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“Oi, let me in, I need to see my mother.”
There are about twenty polearms pointed directly at his throat from twenty different angles and about another fifty or so arrows ready to shoot him if he makes the wrong move.
“All family members in the military should be contacted through the Tenryou Commission.”
Agh. Mortals.
“I mean the Raiden Shogun. You know? Boss lady, in charge of Inazu-”
A polearm is aggressively poked a bit too close to his face. He wants to smite these insolent beings at once but decides against it for now.
“The Raiden Shogun is not currently receiving visitors.”
Scaramouche is getting tired of this conversation and the other party has only said twenty-one words in total. He racks through what the other harbingers would do because Celestia knows his communication skills are dogshit. After a few seconds of thinking, he decides that pummelling them into meaty electro pulp is not the best idea. Killing his mother’s guard is hardly a way to prove his loyalty. He tries ‘diplomacy’ again.
“Aw, not even for her son who she hasn’t seen in centuries?”
The guards seem confused and it’s a very good look on them.
“If you have familial relations with the Shogun, report them to the Yashiro Commission and they will process it accordingly.”
Scaramouche knows they’re bullshitting both him and themselves. Anyone who received a form saying they were related to an Archon would have a good chuckle with their colleagues before throwing out the form.
“Alright, then. If you would so kindly let me out of this poorly-practised formation, I would be obliged to visit the Yashiro Commission.”
And cautiously, hesitantly, they lift their weapons to form a path out and draw their shields.
Oh well, at least they’re not fighting him, he’s never enjoyed getting his hands dirty.
Predictably enough, the Yashiro Commission does not receive a form claiming relations to the Raiden Shogun. This is because Scaramouche decides to monopolise his time by breaking into his childhood home. And just because he knows she’s listening, he lets out a moderately volumed “Hey Yae,” before descending to the caverns underneath the Tenshukaku.
He has a bit of trouble finding the trapdoor to enter his old room because vines are fucking bitches and he’s going to challenge the Dendro Archon someday.
Eventually, after getting too much dirt on his hands and under his fingernails, he finds the trapdoor. He activates his electro power to unlock the seal and when he pushes it upwards it creaks so loudly he thinks the palace guards are going to corner him again. Not that they could even hope of catching him.
He slips through the trapdoor and finally reaches the dusty cobweb-infested room he spent his first few years in. Damn. It is filthy. It looks like someone broke in and ransacked his room. His precious childhood books on politics and military warfare are littered all around the floor, pages eternally crushed and crumpled, all yellowed through the passing of time.
You’d think you would take care of your child’s room after they’ve been abducted to join a foreign government military service but it’s not like he’s lost any children so he doesn’t have much to go off on.
Scaramouche exits his childhood dust haven and goes to find the main room where people challenge his mother for whatever stupid reason and lose.
He finds the big door, guarded by who he assumes to be the best of the best and electrifies them into a modest oblivion. They’ll live… probably. When he stands in front of the door, he prepares to enter and imagines what he’d say. “Hey, mum, been a while,” or maybe “Ayyy, wassup, I’m back after a couple of centuries of being some other Archon's weapon.”
When he opens the door, of all the things he could say, he does not expect, “Hey, sis” to come out of his mouth. It does anyways.
It is an identical copy of his mother who sits at the chair. He knows it’s a copy because instead of being the emotional Archon that she is and embracing Scaramouche uncomfortably, this one just narrows her eyes at him and asks something along the lines of, “who are you, how did you get here,” and other unnecessary questions.
“Kunikuzushi, former Balladeer of the Fatui Harbingers, abducted son of Raiden Ei and apparently your brother, at your service.”
Despite all the titles and his very respectful, very deep and very taunting bow, nothing seems to ring a bell in his sister’s mind.
She comes down from the platform and Scaramouche takes a step closer to ease the travelling distance between them because what’s she going to do? Kill him?
The second his foot lands on the ground, his sister draws a familiar sword and slices at his head.
“Well… that went well” is the thought that comes to his head as he hears his hat fall to the ground.
----
Scaramouche opens his eyes to a very un-Celestial looking heaven. It’s very drab and grey and he feels like something is symbolic about the way the derelict torii stand tall amongst the wasteland. Overall, the realm is very circular but lacks a certain liveliness he would have expected from his mother.
He finds his mother meditating on the other side of the realm.
A light sigh resonates throughout the plane.
“Yae, if the situation can be handled by my puppet then there is no need to enter the Plane of Euthymia.”
Damn, you get kidnapped for a couple of centuries and all of a sudden everyone’s forgotten about you.
“Mother, please never refer to me by your girlfriend’s name again.”
The ‘Plane of Euthymia’ shimmers purple now, the torii stand a bit more overbearing than before but when Raiden Ei’s eyes - his mother’s eyes - lay upon him, the realm settles into a warm pink and the torii let him breathe again.
Unfortunately, his access to oxygen is taken away mere moments later when his mother gives him the suffocating, uncomfortable hug he definitely hasn’t been waiting for since he stepped into Inazuma.
“Kuni-chan, you’re here? Where have you been?”
Kuni-chan is a name he hasn’t heard in a while, although to be fair, the first time someone had tried they died without their tongue and people made the wise decision to never call him that again. He comes to the conclusion that hearing his mother care about him is a feeling he absolutely relishes in and returns her hug without a word, feeling her tears soak through his kosode. He refuses to think about his own tears that run into his mother's kimono.
They exit the realm later when the tear stains on Scaramouche’s kosode had dried off and his eyes had lost their puffiness and they relocate to the tea room only utilised when special guests come over. Scaramouche’s sister, whom he still did not know the name of, had been invited, but she had turned down the offer in the ‘pursuit of eternity'.
Of course, because the universe hates him, the minute Scaramouche and his mother had settled comfortably on their zabuton, Yae walks in and ruffles Scaramouche’s hair, intrusive as always.
“Hey Kuni-chan, nice to see you again. Ei was worried sick, you know?”
Maybe Scaramouche shouldn’t have left the Fatui, maybe he shouldn’t have gone to look for his mother, that way he’d never have to deal with Yae face to face or voice to ear ever again.
'Diplomacy,' he told himself. Don’t be aggressive.
“Please bring up any complaints with her Majesty, the Tsaritsa.”
Something in Yae’s face hardened and he figured enough that both she and his mother now knew who took him away from Inazuma. If he was a better person, he’d feel bad for siccing both the Electro Archon and her omniscient girlfriend onto someone, but he wasn’t so he didn’t.
Another minute passed and a servant placed a delicate porcelain tea set on the tea table. Each cup placed in front of them accompanied with the smooth slide of porcelain on wood and the sound of pouring tea. Gratitude for the tea is said and the servant exits the room with a bow.
Then a minute of silence passed. Then another and another and another.
The silence was unbearable.
“Kunikuzushi…” is the first thing his mother says, breaking the silence with eyes not quite meeting his own, “I apologise.”
Yae looks on patiently.
“I apologise that I didn’t look after you better, that when you went missing, I couldn’t find you. I apologise for not having watched you more carefully on that day..”
Ei rises from her kneeling position on the zabuton, only to fall into a dogeza on the tatami mat.
“I apologise for not caring for you as I should have, for not acting like a mother.”
A deep blush covers Scaramouche’s face as he is faced with the image of his omnipotent mother, Electro Archon of Inazuma, bowing to him. He side-eyes Yae for assistance for what to do, who in turn looks at him with a raised eyebrow, waiting for his answer. Bitch.
Truth be told, he never held resentment towards his mother, nor the Fatui Harbingers that took him away from his mother. Sure, he had been a bit confused as to why a man twice the size of him seemed to be scared of him and why one moment he had gone from the fox-filled plains of Inazuma to the frigid coasts of Snezhnaya. He never resented the Tsaritsa from taking him away from Inazuma, however, he was a bit prickly when she denied his request to visit his family.
Likewise, he never resented his mother for never finding him. When he was younger, maybe he had a bit miffed that his mother hadn’t yet collected him from his impromptu vacation, but then he went up the Fatui ladder, had fun in the trainings and realised that his mother’s omnipotence and Yae’s omniscience were limited to Inazuma only and thus forgot about it when he came face to face with the Tsaritsa.
It was only after he had gotten bored of the snowy wasteland of Snezhnaya that the desire to revisit his home country returned. Even though he had sworn loyalty to the Tsaritsa, words don’t really mean that much when you don’t understand half of them, so he left the country and the Fatui declared him to have gone rogue.
Face still absurdly red from the absurd situation, Scaramouche muttered out an “it’s fine, please get up,” and helped his mother back onto the zabuton. Despite the tense atmosphere, Yae chuckled, deceptively light and innocent.
“Kuni-chan, you’re so adorable when your face is red.” Scaramouche so desperately wants to summon lightning onto Yae right now, to have her removed from his vicinity or at least have his hat to cover his ever-growing blush.
“Yae, I’m going to smite you one day.”
And just like that the tension was broken.
He learns in the next couple of hours, that while he was training to become a weapon at the disposal of her Majesty, the Tsaritsa, his mother almost destroyed the Tenshukaku, unravelled and threatened the entirety of the Inazuman underworld and searched the country by herself when every gang member fell at her feet. Of course, learning about all of this meant that whenever Yae chipped in to give some extra details, Scaramouche would also have to deal with the disgusting look of enamourment she held towards his mother.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, their small tea room had been cast into shades of glowing yellows and oranges, warmed by the soft light and the tugging feelings of comfort and familiarity.