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There are many names for the doctor amongst the Fatui’s ranks. The man rumoured to be behind some of their most brutal creations, and yet some of the most innovative in the age.
Whispers of his genius, his cruelty, the sadistic glee he takes in his experiments and the careful unsteadiness of his eyes, his hands. It’s right until it’s not right, so many conflicting stories that the grain of truth is lost in the desert of his deceptions; in the end, nobody can agree. There’s something inhuman about him, some rumours say. Others say that it is because he is so human that his curiosities are terrifying.
He is both a shadow in the night and as average as any man on the street. Real, and yet a figment of the careful propaganda, an imagined no-face behind misunderstood innovation. There is no Doctor, not like that, because even amongst the Harbingers there cannot be honesty as to education and careers. The third amongst them, Il Dottore, who is to say that he is anything that he says he is? Who is to say that he is everything that he says he is?
The only agreement that can be made about him is one thing: Il Dottore is not a good man. Sadist or misunderstood genius, a shadow to the world’s eye or someone standing boldly in its light, there are no versions of the third Harbinger that are good .
(Once, he had had an abundance of it. It had been draped over him at birth, caught between his first breath and the identical, bound cry of his brother. Small and fragile and far too pale, a ghostly image of the brother he shared his life with. He was good.)
Dottore, for his part, understands this. He understands that the concept of ‘good’ is not compatible with progress, with the ever-moving sands of time that feel the same as the sands of his home. He cannot be good if he is to succeed, and Dottore made the decision long ago that he values success over any semblance of good faith. He’d lost his goodness somewhere along the path of his life like he’d lost countless buttons and pencils and everything else that had once shaped the man who became Dottore. He didn’t want it back. He didn’t need it back, because it didn’t matter whether people thought of him as good or not when he had his progress and his creations and all the funding that the Fatui had to offer.
(It had chipped away from him, goodness. Slow and inevitable and cupped like water in his palms with no way of truly holding it. In the bleary blinks of his eyes, a vivid red in his pale moon face and with none of the warmth in his brother’s deep brown.)
He understood it the same way the day understands that it must give way for the night. Many people with a better grasp of words and poetry than him had tried to explain the comfort of the night. The fear inherent, primal and forbidden and held in careful check by men who believe they are civilized; the gentle light of the moon, matronly and familiar amidst the wonder of the stars. He thought of it like that, once, too. That had ended the day he’d learned that the night, though dark and full of terrors, was much more easily manipulated by those who became terrors.
(When you are held up to a mirror and told what you are, what you must be, you make a choice. One boy, warm like summer and as unnaturally clever as his twin, made one choice. The second boy was cold as winter, and when he was given the choice he never made up his mind.)
Dottore is not a good man. He knows this.
And yet, he does not find joy in his experiments. It is not the pain or pleas for mercy that excite him, that guide the scalpel in his hands or the syringe on his table. It is the knowledge that these things offer, the exchange that is made in return for knowledge-- to learn, one must make sacrifices.
Dottore is very good at making sacrifices. He has a lot of practice in it. A little sleep here, some food or sunlight there, the promise of a future not yet realized and the understanding that he feels like he will never be truly warm again. Dottore is familiar with sacrifice.
(His first sacrifice was his morals, lost the day he caught the sandy fox and held its muzzle shut until it was silent. In exchange, he learned of the anatomy and the way that blood stands out on his skin, how it stains his hair pink when it washes out and that to leave the organs undamaged he must be more delicate in how he cuts.)
Good people make sacrifices, but Dottore is not one of them. He has no higher calling to what he gives up, and what he gives up is often not his to offer so quickly anyway. He knows this, he takes the weight of this blame and loss and Dottore feels a sense of relief at the disgust even his fellow Harbingers show for him. He is smart and he is capable and they know this, but he is off putting. Strange. Unpredictable, and that can be dangerous, can be scary.
Dottore, should you ever see him, does not cut the sadistic figure that the rumours often paint him with. He may have a too-sharp grin, and red eyes, and he is often covered in blood or other suspicious substances. He may, at times, seem to be shaking with either excitement or the drugs that he uses to keep his brain in check. He may even be seen to be murmuring to himself, an extension of the mixing pot of languages he calls out to his empty and soon-to-be empty labs.
(He sacrificed his heart with one pill, the need for sleep exchanged for the nervousness of his entrance exams. What was addiction when he could stop anytime, really, he just needed his head to quiet down, he was fine.)
But Dottore is not sadistic. Not even a little bit. His audience could attest to that, the pretty little doll that likes to sit nearby when he deems the harsh cold of Snezhnaya too much and the sunlight too bright. Scaramouche rarely pays any mind to the details of what Dottore is doing, but he will tuck himself up on the sterile countertops and observe the uncontained chaos that is a genius at work.
Once, it had been Scaramouche on that table. He had been laid bare to the chilly air of the underground labs, the harsh lights and the bony, always-cold fingers that probed his skin. The questions, the ones he knew and the ones he didn’t know, and the surprise that split the Doctor’s face when he revealed that he could think, could speak and learn the same as the rest. An empty vessel, but not one void of life.
The inhuman being observed by the inhumane, and wasn’t that a funny thing?
(He sacrificed his identity with the goodness that dripped from his mouth, an overripe fruit left to rot on the branch of his honesty, his midnight experiments and his fears of his future. In exchange, he lost his lifelong companion and most trusted confidant. A twin for the knowledge that one is almost always alone in the world, that nobody will follow you blindly.)
Eventually, Dottore will come to a stop in his lab. He will sigh, and sniffle, and make a face-- Scaramouche knows it’s because his nose itches. It never matters how long, because Dottore doesn’t keep a working clock in his lab and time means nothing after so many years of living. Scaramouche will look up, either from the reports he’s reading over or something he’s found to fiddle with amongst Dottore’s piles of junk, and Dottore will realize he is there and smile. It’s big and shows too many teeth, and sometimes his face is stained with rivers of blue that cut across his skin in shocking colour; the ink from his hair, freshly dyed and vivid against his translucent appearance.
(Nadir was good, once. He lost that name when he lost the last piece of his goodness, lost somewhere in the fiery remains of his manuscript and the red ink the professors left. He lost that person when Farouk turned away, when he stood over the body of the first man he killed and realized half his face was bleeding but Pierro was pleased.)
He’s not fond of him, Scaramouche reminds himself. It’s just that Dottore will tolerate him better than the other Harbingers do. It’s just that the dangerous eccentricities that Dottore displays are familiar and predictable to him, the way they never will be for anyone else.
(Nadir was good. Was.)
It’s just that Scaramouche has spent so much time empty that it’s nice to feel full sometimes. To feel understood, known in a way that has more to do with the core of who he is rather than the attitude and careful, poised way he presents himself. It’s not healthy, he knows, but he stares back at Dottore in passive observation and lets the taller man lead them from the lab and to his chambers.
(Dottore is not good. Is.)
Dottore is annoying, and he talks too much and laughs too loud, and he touches Scaramouche like he thinks he’ll lose him in the halls. His arm, his elbow, an arm around his shoulders or Dottore’s face too close to his own. He doesn’t care about the way he rambles over dinner, the way Dottore watches with wide eyes when Scaramouche produces the pouch he keeps his pipe in, his opium.
In a way, it’s a declaration of trust.
(Il Dottore is many things. He is not many things. Once, he was these things but now he isn’t, and now he is not those things, but he will be one day.)
Dottore, for his part, watches the way the smoke curls to the ceiling and Scaramouche’s head tips back. The way his delicate fingers go limp around the pipe, the sickly-sweet smell of the drug inside. He hates it, personally, wants to claw out of his skin when he’s made languid and loose and lazy the way that Scaramouche so delights in.
But he watches. He makes sure the pipe doesn’t burn too low, and that when Scaramouche’s fingers go limp it doesn’t singe the bedding. He turns the doll’s face to the side, indulges him in the physical contact that warms both their skin, and in the morning Dottore knows that they won’t talk about the strange trust that’s formed. No rumour will exist, no whisper of what it means and who they are.
(Il Dottore is not a good man.)
Scaramouche will leave in the same silent way he comes, and he won’t say when he’ll come back or if he’ll come back, and there will be no moral insight given when he returns to the lab just as silently as he left.
( Nadir was a good man, Il Dottore is not--)
Dottore is a good man, and Scaramouche thinks that those are hard to find.
(Il Dottore is not a good man.)
...
(To exist is to be known by others.)
…
…
(Il Dottore is a good man. )