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The young man had gotten in Scaramouche’s way, so, he slapped him.
It was already a bad day. Scaramouche stalked the halls of the Zapolyarny Palace in a drug-addled haze, putting one foot in front of the other with mechanical precision to hide his unsteadiness. It had taken fifteen minutes to limp from Dottore’s lab to where he was now. The new guard was too busy gawking at the sights of his new position to do his job and had stumbled into his Lord Harbinger, and then he had the audacity to call him sir. Scaramouche raised his hand against him because that is all he knew how to do, and now they were standing in the aftermath.
Scaramouche had no idea how old the boy in front of him was. Sixteen? Thirty? What did it matter. Niwa was nineteen when he destroyed the growing humanity in the puppet’s chest. The man in front of him was more than old enough to face the consequences of catching his Harbinger in a mood.
Scaramouche stared at the welt growing across the man’s cheek and felt a certain way about it. He chose to believe it was satisfaction.
“My apologies, my Lord,” the guard corrected and bowed deeply, baring his neck without a single stutter, unflinching even in the face of abuse. He must be one of the Knave’s products.
“Your father needs to beat better manners into her brats if she wants them to last here,” Scaramouche snarled, hoping the hostility would knock the guard off balance before he slipped himself. “Not all of the Harbingers are as forgiving as I am.”
“I understand, my Lord.”
“I don’t think you do.” He certainly didn’t understand that Scaramouche had just limped out of a battery of tests that had him feeling more object than person, that he had quite literally been ripped apart and put back together by the only person capable of loving him. The tests were fine most days, but today Dottore had found something to nitpick over and Scaramouche was left feeling exposed and inadequate – pinned beneath scrutiny both internal and emotional. Having his literal insides on display tended to leave him violent.
The new guard still did not flinch, which enraged him further. Scaramouche continued, “You do not speak unless spoken to, you do not look upon your betters unless directed to, and if you make a mistake according to your pathetic nature, by god you better grovel and hope I’m in a good mood.”
“Yes, my Lord. Thank you for your mercy,” he replied in the most un-simpering tone. It wasn’t proud by any stretch, but it wasn’t quite fear, either.
Scaramouche leaned in and squinted at him. A mop of brown hair hung in the human’s face and he pointedly continued staring at the ground. At last, he saw the guard’s hand shake, just a little bit. Scaramouche stood up straight and crossed his arms. “Will you just say anything to calm my rage?”
“...Yes, my Lord.”
He scoffed, though the corner of his mouth curled in a smile at the honesty. He really was new here. “Do you want to see how angry I am?”
“I would not dream of looking upon you without permission, my Lord,” the guard murmured.
“Much better.” The tone could use improvement, but retraining the Knave’s dogs wasn’t Scaramouche’s job. He was about to dismiss the guard when a woman’s voice cut through the air.
“Snezhevich.”
She wasn’t very loud, but the authority in the single word echoed through the halls. The guard snapped to attention sharper than he ever would for Scaramouche and devoted his attention past him, down the hall, slamming his fist to his chest in a salute. “Sir!”
“Your brother needs you at the West Gate. Go now.”
He bowed. “Yessir!”
Once he straightened, the guard half turned to address Scaramouche again. The vibrant energy, the real respect vanished from his voice, replaced by that same calculated politeness that rang in his ‘father’s.’ “My apologies, my Lord. I must follow her orders.”
“Whatever.”
Scaramouche turned and watched him scurry away. He passed the Knave without further fanfare. She stood like a pillar in the middle of the hall, the reds of her eyes the only visible color on her person, her arms crossed leisurely behind her back. Her eyes moved to check her ‘son,’ who seemed at least two years older than her, for injuries before moving to meet his. What Scaramouche saw there made his skin itch.
“You need to mind your brats before they get themselves hurt,” he snarked to cover the tremor in his voice.
She just smiled sweetly, as insubstantial and sickly as candy floss. Even his fake smile had more emotion with less teeth. “Balladeer, may I speak with you privately?”
He crossed his arms and edged away. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in public.”
Her eyes narrowed, her grin unwavering. “Two doors down, on the left.”
When he hesitated, she purred. “That’s an order.”
Scaramouche had not been particularly impressed by the previous Knave. She was an awful, awful woman, prone to cruelty and swinging around an authority that he did not think she earned. Naturally, he adopted the most useful parts of her personality for himself. He expected much the same of her daughter, the one that had beheaded her predecessor at the dining room table and strolled to the Tsaritsa’s throne with bloody trophy in hand. Many people fantasized about murdering a Harbinger to claim their seat, but few attempted it and even fewer succeeded – over a bowl of soup, no less.
In the years since, Scaramouche had not had the displeasure of getting to know the new Knave better. Her supposed flair for the dramatic didn’t show in her work and she kept a remarkably low profile despite rising to Fourth at a record pace. He only caught passing glances of her: longer hair, a new scar. Humans changed too often to bother to get acquainted.
Now she walked with him, one hand hovering at his lower back but never touching. It was normally a comforting gesture. Niwa had done it often, back when he’d called the puppet ‘brother.’ She used it to steer him like an animal.
Scaramouche seethed wondering what punishment he was about to receive. Would she send him to play nurse for her ‘children?’ Perhaps send him to fumble in the waters of her homeland? He couldn’t drown, but only in the sense that he couldn’t die from it. Water still burned when it got where it didn’t belong.
It infuriated him that she outranked him. She was only human. Her cheek would turn red when he struck it, too.
He was about to say as much when they entered the glorified closet and she shut the door behind them. She didn’t give him the chance to speak. “Is there anything that the Doctor cannot fix?”
“Excuse me?” he snarled. He did not like that she towered over him. His body was a proof of concept, an afterthought. It was not physically imposing and he had to compensate with words and attitude.
“Your body.” She stood too close in the dim room, her voice as smooth as glass, something dark bubbling beneath it. “Is there any part of it that Dottore cannot fix.”
What a ridiculous question. “Not that I am aware of, n–”
His head hit the wall with a crunch. He would’ve shrieked in surprise if not for his own cloak yanked up and stuffed in his mouth, the Knave’s nails cutting grooves into his cheek with the motion. The inhuman strike would kill a lesser being outright. Scaramouche, still hindered by Dottore’s latest concoction, was only dazed.
Tragically he was still subject to physics. He slumped against the wall, off-balance, then flailed to free himself when the Knave crushed her shoulder into him. He kicked his leg out for balance and she stomped on his knee.
It hurt too badly to scream. He didn’t need to look to know that it was broken far beyond his ability to repair. He blindly went to protect his injured leg and she manhandled him back into the wall, the back of his head rebounding off the stone.
His initial outrage gave way to actual, real fear. He was not blessed with elemental ability or martial prowess, at least not more than a human man. Even if he was, the Knave would just break his joints one by one.
He always thought it’d be Dottore to do this to him.
Scaramouche lashed out in a surge of panic, uncovering his face to swing at hers. Her hands lanced into the opening to clench around his neck. She lifted him and shook him twice, then left him to dangle. He felt her hands shaking when the room stopped spinning, her nails screeching against porcelain skin. He clawed at the wrist holding him upright, trying to isolate a finger to break it, but he stopped when he finally looked at her face.
He’d never seen her so angry. He’d never seen anyone so angry before. Even he, fueled by righteous fury to exterminate an entire bloodline, had only felt a shadow of what burned in her eyes. She trembled with it, her lips peeling back her polite veneer in an inhuman snarl.
She was going to kill him.
If he had to breathe, he would’ve died of strangulation already. He kicked at her with his good leg and clawed at her hands while she leaned in close, her eyes wide. Embers flickered in her breath.
“I did not kill my father to tolerate this behavior from the likes of you.” Her voice cracked and her body shook with it. Scaramouche hung like a cat locked in the jaws of a rabid dog, something sticky oozing down his temple and matting in his hair.
He hissed and made a wild grab at her face. His fingers met bangs and he yanked, taking a fistful of white strands, but the Knave just bit at his hand. He refused to die like this – murdered in a closet, half-finished, a forgettable blip in Fatui history. He had to ascend. He had to. Dottore had bigger plans for him.
But, Dottore was also why he struggled now, the cocktail of drugs still deadening his reflexes and sitting heavy in his limbs. The Knave tightened her grip around his neck, her own knuckles creaking with the force. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at his terrified reflection in hers.
He deserved this, really. He didn’t even want to slap that guard, but he did, and unlike him the guard had people that cared about him. Scaramouche grimaced as his eyes started to burn. His life would start and end in tears, apparently.
The Knave adjusted her grip, planning how to kill him slowest. Her hand flexed once.
Twice.
Scaramouche’s eyes flew open as he freefell, then he shrieked as his broken leg hit the floor.
The Knave kicked him in the mouth and rested her foot threateningly on his other knee. “Quiet.”
He curled protectively around his stomach, one hand coming to cover his mouth and the other protecting his neck with little concern for how pathetic he looked. He felt the Knave’s burning glare for a moment before she abruptly turned away to pace the breadth of the tiny room. He twitched each time her heels clicked on the floor.
He was alive, somehow.
He wiped his eyes and risked watching her. She stared straight ahead, her brows furrowed and her hands pinned behind her back. She rubbed her thumb against her index finger obsessively, sparks of fire bursting to life and dying just as fast. After a few moments, she stopped mid-march and glared at him.
“Get up.”
He pushed himself as far as sitting. His vision took a moment to catch up, the room smearing as he struggled to process motion. She approached and he flinched, but it didn’t stop her from grabbing a fistful of his cloak and hauling him upright.
The fury had been buried beneath a strained calm. “You may treat your men however you please, but you will not harm my children ever again. Do you understand me.”
“...Yes.”
“Yes sir. ”
He grit his teeth. “Yes, sir.”
She turned to drag him out the door. He yelped, but she did not release him. She had his shoulder and head bent at an angle where he either had to walk or be dragged. One was agonizing for the body, the other for the ego. He chose to walk.
Thankfully they didn’t pass anyone on the fifteen minute trip to their destination. Scaramouche would say thanks for the small mercy, but his stomach flipped as they limped down the increasingly familiar halls. The Knave slowed from her murder march to something approaching a normal person’s pace.
They came to the laboratory Scaramouche had left not that long again and she shoved him forward. “Open it.”
He didn’t open the door so much as fell against it, though it had the same effect. He jerked his injured leg up and held onto the knob for support, swinging forward with the door and overbalancing.
Dottore’s singsong greeted them the moment the hinges creaked: “If you’re not Regrator, get the fuck out~”
The Doctor hunched in the back of his lab. Too-bright lights reflected off every sterile surface, bleaching his hair from surgical-glove-blue to near white. His coat seemed blacker than the shadow he cast. Something ticked rhythmically, muffled by his body in the way, and Scaramouche had the urge to limp over and demand to see what it was.
Instead he swallowed. “It’s me.”
Dottore paused. His shoulders tightened and he looked about to throw whatever he had in his hand at them, but after a moment of expectant silence, he let out an explosive sigh and slammed his project down on the table. Scaramouche hoped he broke it. Dottore lazily turned to greet them, then stopped short on seeing Scaramouche clinging to the doorknob. “What on earth happened?”
The Knave offered a deal instead of an explanation. “Fix him without telling Pierro and I will owe you a favor.”
She lingered just outside the threshold to the lab, the interior light illuminating her like a specter in the dim hall. She almost looked like she was floating.
Dottore spoke without looking at her, instead tilting his head quizzically at Scaramouche. He approached, his lips pursed, circling like a vulture. “As if I’d tattle, though…” he trailed off and poked the side of Scaramouche’s head, who rolled his eyes to keep from wincing. “I don’t appreciate other people breaking my toys, Knave.”
“Then put him on a leash.”
He didn’t feel safe around Dottore, but his presence did give Scaramouche the confidence to sneer at the dig. He turned to spit something back at her but Dottore spoke over his head. “What kind of favor?”
“Anything that doesn’t involve children.”
“Can you procure me a dozen test subjects aged eighteen to twenty five?”
She hesitated for a split second. The average person wouldn’t notice it, but Scaramouche heard the taste of something bad when she said, “Yes.”
Dottore tutted and turned his back to them, waving them forward. “Very well. Bring him here. Leftmost table.”
The Knave went to touch him and Scaramouche hauled himself forward. He couldn’t so much put weight on his bad leg as hop around it, which looked stupid, but he couldn’t show weakness in front of Dottore. His posturing did him little good when he collapsed and the Knave caught him anyway. He whipped around to punch her but she just grabbed his wrist and used it to flip him unkindly onto the operating table. The metal leeched the warmth from his body, but at least he didn’t have to move his leg anymore.
The Knave seemed content to observe and Dottore was busy rummaging through the drawers to the right of his earlier project, so Scaramouche shifted to get a look at the ticking thing on the counter. It looked both mechanical and biological, like him. He’d have to sabotage it when Dottore wasn’t looking. Dottore’s interest in him was the only thing keeping him alive, after all, and he couldn’t afford to share the spotlight.
“You need to stop killing Harbingers,” Dottore chided, speaking to the Knave and confirming his theories. He neatly laid out a scalpel, hammer, a few rolls of gauze and a clean pair of channel locks, then heavily sat down next to Scaramouche’s head. He ignored the leg for now and started poking at Scaramouche’s temple. “Does this hurt?”
He felt… fuzzy when the finger trailed over the area that had connected with the wall. “Nngh, n– no? It’s–” he started, then choked from the sudden spasm that wracked his entire body. Dottore had pushed his finger up to the second knuckle in the wound he didn’t realize he had. One hand gripped the table and the other clawed for support in Dottore’s coat, though it was uncoordinated.
“If I wanted to kill him, I would bring you a body and an apology.” The Knave put on a good show of being unaffected by the gruesome sight, but she frowned slightly on seeing his expression. "Tell him to… mind his manners before he gets himself hurt worse.”
Scaramouche wheezed and checked out of the conversation. The supremely weird feeling – weird and violating – drowned out anything else. At least it was stronger than the pain lancing in his knee. He clumsily slapped the back of his hand into Dottore’s chest. “Stop.”
“Why? What are you experiencing?”
“I, I don’t know. It’s weird. Stop it and just fix my leg.”
There was a nauseating moment where he wondered whether Dottore would listen to him. His eyes rolled over to the Knave in a fit of desperation. She stared at him, her eyes wide and unfocused with adrenaline, her shoulders set. Only Scaramouche would notice. He had spent four centuries learning how to mimic lesser beings. He didn’t have to know her to know that she was uncomfortable. Part of him smiled in perverse satisfaction at finding a way to hurt her. The rest of him cringed at begging his assailant to be a witness.
To her credit, she did not leave. She cleared her throat and stepped closer, which prompted Dottore to finally extract the finger. “...Is there anything important about the subjects besides their age?”
“Not particularly, no,” he mumbled and started stuffing gauze into the wound, which was still horribly invasive but at least it was room temperature. Dottore’s hands were always so warm.
“So pedophiles would suffice?”
“I could not care less. Whatever saves your conscience.”
Scaramouche relaxed back into the table while Dottore parted his hair, following the fractures along his scalp and dabbing away the fluid. This was almost nice. He never bothered with antiseptic since no disease could grow in puppet flesh, but he did clean the area of dirt and debris that would itch as it healed. Scaramouche, still groggy from earlier and tired from recent events, shut his eyes with a quiet hum and pretended he didn’t just have a finger knuckle deep in his skull. He could tell himself it was someone lovingly tending to his injuries, not the person that caused them looming over him and the person that had caused infinitely worse planning how to get a better look inside his head.
Perhaps startled by how still he had gone, where he looked Very Dead, the Knave spoke up again. “How difficult will it be to repair his knee?”
Dottore grunted and the wheels of his stool squeaked as he pushed himself towards Scaramouche’s legs. Of course she had to speak just as he was starting to believe his comforting lie.
“Let me see…” Dottore hummed, then leaned forward excitedly. He cocked his head. “It’s a good thing I enjoy puzzles.”
Scaramouche cracked an eye and glanced down. His flesh didn’t swell, which gave him a great view of the broken supports bulging under his skin. Dottore touched a few inches above the fracture and he hissed.
He withdrew his hand and patted Scaramouche’s thigh over his shorts. His grin stood in stark contrast to the distracted concern in his voice. “Let me get you an anesthetic before we begin.”
Scaramouche nodded his consent and let his head thunk back against the table.
Dottore stared openly at him, then turned to the Knave. “Goodness, what did you do to him? He throws a fit when I even suggest this.”
Again she hesitated, though her voice was perfectly flat. “I responded appropriately to mistreatment of my children.”
Dottore snorted. His mask covered his expression, but Scaramouche didn’t have to see to know that he was rolling his eyes. “How noble of you.”
The next few moments passed in silence. Dottore procured a pill for him, coated in sugar in his only consistent attempt at kindness. Scaramouche popped it in his mouth and swallowed without water, suppressing a shudder at the flavor. Sweetness always brought the fog and with the fog came something different.
He caught the Knave watching him and she frowned, just a little bit, her eyebrows drawing together in what looked like irritation to the average person. Whatever. He was alive, somehow, and for once he didn’t care to be present for whatever happened next. Let her have whatever conflicting feelings she wanted. He let his head loll against the table while the drug took hold, his eyelids growing heavy. Dottore started prodding at his knee before he fully went under and in his last moments of consciousness, he met the Knave’s eyes one last time. She looked like she understood.
From now on, he would stay far, far away from her.