Chapter Text
When Collei is twelve, she tries to escape the Fatui, and she almost, almost makes it.
There are a few things that spur her on to make the attempt. Collei’s stronger than she’s ever been; recently she can even control the black fire a little. And she’s desperate. She’s been singled out by the Doctor due to all her progress, and if things go on like this, she doesn’t know how much longer she’ll last. Some animal instinct tells her that soon she will either die or break completely. So when she overhears that the Doctor will be away for a couple weeks on business-
Collei makes up her mind.
She waits until she’s sure he isn’t around. For days and days, no one takes her from her cell. Finally, Collei makes a ruckus large enough that someone will have to come check on her. She knows what it looks like when the other kids lose control of their power and burn themselves up in it, and it isn’t difficult to fake. She looses the black fire and screams her throat raw, and eventually the guards come running. The moment they lay hands on her, Collei wrenches the black serpent under control, and it kills them. Simple as that. It tears out their throats, its fangs sizzling in their necks, and they fall limply to the floor like their strings have been cut. Collei pauses for the barest moment, a little queasy at the sight, but she’s been surrounded by too much death all her life for it to really faze her. She swallows thickly and begins to run.
From then on, the escape attempt is a blur of color and noise- alarms blaring, footsteps stomping, metal screeching, and throughout it all the stench of blood and cooked flesh. At first Collei uses the keys she stole off the guards to unlock as many of the cells as possible, but she soon gives it up for fear she won’t find the exit in time. She runs guiltily past the little hands thrust out of the bars toward her, ignoring their pleading cries as the gaggle of kids who were lucky enough to be broken out huddle behind her and scramble to keep up. Eventually the black fire starts turning inward on her, nipping at her skin with the smoky sting that lets her know it's about to really start to burn, and in desperation she starts snatching Delusions off the guard’s corpses. They answer easily to her call, startlingly so. Using them feels like the black fire but with less bite, and no one seems to expect it. When she uses two at once, the elemental reactions gout down the halls. Soon it’s the guards running from her instead of the other way around. It gives her a heady thrill, and Collei starts to really believe that she’ll get away with this. The halls are sloping up, and the exit is close, she can feel it-
And then she turns one more corner, and there is the Doctor.
Turns out no one thought to warn Collei he concluded his business trip early.
She freezes like a rat in the sights of a hawk, and the other children bunch up behind her, squalling in terror. But she’s come too far to stop now. Collei lets out a wild cry and throws herself forward, trying to distract him with a blast from the Pyro and Electro delusions as she darts by, but-
Something hits her in the back of her shoulder. The crackling whine it emits fills her with dread even before her conscious mind can register what it is, and then every muscle in her body locks, her jaws clamping shut around a shill scream. Collei falls, her head knocking hard against the floor, the electricity jolting through her leaving no way to catch herself. The Doctor stands perfectly still as he observes her, his head tilted like a curious bird’s, several triangular little machines hovering in the air around him. Get up, get up, get up, Collei screams at herself, you can’t give up now, but her limbs twitch uselessly even as the electricity stops, sore and heavy and refusing to respond to her call.
The Doctor takes a leisurely step closer. He nudges her hand with the tip of his boot, and her fingers spasm, releasing their grip on the three Delusions she managed to seize.
“How very interesting,” he muses. Collei heaves in a breath, struggling up onto her elbows as her muscles unlock, running on nothing but a primal need to get away. The Doctor chuckles. His gloved hand grabs her firmly by the back of the neck, as though scruffing a disobedient kitten. She feels the familiar sting of a needle in the junction between her neck and shoulder, followed by the cold plunge of liquid into her veins-
No, she tries to cry, to plead, to scream, but her vision is tunneling and her body goes limp, and -
*
When Collei is twelve years old, she does not escape the Fatui.
*
In the following months, Collei learns that it is not considered normal for a human to be able to wield more than one Delusion at once. Nor to use them so extensively without great cost. Collei does feel sick as a dog as she huddles in the corner of her cell for the week following her escape attempt, but apparently this is not the usual cost.
If Collei could go back in time and tell herself not to try to escape, she would. She’s only made everything worse for herself. It isn't that she's angered the Doctor - it’s far worse. She’s impressed him.
Some would disagree that this is the worst possible outcome. After all, everyone knows what happens to those who outlive their use. But maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. The thought has struck her plenty of times before, but never so strongly and unignorably as it does now.
The Doctor calls for her even more often than he did before. He puts her through all sorts of nonsense tests with Delusions and her black fire, even pitting her against monsters, until the power turns on her and she's burning with fever and vomiting her guts out, and when she can’t move enough to be useful for much else he sedates her and cuts her up and eventually Collei starts to wonder if she should stage another escape attempt just to see if she can get herself killed.
But that would probably be hard to pull off, because the guards are well aware that to the Doctor, Collei's life is worth more than theirs. He tells her so as he brushes her sweat-soaked hair away from her face so he can ease the rag from her mouth after her latest injection of archon residue. “You killed seven guards with that little stunt of yours, you know,” he says. She wonders if she’s supposed to feel bad about that. She doesn’t. They shouldn’t have worked in such a vile place if they weren’t willing to take the risk. The Doctor smiles at her, all sharp white teeth. “Usually that’d make you too much of a liability to keep around, but, well, I’m not getting results this interesting from anyone else! So do try not to bully them too much, will you? They know what’ll happen to them if they damage a valuable subject."
He pats her cheek. She wants to bite off his fingers. She wants to die. She wants him to die. But she learned a long time ago that shows of defiance like that are more trouble than they’re worth, even if they might be satisfying in the moment. She also learned a long time ago that the Doctor is never actually looking for a response when he talks at her like that. He just likes to hear himself speak.
Which makes it all the more bewildering when, a couple weeks later, Dottore asks her- before any tests have even commenced- “Do you have a name?”
Collei stares at him, wide-eyed and silent from where she sits on the exam table, unharmed and unrestrained. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s posed her a direct question, but it's always been directly related to the experiment before. He only asks when there’s some bit of data he can’t get any other way. Is she really meant to answer this? Names are for people. Collei has never once been a person in her time here, only a means to someone else’s end. If anyone needs to single her out, there’s a string of numbers and letters assigned to her. Collei can’t remember the last time someone spoke her actual name. She’s pretty sure not all of the other kids even remember theirs.
The Doctor tsks, continuing to stare at her in his relentlessly scrutinizing way. “Cat got your tongue? I know you can speak.”
Will she be in trouble if she doesn’t tell him? He doesn’t seem to be getting angry, but he doesn’t have to be in order to hurt you. In fact, most of the pain he doles out is done with cold indifference. Collei, quite suddenly, decides she doesn’t want to tell him her name. It’s one of the only things in the world that’s hers. And she doesn’t want to tell him her name and have him keep on doing the things he does knowing he’s doing them to Collei. Not just to a string of letters and numbers, but to a girl with a name. She’s abruptly convinced that that would be more awful than she can say.
The Doctor leans back with a sigh. “Oh well, it’s no skin off my back if you ship out to Snezhnaya without a name,” he says. Then his lips twitch into an odd little smile, as though he’s just thought of something particularly amusing, and he adds, “I suppose you wouldn’t be the first.”
“S… Snezhnaya?” Collei croaks out, voice rusty with disuse.
“Didn’t I tell you? You’re being promoted!” The Doctor claps his hands, grinning. “You’ve proved intriguing enough to send back to the homeland. We'll conscript you into the ranks, give you a chance to flex that power of yours, mm? Of course, you’ll still have to check in at the labs. But a less constrained environment will provide the opportunity to test all manner of things that-”
He’s still rambling, but Collei hears none of it. Her world has narrowed down to one thing and one thing only: she gets to leave.
He’s not letting go of her entirely - of course he isn’t- but he’s talking like he’s going to let her have some sort of life. And there’s probably some sort of horrible trap in this, but -
She gets to leave.
For the longest time, she thought she’d only ever make it out of here in a body bag.
“Collei,” she says, interrupting him, and he pauses, red eyes alighting back on her in a squint of feline satisfaction. “My name is Collei.”
*
The road to Snezhnaya is long and strange.
First the Doctor has Collei officially sign up as a member of the Fatui. Collei very much does not want to do this. She glares up at him from under her fringe of dull green hair, and he just looks down at her smugly.
“I can’t,” she finally says.
“Oh don’t be difficult, it’s only a formality,” says the Doctor with distaste.
No, she literally can't. Collei is willing to, despite not wanting to. She's old enough to accept this as a necessary evil, though it makes her feel sick to her stomach to become a part of the group that's tormented her all her life, even if only in name. The problem is that Collei does not know how to read or write. She’s been here as long as she can remember- how the heck would she have learned? She does not explain this, just continues to glare mutinously at the paper. But after a few more seconds, the Doctor figures it out, because of course he does.
“Ah,” he says. “Of course. Silly me. Scribble anything here, it doesn’t truly matter.” And he taps his finger on a blank line near the bottom of the page.
Collei hesitates, cheeks burning with humiliation. Then she snatches up the pen and makes an inarticulate scribble on the line. Her throat feels tight. She hates the Doctor, hates the Fatui, hates the world, hates herself. Sometimes it feels like there’s not much left to her but hate.
“Excellent,” the Doctor says, shuffling the papers together and smiling with teeth. “Welcome to the ranks.”
They leave for Snezhnaya the next day. Everything about the experience is new and overwhelming for Collei. The Doctor himself comes along, bringing a small squad of soldiers. Collei will never forget the moment she steps out into the sun, how its warmth curls onto her shoulders, how it stabs into her eyes but makes everything beneath it look so alive. She's wide-eyed in amazement at all the scenery that passes by outside their carriage as she peers out the window, handcuffed but not caged.
The journey takes weeks. Snezhnaya is very far away. Once a week the Doctor gives her the usual injection, dispassionately watches her writhe, and then summons a grunt to settle her in for the night. Collei gets an actual sleeping bag, all soft and warm and cozy. Well, maybe not too cozy, because she is still chained to the tent pole, but it’s far more comfort than she’s used to.
When they move through civilization, Collei is generally not allowed to leave the carriage. If she has to, she’s hemmed in among the soldiers so she’s hidden from view. Wouldn't want anyone to notice the chained-up kid, after all. Collei considers trying to call attention to herself, but she remembers what happened to her parents when they wanted to take her back. If she's going to escape, she’ll have to do it herself. And she does keep a sharp eye out for escape opportunities the entire way, but none seem promising enough to risk it. She'll probably only get one shot. If they think she'll be trouble, she's sure they'll just throw her in a crate for the rest of the trip.
But she fears she's running out of time to make another attempt at all. Before she knows it, they've reached the snowy land of Snezhnaya. “Welcome home,” the Doctor says, gesturing grandly to the frozen landscape. Then, “Ah right,” he murmurs, and produces a key from his pocket. He pulls Collei’s wrists forward and unlocks the cuffs, retrieving them with a flourish. “After all,” he adds, “you’re one of us now.”
Collei stares at her bare wrists uncomprehendingly, then looks warily up at the Doctor; he's smiling as though there's nothing amiss. Is this a taunt? A test? Does he really think he’s bought her loyalty after everything he’s done to her?
It would be stupid to take such an obvious opening. But Collei is desperate, and she’s never claimed to be smart. She waits until they're on a busy city street, and then she makes a breaks for it, slipping into the crowd and running for all she’s worth.
When Collei is twelve and a half years old, she escapes from the Fatui.
She makes it to the next town over before they catch her.
*
When they find her, Collei is faint from hunger and shivering from the cold, with no feeling in her fingers. There wasn't much time to steal food or get warm when she was busy running from any Fatui she saw like a hunted rabbit. Now that she’s too frozen stiff to run, they close in on her easily. Her brief brush with freedom lasted five days.
As exhausted as she is, she still bares her teeth and tries to struggle. She can't tell for sure, but from the sound of the screams, she thinks she might have managed to kill at least one of them with the black fire before a syringe bites into her neck and drags her down into unconsciousness.
When she surfaces from sedation, at first Collei thinks she’s back in the old labs. But she knows the stonework in the old lab by heart, and this is different. She pushes herself blearily up on her elbows, then looks around more thoroughly, only to freeze - the Doctor is standing right outside the cell, a look of cold disappointment on his face. Though he's harder to read than usual, with the mask that covers his eyes.
“I believe,” he says, “that you are operating under some grave misunderstandings about what is going on here.”
And Collei would normally consider it insanity to talk back to the Doctor at all. But her heart is thrumming with devastation at having failed once again, and she does not care what happens to her. “Misunderstanding what?” she snaps. “That you want to lock me up and torture me? I don’t care if it’s back there or in Snezhnaya. I don’t want to be here! Just let me go! ” Her voice cracks. It’s stupid to say. What Collei wants has never, ever mattered.
The Doctor lies right to her face, “I’ve done very little to you that wasn’t necessary.”
Collei scoffs with all the derision this claim deserves.
“Oh, certainly it's been beneficial to me as well,” he admits. “It isn’t right that you wouldn’t pay me back with some experiments of my own choosing. But I’m curious how you think you’d fare without me.”
“Just fine,” she snarls, bunching her knees up to her chest to glare at him over the top of them. “It’d be great. I hate you! All you do is hurt me!”
Dottore’s lips thin with displeasure, and a chill runs through her. “You are an ignorant and foolish little girl,” he says. “My treatments are the only thing keeping your Eleazar at bay.”
Her Eleazar. Supposedly the reason her parents gave her up in the first place. It’s been such a non-issue in her life, Collei thinks of it very rarely; she hardly even knows what it is . Boldly, she lifts her chin and declares, “I don’t believe you.”
“No?” Dottore sighs, reaching into his coat to produce a sheaf of glossy Kamera images. He tosses them carelessly through the bars, letting them scatter across the ground. Collei’s chest tightens. She wants to ignore them, but the Doctor is staring at her expectantly, and finally she crawls forward and turns them over.
She recoils instantly, feeling ill. Every image is of people with grotesque growths on their bodies. Dusty scales coat their wrists and shoulders and spines. In one image the scales crawl up a woman’s entire legs, locking them in place, the skin cracked and painful-looking in the few places it shows. Maybe the worst image is a man with scales covering his neck, his head forced back at an uncomfortable angle. His eyes are dull and glassy, his mouth hanging open as if he’s struggling to breathe. Collei has seen a thousand horrible things in the labs, is no stranger to human suffering, but something is so distinctly wrong about what she's seeing, and she shuffles back on her knees, breath coming harsh and fast as she slaps her hands over her mouth.
“This is the ultimate destiny of any Eleazar patient,” the Doctor says. “Scales, stiffness, numbness - and eventually, an irreversible coma. I suppose we have been a little lax in your education,” he adds with derision. “It’s an incurable illness that plagues the Sumeran population, untreatable with traditional medicine, but I've kept you from suffering its effects. Why do you think your parents went so far as to give you up? They knew they couldn’t get help for you anywhere else. You should be grateful, really.”
“You’re lying,” Collei says, voice high with distress and muffled through her hands. “You’re lying, that wouldn’t happen to me. You - you probably did that to all those people. It’s not real.”
“The depth of your delusion is impressive,” the Doctor drawls. “But there’s no reason to stand around arguing with you. Maybe you’ll feel differently in a few weeks.”
And then he turns, his white lab coat swishing behind him, and a bolt of panic hits Collei in the gut. She scrambles forward. “Wait - wait! What are you going to do to me?”
She can hear the smirk in his voice, though he does not turn back. “Precisely what you wanted,” he says. “I’m leaving you alone.”
*
Weeks pass in which Collei does not leave the cell. She does not see the Doctor. Nervous-looking assistants bring her food and water, and that is all. There are no injections, no testing, no pain. It’s the most peaceful her life has ever been.
At first, Collei has nothing to complain about. It's boring here, but she’s used to being locked up alone with no one to talk to. It's not as if she misses the torture, even if it did break up the monotony. She tries to not worry about the photos or the nasty things the Doctor said. He was just bluffing, she tells herself. She’s more certain than ever that she’d do great without him, experiencing what it's like to be completely without aches and pains for the first time she can remember. Doesn’t matter that she has never, ever known the Doctor to bluff.
It’s hard to keep track of the days. But it’s probably been about two weeks when the first scale pushes up from under the skin on her wrist.
At first it’s just a bit of discomfort, a dark bump under her skin. A little numbness and tingling. It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself. But then she wakes up to a persistent throb and sees the bump has broken through. That it looks exactly like the pictures, a dull scale protruding from her wrist, the skin around it dry and cracked.
Collei well and truly loses it.
She thinks she might scream. She scratches her wrist until the skin is torn and bloody. The scale remains, rooted deeply in her flesh. Already the movement of that hand feels a little slow, a little stiff. Collei sobs herself to sleep.
The next day, Collei decides she must do something about it. In a wild burst of desperation, she grips the scale with fingers and teeth and pulls and pulls and pulls. It hurts. It hurts badly. Pulling at the scale tugs at something deep in her wrist. Collei is barely lucid enough to know this is not a good idea, but she’s frantic like an animal in a trap and she just wants it gone. When she feels it finally start to give, Collei has to double over on the cell floor, dry-heaving with the pain. She feels ill. She should stop. Collei grits her teeth and continues, and with a sick squelch the scale tears from her flesh. Collei’s vision goes white with agony. She falls to her hands and knees and vomits out what little gruel is in her stomach.
Trembling, she turns her hand over to look. The wound it's left in her wrist is deep, deeper than she imagined. Blood streams down her wrist. She twitches her fingers and realizes they are, if anything, more stiff than before. Collei hunches over her hand and sobs herself to sleep again.
The next day, there are two more dark bumps under the skin on the other wrist.
Collei doesn’t tear them out again. There would be no point. They're beginning to crowd up faster than she could ever get rid of them. She takes to compulsively running her hands over her body for any sign of scales growing elsewhere, though she hasn't noticed any - yet. Sometimes she huddles in the corner rocking back and forth. Sometimes she claws at her wrists even though it only causes her pain. Collei begins to despair. Surely the Doctor hasn’t given up on her entirely? Surely, surely she’s still useful enough to him that he won’t let her die down here covered in scales, unrecognizable?
By the time he appears before her again, Collei is far past ready to admit defeat. He's as perfectly composed as always, looking down on her with an indulgent smirk from behind his mask. “Hello, Collei. What have we learned?” he asks idly.
Collei scrambles up to the bars, no pride or shame left in her. She holds her wrists up to him and begs, “Fix it! Fix it, fix it, I was wrong, you have to fix me.”
The Doctor pauses, raising an eyebrow. “Oh? And here I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Collei swallows. She hates him more than she’s ever hated anything, but she understands now that she needs him. “Please,” she whispers shakily.
The Doctor remains unaffected. “You may be a valuable subject, but my patience is not unlimited. I gave you a rare opportunity, and you threw it back in my face. You wasted my time, which is the most valuable resource of all, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’m sorry!” Collei bursts out, and the worst part is that she almost actually is. Her resentment evaporates into a blistering terror that he’ll discard her forever, never mind that a few weeks ago that was her life’s dream. He just keeps watching, like he’s waiting for something more, and Collei insists, “I’ll behave from now on. I - I know you’re right, I believe you, I’m sorry.”
For a moment longer the Doctor still says nothing, and Collei begins to cringe back despairingly. But finally he heaves a great sigh. “Oh, alright,” he says, and then he’s unlocking the cell door, and Collei’s heart soars with hope. “But Collei my dear, I expect a good deal more gratitude from you from now on. Wouldn’t you say that’s reasonable?”
Collei nods, frantically, miserably. She was right from the start, she should never have told him her name if he was going to use it like this, but it’s too late. Collei understands now that it was too late for her from the moment of her birth. She scrambles to her feet and follows him out of the cell, her entire life’s shape changing and compressing ahead of her.
When Collei is twelve and a half years old, she gives up on escape.
*
It isn’t so bad. Really, it isn’t.
The Doctor is more than a little displeased with the damage to her wrist - “What have you done to yourself?” he mutters incredulously, turning it this way and that in his grip. He informs her that she could have had no lasting consequences, but due to her hysteria, she has sustained permanent nerve damage. Mostly her wrist is just a bit numb, twinging or tingling when she moves it a certain way, and those fingers are a little less dexterous than they were before. “You’re lucky it wasn’t your dominant hand,” he grumbles, “we might’ve had to replace it,” and Collei is far too petrified to ask what he means by that.
But true to the Doctor’s word, within a month of resuming his regimen, the remaining scales shrivel and crumble away, leaving only a smattering of pitted scars in their wake.
After that, the Doctor bestows a Pyro Delusion upon her and sets her loose in Zapolyarny Palace with only a few rules to follow. Collei has to show up to the labs once a week for her treatment, and of course for whatever else he feels like doing, but usually he tacks it on to her standing appointment and doesn’t call for her more than once a week. She’s not supposed to go to any other doctor aside from him - “it’d contaminate the data, you see” - so she tries hard not to get injured any extra. Fear and self-disgust well up within her every time she has to deliver herself to his doorstep, but now the idea of going without treatment frightens her more.
He wasn’t lying about this being a “promotion”. This existence is much, much better than the one she had before. She’s treated almost like a person. No chains, no cages; she gets to move around and stretch her legs. She gets her own bed now, and three square meals a day of all sorts of food, and so many things to do that aren’t just sitting around bored waiting for the next thing that’ll hurt her.
But it’s all a lot to adjust to. “Don’t cause trouble for the Regrator,” Il Dottore said when he set her loose from the labs, and this has turned out to be by far the hardest of his stipulations to follow. Apparently, she has technically been transferred under the 9th Harbinger, Pantalone. “For safekeeping,” the Doctor said, waving a hand in the air; “I don’t have the time to keep tabs on you every day.”
Despite saying this, the Regrator doesn’t pay her any particular attention. Collei enters the ranks and is expected to perform the same duties as the other Fatui recruits. No one explains what exactly that means, so she just tries to copy the people around her as best as possible.
But there is something terribly wrong with Collei. She doesn’t know how to act around people at all. She struggles to understand what they're communicating, what to expect from them, what they expect from her. Her words will dry up in her throat or come out in a stammering inarticulate flurry, and that's when she's not baring her teeth and growling at the threat. She spends every moment feeling like either a terrified prey animal or a muzzled predator. Sometimes she secretly, shamefully, finds that she could almost miss the simplicity of her cage, and that’s how she knows she is permanently messed up in the head.
She really is trying her best, but she keeps making mistakes. There's so much to learn and no one to teach her. She struggles to perform even the simple tasks she’s assigned, like standing guard at a door or carrying boxes back and forth or fetching items for the Regrator off a list while trying not to let on that she can’t read because she doesn’t want to seem even more stupid and useless than she already does. Sometimes Collei will get overwhelmed and hide in her bunk, and then suddenly realize she's spaced out and somehow hours have passed and she hasn’t completed her tasks. Or - or someone will touch her, clap her on the shoulder or brush past her in a crowd or grab her by the arm to stop her from doing something wrong. Sometimes she’ll just freeze, blood turning to ice in her veins, but sometimes she’ll explode. And not just metaphorically. After the second time she screams Don’t touch me!, black fire blasting out from under her skin, most people give her a wide berth.
Collei's frustration and anger seems to burst out at the worst possible moments. It boils inside her at every moment, knowing that she’s working for the Fatui and that everyone around her is, too. She tries her best to bury that rage, knowing it isn't helpful anymore, that she needs to keep her head down and just get through it, make sure the hindrance she poses doesn't outweigh her usefulness. If she becomes too much trouble for the Doctor to bother with, he will let her die. But it turns out it's not so easy to box away the feral thing she became to keep herself alive.
It doesn't help that the other teenage recruits don't like her much; the youngest is still a couple years older than her, and they seem to be jealous that she's so young but shown such "favor", already in possession of a Delusion. She could tell them it's really not a good thing, if they cared to listen. And Collei knows she doesn’t look like much, always hunching her shoulders and trembling nervously and not meeting anyone’s eye- but whenever anyone tries to actually pick on her, all that repressed rage comes surging to the surface. She may have to swallow down her own survival instincts to go back to the Doctor again and again, but she doesn’t have to let anyone else push her around. When it comes down to it, no one else is even half so scary as the Doctor.
...But maybe she goes a little overboard sometimes. Maybe she can’t entirely control herself. And eventually there’s an incident where the offending party doesn’t get away with only burns. Instead, she… mostly-on-accident scorches two Fatui grunts to death.
Collei feels - not bad, exactly. They chose to join the Fatui, and they chose to harass her. But she is a little… ashamed, maybe, that she couldn’t keep a lid on her issues. Mostly she’s worried that the Regrator will tell the Doctor how much hassle she’s been and get her in trouble.
But when she’s dragged before Pantalone, he just seems exasperated. “I don’t know what Dottore was thinking,” he complains, more to the air than to Collei. Rubbing his temples, he tells his assistant, “Transfer her somewhere else, I don’t care where. I don’t have time to babysit Dottore’s ill-adjusted pets. Let her be another Harbinger’s problem for awhile- I doubt he’ll even notice.” Collei bites her tongue, though the anger and humiliation boil up in her again at the way he talks about her. (She knows his description isn’t even exactly wrong.)
The assistant leads her off and gathers another round of paperwork she can’t read. “Lord Pantalone said it didn’t matter where, right? There are always empty spots in the Balladeer’s ranks. That’d be easiest,” he rambles to himself. He signs the paperwork, then pauses and eyes her apprehensively, as if he feels a tiny bit bad about what he just did. “...Good luck, kid.”
*
When Collei is thirteen years old, she meets Scaramouche.