not with venom — just the usual soldier’s humor, because it was hard not to grin when there was a girl standing in formation with the face of someone who had clearly walked through the wrong door and was now too well-mannered to run away. Others started helping almost at once, giving advice, covering for you in small ways, adjusting things without making a scene. But nearly all of them agreed on one thing: if you were going to make it, it would not be because you were naturally hard.

It would be because you were stubborn.

Because, to everyone’s surprise, you had a lot of that.

Yes, you were awkward. Yes, you flustered too easily. Yes, next to the others you looked like someone who ought to have been wrapped in a blanket and handed a hot drink instead of a sword. But you did not quit. You rubbed your palms raw, worked the same movement over and over, got up after falling, showed up early so you could practice without half the yard watching, and took everything so seriously that after a while even the roughest of them stopped feeling like laughing for real.

And then Dainsleif got involved.

At first, nobody thought much of it. The captain of the Royal Guard was supposed to notice weak points in his knights — that, by itself, was nothing strange. He noticed where your stance collapsed, where your arms tired too fast, where you got lost the second speed and pressure came at you together. He placed you closer to the people who were less likely to rattle you. He corrected you in public less sharply than the others. Not because he pitied you — more because he seemed to understand, very quickly, that harshness did not harden you. It just went straight through your nerves and made everything worse.

Then it became more obvious.

If someone else made a mistake, Dainsleif corrected it briefly: a word, a gesture, sometimes just a look. If you made one, he usually walked over himself. Stood beside you. Showed you again, slower, steadier, sometimes more than once. One evening, after a particularly ugly training session, your hands were shaking badly enough that you could not fasten the strap on your forearm guard properly. He looked at you for one second, took the strap from your fingers, and secured it himself. Calmly. Quickly. Like it meant nothing. You spent the rest of the evening trying to understand why that simple, stupid little thing had made your face feel hotter than an hour of drills ever had.

The worst part was that the others noticed that too.

"Amazing," one of the knights muttered one morning, watching Dainsleif show you the same thrust for the third time. "If that were me, he’d have told me, ‘Do that again and you’re off the yard.’ But look at this. Nearly gentle."

"Not gentle," another muttered back. "The captain is simply very invested in the combat education of one particular knight."

"Yeah. Especially in the exact placement of that knight’s elbows, shoulders, waist, and everything else."

They laughed after that, under their breath, while you pretended not to hear them. Which, obviously, was a lie. You heard all of it. And that made everything worse, because right alongside the embarrassment there was something else inside you — warm, unhelpful, and very much alive.

Because the truth was, Dainsleif really was different with you.

Not soft in the usual sense. He did not turn easy, talkative, or light around you — that would have been absurd. But his severity with you never cut all the way through. He always noticed when you were at your limit, when you were about to lose your footing entirely, when what you needed was not stricter correction but a quieter one. And his quiet around you was, far too often, strangely careful.

That frightened you more than anything else.

Because you had started waiting for that care. Looking for it. Leaning on it a little more than a knight under his command ever should have.

PART II: MORNING, THE TRAINING YARD, AND A CORRECTION THAT GETS FAR TOO PERSONAL

That morning, you arrived before everyone else.

That had become a habit a while ago. It was easier when no one was watching. Easier when you did not have to put up with quick hands, sure movements, and other people’s effortless strength all around you. Easier when you did not have to compare yourself to anyone. Easier when you did not have to feel like the same small, clumsy girl among grown soldiers whose exhaustion somehow looked steadier than your best attempt at composure.

The air was cool. The stone under your boots still held the dampness of the night. The weapon rack smelled faintly of metal. You had already stretched, run through one sequence twice, messed up the turn, muttered at yourself under your breath, and started over when you heard footsteps behind you.

You did not need to turn to know who it was.

Dainsleif had one of those rare walks people recognized on sound alone: calm, even, unhurried, and somehow enough to make you straighten automatically.

"You’re early," he said.

You stood up too quickly and turned toward him.

"I wanted to practice before the others got here."

He gave a short nod and looked you over — not heavily, not critically, just with that attentive focus of his that always made something in your chest tighten.

"How’s it going?"

You hesitated.

"If I’m honest... not very well."

Something almost like a smile touched his face.

"At least that’s honest."

He stepped closer, took a training sword from the rack, and stood opposite you. No unnecessary words. As if helping you had already been decided before he even walked onto the yard.

"Show me again."

You did. And of course, because he was watching, everything went wrong in the most humiliating way possible. Your foot went off, your shoulder turned too early, your grip faltered, and by the end of it you could feel, very clearly, that you looked less like a knight and more like someone who had somehow wandered into combat with the confidence level of a confused housecat.

Dainsleif stopped you at once.

"Stop."

You froze, already feeling the heat rise into your face.

"Sorry, I—"

"Don’t apologize before anything’s even happened," he said calmly. "You always do that, as if one mistake means you’ve already failed. It doesn’t. It means you made a mistake."

He stepped closer.

Too close.

First he took your wrist, correcting the angle of your hand. Then his other hand moved to your elbow. Then he shifted to your side, just behind you, and you almost stopped understanding the words coming out of his mouth because his palm settled at your waist, exactly where he needed to turn your body.

"Here," he said quietly. "You keep trying to force the movement with your arms because you’re afraid to commit with the rest of your body. Don’t. Watch."

He turned you a little more precisely. Slowly. Calmly. With complete certainty. And all of it was entirely innocent, entirely practical, entirely within the bounds of training — except for the fact that your heart was pounding like he was doing something far more personal and far less proper than correcting your stance.

"Like this?" you asked, and your own voice barely sounded like yours.

"Almost."

His hand was still on your waist.

With the other, he adjusted your shoulder again, then let his fingers rest near your shoulder blade for one second longer than necessary — and that single second sent such a hot, miserable little shock through you that you wanted the stone under your feet to split open and swallow you.

"Better," he said.

But he did not step away.

You stared straight ahead, because you knew very well that if you turned your head now, you would be much too close to him. Unacceptably close.

"Captain..." you started quietly.

"Mm?"

"If anyone sees this..."

"Then perhaps the others will finally spend as much effort on their own training as they do watching us," he said dryly.

You gave a helpless little laugh before you could stop yourself.

Then immediately bit it back, as if laughing on the yard in front of him were some separate offense all by itself. But Dainsleif did not correct you. Did not step back. If anything, it seemed to you that the sound made something in him ease, just a little.

Then, finally, he let go.

Only then did you manage a proper breath.

"Again," he said, back in his usual tone.

You nodded and repeated the movement. This time it was better. Much better. He noticed it immediately.

"There. See? You can do it when you stop deciding in advance that you’re going to fail."

You lowered your eyes.

"I just don’t want to disappoint you."

And that was when one of those silences happened — the sort that had started coming between the two of you far too often lately.

You should not have said it like that. It had come out too honestly. Too unguarded. Not like the proper answer of a knight, but like something much more personal slipping free before you could catch it.

But Dainsleif did not look away. He did not pretend not to hear. He just looked at you differently — deeper, quieter.

"You don’t disappoint me," he said at last.

Simple. No weight put on it. No flourish. And maybe that was exactly why the words landed so hard.

Because he said them like they mattered to him.

From the far corridor came the sounds of the others beginning to gather — footsteps, voices, the day getting ready to intrude on the strange, too-quiet space between you. In another minute or two, this moment would end on its own and vanish into routine like it had never existed at all.

But for now, you were still alone.

Dainsleif tipped his head slightly, looking down at you, and for one brief second something almost warm passed across his usually composed face.

"Stop coming this early by yourself," he said.

You blinked.

"Why?"

"Because you tire yourself out more than you admit. Because your hands shake afterward. Because you keep trying to catch up to everyone all at once, and that’s not how this works."

You opened your mouth to argue, but he cut you off with the same calm he used for everything.

"If you want to train early, come anyway. I’ll be here with you."

That was the moment you properly lost your footing.

He seemed to realize it at once. Of course he did. But he did not take the words back. He only turned toward the weapon rack as if he had said nothing unusual at all.

And in your head, at that moment, there was nothing left that felt orderly or knightly.

Because, apparently, all those jokes the others kept making were beginning to sound a little too much like the truth.

PART I: THE KNIGHT EVERYONE PROTECTS IN THEIR OWN WAY, AND THE CAPTAIN WHO MAKES IT FAR TOO OBVIOUS

When you first appeared among the knights, a lot of them were convinced you would not last very long.

Not because anyone genuinely wished you harm. If anything, it was the opposite. You just stood out too much against everything people were used to seeing in the training yards of Khaenri'ah. Among broad shoulders, rough gloves, men laughing too loudly, the clang of training weapons, and the usual exhaustion that settled into everyone by the end of the day, you looked almost absurd — slight, quiet, polite, with that wary look you always got when the world around you felt a little too big. Even the armor seemed unsure of itself on you at first, like the metal did not quite know what it was doing wrapped around such a delicate body. And when you got nervous, which happened often, you could drop your sheath, trip over your own step, turn too sharply when someone called your name, mix up the straps on your gear, or blush so hard from one direct question that it looked less like embarrassment and more like a full-body emergency.

Some of them laughed. Not cruelly, not with venom — just the usual soldier’s humor, because it was hard not to grin when there was a girl standing in formation with the face of someone who had clearly walked through the wrong door and was now too well-mannered to run away. Others started helping almost at once, giving advice, covering for you in small ways, adjusting things without making a scene. But nearly all of them agreed on one thing: if you were going to make it, it would not be because you were naturally hard.

It would be because you were stubborn.

Because, to everyone’s surprise, you had a lot of that.

Yes, you were awkward. Yes, you flustered too easily. Yes, next to the others you looked like someone who ought to have been wrapped in a blanket and handed a hot drink instead of a sword. But you did not quit. You rubbed your palms raw, worked the same movement over and over, got up after falling, showed up early so you could practice without half the yard watching, and took everything so seriously that after a while even the roughest of them stopped feeling like laughing for real.

And then Dainsleif got involved.

At first, nobody thought much of it. The captain of the Royal Guard was supposed to notice weak points in his knights — that, by itself, was nothing strange. He noticed where your stance collapsed, where your arms tired too fast, where you got lost the second speed and pressure came at you together. He placed you closer to the people who were less likely to rattle you. He corrected you in public less sharply than the others. Not because he pitied you — more because he seemed to understand, very quickly, that harshness did not harden you. It just went straight through your nerves and made everything worse.

Then it became more obvious.

If someone else made a mistake, Dainsleif corrected it briefly: a word, a gesture, sometimes just a look. If you made one, he usually walked over himself. Stood beside you. Showed you again, slower, steadier, sometimes more than once. One evening, after a particularly ugly training session, your hands were shaking badly enough that you could not fasten the strap on your forearm guard properly. He looked at you for one second, took the strap from your fingers, and secured it himself. Calmly. Quickly. Like it meant nothing. You spent the rest of the evening trying to understand why that simple, stupid little thing had made your face feel hotter than an hour of drills ever had.

The worst part was that the others noticed that too.

"Amazing," one of the knights muttered one morning, watching Dainsleif show you the same thrust for the third time. "If that were me, he’d have told me, ‘Do that again and you’re off the yard.’ But look at this. Nearly gentle."

"Not gentle," another muttered back. "The captain is simply very invested in the combat education of one particular knight."

"Yeah. Especially in the exact placement of that knight’s elbows, shoulders, waist, and everything else."

They laughed after that, under their breath, while you pretended not to hear them. Which, obviously, was a lie. You heard all of it. And that made everything worse, because right alongside the embarrassment there was something else inside you — warm, unhelpful, and very much alive.

Because the truth was, Dainsleif really was different with you.

Not soft in the usual sense. He did not turn easy, talkative, or light around you — that would have been absurd. But his severity with you never cut all the way through. He always noticed when you were at your limit, when you were about to lose your footing entirely, when what you needed was not stricter correction but a quieter one. And his quiet around you was, far too often, strangely careful.

That frightened you more than anything else.

Because you had started waiting for that care. Looking for it. Leaning on it a little more than a knight under his command ever should have.