Chapter Text
When Scaramouche first joined the Fatui, he already understood he was nothing but a weapon. He was furious at the world, and a mechanical toy for Dottore to sink his teeth into, and he was useful. To be useful was enough for him. Pierro had told him Snezhnaya had never seen anything like him. Il Dottore bluntly told him he would tear him apart if it meant learning more about Khaenri’ahn technology, and Scaramouche had appreciated the honesty.
He learnt very quickly just how gruesome the Fatui actually were. There’s no real trust between any of his mercenary colleagues. Most of them couldn’t care less about the Tsaritsa and her lofty goals, all content to use infinite resources and power to fuel their own egos and act on their own plans. They would lie, and corrupt, and violate. Scaramouche grew used to the way they use each other for personal gain. He got used to the facades, the cover-ups, the sting of Dottore’s scalpel slicing him open until his blood splattered the sterile walls and his ears rung.
When Tartaglia joins the Harbingers, endlessly loyal to his Archon and without a lying bone in his body, Scaramouche doesn’t really get it. Pulcinella first mentions his desire to promote the boy in one of the hundreds of Harbinger banquets. He speaks of a young man who isn’t a strategist, who isn’t a researcher, who’s only as strong as an average citizen with baggage from the Abyss. Nothing about this lower-rank suggests he’s anything special and yet Pulcinella talks as if he’s a useful asset to the operation. It’s… incredibly confusing.
And then Scaramouche actually meets Tartaglia. His eyes sparkle as if he’s excited to serve his Archon more efficiently, and he doesn’t even seem to be putting up any act, wearing his heart on his sleeve and greeting his colleagues who clearly find him disposable at best, and it’s infuriating. This is who Pulcinella vouched for? Has he no standards at all?
And then he overhears the two talking about family and protection and Pulcinella’s word, which is worthless and dependent entirely on what benefits him most at any given time, and Scaramouche finally gets it. Tartaglia is ammunition. The next time the Fatui need someone disposable and reckless enough to get himself killed, better have it be this new addition to the team than someone who actually matters to the Tsaritsa’s cause. He won’t even have any way to say no, because the safety of his precious family is only guaranteed as long as Pulcinella wants it to be.
Scaramouche scoffs. That poor thing. He’ll be dead before he knows it.
But then, he lives. He lives and lives and lives, and he tears Scaramouche apart just to learn how to love him better, and Scaramouche meets Childe’s family because he can’t bring himself to say no.
They all have Childe’s vibrant hair and freckled nose and easy laughter. They look at Scaramouche like he’s actually good for Childe, so easily trusting and welcoming and infinitely kind because they’ve never had reason to not be any of those things before.
And… And Childe lets them. Which is worse. It’s the worst thing he could ever do. Childe’s family might not know how vulnerable they are, but Childe does. He knows he’s set themselves up for constant risk. He knows he’s always one poorly-timed decision away from dying violently and lonely in a different nation, and his parents will never know what truly happened, and they’ll be left to rot at the mercy of Pulcinella, who’s only in his position because few are as politically ruthless as he is.
When they get back from their trip, Childe is warm and happy by his side. He takes Scaramouche’s hat off himself just to run his slender hands through the soft strands, and he won’t stop smiling. Scaramouche has never seen him this content. It makes a hum of unease run through him. Childe notices, because he tugs at Scaramouche’s hair to get him to look his way. “They loved you, you know.”
Scaramouche knows. That’s not the problem. The problem is they shouldn’t have. If they knew who he is, the danger he poses to their pristine serenity, they would have fled at the sight of him. At the sight of both of them. But they don’t know, not really. They don’t know their adored son and older brother has killed enough men that he can do it with his eyes closed. They don’t know Scaramouche doesn’t kill because he’s never had to, always having the strategic upper hand to manipulate politicians into leading to their demise all by themselves. They don’t know Pulcinella is so, so much worse than either of them.
“You’re going to be the death of your family.” Scaramouche states, matter-of-factly. Childe’s gentle petting stills. The light in his eyes dies.
“What?” His tone is cold. Harsh. Scaramouche knows just by it that he’s ruined everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s furious.
“Do you actually think your secrecy is going to keep them safe? You’re a Harbinger. They’re never going to be free from you.”
Childe’s glare on him is lethal. “Don’t you dare speak on my family.”
Scaramouche scoffs. “Bit too late for that, isn’t it?”
“I- You’re using our trip against me?!”
“What if I wanted to? I know where they live. I know they keep a spare key to the front door under the mat. I know how to leave them vulnerable-“
“What is wrong with you?” Childe raises his voice, taking a step back like he can’t believe who he’s standing next to.
“I know a high-ranking Fatui official finds their safety of such dire importance that he’ll do anything to keep them alive and well. What if I- what if anyone wanted to take advantage of that? What would you do then?”
Childe squints. “Pulcinella would protect them-“
Scaramouche groans in frustration. “Pulcinella is who you should be protecting them from! You can’t possibly think he’s sponsoring you out of the kindness of his heart?”
Childe shakes his head. “He says I’m of use to him.”
That’s so stupid- “What use would the Fifth Harbinger get from you?!”
Childe flinches as if the words were a physical blow. Scaramouche, stupidly, wants to backtrack. He had no- he didn’t mean to be cruel. Not with him.
“That’s, what I mean is you’re part of the most powerful political organization in Teyvat. You can’t depend on kindness. You need strategy. You can’t trust Pulcinella.”
“So why should I trust you?”
Because… because Scaramouche sees the way Childe is holding back tears and considers marching up to the mayor and killing him his own damn self. “… You shouldn’t.”
The other deflates with one exhausted sigh. “Bit too late for that.” Childe paces until he’s sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. He looks so defeated and all Scaramouche can do is watch. “What… do you suggest I do, Scaramouche?”
Scaramouche genuinely considers it. Childe can’t just leave the Harbingers, since he has too much confidential information, so that’s out of the picture. If he tells his family the entire truth, he’d involve them in matters much too important and much too dangerous for a humble family from Morepesok. If Childe expresses his concerns to Pulcinella, it would be seen as mistrust on his part. They technically work for the same causes. There’s no reason for him to not want Pulcinella ‘protecting’ his family.
Childe should completely cut his family off and abandon his past life once and for all, maybe even have them relocate somewhere he can’t find with no way to contact them. That’s the safest they could ever get. But Scaramouche knows Childe. Childe loves them too much to ever keep them away from his reach. And he knows Childe’s family. They love him too much to survive without him.
Oh. There’s nothing Childe can do.
Childe seems to pick up on Scaramouche racking his brain to come up with anything, because he leans over to loosely grab his hand. He pulls Scaramouche towards him delicately, but certainly. “Look, I know you’re worried,” Scaramouche lets himself be pulled as he dumbly stares at their hands. Worried? Is that what’s happening? Scaramouche is worried about Childe and his stupid family? “But this is my problem.”
“Okay,” Scaramouche half-whispers as Childe lays them both down.
“There’s no way to change things now.” He guides the back of Scaramouche’s head until he’s safely tucked under his chin. “I take what I can get.”
“Okay,” Scaramouche is worried. That’s why he was yelling. That’s why he feels so wrong.
“And I’m tired. I don’t want to fight.” Childe wraps his arms around Scaramouche’s waist and drags him impossibly closer. “I just want this, right now. Okay?”
“Okay.”
They arrive from their trip early in the day, so there’s still sunlight coming in from behind the blinds, but Childe falls asleep and Scaramouche doesn’t move away.
Something akin to nervousness buzzes in Scaramouche’s chest. This can’t be right. He should never have allowed himself to get to such a place of vulnerability that any of this happens. He has plans for his life. He’s yet to prove his worth, yet to accomplish something meaningful, yet to conquer, once and for all. He shouldn’t be held back by anything. This isn’t going to last.
Childe is barely awake, but he still sleepily pushes Scaramouche’s fringe aside and places a warm brush of his lips on the skin below.
Scaramouche, in return, delicately draws patterns with his nails on the exposed skin of Childe’s hip the way he knows Childe likes it. Just because he can, just because it’s second nature at this point. Childe makes a little hmm noise and promptly falls back asleep.
Scaramouche knows this won’t, can’t last. But he’ll take what he can get.
Yoimiya beams at him when she recognizes who he is. “Tartaglia! What are you doing back in Inazuma?”
She’s holding a box packed to the brim with fireworks, and she turns to him so fast that a couple passing by flinches at the movement. Either she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because she waves her arms around as best she can to greet him. Childe had forgotten how much she reminded him of his older sister.
“Well, I’m actually looking for something,” Yoimiya perks up at that, clearly excited to help. “I think it’s in Tatarasuna.”
Childe wants to say that he’s actually looking for a someone, but he can’t. Yoimiya is friendly enough, but she isn’t going to believe him since-
“Tatarasuna?” She frowns. “That place has been abandoned for years. It’s um, pretty radioactive.”
He knows that. Organizing a team to investigate the Mikage Furnace had been a hassle and a half due to the high possibility of casualties. Dottore had informed them of the incurable illness that had plagued the island after the spread of Tatarigami energy, and Childe had felt a bit queasy at the mere idea of sending their men, good, honest men, there. His opinion was of little matter. Think what we could do if we could harness that power, Dottore had said. Think of the research. Always, always the research. Dottore cared for little else.
His negotiating got enough funding to keep troops stationed there for months.
“Yeah,” Childe begins, but he doesn’t have much to say. “Yeah.”
She places the box down with a sympathetic hum. “I see. Do you know where in Tatarasuna it might be? Maybe it’s not that close to the danger zone.”
Childe laughs drily. “Somewhere with a lot of water?”
Yoimiya’s eyes widen. “Woah, woah. Hold on. You want to go near Tatarasuna’s water supply?”
He read the reports. He knows the case of a Skirmisher who accidentally stepped in a puddle during his stay on the island, and how his shoe had melted so fast he barely had time to rip it out of his foot before it reached skin. But none of that really matters, does it? He knows what he has to do. His head rings, screams with the knowledge of a singular - S, signed at the end of the paper tucked safely in his pocket.
Yoimiya has her hands up like she’s calming down a frightened animal, as if she’s worried he’ll run into Tatarasuna right now if she isn’t prepared to stop him. “Tartaglia?”
Childe looks in her eyes, and the raw sincerity in his gaze makes her lower her arms, even a little. “Yoimiya. I have to.”
She searches his face, and seemingly finds nothing there, because she sighs in defeat. “Okay.” She’s quiet for only an instant before her expression changes from one of concern to one of determination. “But you shouldn’t go alone.”
“What?”
Yoimiya nods softly, more to herself than to Childe, before disappearing into her house. She comes out a minute later, halfway through writing something on a crumpled piece of paper. “My friend, General Gorou, has a fleet in Yashiori Island. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind letting some of them accompany you.” She hands him the paper and Childe realizes it’s a letter explaining the situation. “Just say Yoimiya sent you.”
Childe shakes his head. “Yoimiya, I couldn’t-“
She picks his hand and places the letter in it herself. “Please, Tartaglia. Your family is so far away, it would be terrible if something happened to you with no one to help.”
Childe’s having a terrible couple of months, and the lack of control he has over his memories is as scary as it is isolating, and here is someone he’s only ever spoken to once offering to help him just because she can. She doesn’t even ask what it is he’s searching for, granting him privacy he didn’t even explicitly demand, and he’s so grateful. For one horrifying second, he thinks he might cry.
“Are you sure it won’t be an issue?”
Yoimiya grins. “The resistance is going a little stir-crazy waiting for something to do, anyway. Besides, the General owes me a favor.”
Two days later, Childe is making his way to Tatarasuna with three Watatsumi Army men, all who look as nervous to be there as Childe feels. Childe is certain they must be at the very least competent, if they survived the war without becoming victims of the Fatui’s smuggling operation, but they certainly don’t seem the part. One of them keeps startling at the slightest of sounds as if he expects Tatarasuna’s radioactivity to jump at him.
“I know Yoimiya made us those special fireworks for the General’s birthday party last month, but isn’t this still asking a bit too much of us?” He asks, clutching his polearm close to his chest.
The soldier next to him rolls his eyes. “Would you just-“ He groans. “General Gorou told us most of the Electro energy has already been cleared. We just need to steer clear of the stream that runs through the island.”
“S-Still! Don’t you think the meaning of ‘favor’ here is a little disproportionate?”
“You volunteered to come with us-“
The two start bickering back and forth and the third man, clearly the youngest yet also clearly accustomed to this behavior, shoots Childe an apologetic glance.
Childe is too strung up too care. He’s on his third nation, blindly searching for distant memories and miniscule clues. He’s worried his luck will run out. How much longer does he need to go on this search? Is he doomed to touching every corner of the universe just for an answer, a solution, a name? Does he even want to know what happened?
His head is pounding, his body aches from the incessant traveling. He’s only carrying his bow. Frighteningly, Childe realizes that if anything does happen to them, he’ll have to be protected rather than the other way around. He knows he’s weaker, knows General Gorou’s eyes sat on the dark bags under his eyes for longer than he probably intended to. His body is in a fight against his own mind, seemingly unable to reconcile the differences between the two. Do his hands remember the warmth of his lover’s fingers wrapped around his? Do his feet remember the rhythm of walking by his side? Will he ever catch up with them?
“We’re here.” The youngest boy says.
They are. The desolate village they’ve reached circles the furnace, disabled yet still thrumming with power, willing to erupt at any moment. Childe’s eyes swim over the scene, wooden houses falling apart from years of disuse, and he already knows: he won’t find him here. The air around them hums with electricity, the hairs on Childe’s arms raise, and he needs to get closer.
He crosses the shoddy bridge resolutely, choosing to ignore the way the soldiers hesitate ever so slightly before accompanying him. The wood trembles under the combined weight, Childe keeps moving until the huge contraption is just an arm away, casting his whole body in a sickly purple hue.
“Um,” The scared one speaks again. “What now?”
Childe… doesn’t know. He’s never had to fight for his memories to resurface. They catch up to him before he can even tell it’s happening, and then just like that, they’re gone.
He turns to the trio who are all staring at him impatiently. He realizes, feeling guilty, that they have nothing to do with whatever this is.
“Just… give me a second, alright?”
Childe closes his eyes and breathes in deep. He thinks of violet eyes, the slightest of smiles, a hand in his, shoulder to shoulder. He fabricates a memory of him, of both of them, right here in hopes his brain will catch on to what he wants. He can’t help the way he shuts his eyes a little tighter, breathes a little harder. Please. He begs. But he’s not sure who he’s even asking. Please, let me remember something.
He tries again. Childe thinks of a cocky chuckle, of cursive writing, of love so big it fights for space inside him.
Nothing happens.
Nothing happens.
He shuts his eyes a little tighter. Maybe if he just- violet eyes, a smile, a hand in his-
His eyes jump open at the sound of thunder. The sky has gotten significantly darker than when they first arrived. “Tartaglia,” No, no no no no- “we should probably head back before the weather gets any worse.”
Childe’s blood runs cold. This can’t be it. This can’t be all he has. Something has to happen, he has no other leads, there’s nothing else for him.
He knows Tatarasuna is significant. He knows in the way his body knows. He’s been here before. He just needs to remember. Violet eyes, a smile, a hand in his. Why isn’t it working? What is being kept from him? Whatever it is, he can take it. Nothing will hurt more than its absence.
Childe, hysterically, inches his body until he sees the stream all the way down. It taunts him in its distance, barely a body of water, but just enough for him to tell: it might work.
He braces himself (violet eyes, a smile, a hand in his), gets his bow so it’ll bear the brunt of the fall, hears the men behind him scream.
Childe jumps off the ledge.
It starts raining halfway through his descent. The downpour is so heavy that his clothes are already soaked before he even reaches the ground. He lands with a grunt, and he’s sure he must have sprained something, but he doesn’t care. He limps as fast as he can, but he’s slow and the rain is making the sand cling to his body.
(Violet eyes, a smile, a hand in his.)
He only stops when he’s by the water, seeing his desperate reflection look back up at him in the murky water.
“Wait!” He hears the soldiers land behind him. Childe rushes to touch the stream, but they team up to hold his arms back and he’s too weak to fight back against their restraints, but he has to, violet eyes, violet eyes, violet eyes,
He hears thunder, and then he’s out.
When Childe finally finds him, he’s not looking in Childe’s direction. Instead, his head is tilted upwards at Mikage Furnace, and Childe wonders just how long he’s been standing there.
Childe can’t help but let out a small sigh of relief. “Where have you been?”
The man has been missing for months. Childe knows it must mean he’s a traitor of the Fatui. Still, he’s more than that. He means more than that. If the circumstances were any better, he would have already rushed forward to kiss him the way they always do.
Until… he turns around and the expression on his face sends a chill down Childe’s spine. His eyes are wide and distant, his gaze on Childe not really there. He looks haunted.
“I…” The traitor, Childe reminds himself, says breathlessly. “I did it.”
He’s holding the Gnosis in his hands so tightly his nails are drawing blood from his palm and it stains the sand. Childe’s not sure he’s even noticed. It’s. This is bad. Something’s wrong.
“Did what?” He asks, not sure if he even should. Childe feels a jab of irrational fear. But that’s ridiculous, it’s just him, isn’t it? Just them? “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“So what?”
Childe steps back in shock. So what? He’s gone rogue from the Harbingers and it’s ‘so what’? He disappeared and let Childe think he was gone forever and it’s so fucking what? “Are you serious?”
He’s not even looking at Childe. He’s monitoring the Gnosis, glowing and powerful, in his grasp like he’s afraid it’ll disappear. Even from this distance, it’s obvious his body is shaking.
“I have it. Finally. Finally. What I’ve needed my entire worthless life.”
The fear in his bones hardens into anger. So all of this is because… “You still think you can become a god?”
Then, and only then, does the puppet take the sight of Childe in. His glare is lethal. It’s like he wants Childe dead. Maybe he does. “Think?”
Childe rolls his eyes. He should be more careful, but he’s never been afraid of him, and he’s definitely going to start now. “You think that just because you got your hands on a Gnosis, that you’ll accomplish anything?”
“It’s my destiny.” He says, cold and monotone, like he’s trying to convince himself, too. He doesn’t sound human. He doesn’t look human. His wild eyes and trembling fingers are closer to that of a savage animal. “It’s what I was made for.”
God. Childe wants to scream. “If you were doing what you were made for, you’d still be rotting in a discarded temple somewhere!”
The puppet growls, and the sky darkens with thunder when he does so. It startles them both, but he quickly chokes out a hysterical laugh in the direction of the Gnosis. He did that. It excites him just as much as it concerns Childe.
“Nevermind. This discussion is useless. Look at what I can do.”
Childe’s eyes sting. There’s a thousand things he wants to say. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You’re not acting like yourself. You’re scaring me. I’ve never been as happy as I am when I’m with you. I love you. Isn’t your life in the Fatui enough? Am I not enough? What’s wrong with you?
Instead, he chokes out: ‘And us?’
And then he, the person Childe has loved helplessly and endlessly for years, scoffs at him as if he’s ridiculous for even implying as such. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing in my life has mattered,” He holds the Gnosis a little tighter. “Until now.”
A quick, painful understanding settles itself in Childe’s heart all at once when he hears that.
He’s lost him forever.
It doesn’t matter what he says, how much reason he tries to instill into the desperate, frantic mind of the one in front of him, he’ll always lose. Something in him breaks. Childe has to push down a sob. It hurts because he knows Scaramouche loves him. Love is the entire fucking reason he’s being pushed away. Love is the obstacle to glory. Love is what Scaramouche spent hundreds of years denying to himself, and he must think Childe guilty for ever trying to convince him otherwise.
Now? Now he’s as close to an empty vessel as he's ever gotten. He’s erratic and impulsive and scrubbing himself clean of everything to start anew. He’s gone. Scaramouche is no more, killed by himself somewhere along the way, and all Childe can do is grieve.
Childe hates himself a little bit, but he still has to know. “Where will you go?”
“Sumeru.”
Childe wants to… he doesn’t even know. He wants to yell in Scaramouche’s face that he’s going to get himself killed. He wants to pick a fight until he dies at the hands of the only person he’s ever loved. He wants to walk back into the Abyss. He desperately wants to drag Scaramouche home and treat him so gently, so vulnerably, that he snaps out of it. He wants love to be enough. God, how he wishes love would be enough.
But love won’t save him. Hate won’t either. There’s no getting him back.
Childe is the first to walk away.
Scaramouche doesn’t stop him.