Work Text:
The first thing Scaramouche notices upon entering Mondstat is a man with an atrocious haircut and a nauseating grin on his face cheering on a teenager. Said teenager – a petite blonde girl with blue eyes and an unconvincing smile – does not seem to enjoy his presence in the least.
He ignores it. It’s none of his business, even if it rubs him the wrong way. He continues on, ignoring the stares that seem to scream “outsider”.
He continues making his way through the streets, heading through the main square, full of people surrounding a fountain. His informant had been told to meet him at the statue of the Anemo Archon, and so he doesn’t dally, making his way to the rendezvous point quickly.
After a short walk, he’s just about to enter the area, when a flash of a rose veil cuts his vision off and he’s being pulled into an alleyway. He scowls, pushing off the person who’s dragged him here, and glares.
“How dare you-”
“Scaramouche, 6th of the Fatui Harbingers.” Her voice is scathing, but it doesn’t strike fear into him. He summons his catalyst, preparing for a fight. She rolls her eyes in response.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we get this over with quickly.”
The woman pulls out something familiar, and it dawns on him that she must be who he’s looking for. Still, she could’ve been less aggressive. (Who is he kidding, it’s not like he wouldn’t have done the same. Intimidation tactics come in handy in this line of work.)
“Whatever. Here,” he pulls out an item from his pocket, and her gaze focuses on it. “Ten weeks worth of information on the movements of Fatui officers near Mondstat. You have the payment for it?”
She scowls, nodding. It hadn’t been an easy decision, handing over intelligence like that, but in the long run it will benefit them.
She begins to hand it over, before the two are interrupted by a girl who darts around the corner, as if looking for a space to hide. She pants – obviously strained from running, but then looks up to the two of them, and freezes. Her composure has shifted, and she looks like a ghost, almost shaking.
She’s the same girl from earlier, he notes, the one who’d obviously been uncomfortable with the irritating man’s presence.
“Oh-um, my apologies-”
“Are you hurt?” His informant asks, before giving her a scathing look and checking her over. Scaramouche narrows his eyes, annoyed at the interruption, but holds his tongue for now.
“No, no. I just…”
“It was him again.” The veiled woman scowls.
“Rosaria, I-”
“Someone needs to cut his tongue out.” She mutters to herself.
The informant – Rosaria, apparently – looks up to him and passes the item in her hand to his. She glares, telling him to stay quiet with his eyes. The blonde girl looks confused, but doesn’t say anything.
“He. Um. He.” The girl seems to want to say something, but looks to Scaramouche, obviously uncomfortable with sharing the information in front of him. She looks teary.
Rosaria turns back to him. “Scram. You’ve gotten what you came for.”
Scaramouche scowls, but doesn’t argue, muttering a curse as he leaves for the Grand Goth Hotel.
-
It’s the next day when Scaramouche sees the man with the ugly haircut again, and they aren’t even in Mondstat. He’d gone for a walk in Wolvendom, bored and wanting to have some time for himself to think.
He’s walking by a tall tree when all of a sudden, he’s yanked to the side. On reflex, his catalyst emerges, ready for a fight, but then he sees it’s only the blonde girl.
“Shh,” she whispers, “you need to be quiet. I don’t want him to-”
“Barbara-sama!” She’s cut off by a man’s voice. Scaramouche raises an eyebrow at the Inazuman honorific. He stares at the girl for a second, trying to see if she has Inazuman blood, but to him she looks Mondstatian through and through. He snorts. Was this guy an idiot?
She sighs, looking scared, but continuing to be silent, not looking behind her. The man is close, now, but not close enough to spot them, or hear them if they whisper.
“Who the fuck is that?”
The girl – Barbara, he presumes – looks almost offended by his language. She doesn’t mention it, though, as she grimaces, taking a quick glance to the clearing where the man’s voice was heard only a small amount of time earlier.
“His name’s Albert,” she whispers back, “he’s…one of my fans.”
“Fans?”
She nods. “I’m, well, I guess you could say I’m an idol. I preform for people. And…so I have fans. He’s the head of my fanclub.” She looks almost guilty for a second. “I really shouldn’t be hiding from him, it’s just…overwhelming.”
Scaramouche raises an eyebrow. “How old is he?”
She looks up, thinking. “In his…forties, maybe?”
He gives her an incredulous look. “Seriously? And how old are you?”
“Six-sixteen.” She stutters out.
“So a grown man is obsessing over a sixteen year old and no one has an issue with that?” He’s starting to see the situation now, and feels oddly protective. No, he denies, that isn’t the word. It’s not protectiveness that’s making him feel this way, it’s anger.
“No…they do. It’s just. He hasn’t…done anything yet. Nothing illegal, at least. Well,” she pauses, “nothing I’d share with the Knights.”
Scaramouche breathes out, annoyed at the Knight’s incompetence. “So he’s done something illegal?”
He doesn’t care about laws, but when it comes to situations like this, some rules are there for a reason. Rules that are meant to protect sixteen year old girls from getting stalked by creepy men in their forties, for instance.
She hesitates, then nods. “I…no offense. But. You’re a man, you wouldn’t understand.”
Scaramouche sighs, annoyed. “I may be a man, but I…didn’t always look like one. Or have the body of one. It doesn’t matter, let’s just say I know more than you might think.”
She looks up, and relaxes a bit. He understands why. It’s…comforting, sometimes, to be able to relate to similar unfortunate circumstances. Especially ones that affect a specific demographic.
“Oh. Um. Then, you might get it. But…I don’t want people knowing. So. Please don’t tell anyone?”
He nods, leaning against the tree. Albert’s calls have faded into the background – ignored by both of them.
“He…took a picture of me.” She holds her breath. It’s clear that there’s more to what she’s saying, so he waits. “Under my skirt.”
His eyes darken, narrowing, and his fist clenches. He looks up at her, and sees that she’s trembling. He doesn’t know what to do about that, so instead he makes her turn to look him in the eyes.
“I’m a Harbinger of the Fatui. I have…connections. If you wanted him gone, I can make that happen.”
She gasps, falling back, scared. She shakes her head wildly. “No-no, I don’t want anyone’s blood on my hands, you can’t-please, don’t-”
“Fine, fine,” he cuts her off, “I won’t kill him. But I will give him a talking to. One that might shock him, a bit.”
Sparks of electricity come out of his catalyst, and her eyes widen as she sees it. She’s torn – he can tell – between denying that she wants this to happen and telling him to go for it.
“I…okay. Just. May I…ask a favor?”
He tilts his head, signaling that she should relay it to him.
“Can you…can you get the picture back? But please – don’t look.” She seems to almost shake at that, as if it hadn’t quite sunk in that the picture was a physical thing. He knew how violating things could be from personal experience, but doesn’t know how to comfort her beyond patting her awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Sure. Leave it to me.”
She nods, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Albert’s calls have stopped, much to Scaramouche’s dismay. He wanted to get it over with here, but if Albert’s left than there’s nothing that can be done.
He motions wordlessly for her to follow him, and they walk back to Mondstat on foot, in a comfortable silence.
-
When they enter the square, Rosaria almost immediately bolts to them, separating the two. A crowd goes silent. A Fatui, alone, with their beloved idol? It must be a sight.
“Are you okay, Barbara?” Rosaria doesn’t look away from him.
She nods, curling in on herself. “He…actually helped me. A lot.”
Rosaria raises a skeptical eyebrow, and Scaramouche rolls his eyes, annoyed. He looks around, seeing no sign of the creep, and then focuses on her once again.
“She was hiding from that creep, Alan, or whatever his name is.” He knows it’s Albert – he doesn’t forget names – but it seems more fitting to ignore it. Idiots like that don’t deserve a spot in his memory beyond something to laugh at when he needs fuel.
Rosaria narrows her eyes even more, if that’s possible. She looks to Barbara, as if to ask, “Is this true?” and Barbara nods. Rosaria relaxes.
“Fine. But I don’t want to see you alone with her again.”
She grabs Barbara’s hand, and the two walk off in the direction of the church, not giving either of them chance to exchange goodbyes. Not that Scaramouche cares – he’s never been one for polite conversation.
-
It’s two days later when the incident happens, and while Scaramouche would’ve preferred to humiliate him privately, (less witnesses), this worked well enough for him.
He’s eating lunch by the fountain, surveying the area out of habit, when a group of drunk men walk into his line of sight. In between them is Albert, chuckling over a piece of paper. The men seem enraptured by it, and that’s when it clicks.
A piece of paper.
A picture.
Anger flows through Scaramouche’s veins as he makes his way through the crowd over the group of men. The rest of the people in the square aren’t paying much attention to them, used to the antics of the drunkards of Mond.
He doesn’t want to look at the picture Albert had taken, but he also doesn’t want to beat up a group of men in public without evidence to get him out of trouble with the Grandmaster. Luckily, he doesn’t need to, because he hears one of the members of the group, dressed as a Knight, slur out –
“-Nice piece of ass.”
He sees red, and socks the man in the face.
The crowd goes silent, all eyes on him, as he grabs the photo, and readies his catalyst. He beats them till they’re bloody, shocking him with Electro and throwing the beer in Albert’s hand on them to conduct the electricity.
The civilians in the square are too stunned to move, and it remains that way for at least three minutes, before the Knights hold him back. He glares at them.
“Take me to your Grandmaster. Now.”
They don’t argue.
-
“-Absolutely ridiculous. I can’t believe a Harbinger, of all people, would stoop to beating up civilians in the square-”
“Albert took a picture of Barbara’s panties.”
That shuts the Grandmaster up. She goes pale.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said. Albert was holding it, showing it to the other pigs, and because your knights are too incompetent to do anything, I had to step in. Not only that, but one of the drunkards in the group was a knight. If a member of the Fatui did anything like this, I’d execute them myself.” He speaks in dark tones, anger and adrenaline still flowing through him.
He studies the face of the blonde woman in front of him, trying to see how she’ll react. To his relief, anger starts to fill her face. It seems like she’s angrier than he was, but he’s never been good at reading people beyond work.
“…Thank you, then, for your service. Off the record, you will be recompensed for your assistance. On the record, you will not get in trouble, and this incident will be…paved over. The men involved, however,” she pauses, trying to figure out how to phrase her next words “will be dealt with.”
Will be dealt with.
Oh, yeah, he thinks, Albert will either be dead or long gone by tomorrow.
-
To his displeasure, the people of Mondstat seem to…like him, after that. The shops offer him free things and discounts and people mention how “chivalrous” he is. Fucking hell, he just wanted to put an asshole in his place. He’s still a Harbinger. They should be wary of him.
But, they aren’t. At least, not most. Diluc Ragvindr, the owner of Dawn Winery, still looks down on him with hate. But generally, people don’t seem to have a problem with his presence. It’s almost…laughable.
He doesn’t like it.
(He does.)
He was never truly at home in Inazuma, and he certainly wasn’t home in Mondstat, but…he could get used to being here, if only for a little while longer.
-
fin.