Chapter Text
The faint yet sweet, buttery scent of coffee proved a worthwhile companion to the work at hand. It almost made the Fatui Captain forget what he'd been typing on the new writing machine his superiors had issued him.
Clack.
Clack-clack.
Clack.
The sound it made had been enough to sober him up.
Mashkov, Radomir, Temer, Snezhevna… the names imprinted themselves onto the page as the type-writer crackled at a quick yet methodical pace. Its operator’s bespectacled eyes dashed between the manifest-in-hand and the machine, constantly checking for any inconsistencies. They glazed over the parchments, spending long seconds between each shift to make certain of his typing.
“Drat,” he cursed as his eyes widened at the mistake, one that would no doubt result in a life lost at least had it escaped his gaze.
“‘Temur’, not ‘Temer’,” he lamented, shutting his eyes as he hid any signs of frustration behind pursed lips and tensed hands. He sighed, taking a long breath before he continued. Rolling the knob on the side, the officer took the parchment out of the machine.
He opened the drawer in his desk, a solid lump of rubber rolling about his palm. He twirled it about his fingers, sticky and kneadable thanks to the warm Liyuen weather. Even as it momentarily clung to his fingertips however, it escaped his grasp and tumbled onto the floor under the desk.
The officer flinched, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration as his concentration shattered. He breathed once more, longer, tenser, his body moving along the motions before recomposing. He shifted in his seat, a hand scouting under the desk for any sign of that excuse for a rubber eraser. The moments felt like hours, the young officer’s mind simmering at the disruption that overstayed its welcome. Eventually however, he would find it, rolling it about in his hand again, trying to bury the little carpet hairs that had stuck themselves in.
The officer held the eraser to the parchment, pressing against it in an effort to cleanly smudge out the error. For a moment, it seemed to work, his forceful movements erasing the word. Unfortunately, the warm weather had all but smoothened the worst of the eraser's edges. A particularly rash rub tore a hole in the paper, the loud rip not registering til it was too late, and a gap the size of a paragraph had manifested.
The simmering irritation had come to a boil. “I was almost done with that report…” he groaned, trapping his face in his hands as muffled screaming echoed through the room.
Four hard knocks, more akin to Electro-Pyro shell impacts on the wooden door, had snapped the young man out of his stupor however. He jolted in his seat, his glasses clattering onto the desk. He scrambled to make last minute adjustments as if nothing had happened, but no amount of acting would hide the fact he forgot to remove the torn paper from his desk.
"Identify." He droned.
“Emil? It’s me, asshole! Open up,” the crass voice rumbled through the entrance. The officer sighed.
Argentum Vulpes, Lord Tartaglia’s own apprentice. Or as she would often insist, “Luna” . She didn't appear on any official command charts, nor was she given a proper rank. But most everyone knew not to start a dispute with her. Emil, occasionally assigned as her handler-in-charge for little more reason than his aversion to the tedium of a court-martial for what usually amounted to petty pranks, often counted the days til he was to supposedly be promoted to Major, to be transferred to a proper office, a quieter one, one Vulpes couldn’t meddle with…as much at least. It was an understatement to say Emil was not in the slightest bit interested to deal with her today.
“You have four—five limbs, don’t you?” He replied in an attempt at equal cadence as he tried to get back to work. He wasn't sure if fox tails were prehensile, nor did he really care. Hers might have been though, he'd seen stranger.
The door held against an assault of four more knocks, more like bashes. It wouldn’t last. The officer rolled his eyes, shifting in his seat to stand just as the door swung open with a crash.
A metallic ping rang out soon afterward. There went the lock and hinge. He’d have to pay for the damage out of his own pocket once they'd check out.
“Where the FUCK are your staff, Emil?!” Vulpes squawked, outstretched leg arching forward as she took one long step, followed by a shuffle, the mountain of papers weighing her down. He sighed at the load she bore into his bedroom-turned-makeshift office. Her presence alone was already a handful, but with this? She could be a Harbinger in her own right, a Harbinger of bad news.
The recent accounts of the Geo Archon’s demise had ushered in an endless flow of paperwork that haunted Emil's desk for days and nights alike, a state not even the relatively comfortable atmosphere of Wangshu Inn could dissuade. Liyue was scared, the Fatui seemingly moreso. Lord Tartaglia himself issued orders for all non-essential agents to quietly leave the country for their own safety.
Hundreds of orders…
Organizing a subtle yet massive personnel withdrawal from one of the more competent nations of Teyvat was…difficult to say the least, but not impossible. And definitely something he could have finished within a night.
“I gave them the night off. The paperwork scheduled for tonight seemed relatively…” Emil replied as she eventually reached his desk, planting her towering load atop with a thud, “light…”
Emil slipped on his glasses as his gaze ran up the new height, almost to the ceiling it seemed. Sunken eyes and an exhausted tone betrayed his fatigue, as if the mess of reports, data sheets, torn parchment, and the new mountain of fresh unsigned documents on his desk hadn't already. With his current responsibilities, it would take Emil at least a week to sort through all this.
"Tough shit, Four-Eyes. Ice Princess wants these done by the time you guys head out for Northland Bank tomorrow."
Tomorrow.
That word in particular nearly made his heart stop, a torrent of thoughts rushing through Emil's mind. But his misgivings and inquiries were too much to list and sift through, akin to the paper mountain before him. Though one did stand out among the rest:
Why was Lady Signora giving him orders?
"We answer to the Eleventh Harbinger, not the Eighth." He objected, snapping out of his shock and facing the courier already at the door, as if she were hasty to escape the room.
"Yeah, and he’s answering to her. Sucks for everyone, especially me." She returned, her lip curled and ears flat against her head. Emil felt too tired to bite back. Besides, he supposed that even someone with enhanced strength would have probably tired of carrying something so… cumbersome.
He reclined into his chair, his fingers brushing through his hair in a feeble attempt to slick it back to no avail. The strands of unruly white sprung up and fell aside in defiance as Emil sighed in dejection. The situation plagued his mind with questions:
Why was the Eighth Harbinger here?
Wasn’t she stationed in Mondstadt?
What business did she have interfering with this expedition’s agenda? With his Lord’s mission?
More importantly, when did she arrive? How long had she been here? And why did Emil only know about this now? He was Lord Tartaglia’s chief logistics officer, surely the stamped seal of a Harbinger wouldn’t have missed his eyes, no matter how much he had on his plate. Though…some of them have been known to bypass such bureaucratic “pleasantries” when it suited them. Emil of all people should know that, it was a favored tactic of his own Harbinger after all. Regardless, he’d hoped it was the latter, the former would be hellish to explain to Lord Tartaglia, let alone Lady Signora.
“What the fuck is that smell, by the way?” Vulpes asked, nose twitching as she angrily eyed the tin mug.
“It's coffee,” Emil replied.
The fox jerked back, as if Lord Tartaglia himself was hidden in that mug. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“That's fucking chocolate,” she cursed.
Emil sighed, the urge to retort bubbling on his tongue, yet he relented. He'd need every bit of energy he had left to file everything before sunrise.
“Well anyway,” Vulpes began, one foot out the creaking door already, tail wagging, “get some sleep so you can make it to the city tomorrow. I don’t want them to make me ride all the way over here again just to wake you up.”
And with that, she was gone.
Emil's face drooped as the door shut only to creak open a crack, leaving him alone to mull over how to deal with the new problem at hand. As his eyes laid upon the room, he noticed she’d apparently cut a swathe through his careful assortment of paper stacks and paper-filled boxes, loosing a flood of parchment onto the floor. She was lumbering on purpose, wasn't she?
Emil lowered his head in dejection, eyes shifting to the document he’d torn a moment ago as it only added to his frustrations. Crumpling it up, he tossed it into a nearby bin.
It missed.
Emil couldn’t even sigh anymore. He tucked the original manifest away into the drawer alongside his pre-existing paperwork. It would seem he’d have to weave the Ninth Company into his withdrawal plans tomorrow morning instead.
He stared at the pillar of paper before him, each second sapping away what little energy he had left. The officer broke away for a moment, and for the first time in a few days, he’d finally taken in the room before him. The fluttering of bird wings by the window had all but been replaced by the constant flapping of parchment. And the once fragrant and fresh scent of Liyuen herbs and incense was masked by the unmistakable stench of stale paper. He’d realized just how much space his equipment had taken, his office now a far cry from the pristine living quarters he’d made himself a home within just a few days prior. He'd have to apologize to Comrade Lazarov for this. No doubt he and the rest of his Intelligence staff would be held responsible for whatever happened to the rooms assigned to Fatui personnel.
Emil looked on with weary eyes as he sluggishly turned in his chair. A litany of books and ledgers had lined the wooden shelves to his right, accompanied by folders upon folders of logistical reports, each marked with a splotch of dyed ink at the spine that typified their importance. There were so many different types that Emil had feared he’d run out of colors to differentiate them all, let alone run out of the inks themselves. On his left, boxes filled to the brim with both signed and untouched documentation had practically consumed his bed, trailing across the floor itself as he peered over the desk in front of him. Behind him, splayed over the wall, was a massive map of Liyue, filled corner-to-corner with threaded lines of red and blue that ran through the countryside as shapes of all kinds had dotted the rest of the map. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like a mess or some cryptic Fontainian art piece. To Emil, it was a diagram that greatly helped him in his logistical duties. Still, while he had the “pleasure” of plotting it all himself, he would be lying if he claimed he’d never gotten confused by his own work at least once.
Staring at the meticulous mess began to make his head throb, and that was the last thing he needed. Perhaps…it wouldn't be remiss of Emil to give himself a break. Just a short break. The young officer had been working on fumes for the past two days after all. It would be much more a dereliction of duty if he were to continue without a clear and focused mind.
Emil stood, coming along the side of his desk, careful not to brush against the deceptively sturdy stacks of documents. The way the beams of sunlight colored the paper window orange told him it was sunset. Perhaps a short walk and some fresh air would do him some good. He flipped out the timepiece from the pocket on his coat, calculating just how long he could afford:
He had twenty minutes.
With a hint of hesitation, Emil gripped the handle on the door, turning it. He pushed, the door’s creaking getting louder, paving the path for him down the hallway as his heart wrenched in both relief and subtle agony.