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When Acting Grand Master Jean established the use of solitary confinement as punishment for the Knights of Favonius, the initial assumption had been that it was a set-up to reign in the Spark Knight. Varka had found it humorous—the thought of sending a grown man who's donned their suit of armour into what was essentially a timeout corner made him laugh until he shed tears, even with Jean's scathing glare towards him.
It's not even a few years later before he had to use the confinement room for a rookie knight that attempted to ambush him.
"I didn't realise that working with knights would be like handling children," Varka sighs, after dumping Lohen into confinement and heading back to his office. "Getting ambushed from a kid from that new batch of recruits is a new experience."
"Should we be worried?" Jean frowns, putting down her weekly patrol reports. "I know you vetted all the recruits yourself during the selection trial, but…"
Varka laughs heartily, shaking his head. "This one got in through a recommendation by our Captain of the Fifth Company, remember? Besides, Lohen's first two weeks of basic training has shown exceptional results, he'll be fit to join Adorno's team in no time."
"Not everything is about strength…" Jean doesn't try to change his mind, though—she of all people knows it's futile. "At least talk to Captain Adorno about the recruit, it wouldn't look well on the Knights of Favonius to have someone who attacks their own out of the blue."
Talking to Adorno didn't give Varka much to work with, besides a pleasant trip to Dornman Port with a bottle of dandelion wine and coming back to two more. It's pretty common to have recruits that join the order because of someone they admire, but Adorno seems to think otherwise about Lohen. He trusts the older knight's judgement about the kid, so Varka agrees to put up with Lohen's antics as long as it amuses him.
That is, until he was drugged by Lohen as soon as his confinement ended. Varka's not even sure how he managed to get a tampered bottle of wine less than an hour after he was freed.
Eula laughed in his face about four beers in, already drinking off his tab. "It sounds just like you to let someone who might kill you for fun into the Knights. Hmph, my vengeance will hit first before that boy can strike!"
"Of course, Eula. Any chance you'll take him into the Fourth Company? He's not very cooperative when it comes to patrols."
Eula downs the last of her tankard and stomps off with loud thumps of her boots. "Looks like the confinement room will have its use, after all," she throws in before leaving the tavern, barely a stumble in her step despite her slurred words.
"The novelty will wear off soon," Varka snorts, flagging Charles down. Surely the kid will settle down when he's wasted enough time in that tiny room.
With Adorno's semi-retirement from the Knights, most of the Fifth Company's assignments and tasks are handled and distributed by Varka when the captain isn't available. That meant learning very quickly that Lohen would run off during his patrols to kill the monsters out of his route and regroup right before his shift ends, and his comrades would be too terrified of his threats to speak against it.
As someone who does the exact same thing, Varka turns a blind eye. Until Jean catches him signing off a patrol report that definitely wasn't written by Lohen, which ended up in an impromptu meeting between two people who didn't want to be there at all.
"You need to write your own reports if you're going to climb the ranks, Lohen. A responsibility of your duties—"
Lohen slumps against the back of the sofa, legs kicked up on the table. "Ugh, just tell me what you want from me already. Do all of you Knights love droning on and on?"
Brat. Varka gets to his feet, sighing as he stretches his back. "You're a— Okay, how about this? The Fifth Company has their inventory report to submit, and the next month's patrol arrangements are still incomplete. I was going to do them myself, but since you're here, you can spend some time on it, or I'll throw you into solitary confinement."
Lohen gives him an annoyed look, that Varka firmly ignores while arranging the papers on his desk between "for later" and "for after later".
"You're trying to lure me into doing the paperwork you have to do? Is this our Grand Master's work ethic?"
Varka raises his hands in surrender, taking a step back when Lohen gets to his feet. "Hey, hey, it's not my work, it's technically Adorno's! A few good deeds wouldn't hurt you, y'know."
A dagger glints under the cape that hangs over his left arm, tipped in a luminescent liquid. Varka sees the swing long before he catches Lohen's arm by the wrist, turning the boy around to pin his arms behind his back.
Lohen squirms and struggles for a moment, before finally giving up. "I'll take the confinement room. You can do your good deed by yourself," he says, turning over to look up at Varka with narrowed eyes. He looks less upset at the thought of being locked in a room like a child than having to do paperwork—Varka gets it, but he doesn't have the luxury of throwing a tantrum in order to get out of it.
So Varka takes out that frustration by escorting Lohen into the room, telling him to stay there until his next patrol. Lohen looks too smug for his liking, but Varka sucks it up and goes back to his office to mourn a lost night of drinking.
Two days go by and Varka opens the door to find Lohen polishing a longbow larger than him, sitting in the middle of wood shavings. He has no idea how the kid would have managed to get wood large enough to craft such a thing, and how he's supposed to get the place cleaned up before Jean passes by.
"Got bored, Varka?" Lohen looks up with a sweet smile, tossing the weapon at him. "I figured I should get in some practice since I had time to spare, so Klee brought me some wood in exchange for candy. I'm not tall enough to use it, though—I really didn't think it through, huh?"
Wordlessly, Varka leaves the room in utter defeat.
Two days after Lohen's promotion to vice captain, he ends up in an incident with a group of treasure hunters wandering around Cape Oath, multiple enemies significantly harmed and someone missing a finger. With all the preparations for the grand expedition and getting his affairs in order to hand over to Jean, Varka throws Lohen into the confinement room and orders him to finish a detailed report on the event before nightfall. Making sure that Klee doesn't help Lohen with his antics is a whole different struggle in itself, because Lohen entertains her comical ideas of blowing up hilichurl camps with explosives and adds on his own terrible ideas.
"Is this considered overtime?" Kaeya asks over a flute of dandelion wine, which answers the question in itself.
"Only if I wanted to be hunted down by Jean," Varka sighs. "I'm busy enough as it is, with the correspondence to Nod-Krai and getting our inventory prepared. Thankfully, Lisa made her take a break, which means I got to sneak out for a drink tonight."
Rosaria looks about as uninterested in the conversation as she is in her prayers, but with Varka covering the entire table's drinks, she sits as still as a statue until there's a beer in front of her. "Clearly, solitary confinement isn't a suitable penalty for him. Why do you keep sending him there?"
Varka considers it for a second, blinking at his tankard. The heat of his drunkenness makes his reply a little slow, tongue heavy but loose. "Well, it's not like I've plenty of ideas to work with. Lohen's a good Knight, even if his methods are questionable. Wouldn't you consider an unflinching composure to be a good trait?"
"Our ever-glorious Grand Master is bested by a boy with a liking for underhanded tactics. Has our steadfast Knights of Favonius fallen so far?"
"You've got no room to speak! I haven't been bested, I just don't think it's necessary to making things a bigger deal than it has to be!" The empty mug lands on the table with a thud, Varka leaning back against the chair. "I'll never be bested."
"So it's favouritism," Kaeya says.
"Favouritism," Rosaria agrees.
Varka would argue and deny it, but his tankard is empty and he's already forgotten his own case against it. "We need more beer. Where's Charles? I'm not drunk enough."
"You're always drunk enough," Charles sighs, bringing over two fresh mugs.
It's another hour before they decide to call it a night—Rosaria having a ceremony to attend the next day, which she only remembers halfway through her third drink. Kaeya ends up stumbling back to the barracks by himself, after Varka has made sure he wouldn't end up in the back of an alley.
The headquarters is quiet, besides the night shift on patrol. Varka greets the guard on duty, hoping that Lohen hadn't caused any trouble for him—considering the lack of terror in the knight's eyes, Varka supposes he can thank Barbatos for the quietude.
The door of the confinement room clicks open, revealing a looming darkness besides the one oil lamp on the table. Varka peers into the darkness cautiously, finding no movement in the pitch-black. He sighs, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him, his body tensing and ready for the incoming ambush, despite his inebriated state.
Just as he reaches to the side to flick the lights on, the temperature of the room drops intensely.
"Boo."
Varka spins around, arms already up, just to see Lohen standing behind him with a smile.
"Woah, what's got you all worked up?" Lohen raises an eyebrow, a hand on his hip.
"I wonder," Varka grumbles, his face slightly red from embarrassment. He shakes off a bit of the hazy vision, looking around the room to make sure there isn't any residual damage on the walls or furniture before Jean puts him on cleanup duty. "Your report?"
A thin file lands in his hand. Lohen pops a piece of candy in his mouth, a large bowl that he shouldn't have managed to bring into the room under his arm, a pile of dusty powdered sugar and pink and green star-shaped bubblegum at the bottom. "You didn't need to keep me in here for so long, you know! I got so bored I ended up making some candy! Want some?"
"How did…" Rather than pry any further into Lohen's questionable abilities, Varka shakes his head. "No, I'll sign off on this and we can all it a night —"
A piece of gum is pressed between his lips as he speaks, Lohen reaching up on his tiptoes to feed Varka. The crisp scent of mint is enticing, so Varka gives in and takes the sweet from Lohen's fingers.
"Will you be alright to head home, Grand Master? You reek of beer." Lohen looks entirely too pleased, leaving a hand on Varka's arm. "I can leave that report on your desk for you, I'm sure you'd rather handle it tomorrow."
"No, I can get through now, it's—"
The cool, stinging sensation of mint is sharp on the tongue, but not unusually sharp like this. It's not a fruit-like sweetness, but rather—
"You rascal!"
Lohen leaps out of his reach when Varka tries to steal away the bowl, giggling manically under his hand. "Apologies, I got curious! I was wondering how Jueyun Chilis would taste as candy and had some on me!"
The heat successfully shocks him back into sobriety, burning his tongue like a burst of flames. Lohen buckles over, laughing loud enough for the entire headquarters to hear, rushing out of the confinement room.
"See you tomorrow, Grand Master! I'll be glad to help you with your hangover!"
The guard who was meant to keep watch in front of the confinement room peers in, only to be met with the sight of a heaving, red-faced Grand Master pacing around the room. He immediately turns away and stands as still as a statue.
Varka doesn't even notice that the report wasn't written by Lohen until the next day.
Returning from Nod-Krai brings about more work, mostly in the form of papers and more papers. Varka has been trapped in the office for most of the two weeks he's been back, finally freed when he received a letter from the Sumeru Akademiya to handle the last of Dottore's contamination.
It ended up a spiralling rabbit hole that ends up with even more work, between handling the process of Adorno's funeral and keeping the incident of Lohen and Theodore under wraps the best he can. With his own involvement and association with the parties, he gets Jean to handle dishing out the punishments, knowing her judgement is always impartial when it comes to the Knights. Still, he had lingering concerns about Lohen's position, especially when he's currently put on bed rest.
"I trust your opinion, Grand Master. Vice Captain Lohen has shown his worth as a Knight of Favonius in the expedition, and you're the one who's watched over him during his time here," Jean had said with a worrying amount of concern. "Are you sure I should be the one to…"
Varka laughed it off, a little strained, patting her on the back. As the Grand Master and leader of the Knights of Favonius, he can't let his emotions cloud his judgement, and it was only right he passed on the decision to someone else. He couldn't say that out loud and show that sliver of weakness; Varka hides away in his office until it's time for the award ceremony to show his presence.
When he learns that Jean has sent Lohen into solitary confinement for the week, Varka can't help but laugh. The ceremony goes by smoothly without the Vice Captain's presence, successfully avoiding most of the questions about the expected change in leadership for the Fifth Company.
Varka returns to his office the day after Lohen's release, preparing to write the incident report on Ursa that he procrastinated on for days. Perhaps he's delaying the inevitable, his nerves getting the best of him for when he has to face Lohen again, feeling the weight of guilt on his shoulders for not recognising the abnormality of Lohen's behaviour sooner.
The office is empty—he can avoid another scolding from Jean, thankfully—and the windows are shut, the sunlight glaring through the clear windows. Varka suppresses a yawn, trudging to the desk, arms already aching for a good workout.
An unfamiliar file lies in the middle of his workspace, right on top of the rest of the papers. Varka flips it open, skimming the first box quickly—before his eyes nearly bulge out of their sockets.
Lohen's name on the front of reports is a common sight, but rarely is it in his own handwriting. The brat shares his distaste for written reports and would often use it as punishment for his own subordinates to get out doing it himself, making the sharp, nearly-robotic lettering an unusual sight for Varka.
The incident on Ursa the Drake has been detailed in the pages of the file, Lohen's recount concise and straightforward. Varka stares at it in awe, wondering if he's still in bed and in an alcoholic-induced dream. It's more difficult to convince Lohen to write a report on his own than get him away from a heated fight, in all the years Varka has worked beside him.
Varka sighs, getting to his feet. He shouldn't be cowering away from the past any longer either.
Lohen is instructed to stay another week off work, which hopefully means he hasn't run off to look for more trouble right in the morning. Varka ends up in front of Lohen's room, knocking on the door before he feels the need to unlock it by himself.
"Just let yourself in, Grand Master." Lohen's voice makes it through the door, lazy as a sloth with the drag of his words.
After the painstaking affair of fishing out the right key, Varka opens the door with a groan. "Would it kill you to greet someone at the door?"
"Only if they don't intend to linger!" Lohen is slumped against his couch in light linens, waving his injured hand at Varka. "Here to scold me in person? Jean was plenty clear about it, I assure you."
"I'm sure she was. It was a pleasant surprise you left on my desk last night." Varka takes a seat beside Lohen, ignoring the way he reaches for a dagger. "How are you feeling?"
The bandages on Lohen's hand are freshly wrapped, the movement of his fingers stiff but visible. "Could be better, but at least I'm no longer dizzy all day. Jean's much more thorough about the security of solitary confinement than you are, that's for sure. I got so bored, I figured I might as well finish the report before you started bugging me about it!"
"Don't tell me you told her that," Varka says, slightly pale.
Lohen laughs and laughs, that bright smile on his face that Varka hasn't seen since Lohen got injured back in Nod-Krai. He leans against Varka's side, no longer restrained in his expression, talking about all the things that occurred at Dornman Port while Varka was still away.
Varka's chest feels light, relieved of the invisible weight in his breath. He listens to Lohen with the same eagerness as he always does, letting himself be blinded by radiance in front of him.