Archive of Our Own ^beta

Scaramouche was not made for the cold, but he wasn’t exactly not made for it either. 

His body was built with the intent to resist erosion itself, and although he knows nothing in Teyvat is actually capable of doing so, it has provided him a strong constitution. That said, he still feels the cold, and while it may not be capable of killing him alone, he is still not fond of the discomfort it brings him. Years spent in the heart of Snezhnaya have given him ample experience coping with ice and snow, but he hadn’t bothered to bring a jacket with him when he fled Inazuma, and now, some untold miles up the side of the only mountain in all of Mondstadt, he wishes for little more than that. Or a fire, perhaps, not that one would be able to withstand the blizzard around him now.

The gnosis sits in his chest, humming with energy that does not warm him. Electro is a freezing sort of heat, not useful for more than keeping him awake and alive, and his body was… never quite perfected for the task of holding it. 

(Even the things he was made for aren’t things he’s actually able to handle. What a joke.)

It’s easy to get lost in his thoughts, amidst all this snow. Scaramouche has to keep his head down to keep his hat from flying off his head, but it’s more trouble than help in the unpredictable winds. Later on, this will be the excuse he gives himself for why he doesn’t see the flash of yellow eyes through the unforgiving gray, or sense the predatory intent of the beast those eyes belong to. 

The only warning he gets for its attack the rumbling of the earth beneath his feet; it starts faint, barely detectable beneath the roar of the blizzard, but it increases almost all at once, and suddenly the earth and snow to his right erupts as the largest whopperflower Scaramouche has ever seen lunges from the ground. 

He actually does lose his hat this time, swearing and lunging for it uselessly as it’s carried off down the mountainside. The whopperflower rumbles ominously, and Scaramouche dives out of the way as its vines come down where he stood, thick as trees. 

The snow rises nearly to his knees, limiting his mobility. So running away isn’t an option, then. Not that that’s his usual go-to strategy, but the cold is making him clumsy, and days of nonstop travel have made him exhausted, and Scaramouche isn’t certain he can win a fight against a creature built for traversing difficult, freezing environments. 

“Doesn’t look like I have much choice,” he grumbles, and, setting his stance, he reaches inward and threads his fingers through a tendril of that restless, unforgiving power.

“I’m not the easy meal you’re expecting!” he shouts, lashing out with a thundering crack of Electro. The whopperflower reels back, emitting a sound that isn’t quite a roar but which resonates loudly through the mountain around them all the same. Scaramouche strikes out again, this time landing a hit and earning something closer to a squeal.

Another vine––or rather, a root, perhaps––explodes from the snow to Scaramouche’s left, and this time his isn’t fast enough to avoid the hit. He’s thrown back into the side of a cliff and tumbles down the side, landing on his face in a thin swamp of icy slush stirred up by the whopperflower’s rampage. Pushing himself to his knees, Scaramouche attacks again, Electro skittering from his fingers and missing his target altogether. 

“Dammit!” he swears as the whopperflower closes in, its roots emerging around him and constricting around his legs. More Electro; this time it hits, but the monster is more determined, or maybe just too angry to back down. The sound of thunder echoes all the way down the mountain, and Scaramouche hits it again. 

This is not how he’s going down. Not after he’s come so far. Scaramouche refuses to disappear into the belly of some overgrown weed, crushed by its roots and melted by the acids of its stomach. Is his body immune to digestion? Did Ei consider that when building a vessel to endure eternity? 

He doesn’t get to find out. Suddenly the thunder is everywhere, but Scaramouche isn’t creating any lightning. He looks up in time to see the impending wave of white coming down from the cliff face he’d been thrown against before he’s thrown into instant, unforgiving darkness.

On the thinnest breeze above the turmoil, Scaramouche swears he hears a voice.

He expects to come to under the snow, freezing and alone in the dark, unable to move for the weight of the avalanche that buried him. When his consciousness finally begins to ebb back into his skull, he’s certain he’s met that fate: he can’t feel anything but the cold, and a distant, throbbing wrongness that could be pain if he weren’t too numb to move. 

But as he sits in the darkness behind his eyes, he finds there’s a weightlessness about him that belies his imagined burial, and a puddle of sound that he knows he would not be able to hear beneath so much snow. 

Slowly, he cracks open an eye, and finds himself met not by darkness, but by the warm, red glow of a fire’s light cast on the icy walls of a mountain cave. 

The sight grounds him, and suddenly the noise around him sharpens into something discernable. A fire crackling. The gentle clinking of glass. The occasional shuffle of feet shifting against stone. Every now and then, a sigh loud enough to reach his ears. 

Not alone, then. That could be dangerous. He came all the way up here to be alone, and somehow he’s stumbled into the clutches of someone who may very well be the only other person on the mountain. Fantastic. 

His effort to turn his head sends a shock up his spine that has nothing to do with his gnosis and everything to do with brilliant, lava-hot pain. He isn’t able to choke down his gasp fast enough, and suddenly the stranger is coming towards him. 

“Ah, you’ll not want to move just yet,” a voice warns. It falls on Scaramouche’s ears soft, but not in a gentle way. There’s a sternness to it that suggests obedience without having to command it. The implication that Scaramouche can do whatever he wants, but he’ll probably regret it if he doesn’t listen. 

Naturally, he forces himself to turn his head anyway.

The pain is instant, but it settles into a bearable ache once he relaxes into his new position. The stranger hums a sound just a little too impressed to be a scoff, and when Scaramouche finally manages to look up at them, he’s met with an expression too blank to parse any judgment from.

But gods, is the face he’s met with pretty. Scaramouche has never considered himself an expert on human attraction, but he knows the basics: the boy’s features are perfectly symmetrical to an almost uncanny degree, with pale, even skin and eyes the kind of blue that reflects more light than it lets in. His ash-blond hair is braided back to keep the front bits from falling in his face, allowing the rest to fall to his shoulders in the back. With an expression so empty, Scaramouche is able to see all of this unmarred and appreciate its purity. It makes him… angry. That’s the only word he can guess for the heat rising under his skin. 

“Who are you?” he means it like a demand, but the words crack and stumble on their way out of his mouth, and instead they come out more of a whisper.

“The person who saved your life,” the boy replies. Then, after a moment’s thought: “And also the one who endangered it, I suppose, though I can hardly take all of the blame when you were trekking up the side of a mountain in a blizzard in shorts.”

Scaramouche gives the rest of him a cursory glance. He scowls. “You’re wearing shorts.”

“And legwarmers,” the boy points out, sticking out a leg as if to accentuate his point. Scaramouche is pretty sure they still wouldn’t be considered thick enough to last a normal human in this weather. An allogene, perhaps? Or maybe some kind of Mondstadtian mountain youkai. 

Which reminds him.

“The whopperflower––the giant one––did you kill it? Where is it?”

The boy’s eyebrows twitch upwards just for a moment before falling back into their serene neutrality. “Oh, no, I’m afraid that whole situation was a rather embarrassing misunderstanding. She was just protecting her territory and didn’t recognize you. She’s easily excitable in storms, you see; the weather puts species like hers into a sort of frenetic frenzy.”

Scaramouche puts all of the disbelief he can muster into his expression as he blinks slowly up at the boy. “A misunderstanding?” He repeats it back slowly. Clears his throat when his voice comes out hoarse. Tries again. “That thing was hunting me! I would’ve been food if it wasn’t for… whatever happened.”

The boy sighs, bracing himself back up against the edge of the table Scaramouche is lying on. “Her own clumsiness combined with some rather reckless elemental attacks, I imagine.” Yeah, there’s definitely something pretentious in the boy’s tone now, Scaramouche is sure of it. “The turmoil of your altercation triggered the cliff face above you to give way, injuring you in the process.”

“Don’t blame me––the flower’s the one who tried to kill me.”

“The fellflower is also the one who exhumed you, once the dust settled.”

“The fell––?” Scaramouche blinks, and suddenly the rest of the cave comes into focus. Swaying idly between an alchemy table and a workspace crowded with glasses of unknown substances, a much more normal-sized whopperflower eyes him curiously, shivering bodily when Scaramouche makes eye contact with it. Its petals curl inward and it shrinks back, yellow eyes squinting. If Scaramouche didn’t know better, he would say it almost looked guilty.

“There’s no way that’s the same one,” Scaramouche protests as the boy watches him make the connection. “The fellflower was huge, far too big to fit in a small cave like this.”

“Which is precisely why I encourage her to take smaller forms around the camp,” the boy says, as if he’s agreeing and completely missing the point otherwise. “Admittedly, we’ve been working on her maintaining more subtle appearances. Unfortunately the storm has her a bit worked up, and she’s given over to her more base impulses. I assure you she’s really quite harmless usually.”

Scaramouche scoffs, “Right,” and immediately regrets it when another shock of pain rocks up his spine. 

“Relax,” the boy says, pushing himself off the edge of the table and settling a gloved hand lightly at Scaramouche’s shoulder. The instinct to pull away is overridden by the instinct not to trigger another crack of pain through his whole body, and Scaramouche grudgingly allows it. “I’ve almost finished preparing the process required to realign your spine. The average human would have died from your injuries, you know. I’m surprised you’re awake so soon, as I only just finished mending the fracture in your skull.”

“That’s one thing I’ve got going for me, I suppose,” Scaramouche mutters. The boy makes his way back over to the table covered in glassware. Scaramouche follows him with his eyes. “What are you, some kind of witch-doctor?”

The boy laughs. There’s an off-kilter note to it, like he doesn’t quite know how to emulate amusement. “Little more than an alchemist, I’m afraid, though I suppose lately I specialize in organic bodies and how they’re put together. It’s a lot easier to put a body that already knows its shape back together than it is to create something entirely new.”

“...Right.” As Scaramouche watches, the boy finishes writing something in a notebook and closes it, exchanging the quill in his hand for a stick of chalk. He returns to the table and begins marking up the wood around Scaramouche’s body, methodical and silent in his unwavering focus. When he’s satisfied, he nods to himself and lays a hand over Scaramouche’s chest.

“You may experience some discomfort,” is the only warning he gets for the sudden seizing of his entire body and the flare up of pain as his vertebrae click back into place.

Scaramouche gasps as soon as the tension eases enough for him to pull air into his lungs, lurching up into a sitting position on instinct. The boy, meanwhile, nods to himself in satisfaction. 

“That should take care of that. All that’s left now is your leg, but I’m afraid this fix may not be as simple.”

With his spine back where it should be, feeling that he hadn’t even noticed was absent is flooding back into his legs, and Scaramouche grits his teeth at the sudden nausea that overtakes him with the agony of it. Now that he’s upright, he’s able to look down at himself, and sure enough, his left leg is a mangled mess of skin and blood and shattered bone. 

Scaramouche grimaces. “There’s no saving that,” he manages. He doubts even the Divine Priestess of Watatsumi herself would be able to salvage the mess in front of him. Dottore would be able to fix him, or at least make him a replacement, but Scaramouche left him behind along with the rest of the Fatui when he defected, and he’s not about to crawl his way back to Snezhnaya because he got his leg crushed by a rock of all things.

But the boy just shrugs. “It will take a lot longer, but I’m sure I can at least rearrange the bones into something capable of healing. You probably won’t want to be awake for that, though.”

Scaramouche’s spine is still aching from its recent resetting. He can’t deny that he’d much rather not be conscious for what is sure to be a much more enduring, much more excruciating endeavor. 

The boy returns to his work bench and, after a bit of puttering around, comes back with a small vial of violet liquid in his hand. He offers it to Scaramouche. “Drink this,” he instructs. “It should put you out long enough for me to reconstruct your leg.”

“I have a fast metabolism,” Scaramouche warns, accepting the vial. That’s what Dottore always said, anyway, not that he ever adjusted the dosage to accommodate it. Scaramouche has woken up mid-surgery more times than he cares to count, and more often than not, the good doctor had little interest in wasting precious resources to put him back under. 

“Don’t worry, I figured as much,” the boy says. With a wry, secretive sort of smile he adds, “You’re not the first artificial human I’ve worked on.”

Scaramouche frowns, but doesn’t otherwise react. He can’t really deny it, if this boy has already witnessed his would-be death. Besides, something (it could be the shorts) tells him the boy isn’t fully human himself.

He drinks the contents of the vial. The potion is sweeter than he’d anticipated; almost like glazed lavender melon, if he had to compare it to something. The effect is almost instantaneous, and he finds himself leaning heavily into a sudden hand at his back as he’s laid back down on the table, the empty vial tugged from his slackening grip. 

It occurs to Scaramouche as he drifts into pleasant blankness that he hadn’t even stopped to consider that trusting this stranger could be dangerous.

It doesn’t matter, in the end; Scaramouche wakes gradually, and sure enough, his leg is, miraculously, back in one, solid piece. The pain lingers; the skin is deeply bruised, but it’s no longer broken open, and Scaramouche is able to move it slowly when he tries.

“Be careful,” the boy’s voice calls from across the cavern. Scaramouche looks up to see him sitting on a chair next to his workspace, not looking up from his notebook as he scratches away with his quill. “The bones have been reconstructed, but they’re still fractured; I meant to splint it before you woke up, but you really weren’t kidding about your metabolism.”

Scaramouche imagines he would have given a better response than a weak hum of acknowledgement, but his attention isn’t on the boy anymore. Instead, it’s fallen to the much smaller, much younger-looking carbon-copy of him sitting with its fist in its mouth at the boy’s feet.

“What in the world is that?” is what he ends up saying.

The boy looks up from his notebook, surprised. He follows Scaramouche’s gaze to the child at his feet, and understanding dawns on his face. “Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t recognize her. You’ll recall I mentioned we were working on the fellflower’s shapeshifting proficiency. Previously, she would have looked identical to myself, but in the interest of blending in better to human society, I figured it would be more appropriate for her to take a form that better matches her mental age. This way, she’ll have time to learn how to emulate humanity without the stress of performing the part perfectly.”

The boy says all of this with a straight face and a matter-of-fact tone that leaves Scaramouche speechless. As if it’s normal to just… create a person out of a whopperflower. Suddenly the ease with which he reconstructed Scaramouche’s bones makes a lot more sense. 

“I assure you, she’s not dangerous,” the boy says, mistaking Scaramouche’s baffled silence for worry. “She’s a very mild-tempered child, like this. The storm has let up. It’s unlikely she’ll throw another tantrum anytime soon.”

Right. A tantrum that turns it into a whopperflower the size of a building.

“What’s, um. What’s her name?” Scaramouche asks. He doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say. 

The boy tilts his head, considering. “Name… that’s a good question. I’ve just been referring to her as ‘Subject Three,’ though now that I think about it, that isn’t very conducive to blending in with human society.”

Scaramouche clenches his teeth. “‘Subject Three?’ What happened to One and Two?”

The first experiment, just to see if it could be done. A prototype cast aside for its imperfections. Tears on his face; it is such hell, to be born.

The boy shakes his head. “Oh, you misunderstand. I didn’t come up with the name. It’s merely a designation from a… relative of mine, you could say. I would have been Subject Two.”

Scaramouche relaxes. “Is that what I should call you, then? Subject Two?”

The boy closes his notebook and sets it deliberately back on the table. He folds his hands in his lap. “I’ve taken to calling myself Rubedo, after the third stage in alchemy. The phase in which the refined begins its undertaking to become pure. In other words, that which always falls short of perfect.”

“That’s what you chose to call yourself?”

The boy shrugs. “It is apt, and follows a sort of familial naming convention, you could say. I find it quite clever.”

Scaramouche scoffs. “That is a miserable name.”

“And yours isn’t? ‘Kunikuzushi, Destroyer of Lands’?”

Scaramouche freezes, immediately on guard. “How do you know that name?”

The boy––Rubedo––shrugs, dropping a hand to his side to pet at the top of Subject Three’s head. “Word moves fast, carried on the winds of Mondstadt. Between rumors of a Harbinger’s betrayal and my own research into the history of Inazuma, it wasn’t too difficult to put a hypothesis together.”

“...I don’t go by that name anymore.”

“Oh? And what would you prefer? Scaramouche? The Balladeer? Are you more prone to song and dance than the ruin of nations?” Rubedo’s voice is mocking, but he looks at Scaramouche’s chest like he knows what’s humming just within the cavity of it.

Scowling, Scaramouche very intentionally avoids raising a hand to protect himself from that piercing gaze. “That was my title among the Fatui. A choice I made for myself, rather than something forced upon me.”

“And what sort of choices are you making now?” Rubedo wonders. “I’ve heard all about your traitorous exploits. You’re not Fatui anymore, and you’re practically an exile of Inazuma. Fled to the land of freedom to make yourself a new life, I suppose.” He spits the word freedom like it burns coming off his tongue. “Without your name and your titles, what are you supposed to be?”

There’s a moment of silence wherein Scaramouche watches the fellflower-child tug at Rubedo’s pants, its pale-blue eyes blinking wide and innocent up at its parent. The irritation that comes to him so readily soothes into something manageable at the sight, and Scaramouche sighs. 

“Little more than a wanderer, I suppose.” Just for now. Just while he’s figuring out his next steps, and where to establish himself.

Rubedo leans down to lift the fellflower-child into his lap with a considering hum. “Well then, Wanderer, suppose you’ll be staying for dinner, what with the…” He gestures to Scaramouche’s broken leg. “Between my alchemy and what I can sense of your power, I imagine it will only be a matter of days for even such a complex fracture to heal.”

“Fracture is certainly an understatement,” Scaramouche grumbles, but otherwise doesn’t protest. Louder, he says, “I don’t need to eat. I have… other means of restoring my energy.”

Rubedo stands, keeping the child on his hip. “You’d do well not to turn down an offering of food in Mondstadt. If you do end up wandering down the mountain, you’ll find it’s considered rude by most. Consider this practice.”

In an unexpected display of politeness, he doesn’t comment on the sound Scaramouche’s stomach makes at the idea of food, but Scaramouche flushes at the reminder of his imperfection. Whatever. What does he have to prove to this not-quite-human, anyway? And if Rubedo also eats, maybe he won’t think less of Scaramouche for doing the same. He certainly allowed no choice about it, at least. 

Over Rubedo’s shoulder, Subject Three peers blankly back at him. Scaramouche grimaces and looks away from its unblinking gaze.

“It’s staring at me.”

Dinner is an awkward affair. The cave is kept lit and warm by braziers lit along the walls and a single, larger cooking fire set up away from the flammable (and potentially explosive) contents of Rubedo’s research. The cavern they’re in doesn’t have an opening anywhere that Scaramouche can see, but rather extends in a long tunnel off into darkness beyond the comfort of the camp. Scaramouche assumes there’s an outlet, because otherwise lighting all these fires would be a very bad idea, but it’s too far away to tell. He’d wobbled his way to a stool beside the fire for the duration of the meal once Rubedo constructed him a splint and a crutch. With his broken leg extended to his side, his position is uncomfortable, but he manages to balance the bowl of stew Rubedo hands him on his other thigh. 

Subject Three is settled next to Rubedo, the both of them on the floor. Scaramouche doesn’t like not sitting at the same level as them, but there’s only one stool, and Rubedo had insisted Scaramouche take it, for his leg. “I can make more later,” he had said with a wave of his hand. (Scaramouche thought privately that Rubedo doesn’t exactly have the hands of a carpenter.)

Rubedo looks between him and Subject Three as he swallows his mouthful of stew. “She’s fascinated by you. That’s just how children are.”

“I know how children are.” Scaramouche brandishes his spoon in the fellflower-child’s direction. “That’s not a child, it’s a predator!”

Subject Three shrinks away at his tone, edging closer to Rubedo like it wants to hide behind him. It looks up at Rubedo, who lowers his spoon.

“You and I are much more advanced predators than she is.” His voice is clipped, almost impatient, and Scaramouche thrills at having found a crack in his otherwise impassive mask, but it doesn’t last long. The thrill goes cold as Rubedo adds, “And I would think you of all people would hesitate to consider yourself the sole determiner of what does and does not constitute as human.”

Scaramouche bites his tongue at the urge to snap back. The gnosis lurches in his chest like it wants him to, but he’s better than that instinct. Has to be better than the Raiden Shogun, at least, who these days offers little more than violence at any slight. If that’s what the divine power of Electro offers––impatience, volatility––he’s determined to overcome it.

Instead, he takes a closer look at Subject Three. How she clings to Rubedo’s shorts like she’s worried about being separated from him. How she can’t quite maneuver her spoon, so she spills more soup than she gets in her mouth. How she breathes, so much like a person: unconscious, unlearned, not something she had to exercise just to get used to. So much like a child, if not eerily identical to the boy beside her. 

In a grudging effort to extend an olive branch, he asks, “Why did you make her look exactly like you? It’s weird.”

Rubedo looks down at Subject Three like that hadn’t occurred to him before. “Is it not normal for human children to take after their creators? I figure if I’m responsible for her, that makes me her parent, no?”

Scaramouche laughs. “For a guy who spends so much time reading through books, you don’t know much about human biology.”

Rubedo’s face seems to turn just a bit red in the firelight. “I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t managed to come across any sort of textbook on mammalian reproduction, but I’ve spent enough time around humans to know that they most definitely pass traits of their appearance onto their young!”

“Yeah, but it requires two of them!” Scaramouche laughs harder. “Humans can’t just clone themselves without a partner. I don’t know what sort of creature you are, that you seem to have emerged out of the aether without any parents, but now I’m sure you’re not human.”

Rubedo is definitely blushing now. Next to him, Subject Three starts to laugh along with Scaramouche, and Rubedo glares at her. “Eat your dinner,” he snaps, pushing the bowl closer to her. She doesn’t notice his tone, just plops a tiny fist into the stew and laughs harder.

“Someone’s sensitive,” Scaramouche jeers. He feels a little more like himself, now that he’s eaten, and getting under Rubedo’s skin is starting to look like a really fun pastime. 

Rubedo’s expression twitches with displeasure. “You would be too, to have your own ineptitude thrown back in your face. My name wasn’t chosen so I could presume perfection.”

“That’s what you think perfection is? To be human?”  

“It is the purpose I was built for,” Rubedo says, raising another spoonful to his mouth. “To be the first artificial human. I was… not considered a success.”

The gnosis rattles, sending a tingling sensation to Scaramouche’s extremities that leaves his fingers feeling numb. I know you, something inside him seems to say. You’re like me.

A silence that Rubedo doesn’t seem to have been expecting follows his words, and he looks up, his frustration and embarrassment melting away into curiosity as he locks eyes with Scaramouche. “Your manner has changed,” he points out, like it’s not obvious. “Did I say something that surprising?”

“...No,” Scaramouche decides. He shakes his head. “No, I just. I wasn’t exactly considered a success either.”

It’s Rubedo’s turn for silence, though his is more thoughtful than shocked. After a moment, he raises his bowl of soup as if in a toast. “Well then. For the disappointments, as it were.”

With a wry half-smile, Scaramouche toasts him back. 

The next time Scaramouche wakes up, it’s to Rubedo telling him it’s morning, though Scaramouche isn’t sure how he can tell.

“Subject Three has an innate sense of time, having originally been a whopperflower. She always wakes at dawn, and typically falls asleep right after the sun sets, if she isn’t disturbed.”

Scaramouche recalls Subject Three’s sudden decline in energy the night prior, right around the time Rubedo had suggested getting some sleep. He’d allowed Scaramouche to take the cot, as Rubedo had intended to stay up a bit longer to put Subject Three to bed and work on… whatever it was he did at his alchemy table. Scaramouche had expected to find it difficult to sleep so close to Rubedo’s lab, as his only other experience sleeping in a lab had been in Il Dottore’s, but the warm light and quiet puttering of Rubedo at work was far removed from the fluorescent sterility of Dottore’s clinic, and he’d found himself asleep before he could do more than put the comparison together. 

He doesn’t know if Rubedo slept, but if he didn’t, the lack doesn’t seem to affect him. He has Subject Three sat on the stool Scaramouche had used the night before, chewing on… something in her hand.

“What does she have?” Scaramouche asks warily, not liking the look of the dark object she’s gnawing at.

“A cave spider,” Rubedo replies. “They come through, from time to time. The hunt is good entertainment for her, though I do encourage her to return to human form once she’s caught them. I would have saved you some, but I wasn’t sure how you’d prefer it prepared.”

“Uh, I’d prefer it turned to dust with Electro. You know it’s not normal for humans to eat spiders, right?”

“It’s not?” Rubedo blinks. “But I’m certain I’ve seen my… Well, someone I know eats them, and he’s assimilated quite well to Mondstadt. I can’t imagine him committing any faux-pas, unintentionally or otherwise.”

“Take it from me, who has seen a lot more of the world than I think you have: eating spiders is not normal.”

Rubedo looks like he’s going to give this more thought. Scaramouche is perfectly happy to let him. 

Over breakfast, Scaramouche broaches the question he’s been turning over since Rubedo introduced himself. “If you’re Subject Two and she’s Subject Three, who’s Subject One?”

Subject Three looks up at the sound of her name, her mouth hanging open with her only remaining spider leg clenched in her little hand as she loses focus and forgets she was in the middle of eating. Unthinking, Scaramouche reaches out and guides the wayward leg back to her mouth, and she goes back to her snack with sharper teeth than most children of her approximate age tend to have.

When he looks back up, Rubedo looks uncomfortable.

“...I mentioned previously that I was a failed experiment. My creator disposed of me by feeding me to another of her creations, who then perished on this mountain.”

Um. Alright. That’s certainly not the backstory Scaramouche had anticipated, but he supposes there were weirder tales among the Fatui. He tries to keep up with the main thread of conversation. “So, Subject One is… the thing that ate you?”

Rubedo snickers. “Oh, no, he couldn’t manage that. The other creation was a dragon. My creator called him Durin. Unable to die, I laid dormant in his body for many centuries. I only managed to exhume myself recently, and once I did, I discovered that my creator had eventually succeeded in her endeavors to create a complete, artificial human. He once referred to himself as Subject One, though it was only for the sake of explaining my existence to an acquaintance of his. He was properly named by our creator.”

“...I see,” Scaramouche says, only a little lost. “So this… Subject One is the final culmination of your creator’s experiments. Where is he now?”

“Off in his lab further down the mountain, last I heard,” Rubedo huffs. “He divides his time between Dragonspine and the Mondstadt city proper. He’s the chief alchemist of their Knights. Managed to fool the Grandmaster himself into believing he was human.”

There’s a bitter tinge to Rubedo’s voice that speaks to poorly-suppressed envy. Scaramouche can’t imagine wanting to be human, but he supposes he can understand the longing to fulfill a destiny that was denied him. He thinks of the Raiden Shogun, who acted in Baal’s stead for years. He thinks of the stolen gnosis humming with power in the cavity of his chest.

“That sounds like a rather dull life, pretending you’re something you’re not,” Scaramouche offers. “I think you’ll ultimately be much happier than he is, if you’re not under pressure to perform for some pathetic human standard.”

Scaramouche isn’t built to comfort, but Rubedo seems to understand what he means anyway. He offers Scaramouche a small smile. “We’ll have to work on your disdain for humanity, but I do appreciate the sentiment.”

The topic feels like it’s reached its natural conclusion, and Scaramouche isn’t really all that keen on pushing further into this kind of intimate subject. He turns his attention to the fellflower-child.

“She needs a better name than ‘Subject Three’ if she’s going to commit to human society,” he says.

Rubedo hums in agreement. “I think you’re right. And I suppose it’s not fair to burden her with a name some stranger selected for her offhand.” He drops his hand onto her head and pets lightly at her golden hair. “I’ll think about it.”

As morning ekes into afternoon, Scaramouche finds himself growing quickly bored. Rubedo apparently has no interest in entertaining him beyond ensuring he’s fed and healing, too engaged with whatever kind of research he’s doing to spare Scaramouche a thought. 

Left with nothing else to do, Scaramouche finds himself watching over Subject Three. 

She wobbles her way over to him on unsteady legs after Rubedo shoos her from his workspace, and when she reaches up to grab at him, Scaramouche doesn’t think before lifting her up into his lap. 

She coos happily and claps a tiny hand at his face. Scaramouche lurches back with a grimace as she keeps waving in his face. “Stop that,” he mutters, pushing her hand down. 

She blinks up at him. The icy blue of her eyes appears darker than usual. He wonders if he’s imagining it. 

“You’re pretty good with her.”

Rubedo’s unexpected comment catches Scaramouche off guard, and he jolts, catching Subject Three before she can tumble back off his lap. She makes an uneasy sound, but settles back down quickly when Scaramouche cups the back of her head. 

“She’s just happy to have someone around who attends her,” Scaramouche retorts. 

Rubedo doesn’t look up from his work, but his voice has the kind of exasperation that makes Scaramouche think he would be rolling his eyes if he wasn’t so focused on measuring the powder he’s adding to his strange potion. “I am attending her; all of my work lately is to ensure her healthy development.”

“Children appreciate attention far more than they appreciate being experimented on,” Scaramouche points out. 

“I’m not ignoring her. She’s perfectly capable of being left alone while I take some time to work.”

Scaramouche doesn’t disagree, but he supposes he’s never taken well to seeing children denied anything by their parents. 

Too embarrassed to admit he may be projecting, he says, “What are you doing, anyway?”

Far more interested in alchemy than in arguing, Rubedo adapts seamlessly to the change in topic. “I’m working on a way to nullify her shapeshifting capabilities. My goal is to seal her human form by the end of the month. I can’t very well assimilate her into humanity if she’s prone to change into the Fellflower every time the weather turns.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Rubedo looks up at last, pausing in his work. “Why not?” 

Subject Three squirms in his lap, and Scaramouche adjusts her so she’s standing on the thigh of his good leg. “Limiting her natural capabilities may have unexpected consequences you can’t foresee. No matter how you shape her with your alchemy, you cannot change her nature as a whopperflower. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try.”

Rubedo’s face twists into something… dark. It’s the most intense expression Scaramouche has ever seen on him, and if Scaramouche hadn’t already spent years among the Fatui as one of the worst of them, he might have been intimidated. Instead, he just raises an eyebrow as Rubedo speaks. 

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing? That I’m not a good enough alchemist to turn her into a human?”

Scaramouche scoffs. “Please, don’t put words in my mouth with your insecurity. You’ve already managed to give her a human form. I’m only advising you against taking away access to her original body.”

“She doesn’t need her original body to conform to human society. Her shapeshifting will only get her in trouble, and she’s too young to know how to manage it.”

“What’s so great about being human anyway?” Scaramouche groans. “Your obsession is growing old. Is it projection? Is that it? You couldn’t make the cut for your creator so you’re going to live vicariously through this… experiment you’re pretending is a human?”

It’s an unfair thing to say—not because it isn’t his true opinion, but because Scaramouche has dressed it up in all the right ways to hurt. It’s reflex more than anything, but he doesn’t actually expect what he’s said to go over so poorly. 

There’s a loud crash as Rubedo slams his fist down against his work desk, and it’s so unexpected that Scaramouche actually jumps. His chest sparks with adrenaline-fueled Electro, and Subject Three makes a warbling noise of distress. 

“If your insinuation is that I’m anything like that woman who made me, I’ll thank you to rescind the sentiment.” Rubedo’s voice is a cracked clay-mask of calm poorly concealing the heat of his anger underneath. Even when Scaramouche had prodded him about his idolization of humans before, Rubedo had not gotten truly upset. For whatever reason, the usual thrill he feels at upsetting someone unflappable is stale in the pit of his stomach. “All parents want for their children to have opportunity. I’m not projecting. I’m giving her the life I could never have.”

“And what makes you think she wants that?” Scaramouche points out. He can’t really help it; he doesn’t like when people get a tone with him, and he’s not used to being talked back to. “She must have been perfectly happy as a whopperflower before you involved yourself.” He sneers, “Don’t tell me this is all the result of some misplaced desire to become a parent that you just weren’t able to fulfill the normal way?”

“I never intended to make a child!” Rubedo snaps. 

Scaramouche’s jaw clicks shut as his irritation sours into something colder. Something a little like shock, and a little like dread. Electricity burns cold in his veins, and Subject Three continues to squirm. 

Rubedo goes on, “She was a––a selfish experiment I started to help me kill my brother so that I could replace him. She was meant to be a scapegoat, to distract his friends while I disposed of him and to take the fall for my misdeeds. But that bastard, he’s always so many steps ahead. He figured out my plan and they killed her––or thought they did––and now I’m forced back into hiding so no one else finds me on this forsaken mountain!” 

His hands find their way into his hair, his fingers knotting viciously into the roots. He isn’t looking at Scaramouche anymore, instead turned half-away, glaring down at his shoes as he tugs at his scalp. “Then he found me, because of course he did, he knows the mountain like the back of his hand, and he brought her with him! And what was I supposed to do but take responsibility for my own selfishness when I learned she could never return to her life as a normal whopperflower? The fellflower would have terrorized the mountain and gotten herself properly killed if I didn’t step in, and she’s really only a child, you know, so what could I––what could I do but finish what I started?” Rubedo lets go of his hair and turns away, like he can’t bear to be looked at, bracing his palms flat against his desk and leaning into them like his own weight is too much. Miserably, he mutters, “What penance is there for bringing a child into an unwilling world other than raising it?”

A sick feeling stirs in Scaramouche’s stomach in the silence that follows, and he isn’t sure what it means, much less what to do about it. Subject Three has calmed down and is now slumped sideways into his chest, her little cheek squished against his sternum in a way that makes her look like she’s pouting. Maybe she is; the energy in the room is tangibly dismal, and children really are sensitive to emotion. He wonders if Rubedo knows this: that children––even the pathetic, useless human ones––can always tell when they are unwanted.

“…Taking away the power she was born with, even if it’s for her own good, will only make her resent you in the future,” Scaramouche ventures carefully, unwilling to upset Subject Three further by being insensitive around what is clearly a delicate topic. “It’s cruel, like declawing a cat.”

Rubedo doesn’t say anything to this. Scaramouche sighs and tries looking for an interesting point somewhere on the cave wall to stare at. “What’s your plan then? You make her a human, then foist her on some Mondstadt orphanage? If you’re stuck on this mountain and you still want her to live among humans, it doesn’t sound like you have anyone else volunteering to take her.”

“...Albedo would take her.”

“Albedo?”

“My brother. Subject One. He has a… sister, of sorts. He knows how to look after children, and the means to do so.”

“Isn’t he the one who told you to look after Subject Three in the first place?”

Rubedo runs a hand down his face. “Yes. Yes, I suppose he would have taken her then, if he’d wanted to. Unless he intended this to be my punishment, but…” He laughs, a weak, bitter thing. “No. He wouldn’t be the type to punish someone by leaving a child with them. He’s too… good. Cares too much for children to leave one with someone he believes would neglect it. More likely, he entrusted her to me thinking we would be good for each other.”

“You have a lot of faith in his decisions.”

“Of course I do,” Rubedo retorts, but there’s no heat to it. “He’s the perfect specimen, beloved by our creator and all of Mondstadt. Even I can’t deny that he deserves it. He’s never been wrong before.”

Scaramouche rolls his eyes. “Everyone’s wrong sometimes. All this time on this mountain is just narrowing your vision. He’s an artificial person too––I doubt he’s the expert on every interpersonal topic.”

Rubedo sighs and sits on the stool beside him, slumping tiredly into it. “He at least knows better than I do.” 

He props an elbow on the desk and presses his forehead into his palm. “And I’m not going to dump her in some orphanage. Even I know that’s more cruel than inflicting my own ineptitude on her.”

“It’s not wise to raise a child if you don’t want it, though,” Scaramouche says, and he hopes the timing’s right. “The both of you will grow to hate each other. It wouldn’t be healthy.”

Rubedo’s palm clenches into a fist, and he looks over at Scaramouche. “But I don’t… not want her,” he says, stumbling over the words like he doesn’t know how to say them. Like they’re embarrassing to admit, even to himself. “She’s… a reminder of my failures, yes, but she’s my opportunity to do right, if only just by her. I just… I’m afraid I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He looks pathetic, Scaramouche thinks, as his gaze slips down to Subject Three. It’s not a thought he’s had about Rubedo until now, but it doesn’t come with any of the usual contempt, either. The weird feeling in his stomach makes its way into his chest. Is it pity? he wonders.  It’s too thick for that, but it feels similar. The cloying feel of it gets stuck in Scaramouche’s throat, and he scowls in disgust with himself. 

He clears his throat and tries to speak around it. “Well, I have some experience with children. As long as I’m stuck here––” He tilts his splinted leg to the side by way of explanation. “––I suppose it won’t put me out any further to give you some pointers on how to take care of one.”

And ugh, the look Rubedo gives him is tinged with just enough gratitude to make Scaramouche’s skin crawl. “I suppose it would be ridiculous to turn down such a generous offer, after making such a scene of myself already,” he smiles. 

“Whatever,” Scaramouche says, but despite his embarrassment, he finds that looking away from that sincere smile is harder than he’d like.

“And… I’ll consider what you said about her shapeshifting. It will be harder, but perhaps there is a way to make it work after all,” he adds, sobering Scaramouche’s fluster a bit. Rubedo looks at him with his usual marble-smooth expression, but his eyes seem softer, somehow. Like ice thawing under the afternoon sun. “I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to blend her whopperflower instincts with a human lifestyle.”

Scaramouche pictures a much older, more adjusted girl eating a cave spider in a Mondstadt bar and tries really hard not to change his mind.

“So, Wanderer,” Rubedo starts casually. He’s finally pulling himself away from his alchemy table, though what he’s been doing for the past hour Scaramouche has no idea. “What were you doing so high up on Dragonspine in such a storm anyway? And so underdressed,” he adds, with a smirk at Scaramouche’s shorts. 

“I still don’t want to hear that from you,” Scaramouche huffs. He runs a hand through his hair, remembering unhappily the loss of his hat. “You already put it together yourself, didn’t you? I can’t return to Inazuma, and I can’t return to Snezhnaya. Mondstadt has no involvement with either.”

“But why?” Rubedo presses. It’s all earnest curiosity, the kind that suggests no ulterior suspicion even though some suspicion is probably warranted––and healthy, if Scaramouche is being honest. “What would convince you to leave the Fatui? As I understand it, you enjoyed a fairly high position among their ranks. Surely that came with its perks.”

What a question. Scaramouche doesn’t really know how to answer, or how honest he can afford to be. Rubedo already knows who he is and helped him anyways, and it sounds like Rubedo’s got his own laundry list of sins to atone for, so it’s not like he’s in any position to judge. But there’s also no way the Fatui or the Tri-Commission would have let word of the gnosis’s loss leak to the public, much less make it all the way out across the sea to this secluded mountain. Unless that witch Miko has somehow been feeding information to very particular people in some kind of ploy to topple him before he can get too far out of control.

(That sounds like the kind of thing she’d do after practically throwing away the source of Ei’s godly power. Scaramouche isn’t stupid; he knows Miko never would have handed over the gnosis unless she figured she’d be getting a better deal on the other side when all is said and done. What that better deal could possibly be, he has no idea, but she’s not infallible, no matter how clever she thinks she is. He just needs a little time to come up with a plan she won’t expect.)

He masks his uncertainty with a scoff. “All of the Harbingers have their own reason for ascending to power, and not one of them is ‘loyalty to the Tsaritsa.’ Sure, we all play the part, and enough of them are satisfied enough with what they’ve gained that loyalty becomes the natural consequence of protecting what they have, but if they found a way to get what they wanted without running her errands, they would desert in a heartbeat.”

Rubedo hums thoughtfully, sitting down on the floor across from Scaramouche where he’s been watching Subject Three. She’s been entertaining herself by chewing on gravel she finds scattered around the cave floor. Scaramouche hasn’t bothered stopping her, partially because she’s part plant and probably eats dirt regularly anyway, and partially because he really doesn’t want to get any closer to a jaw and set of teeth powerful enough to crush stones. Rubedo has a fleeting expression like he can’t tell if eating gravel is normal human child behavior, but since he’s taking his cues from Scaramouche now, he doesn’t say anything. He calls her name, and Subject Three scoots her way over to him.

“So you found what you were looking for, is that it?” Rubedo deduces, pulling Subject Three into his lap. “And you’re hiding out on Dragonspine to wait for things to blow over.”

Scaramouche looks away. “Something like that.” He’s not looking for things to blow over. Becoming a god isn’t something that can be done discreetly. He’s just buying time so he can figure out how to actually do it now that he has the gnosis. 

Mondstadt isn’t exactly his ideal backdrop for his debut, but it’s the best place he could think of to throw off Yae Miko. It will do for now.

“Don’t suppose you’ll divulge what it is you found,” Rubedo says.

Scaramouche folds his arms behind his head and flops onto his back. “I got what I wanted, and it’s going to get me places. I’m going to prove a lot of people wrong. That’s all you gotta know.”

Rubedo hums again, but it sounds less neutral this time, somehow. Like he’s stopping himself from saying something.

Scaramouche glares at him. “What?”

Apparently not the sort who’s able to hold his tongue, Rubedo gives easily. “I just can’t help but recall my most recent experience trying the same for myself. I wonder if maybe obsessing over the expectations of others is what creates our problems to begin with, rather than the expectations themselves.”

Scaramouche sneers. “I’m not about to mess up so badly that I end up with a toddler, if that’s what you’re saying. I think that fuck-up is pretty exclusive to you.”

“There are worse fates than becoming a parent,” Rubedo muses. More seriously, he adds, “I’m just offering a suggestion from the privileged perspective of hindsight. You scorn me for my obsession with humanity, but I can tell there’s an obsession of your own driving you, and if it’s anything close to what I think it is, the fallout may be far less kind should you fail.”

“Then I won’t fail,” Scaramouche snaps. 

“For your sake, I hope not,” Rubedo replies earnestly. Scaramouche tries to catch his eye, but he’s focused determinedly on Subject Three.

An idea begins to form in the back of Scaramouche’s head as he watches them.

Whatever fate Yae Miko has projected for him, it’s dependent on her knowledge of Scaramouche’s weaknesses, and of the connections he’s made through the Fatui. She knows Scaramouche is defective, determined too soft to bear the burden of a gnosis, and she knows he knows it too. She won’t be waiting for him to break down under pressure; she’ll be determining who he’ll go to to fix his body. Il Dottore is the obvious choice; he’s already familiar with Scaramouche’s anatomy, and he’s just the right amount of crazy to try it. Could probably swindle the funding right out of Pantalone for it, to boot. Admittedly, Dottore had been Scaramouche’s plan before Miko’s intervention, and up until now had been his only option.

There’s no way Yae Miko could have anticipated someone like Rubedo.

Rubedo, who put Scaramouche’s body back together with a piece of chalk and a wave of his hand. He has an inferiority complex a mile wide and the skills to make up for it. If he can turn a whopperflower into a person, he can make Scaramouche’s body suitable to hold a gnosis, without a doubt. 

Scaramouche just has to figure out how to convince him to do it. 

Suddenly, Rubedo jerks, taking Subject Three’s face in his hands. “Her eyes are darker than usual,” he says. 

Pulled out of his projections of grandeur, Scaramouche rolls onto his side, propping his head on a hand. “Yeah? I thought so as well.”

“What does that mean? Is she sick?”

Scaramouche sits all the way up, urged by the worry in Rubedo’s tone. “I don’t know. That’s not typically a symptom in humans, but I can’t say I’m an expert in those derived from whopperflowers.”

He leans forward to get a closer look. Sure enough, Subject Three’s eyes have turned decidedly dark-blue. The irises are shaped differently around the pupils too, which are much darker than they were when they perfectly mirrored Rubedo’s. They look familiar. In fact, now that he’s looking closely, Scaramouche almost thinks they look like––

“She’s shapeshifting!” Rubedo realizes, laughing in disbelief. “Those are your eyes she’s mimicking!” 

“My eyes…?” Scaramouche mutters, raising a hand to brush against his own cheek. The skin grows warm beneath his fingertips. “Why would she…?”

Rubedo ducks his head lower to look into Subject Three’s eyes. “Do you want to look like Wanderer too? Do you sense that you’ll blend in better, if you’re not a carbon-copy of me?” He doesn’t raise the pitch of his voice like Scaramouche has seen so many parents do instinctually with their children, but he does amuse himself with questions that the child cannot actually answer. 

She smiles at the attention all the same, laughing like she senses Rubedo’s delight. Rubedo looks up at him, his voice bright with unrepressed excitement. “It must be some extension of her camouflaging instincts! Perhaps altering her brain to a more human construct gave her biology the innate understanding of what’s required to pass for human: not just mimicry, but complex assimilation!”

Rubedo shoves Subject Three into Scaramouche’s arms and practically leaps to his feet. “I’ve got to examine this further. My journal––!”

He spins around to start his hunt for it, but before he can get away, Scaramouche clamps a hand down around his ankle.

“Calm down, you insatiable nerd,” he says. “You can’t go running for your journal every time she does anything. Lesson number one in parenting is that you need to actually spend time with your kid. You’ve been working all morning, and I’m not always gonna be here to babysit. You have to get used to giving her your full attention.”

Rubedo runs a hand over his eyes, gesturing with his free hand for emphasis. “Yes, of course, but Wanderer, this isn’t just a typical milestone like learning to walk or turning lead to gold––”

“Right, typical.”

“––this is a scientific anomaly! It needs to be documented!”

“And it can be,” Scaramouche insists slowly, like that will help the words get through Rubedo’s one-track runaway mind. Are all academics this thick-skulled? “After you spend an hour playing with Subject Three. Besides, maybe she’ll do something else while you’re not watching. Don’t wanna miss that.”

All at once, Rubedo plops back down on the floor, taking Subject Three under the armpits and hauling her back into his lap as she babbles at him and kicks her feet at the air. “You’re right,” he realizes. “I can’t waste time writing down speculation when I could be witnessing the process in real time.”

Scaramouche sighs and leans back on his hands. “Whatever it takes to get you to sit still, I guess.”

Annoyingly, he discovers he’s been smiling without realizing. Even more annoyingly, he can’t seem to wrestle his expression back into something less embarrassing.

As Rubedo tries to determine if he can encourage Subject Three to shapeshift certain parts of her body to match Scaramouche without alchemical intervention, Scaramouche sits back and thinks about how he’s going to get Rubedo to help him.

Not now, he decides. He’s still got a few days before his leg heals completely, and it’s not like holding the gnosis in his body on its own is going to break him. It’s probably smarter to warm Rubedo up to him first––maybe build up his trust through Subject Three, since she seems to be the one other thing he’s interested in besides alchemy and usurping his brother. Scaramouche knows next to nothing about alchemy, and it sounds like replacing the Chief Alchemist is a ship that has long since sailed and sunk, so he’s going to have to score his points by playing babysitter.

That’s fine; he’d already agreed to help out anyway. Now he just has to… keep his complaining to a minimum. Try and make it look like he really enjoys helping out. 

He wasn’t the Sixth of the Fatui Harbingers for nothing. He’s done much harder things than play house with an eccentric alchemist and his carnivorous-plant-daughter. Compared to stealing a gnosis from under the nose of a god, this will be easy.

“She’s crying. I don’t know why she’s crying. She’s not responding to anything I’ve offered her.”

“Have you… checked her napkin?”

“Of course I’ve checked her napkin! I changed it and she’s fine but she won’t calm down!”

“Well, what do you usually do when she gets like this?”

“She’s never been this hysterical before! She’s not listening to reason!”

“Rubedo, she’s an infant. Or at least some alchemical approximation of one. She’s not capable of listening to reason.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to know what she wants?” 

Scaramouche leans down to pick the screaming child up and holds her to his chest, cradling the back of her soft little head, his fingers threading through her hair. She turns her face into his shoulder and muffles her own crying. “You don’t always know. Sometimes you just have to hold children until they calm down. Or, if you’re too stressed, leave them alone until they fall asleep.”

“That seems cruel.”

“The stress of raising a child has driven many parents to kill their own children by accident. Better to take space for yourself where you need it, especially if you’re raising her alone.”

Rubedo’s face pales. “H-how do they manage that? By accident?”

“They, um.” Scaramouche shifts Subject Three precariously into one arm and takes Rubedo’s shoulder with his free hand. Rubedo looks at the point of contact, then at Scaramouche, confused. “They shake them. Like this.”

Scaramouche digs his thumb into Rubedo’s clavicle and rattles him back and forth as best he can with a wailing child in one hand. Not anticipating it, Rubedo is tugged back and forth rapidly, his head rocking along with the motion belatedly.

“Ow, ow, stop!” Rubedo smacks at his arm to get Scaramouche to let go. “Goodness! What was that for?”

“I was trying to show you what I meant.”

“I know what shaking means. You didn’t have to manhandle me.”

“Didn’t realize you were so fragile,” Scaramouche sneers, changing his grip to better support Subject Three again. “Anyways, human infants are delicate. They can’t even support their own heads when they’re born, so shaking them like that is dangerous. Doing pretty much anything with them is dangerous, now that I think about it.”

“Subject Three isn’t some newborn. She can support her head just fine. She stands on her own and can run around just fine. She doesn’t speak words, but she wasn’t able to do that in an older shape either, so I think that may just be a consequence of the language center of her brain only just adapting to intake human speech. She mimics sounds back plenty already––I’m sure she’ll improve quickly once her Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas learn to collaborate and make sense of what are surely very complex, foreign sounds––”

Scaramouche scowls and smacks a hand over Rubedo’s mouth as Subject Three shrieks in his ear. “That’s wonderful, I’m sure you’re a very proud father, but right now let's focus on getting her to quiet down.”

Rubedo glares at him and shoves his hand off, but eventually relents and turns his attention back to Subject Three. His expression softens just enough for it to be visible, and he reaches out to pet the back of her head. “It’s alright, Subject Three,” he tries. “There’s nothing to be upset about. If you’re hungry, I can make you food, or you can sleep if you’re tired.”

Subject Three continues to cry. Rubedo’s soft expression twists with a tinge of pain, and he pulls back. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits. 

“Here, let me try something,” Scaramouche says, turning Subject Three in his hold so she’s cradled sideways, more like a younger infant would be, and he begins bouncing her gently.

“Stop! What are you doing?” Rubedo surges forward, reaching out to try and snatch Subject Three away. Scaramouche turns out of the way just in time, but Rubedo presses up against his shoulder insistently. “You just said shaking a baby was bad!”

“I’m not shaking her!” Scaramouche bites back. “This is… bouncing. It’s different. I’ve seen plenty of human parents soothe their children this way.”

And sure enough, almost as soon as Scaramouche has started, Subject Three’s crying begins to ebb in intensity, until the only noises she’s making are weak snuffling sounds into the fabric of Scaramouche’s tunic.

They stare down at her, transfixed, Rubedo’s chin still hooked over Scaramouche’s shoulder, though now the press of his body is less urgent and more relaxed. The heat of him is surprising; Scaramouche hadn’t expected him to be cold exactly, but he’d imagined an artificial human might run cooler than an organic one. Now that he thinks about it, for all of Rubedo’s complaining about being considered a failure of an experiment, Scaramouche has seen very little to indicate his shortcomings. He’s a little odd maybe, and not perfectly versed in human social etiquette, and he wears shorts and legwarmers despite living on the side of a frozen mountain, but Scaramouche would hardly call those traits failures.

He’s been wondering what’s so wrong with Rubedo, that his creator would throw him away. With Rubedo’s soft breathing puffing faintly against his cheek as he stares down in awe at the pacified child in Scaramouche’s arms, Scaramouche wonders if he was just too sensitive for his master’s purposes––wonders if he too cried when he was born.

“Incredible,” Rubedo breathes against him. “That something so simple could soothe such a tantrum… I have to wonder why.”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Scaramouche mumbles. “All that matters is that it works.” 

“Will she cry again if you stop?”

“Do you really want to find out?”

Rubedo laughs, a quiet, airy sound, and steps back. “I suppose that’s a hypothesis I can live without testing.” He taps his forefinger and his thumb together at his side like some kind of nervous tic. “For now,” he adds after a second, like he can’t help it. 

This guy really is a nerd. It’s a thought that surprises Scaramouche––not for its wording, but for its distinct lack of disdain.

Before he can linger on that for too long, Rubedo stands back and folds his arms with a small smile. “I’m impressed you knew what to do. I’ll admit, I thought you might be playing up your competence, but I suppose I should have expected no less from a wanderer so traveled as yourself.”

The acknowledgement shouldn’t sit warm next to the gnosis in his chest, but for a moment the electricity almost feels like heat following Rubedo’s words. Scaramouche scoffs to try and conceal the feeling. “I trust you’ll know not to doubt me in the future, then.”

“Certainly,” Rubedo agrees easily, either not understanding or not minding Scaramouche’s scorn, and that’s another pitiful shock of warmth to his system. 

Scaramouche can’t be sure what the feeling is, but he has his suspicions. Whether or not he’s correct, it’s altogether far too human for his liking. He’ll suppress it as best he can, for now. 

“I've decided on a name.”

The announcement comes that evening over dinner, entirely unprompted, as most of Rubedo’s commentary seems to be. He’s an academic; those types are always in their heads, after all, with everyone else an external force to occasionally consult or inform. Scaramouche has never much liked academics, never been keen on the feeling of being a secondary moon in someone else’s egocentric orbit, but Rubedo has long since proven himself different. Less a planet drawing Scaramouche in, and more a pair of satellites moving in tandem around some greater force that neither of them can quite escape, doing their best not to fall into its gravity such that they burn up.

Looking at Subject Three gnawing on her fingers instead of her toast, Scaramouche wonders how something so soft and weak as her became the star that trapped them both. 

“Go on, then,” Scaramouche prods when Rubedo seems to wait for an answer. The other thing about academics: they’ve always got a flare for dramatics.

“It was the first name that came to my mind, when you suggested I choose one, but I wanted to exhaust all other ideas before settling, just to be sure I wasn’t carelessly following what could very well be considered a… familial naming convention, at this point,” Rubedo explains, coming away from his desk to stand behind Subject Three. He’s somehow managed to conjure two more stools, so the three of them are all able to sit comfortably around the small table he pulled aside for eating. He says he used alchemy, but Scaramouche doesn’t know of any alchemy that builds furniture. “I was afraid naming her such would put undue pressure on her to become something perfect, but ultimately, I suppose this name is less like a wish, and more a reassurance.”

Rubedo rests his hand on Subject Three’s head, and she looks up at him with Scaramouche’s eyes.

“I’ve decided to call her Citrinitas. The final success of all alchemy, so that she’ll never feel like she’s fallen short.”

It’s such a tender sentiment. It makes the gnosis in his chest prickle with that warm feeling from earlier. “What a mouthful,” is what he offers. “I’m calling her Citrin, for short.”

Scaramouche cannot say more, because for some reason, he finds his throat tightening like someone is strangling him from the inside. It’s all he can do not to tear his eyes away from the clueless grin Citrinitas returns to Rubedo when he smiles gently down at her, with what is surely his own kind of prickling warmth clear on his typically stoic face. 

What Scaramouche doesn’t say is this: in all the years following his creation, his mother never once stopped to consider a name for him. He was never given the kind of careful consideration Rubedo has designated to Citrin, to picking a name that suits her. Whether a name is a wish or a reassurance doesn’t matter, because every name Scaramouche has ever had has been a threat. A name has never been something that he is, but rather a reflection of how others perceive him. 

He doesn’t think he was always dangerous. Scaramouche knows for a fact he at least wasn’t always cruel. He can pick out every moment of his entire life that created the person he is now, each one summoned with perfect recall from the memories of a god’s imperfect puppet, and he knows as sure as he knows he has never once had his own name that none of those moments ever gave him what he really wanted.

The gnosis is quiet, for once. Scaramouche wonders what it is that he does want.

Citrinitas––and it’s been a struggle, remembering to call her that––continues to molt into something new with each passing day. Her hair changes, darkening at the roots until it settles with just the tips light enough to tell it was ever blonde in the first place, and even that fades into a lighter violet. Scaramouche thinks it looks silly; Rubedo can’t get enough of it. 

Her ears are the same, but her nose is just the slightest bit smaller. Her lips are thinner. Her bone structure is different too, if Scaramouche squishes all the baby fat down into her cheeks and gets a good look at her. She’s starting to look like a proper mix of both of them, maybe even leaning a little more towards Scaramouche, and it’s freaking him out.

“This is completely normal,” Rubedo reassures him, as if he has any precedent to go off of. “She might oscillate between the two of us until she finds a fit that feels right, but I’m confident that this instinct is derived from the shapeshifting tendencies of normal whopperflowers, so it shouldn’t cause her any discomfort to change as much as she likes.”

Scaramouche tries pointing out that this isn’t normal behavior for humans, but Rubedo’s too wrapped up in the scientific excitement of it all to listen to him. “You were the one who told me I couldn’t force her to be like a normal human child,” he points out. “And it’s not like there’s anyone else around here to see.”

That stops being true four days after Rubedo names her, on the same day Scaramouche finally has his cast removed. 

He’s getting his leg used to walking again when there’s a grinding noise at the distant end of the cave, and suddenly a sharp gust of freezing air whips at the braziers on the tunnel walls. 

Scaramouche knows there’s a large, stone door at the end of the cave; during one of his stints with boredom, he’d hobbled his way down the tunnel with Citrinitas at his heels, figuring he would eventually stumble upon a way out. The door was round and fit the size of the cave perfectly, but Scaramouche was unable to figure out how to move it. When asked, Rubedo explained it was sealed with alchemy, so that only himself and others equally skilled could enter. Occasionally, Rubedo would make trips outside of the cave, leaving Scaramouche and Citrinitas alone to entertain each other while he ran whatever errands warranted heading out into the snow.

Scaramouche hadn’t expected anyone but Rubedo to open it, but Rubedo is right there at his alchemy table, looking just as surprised as Scaramouche feels as the sound of the door sliding shut echoes down the corridor, followed by a single set of footsteps growing closer.

Rubedo’s face sours before the person can even turn the corner into view, and sensing his apprehension, Citrinitas shifts back into a whopperflower entirely and burrows into the dirt, reappearing behind him anxiously.

“Citrinitas,” Rubedo scolds, but his heart isn’t in it. Instead, his focus is narrowed in on the entrance to the cave, waiting for the intruder to appear. 

The gnosis rattles to life in Scaramouche’s chest, and he stands to the side, posed to lash out if this person turns out to be dangerous.

But Rubedo lifts a placating hand in his direction and shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he says. “He won’t hurt us.”

Scaramouche has no way of guaranteeing that that promise extends to himself, but he relaxes his stance anyways, if only to appear less threatening. It does not comfort him that Citrin remains a cowering wallflower behind Rubedo. 

And then the intruder turns the corner, and Scaramouche has to double-take to make sure he hasn’t completely lost his mind.

This person looks exactly like Rubedo, clothing and all. If Scaramouche thought it was weird when Citrin looked like a tiny clone of him, it’s even weirder seeing one identical in size. It takes him three full-body scans to catch the only notable difference: a gold, four-point star tattooed into the boy’s throat, right over the faint rise of his laryngeal prominence. Beyond that, they’re identical in every way Scaramouche can tell. 

“Albedo,” Rubedo nods, and despite his reassurance a moment ago, his expression has closed off. “How very like you, to drop in unannounced.”

“You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid carrier pigeons don’t do well in this climate, much less through alchemically sealed stone doors,” this clone—Albedo—replies. His amusement looks the same as Rubedo’s. Already, Scaramouche’s head is starting to spin. 

Without waiting for Rubedo to respond, Albedo turns to Scaramouche. He raises his hand, and for the first time, Scaramouche realizes it’s not empty. “I have a feeling this belongs to you?” he says, holding Scaramouche’s hat out to him. 

Unnerved that he hadn’t noticed his own hat in the other’s hand, Scaramouche reaches for it carefully, eyeing Albedo with suspicion he doesn’t bother to hide as he adjusts it over his head. Albedo looks perfectly pleasant and not at all bothered by Scaramouche’s obvious caution; in fact, Albedo is the only person in the entire room who doesn’t look bothered to be here.

“I found it stuck in a bush growing out of the side of the cliff above Wyrmrest Valley,” he explains placidly. “I hadn’t heard of anyone coming up the mountain lately, so I figured if it belonged to anyone who had managed to survive, they would have ended up with you,” Albedo gestures to Rubedo. “I’m glad to have been right; it would be a shame to lose another explorer to the treacherous terrain of the mountain.”

His eyes drift down to where Citrinitas is peering out around from behind Rubedo’s legs. “Hello, Subject Three,” he says, his voice lightening. “Still anxious, I see. I can’t say I blame you.”

“Trying to kill her will have that effect,” Rubedo snipes. Scaramouche frowns at the sour feeling that settles in his chest at the reminder. As if it really matters to him, that this is the person that nearly killed Citrin. 

“If anyone’s holding grudges, I imagine it should be the victim of the plot on his life, not the perpetrators,” Albedo says. For all that the words should sound like a threat, they come out so even-keeled that it sounds exclusively like reason. “I had hoped she might remember me as the one who ultimately rescued her, but, as they say, it is more often the evils men commit that live after them.”

Rubedo seems to settle down a little at that. Scaramouche has to admit his own bitter feelings ease at the reminder that Albedo no longer wishes Citrinitas any harm. (He’s not going to examine that too closely. He isn’t getting attached.)

“Her name is Citrinitas now,” Rubedo says, like a peace offering. Albedo’s face brightens. 

“That’s a wonderful name. I’m glad you’ve finally chosen one for her.”

“It was the Wanderer’s idea,” Rubedo admits, carefully bringing Scaramouche back into the fold of the conversation. “He’s been helping me adjust to treating her like a child more than a whopperflower.”

“‘The Wanderer,’ huh?” Albedo says, glancing Scaramouche’s way. His eyes, just like Rubedo’s, are like flat pools of ice, reflecting more than they offer any depth of their own. Scaramouche has become fairly adept at reading Rubedo’s expressions; somehow, Albedo seems even less forthcoming with his emotions, and even more impossible to read. 

As it is, Scaramouche can’t tell either way if Albedo has guessed his identity or not. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Albedo says. “Thank you for helping Rubedo. Ah—I suppose I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m Albedo, Rubedo’s brother.”

“I’d guessed,” Scaramouche scoffs. “It’d be hard to miss the resemblance.”

“I suppose so,” Albedo agrees. Still unflappable, just like Rubedo had been when he and Scaramouche first met. Scaramouche wonders what it would take to make Albedo drop the façade—wonders, for how effortlessly serene he seems, if it’s even a façade at all. 

“I’ll admit I didn’t come here just to return the hat,” Albedo continues, turning back to Rubedo. “I’ll be heading back down the mountain in a few days. I wanted to let you know in case you were planning on running any errands soon.”

Scaramouche raises an eyebrow. “You can’t both go down the mountain at the same time?”

“It would be rather hard to explain there being two of us, wouldn’t it? Rubedo usually stands in for me when I’m away, if he feels the need to be around people. It’s a compromise we’ve managed to make work.”

Scaramouche folds his arms and does his best to project doubt without saying anything. If it gets across, Albedo doesn’t let on. 

“Thanks for the warning,” Rubedo says. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”

Albedo shakes his head. “No; the Knights have need for my expertise regarding an issue having to do with the spread of dangerous manufactured products coming out of Snezhnaya. I have no idea how long it will take to resolve my involvement, but until then I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here.”

“Naturally.” Rubedo’s voice has a bitter note to it. Albedo doesn’t flinch. 

“I’ll take my leave now,” he says, turning on a heel. Over his shoulder, he adds, “Do be careful; there’s a storm coming within the next few days. I know Citrinitas has a tendency to become troublesome when the weather hits.”

“She’ll be fine,” Rubedo says. “I have her under control.”

“I have no doubt. It was nice to meet you, Wanderer. And good to see you both as well, Rubedo and Citrinitas. Farewell.”

Scaramouche follows the sound of Albedo’s footsteps until the disappear around the stone door. Only then does Rubedo turn and kneel in front of Citrin, whose leaves are curled and trembling with uncertainty. 

“It’s alright, Citrinitas,” he reassures her. “He’s gone. You can calm down now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She doesn’t turn back into the human form Scaramouche is so used to dealing with, but she does nuzzle the bulb of her whopperflower head into Rubedo’s knees. He pets her leaves soothingly. 

Scaramouche steps over to them. “You’re okay with that? Playing his role, pretending to be him?”

“That’s what bothered you?” Rubedo looks back at him. After apparently determining that yes, that really was the part that bothered Scaramouche, he shrugs. “It’s what I wanted, to be loved like he is. Acknowledged by others. It’s the easiest arrangement, until we work something else out. I don’t know for sure that trying to join them as myself wouldn’t call into question Albedo’s own origins and end up being more complicated for all of us.”

“So what about Citrinitas? Is she going to have to get used to pretending you’re Albedo? I’d have hardly called her comfortable around him, not to mention how confusing that would be for a child to understand.”

“I don’t know. I’m still working that out.”

“Well work it out faster,” Scaramouche sneers. “If you don’t get your own mess together soon, Citrin isn’t going to get a chance at all those opportunities you were raving about. She has to grow up around normal children to be a normal child, you know.”

“Of course I know that,” Rubedo snaps. Citrinitas folds further into herself, cowering at their raised voices. In an unusual display of self-awareness, Rubedo takes a deep breath and reels in his temper. “You’re right. I’ve been putting it off because it’s difficult, and because maintaining the tenuous peace with my brother has been my priority up to now. 

“But there are other priorities I need to see to. It isn’t fair of me not to put Citrinitas first, now that I’ve decided to raise her.” He turns fully back to the whopperflower shivering in front of him and reaches out, pulling her into his lap and cradling her like he does when she’s shaped like a human child. In an even softer voice, he adds, “I won’t be someone who abandons my creations just because they didn’t turn out the way I expected.”

In his arms, Citrinitas grows still and quiet, until eventually, she relaxes completely, shape-shifting back into her human form. Rubedo adjusts her so she’s upright, face pressed into his neck and tiny fists clutching at the front of his tunic, and then he stands. 

When his eyes next meet Scaramouche’s, Rubedo looks determined. “I’ll go down the mountain later this afternoon to run my errands as Albedo. I’ll use this opportunity to gauge the risk of revealing myself to the public, as well as to come up with ideas to mitigate suspicion. When I return, I’ll speak with Albedo about this. I… don’t know if he’ll be pleased that I want to alter our arrangement so soon after it was made.”

Scaramouche pictures the way Albedo had stood in the cave just minutes earlier, serene and unreadable, and somehow can’t imagine the same person who seemed so pleased by Citrin’s naming to be against Rubedo becoming his own person. 

He keeps this thought to himself. More importantly, Rubedo leaving to run errands means—

“And you’re expecting me to watch Citrin for you?”

Rubedo looks like it hadn’t even occurred to him that Scaramouche would object. “Well, it’s not like you have anywhere else you need to be.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to stay cooped up in here babysitting while you’re gone for who knows how long.”

“It should only be until tomorrow,” Rubedo promises. “I’ll have returned by evening. If it’s any incentive, I can pick anything you need up from town while I’m there.”

Scaramouche flops down on one of the stools. “Great. Just when I finally get my mobility back.”

Rubedo has the decency to look sympathetic. “You won’t be able to leave the cave without me or Albedo to open the door for you, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t destroy the integrity of the tunnels by trying to blast them open with force. You’re welcome to go out before I leave, as long as you’re back by noon.”

“What makes you so sure I’d come back just to be locked up again?”

Rubedo smiles. “Because, Wanderer; I may not know much about you, but I at least can tell you have a soft spot for children. You would never leave Citrinitas alone if you could help it.”

Scaramouche bristles at the insinuation that he’s in any way soft, but he doesn’t actually have an argument for that. He clicks his tongue anyway, just to show his annoyance. 

“Whatever. You’re making it up to me though, when you get back.”

For all that Scaramouche tries to justify his continued presence here as scheming, even he has to admit there isn’t anything all that grand about babysitting. 

Citrinitas is inconsolable. 

About an hour after Rubedo left the cave, she seemed to figure out he wasn’t coming right back. She grew fitful and kept wandering back to the front of the cave as if waiting for Rubedo to pop out from around the corner, and each time he failed to do so, she would come back to Scaramouche even more upset. 

Now he’s holding her while she wails in his ear, fussing and wriggling and screaming, and no amount of bouncing or shushing has managed to calm her down at all. 

“He’ll be back by tomorrow night,” Scaramouche tries in vain to reassure her, rubbing circles in her back like changing tactics might help. It doesn’t. She smacks with all her pitiful baby strength at his face, and he has to hold her away from him to keep her from taking his eye out. “Stop crying, you’re okay; he’s barely been gone an hour.”

Eventually, he lets her back down to the floor. She plops herself down heavily, sobbing and hiccuping, fat, wet tears streaking her face. Snot drips out of her nose and over her mouth, creating a disgusting string of mucus that wobbles in front of her mouth as she gasps for air. 

Scaramouche wrinkles his nose and grabs a towel from Rubedo’s workstation, wiping at her face in an effort to clean her up. It distracts her for just a moment: she opens her eyes and watches his hand and breathes in, and breathes in, and breathes in—

She starts screaming again. It’s been twenty minutes. Scaramouche is running out of ideas. 

He’s heard of children developing anxiety about being separated from their parents, but he’d never imagined it would get like this. Certainly Citrin will exhaust herself eventually, but is he supposed to do something until then? Is there anything he can do that won’t just make things worse?

He sits down in front of her, crossing his legs and leaning into his hand. He doesn’t know why he’s exhausted; he’s been sleeping normally and the gnosis keeps him energized most of the time anyway, but somewhere in the last hour all the strength was sapped from his body. 

“It’s your fault,” he grumbles at Citrin, but there’s no anger behind it. Somewhere along the way, he ended up getting his heart tangled up in all this, and it hurts to see Citrin in distress.

He wasn’t careful enough. Really, the fault is his own. 

Things take a one-eighty by the next morning. Instead of resisting his every effort to soothe her, Citrin won’t let Scaramouche out of her sight. If he tries to set her down, she starts to fuss. If he leaves her line of sight, she starts to cry. He ends up letting her nap on his chest following a particularly dramatic bout of tears after he leaves to use the chamber pot. He hasn’t ever seen her self-soothe by sucking her thumb before, but she has her tiny fist curled up against her mouth as she sleeps, occasionally gnawing on her knuckles. There’s a puddle of drool forming on his tunic. Scaramouche is trying really hard not to think about it. 

She likes to play with the veil on his hat. Scaramouche discovers he can put it on her head to occupy her when he has to step away for a second or distract her with the hanging accessories when he’s changing her napkin. At some point, he takes to tossing it like a frisbee and letting her retrieve it for him. (That activity feels more like playing with a dog than a child, but she enjoys it all the same, and it keeps her occupied, so he lets her have her fun.)

Citrin clings to him whenever she can. It’s odd; she’s never this attached when Rubedo is around, but in his absence she’s taken to hanging off Scaramouche at every opportunity. She won’t even eat unless he’s the one spooning food into her mouth. 

It’s exhausting. He doesn’t mean to, but late in the afternoon he ends up falling asleep while she sleeps half on top of him on Rubedo’s cot. He dreams of a snowstorm, and of a strange, red stone that pulsates like a heart.

Rubedo is late. 

Scaramouche had awoken from his nap half expecting him to have already returned, and when it becomes clear he hadn’t, he finds himself anticipating Rubedo’s return more and more with each passing minute. 

He prepares dinner for Citrin but doesn't bother to eat himself. He changes her napkin and prepares her for bed and lets her play with the veil of his hat until her uncanny biological clock decides it’s nighttime and then she’s asleep, snuffling softly on her back with her hands curled up on either side of her head. 

Scaramouche waits up. He isn’t sure why. Rubedo is late, sure, but it’s not like Scaramouche can really gauge whether that’s normal for him or not. On the one hand, Rubedo is definitely the sort to get so caught up in something that fascinates him that he loses time; on the other, there’s Albedo’s warning of a coming storm to worry about, as well as whatever deadline Rubedo has to get in and out of Mondstadt proper before Albedo’s forced to scale the mountain to avoid it. 

When Rubedo isn’t back by the next morning, Scaramouche begins to worry, and Citrinitas picks up on it. She starts to fuss again, as if she’s remembered that she’s supposed to be missing her parent. Scaramouche isn’t able to calm her just by walking around holding her and letting her fiddle with his hat. He tries to stay calm and rational for her sake, but the niggling doubt in the back of his head remains, and every time Citrin begins to cry, his stress grows. 

He feeds her. He plays with her. More than once, he steps back to take time for himself. Without Rubedo to talk to, there’s not much to do in this cave, and the silence in place of his endless ramblings only makes his absence yawn wider.

Scaramouche lets Citrin sleep on top of him that night––partly because it calms her, and partly because it calms him.

(He’s given up denying what that means.)

Scaramouche is awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of the stone door sliding open and a cold rush of howling air down the length of the cave. Citrin is dead asleep on his chest, and she doesn’t wake when he rolls her gently off to sleep in his place as he fumbles to get his bearings enough to stand. He pulls the fleece blanket hastily over her shoulders and rushes to the mouth of the cave, his heart in his throat for a reason he can’t rationally define. 

Rubedo should be there when he arrives at the turn of the tunnel; he isn’t. Rather, he’s only made it a few steps beyond the stone door before slouching against the icy cavern wall, his hand to his chest like he’s trying to calm his own pulse, the heavy backpack on his shoulder sliding off and tumbling to the side, spilling onions and root vegetables across the frozen floor.

Scaramouche can’t help but walk a little faster to meet him. He scowls when he stops in front of Rubedo, if only to disguise what he’s sure is an embarrassing display of concern. “What’s wrong with you?” he demands, but it wavers on the way out and sounds more pathetic than it does harsh. “Where have you been?”

Rubedo’s breathing stutters, and he doesn’t answer right away. Scaramouche grips his upper arm to steady him, and Rubedo growls. Scaramouche snaps his hand back to himself at the same time Rubedo flinches back, as if startled by the sound coming out of his own throat. Then he looks up, and it’s only years of standing alongside the most violent and powerful people in Teyvat that keeps him from taking a cautionary step backwards.

Rubedo’s irises glow a putrid fuchsia that seems to drip into the veins around his eyes, extending beneath the skin surrounding his orbital lobe, varicose. The drama of it lasts only a moment, before they return to their normal color, but in the absence of the aggression giving color to his face, his complexion turns morbidly pale.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice crackling. “It wasn’t––I didn’t mean to…”

His voice breaks off into a whisper that he doesn’t finish. Scaramouche risks reaching out again, and this time Rubedo leans into the support. 

“I knew something was wrong,” Scaramouche mutters, mostly to himself. He tugs Rubedo’s arm up over his shoulders and sets off down the cave without asking if he’s ready, and when Rubedo nearly wobbles right over because of it, Scaramouche just takes more of his weight. He leaves the bag behind for now. “All you had to do was pick up groceries from town. Of course you go and get yourself cursed or something.”

“Don’t let Citrinitas see,” Rubedo answers, barely listening.

“She’s dead asleep. Worry about yourself right now.”

Scaramouche sits Rubedo down on the floor across the room from where Citrin is sleeping, not bothering to even try balancing him on a stool for the way Rubedo is listing to the side every other minute. “You have two seconds to tell me what kind of mess you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”

Rubedo manages half a smirk. “You say that… like I’m the one in the habit of losing fights to toddlers.”

“She was a giant fellflower in a snowstorm––you know that doesn’t count. Don’t change the subject.”

“It is merely… a malfunction of this body. Give me a moment.”

Rubedo takes his moment. Then he takes another. Then he’s clamping a hand over his mouth and swooning forward, and Scaramouche leaps to his feet to avoid the potential splash zone. 

“Bowl,” Rubedo manages through his fingers, and Scaramouche, given direction, leaps into action, snatching a wooden bucket from the side of Rubedo’s alchemy table and forcing it under Rubedo’s chin just in time for him to cough bile into the basin. 

Right; vomiting. One of the many human functions Scaramouche is happy not to be prone to. He recalls the only time he’s ever tried it: a moment of curiosity following the amused instruction of Tartaglia, who had contracted food poisoning the night before and was eager to know if Scaramouche’s body was even capable of expelling food in the same way. He recalls it being a foul experience, wretched in the body and taxing on the mind, not to mention horrifically messy. The bowl helps; Scaramouche is glad Rubedo had the presence of mind to suggest it before giving into this ‘malfunction,’ as he put it.

What comes up isn’t food or hydrochloric acid, though. It’s bright red with a sharp tang to it, not unlike blood in aroma but thicker in viscosity, like hot wax before it cools on the side of a burning candle. Rubedo gags on it like it will choke him if he’s any less violent about it, coughing and hacking to clear his airways as more of the strange fluid makes its way to the bowl. At some point, he does seem to choke, and Scaramouche pounds on his back until he’s coughing again.

The fit eases within a couple of minutes, but for the way Scaramouche’s fingers tingle with electric adrenaline, it feels like it takes hours. When Rubedo is finally calm enough to breathe without lurching forward, Scaramouche presses again.

“So what’s this, then? Don’t tell me your creator went and gave you the ability to contract influenza.”

Rubedo manages a weak laugh. “If only,” he murmurs. “No, I’m afraid this ailment is specific to me. One of the many failures of an incomplete project, and a consequence of my disposal. You could say I am… infected by the condition of my brother’s blood.”

“You don’t mean Albedo’s?”

Rubedo shakes his head, then seems to regret it. “Durin’s,” he offers by way of explanation.

Scaramouche takes a moment to recall where he’s heard that name before. “You mean the dragon? The one who ate you?”

“The very same,” Rubedo affirms with a wry smile. “It is another reason I’m reluctant to move permanently down the mountain any time soon; though it would surely be best for myself and Citrinitas in the long run, I don’t know that I wouldn’t infect others with this poison. Albedo says he is working on a solution, but, well. He’s been after that solution for a long time––longer than I’ve been any concern of his. I haven’t much faith he’ll be able to find a cure any time soon.”

“I’d be offended that you don’t seem bothered by the idea of me contracting… this, but I suppose I would find it even more offensive if you believed I even could.”

Rubedo scoffs. “Lucky you. A god’s handiwork, even imperfect, will always land worlds above that of a mere human alchemist.” He spits into the bowl, his voice a grating, miserable sound. “Your mother set you free into the world. Mine fed me to my brother.”

“My mother abandoned me,” Scaramouche scoffs, but the fire behind those words dies as soon as they leave him. Instead, he finds himself wincing as Rubedo coughs up another clot of that strange, red tar. He sighs and throws himself down to sit beside Rubedo on the stone floor. “I’m not going to argue with you about who had it worse. That would be childish.”

Rubedo manages a bitter laugh. “For all your years, you never once gave the impression of maturity.”

“What’s your excuse? I’m pretty sure you’re older than me.”

“Only in body; you’ll recall I spent the centuries immediately after my birth comatose. You know, in the dragon my mother fed me to. The one that infected me with its poisoned blood.”

“I suppose you fancy yourself a comedian.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Rubedo says, but he’s smiling––the real kind, despite the mess of the situation. He sits in the relative comfort of that amusement for just a moment, then Rubedo sobers once more. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry for running late. I was afraid to let Citrinitas close to me like this, but then the weather convinced me to take shelter, and I knew I couldn’t leave you two alone for long.”

“She was rather upset during the time you were gone,” Scaramouche agrees, “though she settled a bit when she figured out she could attach herself to my hip instead. The weather must be agitating her, or something; she’s been harder to deal with since you failed to show up.”

(He doesn’t bother mentioning that part of her anxiety was surely a reflection of Scaramouche’s own as the time between Rubedo’s estimated return and his actual one grew wider.)

Rubedo steals a glance towards the cot across the room, where Citrin is only visible as a lump under the covers. His face pinches. “I don’t think she’ll be infected unless she comes into direct contact with the contents of my expulsion,” he says, tilting the bowl towards Scaramouche as if to show him. (And Scaramouche really, really doesn’t need a closer look, thank you very much.) “And, granted I take proper rest, it should settle within a day or two’s time. 

“...This would require me to ask you to watch her for longer, though, and I know I have already taken up much of your time. Though it would be very much appreciated, I don’t exactly have anything to offer that might incentivize you to stay. That is… I can manage. I won’t trap you here longer than I already have.”

Scaramouche frowns. “What makes you think I want to leave?”

Rubedo pushes the bowl away at last, apparently confident that he’s no longer at risk of vomiting. He conjures a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his mouth as he says, “Well, you seemed very eager before I left you alone with Citrinitas for three days. I can’t imagine you’ve grown fonder of the idea of staying cooped up with her in that time.”

“...Suppose I was only sour at the idea that you wouldn’t be there.”

“What?”

Scaramouche blinks at the realization of what he’s just admitted. “I… only meant that it was more difficult to keep her calm without you around, not to mention excruciatingly boring, sitting around all day without your prattling to occupy the silence. There isn’t much to do around here, you’ll notice.”

The look Rubedo is giving him is… different from what Scaramouche is used to. A little more bewildered than the usual thoughtful acceptance, a little more naked than the usual unreadable blankness. Maybe it’s the illness, but it takes him way too long to pull the shutters down over his expression, and when he finally tries, he doesn’t quite manage to get himself all the way under control; he just turns his head down as if to hide the incontinence of it. Something about it makes Scaramouche’s face warm uncomfortably. 

“I… apologize for that, then. Your boredom. That said, I won’t be much fun the next couple of days either. I won’t make you stay for no return.”

Now’s his chance, Scaramouche realizes: the one thing he hasn’t quite figured out how to ask for or bring up. It’s the perfect opportunity to reveal his true intentions, to manipulate Rubedo into filling the holes in Scaramouche’s divinity with alchemy. The gnosis sparks in his chest like it’s urging him to, but for some reason the words are sticking in his throat. He clears it roughly.

“I… have an idea. Something you can offer me.”

Rubedo looks up again, surprise open on his face, along with that other thing. The one Scaramouche isn’t sure he knows how to place. “Do you?” he asks. 

Is his voice… hopeful?

Scaramouche clears his throat again, swallowing against the sudden dryness of his mouth. “You’re not going to like it,” he warns him.

Rubedo blinks, leaning forward a little, clearly curious. “Try me,” he all but breathes.

Scaramouche stares at him for a long moment, but he can’t even begin to find the words until he looks down at his hands. “You fixed my body before,” he starts. “Better even than any doctor I’ve had before. I want you to try to use alchemy to fix my body to better accommodate the gnosis.” He rests a hand over his chest, right where he knows Rubedo knows the gnosis that neither of them ever talks about rests inside of him.

And Rubedo’s face… falls, oddly enough. Like he had been expecting something entirely different; like he’d been anticipating this very answer, but had hoped all the same it would be anything else. His mouth sets into a grim, unreadable line, and whatever that odd light in his eyes before had been blinks out entirely. 

“I see,” he says, perfectly neutral. “You want me to experiment on you.”

“I would have thought you’d jump at the opportunity.”

“Yes, that would be like me,” Rubedo agrees, but he doesn’t offer anything else. He continues to stare at Scaramouche. “Perhaps it is the outcome of my potential success that makes me so hesitant.”

Scaramouche expected that, at least. Still, he scoffs, unable to completely dismiss his own politics. “I’m almost offended you would think me any worse a candidate for godhood than the current archons. As if they’re doing much good at all for this world falling apart at the seams.”

But Rubedo shakes his head. “You misunderstand me. I’m not so noble that I care what my involvement might mean for the fate of Teyvat. I am still a creation of elsewhere, after all.” He studies Scaramouche’s face, almost cautious. “It is the knowledge that you would surely leave for grander horizons than Mondstadt, I suppose, that makes me selfishly hesitant to assist you.”

Now Scaramouche is the one blinking, searching Rubedo’s expression for what he could possibly mean by that. “I don’t understand,” he says, but there’s a waver in his voice timed with a heavy thrum of the gnosis, as if it has figured out what’s going on before Scaramouche has.

“Clearly,” Rubedo says without any humor. He’s still staring, and now, he’s leaning forward into Scaramouche’s space, his face suddenly way closer than it has ever been before. 

Scaramouche figures it out a half a second before Rubedo kisses him. It’s stiff and entirely unpracticed and bites with iron against Scaramouche’s mouth where the faint remnants of Durin’s poison still linger. Rubedo doesn’t tilt his head to find a better fit, nor does he make any effort to move his lips. It’s as if he’s performing an affection he’s only ever heard about, or seen once or twice in passing. 

Scaramouche doesn’t push him off, but he doesn’t make any move to fix the kiss either. He just sits there, eyes shocked open, waiting for however long Rubedo intends to linger in the moment. 

When Rubedo pulls back at last, too slow to call it chaste but too distant to really call it anything else, he can’t seem to pull his eyes up any higher than Scaramouche’s mouth. He’s eerily calm for someone who’s just taken such bold action with no return. 

“If that’s what you still want in a week when I’m better, I will do it,” he says, perfectly steady. He’s still leaning into Scaramouche’s space, hands placed on either side of the floor beside Scaramouche’s legs. “Strangely, I find that the fondness I have for you aches at the thought of not giving you anything you ask for more than it weeps at the idea of you leaving. So, ask me again in a week.”

“Rubedo––”

“Until then, I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Rubedo rushes on, not giving him room to speak. “You’ve given me the courage to conquer my insecurities in order to provide the best life I can for Citrinitas. For that, I can never thank you enough. If this is what it takes for me to repay that debt, I cannot refuse. All I ask is a week to prepare for it.”

Scaramouche nods, slowly. “Alright. If that’s… what you need.” He doesn’t know what else he can say.

Rubedo sits back at last, nodding to himself. “Thank you, Wanderer. That's all I ask.”

The night that follows is cold, despite the relative security of the cave. Rubedo fixes himself a bed across the room and sleeps for the first time Scaramouche can ever recall witnessing. Scaramouche himself returns to the cot with Citrin and uses his body to shield Rubedo from her view, aware that when she awakes, he’s going to have to keep her away from him and the bowl of poison that he’s hidden away with the chamber pot. 

For as long as Scaramouche is awake, he finds he is unable to forget the feeling of Rubedo’s lips over his, awkward but undeniably soft, a simulacra of a kiss that lingers longer than any proper kiss ever has on both his mind and his mouth, like a phantom pain that never quite goes away. 

Why doesn’t he feel revulsion like he’s grown so used to? Why, rather, does the gnosis hum and rattle like his very own heart, in tandem for the first time he can remember since he forced it into the cavity of his chest?

He does not know. All he knows is that Rubedo is going to make him ask again, and this time the decision isn’t going to be in Rubedo’s hands; it’s going to be up to Scaramouche to decide what he really wants. 

For the first time in a long time, he isn’t entirely sure he knows what that is.