dottore is smart. too smart for his own good, really. he can tell how much people don’t like him. for as long as he can remember, everyone has treated him as an outsider, as someone who didn’t fit in with the rest. as much as he’d like to say it didn’t bother him, it did.
he often wondered if he was destined to merely exist on the outside while everyone else got to live on the inside. dottore would never forget the day he was exiled from his hometown for his “inhumane” scientific pursuits. it wasn’t like he was planning on doing all that stuff he brought up. he was just explaining his ideas without any intentions of bringing them to reality.
in the academia, dottore was shunned by his peers and educators. “monster,” they called him. like before, all he wanted was to hypothetically explore his morbid curiosity. he couldn’t control his thoughts, nor could he stop giving them so much attention when they consumed his being to such an extent. dottore joined the academia because he thought it would be an accepting, educational community. yet, there he learned the true nature of humankind and its inherently judgmental instincts.
madman, evil, sadist, monster? fine, he’d show them a monster.
even when dottore thought he’d found a home with the fatui, he still felt alone. no matter how successful his ventures were in the eyes of his beloved tsaritsa, people throughout the organization still viewed him as a strange outsider, someone not to be trusted.
“be careful around dottore,” he once overheard an experienced agent say to a new cicin mage, “something’s not right with him.”
“really? what’s wrong with him?” the mage inquired, growing increasingly more concerned as the agent spoke to her.
dottore heard the agent sigh. “what’s not wrong with him? he’s just… not all there in the head, you know?”
after overhearing the lower-ranking fatui talk about him so negatively, dottore developed a habit of locking himself in his laboratory for days or weeks at a time. the less he had to interact with others, the better. dottore told himself that it was for everyone’s benefit, anyway; he was protecting himself from the heartbreak of being mistreated, and he was protecting the outside world from his fanatical ideas and odd behavior.
dottore had never considered that he may “not be all there in the head” until he started hiding away from the rest of the world. the longer he was gone, the more he felt his sanity slip away. ’what little left of it i have,’ he would wonder. even if something was wrong with him, why did that mean he had to be treated so poorly? just because he was different didn’t mean he deserved all of this… right?
you joined the fatui out of necessity. you had been struggling financially and had no choice left but to join the fatui to keep a roof over your head. you didn’t agree with the fatui’s operations, but what choice did you have? you could either give up your morals or give up your life. the easier decision was obvious.
you had no vision or combat experience, so the tsaritsa delegated you to various odd jobs and clerical work. your least favorite job was delivering messages between the tsaritsa and the harbingers. you only met three of the harbingers so far, but from your brief yet frequent interactions with them, you assumed all of them had to be bad. scaramouche would always belittle you for taking so long to deliver a message and just generally treat you as subhuman. la signora simply behaved as if you weren’t human or subhuman, just a nonexistent entity. and tartaglia… was terrible. for lack of a better word, you hated him. his cocky attitude and incessant flirting made you want to punch him in the face.
so, when the tsaritsa asked you to relay a request for more delusions to il dottore, the elusive and psychotic harbinger, you braced yourself for the worst.
you knocked on the door to his laboratory gingerly, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the monster you’d been warned of. but the door never opened. you knocked again, louder this time, but still, there was no response. you inhaled nervously, knowingly, as you pushed the door open, unsolicited.
the scene before you wasn’t as frightening as people had made it seem. it was less scary, more… what was the right word? sad, you settled on. there were barely any lights in the windowless room you entered, shrouding the scattered documents and multicolored vials in darkness. the mess made it clear that dottore was often hard at work but never found the time (or energy) to clean it up.
head in his hands as he sat disparagingly at his desk, dottore eyed a vial of white liquid on an askew shelf. the liquid was a little side project he started outside of the tsaritsa’s requests meant to take away his pain. while he was sure he was capable of remedying physical injuries, dottore couldn’t figure out how to heal his emotional suffering. the vial contained a large amount of poison, enough to kill someone. dottore created it months ago and kept electing to not drink it, but with every passing moment, it became more and more tempting.
dottore felt his hands become wet beneath his eyes. he’d seen people cry before, but never experienced it himself. sometimes dottore wondered if he simply lacked the ability to cry at all, but now, he knew that all it took was to be pushed too far.
dottore heard you open the door but didn’t say anything. he didn’t move, paralyzed by his overwhelming thoughts. he’d be doing the world a favor if he killed himself. he’d rid teyvat of the monster he knew he truly was. he wouldn’t have to exist on the outside anymore. after all, how can you live on the outside if you’re not alive at all?
“i apologize if i’m disturbing you, sir,” you started gently, trying not to anger the infamous harbinger. “the tsaritsa sent me to tell you that she needs you to manufacture 50 more delusions within the month.”
he lifted his head to look at you. you were clearly scared: hands fidgeting in one another’s hold, gaze refusing to meet his own, breathing labored, and refusing to step any closer into the room. dottore wondered if he appeared the same way. he felt just as terrified of himself as he was sure you were of him.
“thank you,” he responded quietly, voice hoarse from disuse. “i’ll get started on that soon.”
you were dumbfounded. wasn’t this the guy that everyone told you to avoid? wasn’t this the man that spoke of experimenting on his own kind? you fully expected him to forcefully push you away like signora or berate you like scaramouche, but he didn’t. you hadn’t met him before this, though, so what could have possibly caused people to be so cautious of him?
you nodded incredulously. “you’re welcome, sir,” you answered, now significantly less terrified of him.
“you can just call me dottore,” he suggested lightly. he doubted he’d run into you often enough for his name to even matter to you, but… but nothing. you wouldn’t come back. you wouldn’t be his friend. you wouldn’t care about him. you’d cast him aside just like everyone else.
“right, dottore,” you corrected. he felt his heart swell with joy when you spoke his name. “do you mind if i ask you something?”
oh, no. you were going to lecture him about how strange he was, right? you had to be preparing him for a long rant about how bizarre and evil he was. dottore had seen it all before: what’s wrong with you? why are you like this? why can’t you just be normal? he wasn’t sure if he could take it again.
you took his silence as a yes. “why is everyone so afraid of you? everyone always says you’re dangerous, but i’ve never seen any proof of that… and i know we just met, but you seem normal…”
unlike earlier when tears breached his eyes without warning, dottore felt himself holding them back again. he wanted to cry. he wanted to cry, he was normal. that was all dottore ever wanted to hear.
dottore couldn’t hold back his tears. he didn’t think he had to anymore. finally, after all these years, he found someone who didn’t think he was a monster, someone who belonged on the outside.
you panicked when he started crying. you tried your best to diffuse the situation before all those warnings came true. “s— dottore, i’m sorry if i offended you! i didn’t mean t—”
“no, no, it’s not that,” he cut you off before you could falsely incriminate yourself. you didn’t even have to look at him to know he was smiling, you could simply hear it in his voice. “i’ve waited all my life to hear someone say that.”
you would find an answer to your question another time. right now, dottore’s emotions were too high for you to get any solid information out of him. honestly, you didn’t really care to know anymore. all you wanted now was to make sure that he felt like he had someone. you weren’t sure what overcame you, but you felt the need to shelter him from the horrible things others would say about him. dottore was just misunderstood, and you were suddenly interested in being seemingly the first to understand him.