Chapter Text
He walked through the halls of Zapolyarny Palace so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
After a few weeks, his wrist was almost fully healed by now and the brand mark on his leg finally stopped bleeding too.
And with the gloves, it became easier to pretend Dottore never ripped off his fingernails in the first place.
It's fine.
It's gonna be fine...
Just complete Dottore's errands, make sure he's satisfied and everything will be... okay.
The first person he went to was the Rooster.
Dottore wanted him to pick up some things the Rooster had for him. He was not told what they were. The Rooster would appearantly know and that was enough.
He didn’t say anything but he noticed the Rooster looked uncharacteristically nervous.
The old man didn’t say much to him. Just gave him a bag of the things Dottore wanted and told him to get out of his office. The segment decided not to question it and just did as he was told.
It eas safer this way.
Next stop was Marionette.
The moment he entered her workshop, he could feel multiple eyes on him even though most of them were machines.
Sandrone sat at the head of a table, surrounded by robots of all sizes, wearing tiny hats. Pulonia stood nearby carrying a tray in one hand.
"You’re interrupting tea time!", Sandrone snapped at him.
"...Apologies." He said. "The Doctor wanted me to pick up some machines you fixed for him."
Sandrone looked annoyed. "Fine... I'll get them...", she said. "But first..."
She suddenly picked up a tray of cookies and held them out to the segment. "You're gonna have to try my homemade cookies!", she said, sounding 100% serious.
"...the Doctor forbid me from eating sugar." , he responded. The Doctor called it inefficient and bad for the brain. He was already unable to connect to the hivemind. The Doctor would no fpubt loose it if he discovered the segment had poisoned his brain with this.
Sandrone did not back down. "Well Scaramouche said my cookies taste like sand, so if Dottore wants those devices back, he better make an exception!", she explained harshly.
In the end, he ate one cookie...
...
...okay, he ate two.
When he went to pick up Dottore’s funds for this month, Pantalone suprisingly made conversation.
"Just as a heads up, Dottore is very likely to blow all the money halfway through the month and then pester you about pestering me for extra funds." The Regrator told him. "Please let him know that this is all he get's for the month and not a single mora more."
The segment nodded and promptly turned to leave the room...
"Also...", Pantalone continued.
He turned back towards the Regrator, expecting his next words.
"Did Dottore do anything to the allowance I had given you?", the Harbinger asked, smiling.
"...he took it." The segment replied.
"Aah... in that case I'll draft a formal letter urging him to pay me back the money.", the older man replied, almost excited. "I'll let you know when it's finished."
The segment was not sure how to respond to that and just nodded.
"And if he has a problem with anything I just said, then he may submit a complaint form.", the Regrator added.
The segment tilted his head.
"...There’s a complaint form?"
Pantalone smiled.
"No."
"Regrator said this is all you get for the month and not a mora more.", he said, dropping the bag of mora on the table.
Dottore clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"As expected from that cheapstake.", the Doctor murmured. "Anything else that chain-smoker said?"
"He also said it's your own fault.", the segment said calmly.
Dottore rolled his eyes behind his mask.
"And he is currently crafting a legal paper stating if you don't pay him back the allowance he gave me, he will buy a ruin guard factory and gift all the rights to Segment Delta."
Now dottore looked up from his work. "...Segment Delta is 10 years old."
"And has a vendetta against you.", the segment explained.
"...a vendetta?" Dottore asked, genuinely suprised. What vendetta is a 10 year old kid suppose to have against him that warrants aquiring an army of ruin guards...?
... okay, for him it actually makes sense.
"The Damselette mentioned you took away his toys." The segment explained.
Scaramouche somehow managed to call in a meeting with every harbinger involved in their secret operation. He insisted he had some major discovery that would certainly be usefull for their grand plan.
"Through extensive research..." the balladeer explained proudly. Nobody trusted that phrasing. "I have discovered a way to get the segment away from Dottore without drawing any suspicion."
"...What did you do?" Arlecchino asked flatly.
Scaramouche grinned. "I annoyed Dottore until he sent the kid to make me stop."
A deafening silence suddenly fell over the room.
"...how?"
"Oh, you know... I press a few big red buttons, pull on wires, misplace tools for fun, ask him annoying questions...", Scaramouche explained "Until he snaps and tells the little segment to keep me busy before I "Accidentally" detonate his lab." He made quotation mark gestures with his fingers.
"He does that?" Tartaglia asked.
"Sometimes." Scaramouche leaned back smugly. "Apparently this specific segment is the ONLY one Dottore trusts to be in a room with me unsupervised."
"...Why?" Columbina asked softly.
Scaramouche looked deeply pleased with himself. "Because every other one eventually tries to stab me."
"Yes... I am very certain you are the one in constant danger when in the same room as Dottore’s segments.", Signora said, voice a mix of sarcasm and deadpan energy.
Tartaglia broke out into laughter.
"Dude... I wish i could've seen that...!", the ginger said through laughter.
Scaramouche turned towards Tartaglia. "Wanna join?", he asked, smirking.
Tartaglia smiled excitedly.
Every other harbinger in that room lost faith in their organisation. Just for a moment.
It was on one random day. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except Scaramouche had been annoying the doctor regularly over the last few days. Always coming into the lab without permission, pressing buttons, playing with fire, and pouring strange liquids into the doctor's drink...
And soon after, Tartaglia seems to have picked it up from the Balladeer.
Dottore was sure this was their revenge for the way he appearantly "abuses" his propertyin their eyes.
"Go keep Tartaglia busy. I don’t want him poking around my lab again."
That was all Dottore had told him. He didn’t need to say anything else.
It didn’t take long to find him. The ginger lounged in the training grounds, smirking as always.
"Well, if it isn't Dottore's errand boy!" he said, twirling his bow casually.
He didn’t respond.
Childe still saw through him. He knew why Dottore send him here.
Scaramouche’s plan actually worked!
At first, the arrangement was purely practical.
The segment followed Tartaglia around.
Quietly.
Watching.
Occasionally stopping him from touching dangerous things....
...Or from provoking other Fatui.
...Or from trying to duel anything that has a pulse.
Which happened alarmingly often.
But then something unexpected happened....
"Wanna sparr?"
The wuestion came put of nowhere, asked in the middle of the training grounds as Tartaglia was holding a random polearm.
Against his better judgement, the segment agreed.
...He doesn't remember much about what happened after that point.
He later learned that by the time Capitano arrived after hearing the noise, half the training grounds were destroyed.
Several weapon racks were embedded in walls.
There was a spear sticking out of the ceiling somehow.
And Tartaglia was flat on his back staring at the sky wheezing with laughter while bleeding from at least six different places.
Nearby, the segment stood over him breathing hard.
His eyes were actually not empty or afraid for once.
For once, they actually looked bright.
Excited.
Alive.
The Captain has seen many horrors in his life. Nothing scares him so easily anymore. Ask him to proove his courage, he'll go and challenge the Pryo Archon to a swordfight.
But right now?
One look in the segments eyes and he felt shivers creeping up his spine.
The Harbingers’ council chamber smelled faintly of parchment, ink, and expensive leather. Dottore sat in his usual posture, unnervingly calm, while the rest of the Fatui erupted in a symphony of outrage.
"Four broken ribs, a concussion, a broken arm, multiple stab wounds, a spear in the shoulder... and you fail to see why this is a problem?" Pantalone’s voice was icy, shaking only slightly from suppressed fury.
"Don’t forget the bite wounds!" Childe interjected, grinning through bandages. "Lil comrade took it personal when I asked if he had only bark and no bite."
That had been an understatement.
The kid fought like a cornered animal.
Dottore’s expression did not change. Calmly, he leaned back. "I fail to understand why I am being lectured. It wasn’t I who—"
Arlecchino cut him off, eyes narrowing. "Tell me, Dottore. Who do you think did your segment learn this behaviour from?"
Dottore’s calmness wavered for the briefest second.
"Incase you didn't know, you are pretty much a textbook example of 'morally bankrupt', a walking war crime and if child torture were a science, you'd have a doctorate in it." Arlecchino explained. "Of course a lab-grown kid with little to no life experience is not gonna know any better, if 90% of all the human interactions this kid is getting is with people like you."
"You created this… monster. And then you left it unsupervised with him of all people?", the Rooster spoke, pointing at Childe.
"Monster?" Childe muttered, smirking. "I think he’s fun. Just saying."
Pierro’s voice cut through, low and measured:
"If you can’t control your creations, don’t let them roam freely."
For Dottore, it was another jab to his ego.
But for the segment, crouched in the shadowed corridor outside the chamber, the word pierced through everything else.
Free.
He remembered that word from the way the Doctor used it.
When the Doctor told him he doesn't have the freedom to do as he pleases.
He didn’t understand it… not fully.
But he felt the weight of it, strange and tantalizing, like the edge of a sensation he’d never been allowed to experience.
Freedom.
Inside, the lecture continued.
Pantalone listed every expense, Signora rolled her eyes at Dottore’s impudence, Pulcinella criticized resource allocation, Arlecchino leaned in for dramatic effect, and Sandrone and Scaramouche were openly stifling laughter at Dottore’s perfectly calm, utterly flustered protests.
Outside the chamber, the segment's hands curled into fists. He didn’t know what freedom felt like. But he knew it was something he wanted.
And he knew he wouldn’t find it here.
Dottore leaned back in his chair, silent for longer than anyone dared to breathe.
The other Harbingers had left hours ago, satisfied that he’d been properly chewed out. Panthalone’s demands still echoed in his head, Pulcinella’s constraints weighed on his resources, and Scaramouche and Sandrone’s smirks lingered like a bad aftertaste.
And even after all the conditioning, Dottore’s newest segment was still… himself. Unconnected. Uncontrollable. Unmanageable.
"Failure..." Dottore whispered. The word was clinical, almost serene. Not cruel, just factual.
Spoken with the calmness of a man indifferent to life... even the ones he creates himself.
The secret meeting had already gone off the rails.
Again.
And this time, Scaramouche and Sandrone had nothing to do with it.
They were in a dire situation.
Thanks to Tartaglia, Dottore had now run out of patience with his segment and was now considering decomissioning it for good.
Now they were in a race against time.
"I said I'm sorry!!" Childe exclaims bashfully.
Meanwhile, the Harbinger's were too busy focusing of Capitano. A map of the Zapolyarny Palace covered one wall ehind the Captain. Routes, schedules, guard rotations, contingency plans...
And absolutely none of it addressed the main issue.
"This is Dottore we are dealing with.", Capitano said, folding his arms. "We require information."
The room quieted.
"He is aware of most of our capabilities.", he continued. "We need someone close enough to observe him without drawing suspicion."
"A spy on the inside...", Signora thought out loud.
Everyone began thinking.
Spies.
Servants.
Agents.
Informants.
Anything that isn't easily intimidated by Dottore.
Then Scaramouche snapped his fingers.
"Oh!"
Everyone looked at him.
"Oh no...", muttered Pantalone, already dreading what was to come.
Scaramouche grinned. "I know exactly who!", he exclaimed, smirking.
That's what everyone was afraid of...
"Scaramouche, do we need to worry?", Pantalone asked.
"Nooooo..." Scaramouche tried to assure them. Nobody felt assured.
...
"...unless you become worried at the idea of a 10-year-old Dottore having acess to Ruin Guard technology..."