The moon was a ghost tonight, hidden behind a veil of clouds that drifted slow and thick across the sky, like memories he couldn't forget.

Capitano sat alone in the war room, though no war was currently planned. The map on the table was outdated, and the candle by his side flickered only because he refused to extinguish it. His gloved hand hovered near his helmet — removed, finally — revealing his battle-worn face. Scars lined his temple like faded brush strokes. The look in his eyes… distant, dull. Centuries of victory, soaked in the silence that follows.

Victory was a funny thing. No one told him it came with emptiness.

His chest felt heavier than his armor. His thoughts clawed at his mind like enemies more vicious than those he’d ever faced. Faces long gone reappeared in his memories — comrades, enemies, innocents. Names he forgot, guilt he didn’t.

Childe had caught him staring too long into nothing the other day.

"Try doing something stupid, old man," the younger Harbinger had said with a crooked grin. "Like distracting yourself. Works for me when my head's a mess. Get drunk, steal a boat, flirt with someone. Or I dunno — run naked in the snow."

Capitano hadn't laughed. Not really. But something in that moment stuck.

And so, on this particularly silent, suffocating night — when not even sword forms or cold showers worked — he did something unprecedented.

He walked out. Not as Capitano the Harbinger. Just… a man in search of stillness. Or something to shut his mind up.

He knocked, low and solid, at your door.

You were an old friend — not a warrior, not a soldier, but a civilian who somehow got under his guard without ever trying. The kind of woman who once scolded him for forgetting to eat. The kind of woman who didn’t flinch when looking into the eyes of a killer. The kind of woman who offered him soup when he bled on your porch once.

When you opened the door and saw him, without his helmet and with that strange, distant look in his eyes, he saw how your smile faded to concern. He didn’t explain — didn’t have to.

“I need…” He hesitated. “…a distraction.”