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The blade of water shimmered in the early morning light, its undulating surface casting ever-changing spectrums onto the snow below.
“Stay where you are.”
Scaramouche looked down at the blade, whose tip hung an inch from the centre of his eyes, then up at the mage who held it in her hand. The brief look of shock on his face faded into a smile. “Hello to you, too.”
“Why have you been following me?” Mona snapped. Her breath cast tiny frozen clouds into the air.
“Perceptive, as always,” Scaramouche said, raising his hands in mock defense. “I’d answer, but I find it quite hard to talk with a weapon in my face.”
Mona flicked her sword hand, relishing in the way the Harbinger jumped as the blade flew past his face before dissipating into thin air. Leaving herself without a weapon in front of a man who’d already tried to kill her once seemed like a stupid move, but she’d be able to summon her powers again at a moment’s notice. After all, this was Dragonspine. They were surrounded by frozen water. Scaramouche would have to be an idiot to piss her off here.
“Speak.”
“As you wish. The answer is it’s none of your business.”
Mona almost barked a laugh. “A Harbinger stalks me through the snow, and I’m supposed to just be okay with that?”
“Trust me, you’re not interesting enough for me to want to stalk you.” Scaramouche pulled his furs, a departure from his usual Harbinger’s uniform, more closely around his neck. “I could ask the same. Why are you here?”
Casting the bare-faced audacity of his question aside, Mona realised they were at an impasse. They stared into each other’s eyes, each daring the other to speak first, a pair of stubborn, immovable objects.
Too bad Mona had an advantage. Drawing on her Vision, she used her astrology to reach out and see the things he kept unseen. It took a little searching - Scaramouche’s web of fate felt needlessly tangled compared to others she’d met - but eventually, she found what she was looking for.
“You’re checking on the Fatui camps in the area,” she said.
Scaramouche’s dark eyes narrowed. “That’s a nice party trick you have there. What’s next? Are you going to summon feathers from the sky like rainfall?”
The urge to snap back tickled Mona, but instead she pursed her lips, spun and marched back along the valley path she’d been following before intercepting the Harbinger. If there was one thing she hadn’t missed since their last meeting, it was the incessant smartassery that fell from his mouth.
“Hey, where are you going?” Scaramouche called after her.
Away from you, Mona thought bitterly. She refused to look back. Maybe if she ignored him for long enough, he’d leave her in peace.
That hope was shattered when she heard footsteps thundering in the snow behind her. She turned just in time for a gloved hand to grab her by the shoulder and drag her forwards.
“Don’t ever run from me again,” Scaramouche hissed.
Mona saw red. Her hand flew up to strike him on the cheek, but he threw his head back at the last moment and shoved her backwards. Before she knew it, she was lying down, winded and pinned beneath a heavy weight.
“Oh, my.” Scaramouche grinned at her. His face was inches from her own, breath hot on her cheek.
Feeling the blood rush to her face, Mona placed her hands against Scaramouche’s chest and pushed. “Get… off me.”
But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get him to move. He had her in the perfect position, knee slotted between her thighs, hands digging into the snow either side of her head.
“Ask nicely and I’ll consider it,” he said with a cloying sweetness.
The jet of water came from seemingly nowhere and hit Scaramouche square in the cheek. At last, he rolled off Mona, allowing her to scramble to her feet and put as much distance between the two of them as she could. Despite the frigid cold, her face was burning.
“You’re awful,” she spat, furiously brushing snow off the front of her coat.
Scaramouche just sneered at her.
Mona was about to shout at him to leave her alone, for good this time, when she froze. She’d sensed something.
“There are people nearby,” she muttered.
Before Scaramouche could ask her what she was talking about, Mona was on the move again. There was an urgency to her steps now. Dragonspine was renowned for its dangers, and the last thing she needed was a group of thieves ambushing her.
The terrain sloped upwards into a gentle hill. As she neared the top, Mona started to hear voices ahead. She veered right into the valley slope, weaving through the trees and digging her boots into the snow as she climbed, until she was high enough to see over the peak of the hill at what lay beyond.
Just as she’d suspected, a camp lay just off the path about two hundred yards ahead. The five men she counted milling about were Treasure Hoarders. If her insight hadn’t given them away, then their uniform and the crude way they behaved (two of them were having a bet over who could hold their hand over the fire for the longest while another was kicking a tin around in the snow) definitely did. For all their flaws, at least the Fatui groups she’d encountered out in the wild had some semblance of order about them.
“Easy.”
Speaking of Fatui.
“What?” snapped Mona as Scaramouche crouched down beside her. “Don’t you have your camps to check up on?”
Scaramouche ignored her, planted his elbow against the tree and leaned forward so that he could better see the Treasure Hoarder camp ahead. Then he snorted. “It’s obvious what you plan to do. Shall we say two each, and whoever gets the last one takes first dibs at the treasure supplies?”
Mona didn’t need her astrology to sense the pure fighting energy seeping out of Scaramouche, like a storm cloud moments before it rained down thunderbolts. His eyes were trained on the bandits, fingertips tapping the bark of the tree impatiently.
“We’ll go around them,” Mona snarled. “I don’t need you to—”
The sound of shouting drew her attention back to the camp. Her heart fell to see one of the Treasure Hoarders pointing at them, a furious look on his face.
So much for avoiding a fight, she thought.
Scaramouche sprang from his spot in the trees and hurled towards the camp at breakneck speed. It could’ve been Mona’s imagination, but she swore she spotted tiny bolts of Electro crackling in his wake.
“Don’t kill anyone,” she shouted after him before disappearing into her Hydro torrent and following him down into the valley.
She emerged from her elemental form just in time to knock the shouting man off his feet. He stumbled backwards, swinging his fist clumsily, but Mona was faster, slipping under his arm and landing a kick to his ribs. Before he even realised what was happening, he was lying face-first in the snow.
In her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of Scaramouche holding a man in a headlock, though her gaze didn’t linger for long as another bandit lunged for her.
It was a short fight. Not that it could’ve gone any other way against a Vision-holder and a Harbinger. Still, as Mona watched the last two Treasure Hoarders who hadn’t been knocked unconscious run away, she felt pride swell in her chest at another job well done.
That pride dimmed a little when she turned to Scaramouche.
He was standing over one of the men he’d just felled and poking at his shoulder with the tip of his boot. The man groaned in response. Seeing he was still half-conscious, Scaramouche lined his foot up with his temple and drew back his leg.
“Wait!” Mona shouted, lurching towards him. “I told you not to—”
The pain hit her from nowhere, and for a moment, Mona forgot how to breathe. She clutched at her side to find a slash in her coat, the edges wet with blood.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been injured in battle. She was always so careful, so sure of herself, that it just didn’t happen . Naturally, it was the Harbinger’s fault. If he hadn’t been so distracting, she wouldn’t have let her attention slip enough for an enemy to get close to her.
In any case, it felt better than admitting she’d been the one to mess up.
“What’s up with you?” Scaramouche called over, the man he’d been about to kick forgotten at his feet.
“Nothing,” Mona gasped, though no sooner had the word left her mouth, she felt that pain stab at her side again. The world blinked in and out of focus around her. She swayed on the spot in an attempt to find equilibrium before her legs turned to rubber and she keeled over towards the snow.
Only she never reached it.
Warm furs enveloped her where she’d expected the stinging bite of ice. The mingled scents of leather and skin met her nose.
“You’re an idiot. You know that?”
Mona’s eyes widened. She looked up to see the Harbinger frowning down at her. She’d never been this close to him before. Even when he’d been pinning her to the ground, he’d left some distance between them; and yet here she was, practically wrapped up in his arms.
She tried to jerk away, but a hand wrapped around her waist, securing her in place.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. You’ve lost too much blood to stand.”
Mona opened her mouth to protest, only for another stab of pain to steal her breath away. Scaramouche clicked his tongue and muttered, “There’s a Fatui camp down the mountain. I’ll take you there and see what can be done.”
Normally, Mona would’ve baulked at the idea of entering a Fatui camp, by a person who’d once tried to kill her no less, but Scaramouche did have a point: she had no idea how deep the wound went, and shock was probably sparing her the worst of the agony. If she stayed out here for much longer, she’d probably end up passing out in the snow.
“Fine,” she mumbled at last. “Take me there.”
A smirk pulled at Scaramouche’s lips. It was the only warning Mona got before he slipped an arm beneath her knees and lifted her off the ground.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she hissed.
“I’m not exactly going to drag you down the mountain, am I?”
He started to walk along the path, Mona clinging to his neck as he did so. She was surprised at the strength in his arms. His Harbinger uniform had emphasised his lean figure, but right now, he carried her as if she weighed little more than her coat.
For a long time, a silence lingered between them, punctuated only by the crunch of boots on snow. Mona kept her eyes on the landscape, though every now and then, she found them drifting back to Scaramouche’s face. Sometimes, he met her gaze, in which case she’d look away as quickly as possible.
After several exchanges of this kind, Scaramouche finally said, “You know, you never did tell me what you were doing out here.”
Mona stiffened. If she’d been in any other position, she probably would’ve ignored the question or made up an answer, but it wasn’t like things could get any more humiliating for her as they were now. “I came from Mondstadt for some stargazing. The skies are a lot clearer on the mountainside.”
“You mean you’ve been wandering around all night lost in the snow?”
When Mona remained quiet, Scaramouche snorted. “No matter. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be having the pleasure of carrying you right now, would I?”
While his tone was heavy with sarcasm, Mona could’ve sworn she felt his fingers curl gently against her legs. She’d thought she’d hate being carried by the Harbinger, but the longer she spent in his arms, the more she realised there was something oddly comforting about his closeness.
“It must be fate.”
The words slipped out of Mona before she could stop them. Scaramouche’s footsteps faltered a little.
“No such thing.”
He turned his head away, but not before Mona could catch the unmistakable share of pink that coloured the bridge of his nose. All at once, she felt like she’d just witnessed something nobody had ever seen before. A secret shared between the two of them.
“If you say so,” she said.
When she looked back, Scaramouche’s face had returned to normal. Mona buried her face in the soft, warm fur of his collar to hide her smile.
Must have been the cold, she thought to herself.
Yes, that had to be it.