Chapter Text
“Hey, about last night…”
“For the fifth time,” Huffman snaps, “will you shut up? I’m busy.” He rubs his arms to warm up. Who thought it was a good idea to have a patrol route so close to Dragonspine?
Right. It’s not like the monsters fear the cold.
Neither, apparently, does Tartaglia, who followed him here—sorry, tagged along—wearing nothing but his red shirt, which, despite having all buttons attached and functioning, is barely closed. Apparently because he’s from Snezhnaya, he can handle the cold.
Huffman rolls his eyes and buries his face further in his scarf. Snowfall drifts from the mountain, leaving dark spots on his sleeve as he fiddled with his sword.
Tartaglia spins around, glancing up at the peak of Dragonspine before facing Huffman and walking backwards. “There’s literally nothing happening,” he points out. “And I wasn’t going to say anything bad! Really, I don’t remember all of last night anyway, so—”
Huffman flings out a hand to stop him and makes a show out of looking around, and Tartaglia shuts up.
“What? Did you see something?”
“No, I just wanted to see if you’d actually stop talking.”
Tartaglia whines. “You’re so mean.”
“Good,” Huffman says shortly, hoping the Harbinger will drop the conversation topic. Huffman was still mostly sober—he remembers last night. He pulls his scarf up on his face as his cheeks heat up.
Tartaglia tilts his head and looks at him in concern. “You’re awfully red. Are you cold?” He turns to walk next to Huffman instead of in front of him, and puts an arm around the knight’s shoulders.
Huffman recoils immediately, snarling as he shoves Tartaglia away. “Don’t—” he growls, then swallows and stands up straight again. The pitiful look on Tartaglia’s face is almost too much to bear, so he hurriedly stomps off.
“Hey, wait— hey! Huffman!” Tartaglia catches up to him fairly easily, and Huffman glares at him and stops in his tracks. “Hey,” Tartaglia says cautiously. His brow is furrowed with concern. “If I made you uncomfortable in any way, you can tell me,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a potentially wounded animal.
“NO,” Huffman says, far too loudly. He hears a strange, burbling cackle in the distance and tries to reassure himself that it’s only the river and the wind howling around Dragonspine.
Tartaglia frowns. “What, you’ve seen me drunk probably two dozen times but you can’t talk about one thing that happened? Was I that bad?”
Huffman waits until the silence stretches out, thin enough that it’s sure to break on its own— and then he turns and looks in the opposite direction, loosening his scarf in the hopes that the chill air from the mountain will cool down his burning cheeks. Was it bad? The warmth from Tartaglia’s hands, spreading up his arms. He recalls the way he’d recoiled from the man’s mouth and holds onto that determinedly.
There’s a hand on his shoulder, and Tartaglia walks around to his side slowly. “Look. I don’t know when I’ll next get reassigned, but I hope until then that if you don’t trust me, then as my link to the Knights, we can at least be honest with each other.”
“You? A Fatui Harbinger wants to be honest?” Huffman scoffs, tension filling his muscles. “Maybe start by keeping your hands to yourself.” His gaze drops to Tartaglia’s lips for a moment.
Tartaglia notices the glance, and after a few seconds of contemplative silence, his eyes widen. “Did I—”
The cackling sound comes again, much, much closer, and a bubble slams into them, absorbing Tartaglia in one fluid motion. It continues rolling, the Harbinger flailing around inside it, his eyes widened further with terror. Huffman turns to clock the threat —a Hydro Abyss Mage— and spins and draws his sword, slashing forward and breaking the bubble. Tartaglia spills out, drenched to the skin and gasping for air in between harsh coughs. Huffman tosses him an extra Favonius regulation dagger with a glance at his bow, which is dripping water, and he turns, leveling his sword in a defensive stance towards the mage.
The fluffy creature lounges back inside its own bubble shield, unharmed by the water sloshing around inside. It waves its staff leisurely and sends a slurry of smaller bubbles shooting at Huffman; he deflects most of them, but the ones that hit his arms and soak into his sleeves sting like crazy.
Tartaglia hacks up the last of the water, although it sounds more like he’s trying to cough up a lung, and stumbles to his feet, one hand on Huffman’s shoulder for support. Huffman can feel him swaying. “You know I’m a Hydro Vision user, right? And I left my Delusion at home,” he mutters.
Huffman nods. “Physical force can crack their shields, can’t it?”
Tartaglia exhales slowly, his breath fluttering the hair around Huffman’s face. “It takes a while, but sure.” His voice is devoid of humor now, which is how Huffman can tell they’re definitely in danger. (As if the Abyss Mage wasn’t obvious enough.)
“Then we just have to keep it occupied for long enough to break it.”
Tartaglia sighs. “As long as we don’t break first,” he says, then moves off in an arc.
The mage looks back and forth between the two of them, and while it’s distracted by Tartaglia swiping at it, Huffman lunges. His sword sticks in a crack in the shield where it’s thin, and the Abyss mage whirls around with a shriek, sucking his sword inside where it disintegrates into shiny mud.
Huffman stares up at the fluffy, dangerous creature, without a weapon in his hand. Terror fills him with a heavy dread, sticking his feet to the ground. … Wait, no, that’s the mud. He glances down for a split second to see his boots an inch deep in the ground and gradually sinking.
He hears Tartaglia curse and then a hollow thwack as the Harbinger hits the shield with his bow. The Abyss mage startles, and in that brief moment, Tartaglia ducks around it and lifts Huffman out of the mud. Huffman nearly stumbles on the solid ground, but he grabs onto Tartaglia’s shoulders.
He opens his mouth to say a reluctant thanks when another bubble blindsides the two of them. The impact sends them spinning inside, and Huffman feels his forehead bash into Tartaglia’s face. When he opens his eyes, his head pounds as if he’s had three Death After Noons, and a trail of blood diffuses in the water from Tartaglia’s nose. The Harbinger looks dazed, and Huffman’s skin prickles all over with the Abyssal taint in the water, but it isn’t until he realizes the bubble is completely filled with water that he panicks.
Huffman pounds a fist on the shell of the bubble, but it’s tough, only giving slightly under his onslaught. His vision gets blurrier, maybe from the magic water, and he shouts in surprise when Tartaglia puts a hand on his shoulder, but all that comes out is a rush of bubbles, and Huffman clamps his hands over his mouth, his eyes widening in horror.
Tartaglia’s nose is still slowly leaking blood into the water, and his hands move sluggishly, but he tries to communicate something using gestures, and taps his Vision.
Huffman shakes his head in confusion and goes back to kicking and pummeling the walls of the bubble. Dimly, he can see the mage cackling and starting to float away; at first, he thought the fuzziness was due to the water, but stars prick in the corners of his vision, and he realizes he’s close to passing out. He glances at the Harbinger, and Tartaglia’s eyes are already closed, a few stray bubbles drifting from his mouth.
No. They are not going to drown here, in this stupid bubble. Huffman is not going to die here. He shoves his shoulder into the wall of the bubble, hoping the edges of his armor are sharp enough to pierce it, but nothing happens. He gathers his strength for one last punch, as his sight fails completely and his body is racked with some force that he can’t name but which makes his skin prickle violently.
The last thing he knows is a chill wind, the hard ground, and a series of coughs that pass through him violently. Then he’s overtaken by darkness.
“Is that a knight?”
“Obviously it is, can’t you use your eyes? And that Harbinger, too—d’you think they got in a fight?”
“It’s Sir Huffman, he’s soaked through!”
“Aye, I can see that, dunce. Eh, what’s this, though?”
“It’s so bright! No way, is that—”
“A Vision? Well, I guess we have to bring the Harbinger back too, then. Shame.”
“But, sir, you couldn’t have considered leaving him here?!”
“I could and I did, but now we’ll have to question him… what a pain.”
“What now? I can’t carry them.”
“Then get someone from the base camp who can, idiot.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Damn Fatui. This is going to cause a storm of paperwork, ain’t it?”
…
“Well, up we go. Back to the city with these two.”