Chapter Text
Scaramouche’s heartbeat is loud. He can feel the quick, rhythmic pounding in his throat—can’t hear anything around the hot pulse of it.
Smoke billows into the sky like great thunderclouds, but falling specks of ash betray the unusual nature of them. Once his heart settles, clamor and panic from beyond the crest of the beach become audible, yet It’s still eerily quiet on the shore. The gentle lap of the waves is striking in the dichotomy of it all.
Scaramouche traces the trail of smoke downwards, and apprehension thickens his voice. “That’s coming from…”
Miko’s fingers tighten around his own. They share a loaded look.
“The gate,” she finishes.
It's chaos.
A great roaring fire—too large and hot to be anything other than a Vision user’s element—engulfs the Shogunate’s training area and the wooden panels of the gate into Tenshukaku. The fire is spreading quickly, too quickly, so Scaramouche decides the perpetrator must be nearby. He scowls and readies his Vision for take-off before a hand clamps down on his shoulder.
“What?” Scaramouche snaps. “They can't be far.”
Miko crowds into his space, eyes darting back and forth to the frenzy around them. Hydro users frantically douse the flames but there aren’t enough of them to extinguish it completely. A horrific consequence of the Vision Hunt Decree.
Miko herds him behind a wall so he is unable to view anything more.
“You’re staying with me,” she says.
“I’ll be faster on my own,” he argues.
The sound of creaking wood pierces the air as the solid wooden pillars around the gates are consumed with fire.
“And if they are here for you? If it is the Fatui?” Miko hisses.
Scaramouche pulls on the single thread of sadistic enjoyment that has been laced securely through his disdain since he joined the Fatui; an emotion so ugly and horrid that he allowed it to fade as time passed him by. Despite everything he’s been through, and the gentleness he’s accepted for himself, he can’t pretend that he doesn’t still enjoy violence.
“I won’t lose.”
But Miko’s eyes are hard and unyielding. “I forbid it.”
Scaramouche bares his teeth in response, because as close as they’ve gotten, as much as he has begun to appreciate her company, she is not Ei.
He almost voices this scathing fact, but a new concern stops him in his tracks. Where is Ei?
And then, tailing that thought: where is Nahida?
As if summoned by Scaramouche’s budding panic, Shogunate soldiers dart from the streets and race through the burning gates, crying, “Protect the Shogun!”
Scaramouche feels his stomach drop as cold horror fills his veins.
Kujou Sara appears at the entrance of the gates, where soldiers are pushing people away from the flames.
“Secure Her Excellency!” Sara yells, sparing not a glance for anything else. She ensures an appropriate number of soldiers file quickly through the fire before darting away.
All thoughts of tracking down the culprit vanish. Scaramouche’s urgency is immediately redirected and focused on one single goal: find his mother.
Unwilling and unable to waste time arguing with Miko, Scaramouche rips himself from her grip and throws himself over Tenshukaku’s wall with a boost of Anemo. He pays no mind to the cursing that follows, or to the fire that licks at his skin, greedily feeding from the air currents pulsing around his form.
The main courtyard is a mess of soldiers, smoke, and shouting. Scaramouche pushes off the tiled barrier when the flames catch on his clothing. He doesn’t immediately see his mother, so he opens his mouth to call.
It’s then that he feels her.
The crackle of Electro is so intense that it’s audible over everything else, and that says nothing for the stinging waves of it in the air. It’s so much that Scaramouche wonders for one hysterical second if Ei has somehow regained the Gnosis.
When he finally spots her silhouette through plumes of smoke, he instinctively rushes forward before stopping dead in his tracks. The small group of soldiers dispatched to be his security escorts are in various degrees of distress, and they are all kneeling at the Electro Archon’s feet.
Ei is furious. Scaramouche has never, ever, in all the years he has known her, seen her this outwardly threatening towards individuals she must know are innocent.
She holds Musuo Isshin in a white-knuckled grip, shoulders taut with tension. The blade glows white with Electro, and the tip of it is held just beneath a trembling soldier’s chin. Even from here Scaramouche can see how the man’s skin burns raw beneath her power.
His stomach churns. For Ei to reveal the blade here, now, in place of her polearm—
Miko, appearing beside him in a flash of searing violet, swears once more beneath her breath and yanks Scaramouche forward just enough to make out his personal guard’s words.
One of his escorts—the only one who dares to meet Ei’s eyes—is pleading. For what, Scaramouche doesn’t know.
“I assigned you to this job personally,” Ei snaps, eyes lit a piercing lavender. “What is your life worth to me now that you’ve failed?”
“Your Excellency, I beg for mercy,” the guard cries, and Scaramouche flinches. Guilt spikes sharp and hot beneath his ribs. A sinking feeling in his gut tells him they’re in trouble because of his absence.
Ei bares her teeth. Her teeth. Scaramouche has never been so shocked in his entire life.
The tendons of Ei’s hand shift beneath her skin, and the sword's blade tilts in the scant millimeters between it and the man’s flushed throat—she’s going to kill him.
“Ei,” Miko’s voice pierces the air, sharp with urgency.
Ei’s eyes flick up to the two of them, and for one breathless second Scaramouche is frozen with fear at being pinned beneath his mother’s rage. But then Ei remembers herself, and the switch to relief is so obvious that anyone watching would have recognized it.
Ei’s composure snaps back into place like it never left, and she turns to the kneeling soldiers.
“Dismissed,” she says coldly. “Return to Sara for further instruction.”
As they flee, Ei flashes to Scaramouche and cups his nape in her palm. He jolts when a shock of pure Electro traverses through his body, flowing in a wave downwards until it coalesces beneath the superficial burns that mar his legs.
Within seconds, the burns are healed. Scaramouche stares in shock.
“How did you do that?” he asks. Unbidden, the memory of knocking into the katana case comes to mind. She hadn’t healed his injury then, despite its severity.
“Now is not the time for questions. Inside. Now.”
Scaramouche shakes his head, still reeling from what he just witnessed. “The perpetrators must be nearby, so I’ll—“
“I will handle it,” Ei says. Her eyes are now dark, but for the glowing Electro lit within her pupils. “I need you safe.”
She turns to Miko. “Escort him in. Stay away from the entrance.”
“I can handle myself—“
Ei interrupts his snapped spiel with a furious look and sharp swipe of her hand in the air demanding silence. It’s so abrupt and discourteous that Scaramouche’s mouth snaps shut automatically.
The very air buzzes with electricity when she bends closer to him, hiding her words beneath the roaring flames and chaos still surrounding the gates of Tenshukaku. Shouts from the fire-brigade and the hiss of Hydro-doused flames create camouflaging clamor—not that he believes he’d be able to miss her words even if he tried.
“Fear for your safety impairs my judgement,” Ei hisses, low and urgent.
Scaramouche mind stalls. Fear?
She continues on, ignorant of his shock. “You are capable, yes, but I cannot act if I know you are in danger. I can hardly even think with you here now —“
She cuts off, glaring at their surroundings, at the fire that creeps along the wooden tiles. The longer they stand here, the longer the culprit will remain undiscovered.
“Shogun!” a soldier calls.
Ei turns to leave, but Scaramouche pulls her back. “Where is Nahida?”
Pressure thickens in the air around them; the crackle before an electrical storm. Ei’s expression morphs into something dark and unforgiving.
“The Dendro Archon is not my immediate concern,” she practically snaps. The flames roaring behind her figure make her eyes glow even brighter than usual. They turn the flickering snaps of pure Electro shrouding her body into glimmering waves.
She’s angry, Scaramouche thinks, confusion making his head ache. But why?
“She is your guest,” he snarls back, half in pure bewilderment. “She could be in danger!”
“Inazuma’s citizens are in danger,” she counters. “You are in danger. The longer we stand conversing about this, the likelihood of catching the culprit decreases. Go inside. I will not tell you again.”
She does not wait to see if he will obey; there is a sharp increase in pressure—lightning about to strike—and then she is gone.
Scaramouche doesn’t hesitate, but neither does Miko. Knowing him well, she’d clamped onto his shoulders with bruising force.
He struggles. “I need to look for Nahida!”
“I have been ordered to escort you inside,” Miko says, pushing him towards safety.
Scaramouche’s squirming turns just shy of desperate; he cranes his neck back to look Miko in the eyes and sees the resolve there.
He grits his teeth around a groan of frustration. “Miko, please.”
“Have you gone deaf?” she snaps, gaze boring into his own. “She ordered me to escort you inside.”
Understanding hits him all at once. He wonders, genuinely, what the line will be with Ei, and when Miko will cross it. He doesn’t think to wonder when he will cross that line because it would cause him too much stress to bother.
So Scaramouche puts up a show of struggle—not that he need have bothered because the chaos around them more than distracts from any curious eyes.
The second the heavy doors snap shut behind them, Scaramouche rips himself away from her hold. Tenshukaku is eerily quiet.
“Where will you go?” Scaramouche demands skeptically. He doesn’t think Tenshukaku is especially safe at the moment, but it is certainly the most protected building in Inazuma—ignoring the gate.
Miko eyes the barren hall as if she can see the commotion through the wood and stone. There's not an attendant or guard to be found.
“I will join the hunt for the culprit,” she says. “Can I trust you to stay out of harm's way?”
Scaramouche opens his mouth to reply but Miko presses a finger to his lips. Her own lips are pursed in displeasure.
“On second thought, don’t answer that,” she mutters. “A positive response from you rarely results in a positive outcome.”
Scaramouche scowls, but his attention lies far beyond their conversation.
“It must be the Fatui,” he says. “I don’t know who else would have a motive.”
Her lips thin in displeasure. Scaramouche thinks she might change her mind and order him to stay—or worse, refuse to leave him at all. But then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“There’s no time now. We can discuss when we regroup with Ei. You are a capable fighter. Do not get yourself killed.”
Scaramouche nods once. They stare at each other for a short moment with trepidation and determination equally present in the silence.
“Go,” Miko says. “Find her.”
“I will,” Scaramouche replies. And then, severity sharp in his voice, orders, “Help our Archon.”
Miko smiles, and bows her head.
“As our Prince demands.”
—
Scaramouche curses as he exits the empty guest wing, vacant of any Archon or her guard. He feels no hint of elemental energy drawing him towards any particular direction, and there are no visible residuals. How could everyone have disappeared so completely?
He slams open a random door deep within Tenshukaku and startles as a dozen pairs of wide eyes meet his own.
“Kuni!” a young voice gasps, before a force hits Scaramouche around the middle and makes him stumble back a step.
The crown of dark hair and wiry limbs could only belong to one person—in fact, there’s only one person who would dare to touch him so brazenly.
“Daisuke?”
Whimpered mumbles vibrate through the skin of his stomach, and Scaramouche runs a soothing hand through the kid’s hair. Anger at the entire situation returns with blazing heat. He wants to destroy anything that would dare threaten his friends.
Looking back into the room, Scaramoche makes out other familiar faces in the crowd. Azumi and other attendants who have become familiar to him during these last few months are among them, as well as the palace chefs and a handful of maids.
“What are you all doing here?” he asks, trying to keep fury from hardening his voice. He doesn't know if they would assume he’s angry at them, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“Raiden-sama,” an attendant starts, voice trembling. “We were ordered to take cover after the attack on the gate. Is it safe to come out?”
Scaramouche frowns, half in apology. “No, it’s not.”
A wave of discontent and worry sweeps through the room. Scaramouche rushes to add, “You all are very safe here. Our Archon is handling it.”
Azumi appears at his side and gently starts to pry Daisuke off, calmly ignoring his resistance. “Then you must stay here with us.”
Scaramouche shakes his head. “I need to find Lord Kusanali. Do you know where she and her party have gone?”
“I’m sorry, but I do not.”
He expected as much, but it still rankles. It’s then that Daisuke’s emotions get the better of him, and he starts to cry. Scaramouche’s heart aches for the child. He kneels down and brushes dark hair away from red, swollen eyes.
“Nobody will tell me what’s going on!” Daisuke sobs. “But everyone is scared! Please don’t leave us.”
“Hey,” Scaramouche soothes, squeezing the kid’s shoulders. “Nothing is going to happen. Do you remember what I promised you?”
Daisuke slowly nods. “You’ll protect me.”
“Yes. Do you think I would break it?”
The kid’s eyes are bright and full of tears. “No.”
Scaramouche gently guides him closer to Azumi, who hugs him close. “I need you to stay here. No harm will come to you. To any of you.”
Once he is sure Daisuke is settled, Scaramouche starts to back out of the room before anyone else can ask that he remain with them. He spots a single guard among the crowd, at the front, near the door. She stands at attention, obviously sent to protect Tenshukaku’s staff.
“Guard them with your life,” Scaramouche orders.
The guard bows. “Yes, Raiden-sama.”
Scaramouche, with no other plan, moves to his own wing next. He suspects it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Nahida could have gone searching for him, but his chambers prove to be just as desolate as the rest of the castle.
Incensed, he stalks outside to his courtyard and scales the divider. Noise assaults his awareness as the now familiar chaos rings from the front of the castle; dark smoke stretching to the sky. At least the fire looks to be under control.
He can see colored energy and aqua streams flying through the air, controlling the last of the flames, while soldiers direct the crowd and search the city.
Sitting back on his heels, Scaramouche grits his teeth in frustration. He doesn’t understand how Nahida could have just vanished. She is an Archon , for Celestia’s sake, surely somebody—
It’s then that he feels it. A rustling movement from the rocks beyond his chambers; a cold sweep echoing through his chest.
Emptiness, in a way he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. A pull on his awareness from an instinct he thought he’d buried so deep that he’d never feel it again.
Before he can analyze this feeling further he’s already moving, propelling himself down the cliffs of Tenshukaku and stepping up to the mouth of a well hidden cavern that rests between two algae-covered rocks.
A man stands among the shadows.
Fury rips up Scaramouche’s spine. His elements hiss and buzz equally throughout his body. His lips curl against his will, baring his teeth like a predator.
— like prey—
Dottore’s segment smiles.
“You,” Scaramouche spits. “How dare you come here—“
“It was a mistake to defect from us, Balladeer,” the segment says, interrupting Scaramouche with a flick of his wrist. Scaramouche’s mouth snaps shut with an audible click.
Fear closes around his throat like a collar. Memories of his torture flit into his mind, one by one, each worse than the last, and he is powerless to stop them.
The segment takes a step forward, and Scaramouche takes a step back. He hates himself for it. The person he’s become beneath his mother’s attention rankles; spits and hisses in offense.
This is not who Scaramouche is. He will not be cowed by this thing.
He raises his chin in defiance. “The Balladeer is dead. The Fatui have no business in Inazuma.”
The segment’s head tilts to the side. A wondering expression crosses its face, as if it has encountered a problem it didn’t know it had to solve. “Did you truly believe you would escape us?”
Scaramouche sneers. He did escape them.
The segment continues, “We made you what you are. We turned you into a God—“
“I am not a God,” Scaramouche snarls. Old guilt bubbles up from pain only freshly buried. “And neither are you . It’s pathetic how long it took me to see that.”
The segment’s expression falls blank of any emotion. Then, slowly, a small smile blooms on his face.
“Perhaps not,” he starts, words slow and calculated and altogether infuriating. “But you do carry the essence of one. And when we’re done with you, nothing but a shell of cursed divinity will be left.”
Scaramouche realizes too late. We?
Cold arms wrap around his middle and squeeze his body close. Scaramouche startles with it and fights the hold automatically, before stilling in adrenaline-soaked fear.
Scaramouche always had a fighting instinct.
Well, perhaps not always. But long enough that it became his normal—matching heated words with targeted barbs, returning hits and punches and stabs and shots by whatever means necessary.
Scaramouche was brutal, and he was violent, and everyone in the Fatui knew that.
Everyone except for Dottore, who reached deep inside Scaramouche and ripped away his defenses.
It was only with Dottore that Scaramouche developed the instinct to freeze.
And that’s what he does now, because the scent of sterile metal and blood wafting off the Doctor makes goose-flesh prickle at his arms and dries out his mouth. The scent encases Scaramouche on all sides, permeates beyond the soothing scent of sea salt and turns it sour.
Bile rises in Scaramouche’s throat as Dottore presses a sharp-toothed grin to his ear.
“You’re going to regret this little defection of yours,” the Doctor croons. “But don’t worry.”
The Doctor’s hands are freezing even through his thick gloves. They’re so cold that it burns when they run up Scaramouche’s sides, into the outer layer of his robes, to frame his chest where his core sits. Where Dottore once spent hours elbow deep in his body. Where Scaramouche had let him operate with no rules or regard for his own life.
“I have been experimenting quite intensively with our previous project, Balladeer. I believe you will find the results quite fascinating.”
Scaramouche shudders with rage, jaw clenched so hard his teeth could crack.
“You—“
Dottore’s grip on him tightens, and Scaramouche’s mouth snaps shut once more.
The segment standing across from them, inching ever closer, smirks and pulls his coat aside to reveal the largest knowledge capsule Scaramouche has ever seen. It’s completely black, save for a mess of thin, webbed veins, and glows with so much corrupted energy Scaramouche feels his stomach clench in unadulterated fear.
“I have more than enough information to override these cumbersome emotions you insist on nurturing. And this time, it will not be so pleasant.”
Scaramouche remembers. It had not been pleasant at all, then. So he can’t even imagine what this single capsule of amalgamated corrupted capsules would do to him now.
This is why they were smuggling capsules, Scaramouche realizes with dawning horror. This has been planned from the very beginning.
Dottore’s nose trails along Scaramouche’s hairline to the back of his neck, and the Harbinger chuckles when Scaramouche jerks away in disgust. Scaramouche reaches for his power and finds nothing, and he can’t tell if this is an automated response his body has been disciplined into or if Dottore has done something—
“When I’m through with your conditioning,” Dottore murmurs, “you won’t ever entertain the idea of leaving me again.”
He slides a hand to Scaramouche’s throat. This frees one of Scaramouche’s arms, but his limbs won’t obey his command. His body is nothing but an empty vessel.
“I’m going to rip out every last shred of defiance until you’re nothing but the puppet for a Gnosis you were made to be.”
If Dottore had stopped here, he might have succeeded. Scaramouche was frozen in place, half-locked in memories he never wanted to visit again with a predator at his throat.
But Dottore keeps talking.
“And the first thing you’re going to do for me when I’m done,” Dottore murmurs, soft and cruel, “is tear apart that imposter of an Electro Archon with your bare hands.”
Many things happen at once.
Dottore slides a knife through Scaramouche’s spine.
Scaramouche’s body erupts in raging pulses of elemental energy.
The segment pulls the corrupted capsule from his coat, glimmering and pulsing with malevolent energy.
Scaramouche’s fingers rise to his collar as his legs go numb.
Dottore’s teeth sink into his nape.
The segment activates the capsule.
Dottore twists Scaramouche around—
—and Scaramouche slides his poison needle deep into the Harbinger’s throat.
Dottore stumbles away, stunned, with a hand pressed to his carotid artery. A river of crimson flows down his chest. The sharp, metallic end of the needle pokes out between his fingers.
When the man falls to his knees with blood dribbling past his lips, Scaramouche bares all his teeth in a feral grin. He’d fallen too, at some point, and now braces himself shakily over the wet stone of the cave as every sensation below his hips tingles and fades to nothing.
“Fuck you,” Scaramouche viciously spits. Though slight, victory courses like a heady drug in his veins.
Dottore’s body jerks, and seizes, then stills. Scaramouche can’t tell if he’s dead and prays to Celestia that he is.
Blood floods his mouth. Blinking past his dizziness, Scaramouche’s attention focuses completely on the sharp pain in his chest. He looks down to see the pointed end of the knife still sticking through his abdomen.
The pain doubles when Dottore’s segment, not halted by the limp form of the Prime, approaches from behind and rips the knife from Scaramouche before pushing him flat on the ground.
Scaramouche’s body and Vision both pulse in blinding agony, instinctively sending shockwaves of Electro and Anemo to the threat. But he can’t even feel relief from his returned power because Dottore’s segments learn from their past mistakes.
Cryo, channeling from the segment’s Delusion, shoots through Scaramouche’s body and dampens his elemental energy enough for the segment to do its work.
Pain. There’s nothing else, and for a moment Scaramouche is blinded with it. Time fizzles out of existence beneath the weight of his agony.
He comes back to himself a second before the segment activates the corrupted capsule directly into Scaramouche’s core, and in that time a figure had appeared at the mouth of the cave. Indiscriminable against the harsh light reflected from the sea.
He thinks, as he tries to focus his blurred vision, that he sees an arc of gold and violet—but then the capsule fires to life within his chest.
Scaramouche sends a fleeting thought to Ei’s gift of Euthymia. Useless, now, where it’s tucked away deep in his robe.
If I escape this alive, Scaramouche thinks as corruption spreads its searing tendrils through his mind, I’m never gonna hear the end of it.