TW: language, mild gore
● ● ● ●
"Wake up, bitch!"
You were violently shaken awake. You open your eyes, alarmed. Two fatui agents grabbed your arms and pulled you out of bed.
"Wait-" you started.
One of the agents twisted your left arm against your back. "Shut your mouth and keep walking."
Last night, you had let your guard down. You didn't have your sword with you. And you couldn't match upto these fatui agents in strength.
"Where's Scaramouche?" you dared to ask.
The other agent pulled your hair till your neck arched back and punched you right across your face. Instantly you broke a few teeth. Mouth full of blood, you kept quiet, as the two agents dragged you out of the ship.
Two more agents came forward and tied your hands in front of you. You were then blindfolded and gagged and mercilessly shoved into a cart. All this time when everything hurt, you mind went back again and again to Scaramouche. Did he leave you? Please archons let him not abandon you in this wretched place.
The cart ride was long and freezing cold. You could feel your bare fingers go blue. When the journey ended, the driver dumped you on the sidewalk like a sack of vegetables. You could feel a cut open in your forehead and warm blood trickle down from it. You were left at the sidewalk for sometime.
"Is this the one?" you heard a voice.
"Yeah. Lord Sixth's new companion." Someone replied. You realised they were talking about you.
You were again forced to walk a long distance. When they opened your blindfold, you looked around and saw that you were in a cage. The agents locked the cage door and started pushing it into a room. You fell down to the floor in the impact and stayed there. Why were you caged up? Your brain couldn't grasp any answers. Once inside the room, you saw many human sized glass cylinders lined up against all the four walls. In the centre was a cylinder noticeably larger than the rest and something was hanging inside of it. The fatui agents continued pushing the cage to the very corner of the room where the cage door aligned with another small door.
"That's your bathroom for your enjoyable stay," one of them pointed at the small door and laughed.
"Stop the ruckus!" A masked man with blue hair emerged from the shadows. "Out of the room, now!"
The agents scurried away, mumbling apologies.
"Welcome," the blue haired man continued, "to Snezhnaya, y/n."
He looked dangerous. And insane. You were immediately scared of him.
"No response?" he continued. "Well I'll just introduce myself first. I'm Il Dottore. The second of the harbingers."
You were still incapable of forming words in your bloody mouth.
"Hm. If I'm not gonna get answers, I'll just continue with my work."
He walked to the large cylinder in the centre and turned on a switch. The cylinder lit up and revealed Scaramouche inside it. A million wires and cords sticking out of his back. He looked up at you and gave a half smile. "Hi again, y/n," he said as to your horror, Dottore opened the cylinder and ripped Scaramouche away from the wires. He fell down like a rag doll, bleeding from the gaping holes on his back where the wires had been attached.
"KABUKI!" you screamed, throwing up blood.
"Don't worry," Scaramouche said, "get used to this. This is all for me to become the perfect vessel to house the gnosis."
You banged your tied up fists against the bars of the cage. How could a human do this? "Stop this! Please. Let's go back home!"
Dottore transferred Scaramouche on a table and started attaching more wires into the bleeding sockets on his back. Scaramouche screamed in pain. You were going mad. You ran against the bars of your cage, kicked them and punched them to no avail.
"Stop, please," you cried, "what is the point of being a god like this? Please let's go back home. I don't want you to be a God!"
"Silence, you insolent fool," Dottore suddenly rushed to your cage. "You want a taste of my experimental drug? That'll shut you up for good." You stepped back immediately. Up close, he looked even more deranged and lunatic.
"Dottore!" Scaramouche almost roared at him, "you dare not lay a finger on her. I swear I will ruin your entire goddamn experiment."
"I told you having a mere foolish human here will cause interruptions," Dottore shouted, "how do I focus with you both shit heads rambling on?"
"Give her a muting potion."
"What? Kabuki, no please-" you start.
"Y/n. I need this. Trust me on this," Scaramouche replied to you. "Untie her hands and treat her wounds."
"Yeah yeah," Dottore said reluctantly as he unlocked your cage and held you by your neck, pouring a liquid down your throat as you thrashed around in protest. Your throat burned from the liquid. You opened your mouth to scream but no voice came out. You realised to your horror that the muting potion had worked. You let the doctor treat your wounds, reluctantly. After he was done, he exited the cage and locked it up again.
Scaramouche looked at you longingly. "The effects of the potion will wear off in about a month. Don't worry. "
You wanted to tell him that you weren't worried about yourself. Him sitting there with his back cut open, bare bones sticking out was making you spiral. You cared for him so much. You loved him so much ever since you were kids. To see him like this was the worst thing that could have happened.
Why was being a god so important to Scaramouche, you wondered. Why couldn't he just return to inazuma with you? You looked on in horror as the doctor drilled cords into Scaramouche's back and hung him inside the cylinder again.
"I'll be back again tomorrow," the doctor said, "we're almost there. In a few days we'll be heading over to Sumeru." Saying this, he left the room, locking it from outside.
"Y/n." You heard Scaramouche. You looked up at him. If only you could take away whatever sufferings he had. Seeing him like this brought back memories of him in Tatarasuna, in his long purple veil, running around freely. The tears kept trickling down your face. The way you were now, you couldn't even offer him words of comfort.
"You lost a few teeth, didn't you?" he asked. When did he notice that? You cover your mouth with your hands. Then as if reading your thoughts, he said, "Come on, no need to hide it. I think you look sweet like that. Remember when you were 7 and your two front teeth fell?"
He remembered that distant memory of yours. He had helped you out when your milk teeth fell off. You had thrown tantrums all over the place as Hisa-nii and Kabuki had laughed. All this time, it wasn't just you who kept remembering the past. It was him too.
"You know," Scaramouche continued, "after hundreds of years, I'm glad I still have you. The other Niwa and all the other people of Tatarasuna betrayed me. I searched for you everywhere but you were nowhere to be seen. I was angry and hurt. After our promise, you had left me. I had to flee from Tatarasuna by my own. And that wasn't the end. Later, I befriended a little child, thinking he'll be there with me. I ran chores for the city people and earned mora to get him food. I thought I will finally be happy. But guess what? That brat died on me. I was again left alone, y/n."
You shook your head violently. You wanted to tell him that no one had betrayed him. Something must have happened in Tatarasuna that night.
"Well what did I expect?" Scaramouche went on, "my own creator, my mother- she was the first to betray me. Discarded me as if I'm nothing but a burden, while her next creation rules the nation? Tragic, isn't it?" He paused. And then laughed manically, "Guess what, y/n? Yae miko gave me my mother's gnosis in return for the traveller's life. Now I can finally serve my purpose of being a god. And you will watch me attain divinity."
You wondered how he managed to explain such traumatic experiences of his life in the current physical pain he was in. You remembered that he had said it didn't hurt him no matter what as he was a puppet. And yet, here he was. You stretched out your arms towards him from within the bars of the cage, as if doing that will bring him close to yourself.
"Aw don't do that now," Scaramouche said with a smirk. "You look pathetic like that. Someone as beautiful as you shouldn't be seen like that. But then again, you are my first follower. So I guess you can't really help wanting me."
"I will be called Kunikuzushi- the destroyer of countries," Scaramouche now seemed to be talking to himself, because there was no way you could talk after the potion, "But I must offer thanks to my creator. She made such a puppet that can withstand so much pain. The perfect being to be a god. Do you know, I especially requested the captain to let you be brought here?" he turned his gaze towards you. "And a lot of negotiations it took. But I had my way. You had to be here to witness me becoming a god, y/n."
After this, Scaramouche didn't say much. Occasionally, he used to ramble on narcissistically about how he lived in the past hundred years. You came to know that Scaramouche was nothing like Kabuki- pure and innocent. To your horror, you realised that the traveller was correct. Scaramouche had killed hundreds of people as and when he had been instructed to, or sometimes merely to stir up trouble. He had manipulated many and even committed arson. The little hope that you held on to of him still having his old self buried deep under somewhere was slowly fading away.
A few days passed. Dottore visited three times a day, replacing the cords on the puppet's back. During his visits the room would echo with Scaramouche's screams as the doctor dug into his skin. You would tear at your hair and ram your body against the iron bars of the cage out of frustration for not being able to do anything. This continued for four days.
"Look alive, you two," the doctor said on the fourth day, "we're heading for Sumeru now."
There was nothing left to look alive for. You hadn't seen sunlight in days.
"Balladeer, I will have to blindfold your little companion here for the journey. Who knows to whom she babbles our base location?" Dottore told Scaramouche. The latter didn't object. So once again, you were blindfolded and your hands were tied. For Scaramouche, you had travelled half of Teyvat. You didn't really care about anything else at the point. The little glimmer of hope of making him come back home with you was slowly disappearing. You didn't have your weapon so fighting your way out was out of question. You sat in your cage as some agents pushed it out of the room.
"Y/n," you hear the Balladeer's voice, "the next time we meet, you will see a perfect God before you."
(Chapter picture credit: thijikoy on Twitter)