Chapter Text
“You handle it gently, like this.”
Eyes, an oasis against sandy skin, stared at the bird cupped in Buer’s hands. She pulled it closer into herself, letting it burrow its head into her dress, allowing her room to remove one hand. She smiled softly at the creature, running a free finger down its back. A blank gaze followed the motion, unreceptive and naive. It was a reaction that wouldn’t last for much longer—with every passing day she would look up and find the spark of intelligence concealed within those eyes had grown.
Scaramouche, the discarded puppet thrown at Buer’s feet without care, would return eventually. But for now, he was hers to care for.
He wasn’t her responsibility; she knew that. The Traveler had come and gone every other week, and with them came assurances that no one would place the blame on her if she left the failed god to fend for himself. Assurances, however, meant nothing in the face of the empathy she held toward Scaramouche. She had been abandoned, too, left to fester in her hopeless desire to become the god her people wanted.
Those empty eyes fell upon her, attempting to mirror her expectancy as she held out her open hand. The puppet didn’t notice it, too focused on the sight before him. With a sigh, she moved as if to take his hand in her own, careful not to touch him as she guided his hand toward the bird.
The bird remained still in her arms, the only proof it was still living being the slow rise and fall of its breast against her chest. She held her breath as Scaramouche reached toward it. His fingertips were a hair breadth away before he suddenly jerked back, blank expression congealing into disgust, then hurt, before finally fading back into placid neutrality.
It was progress. Undeniable, immutable progress. He had, before, struggled to remain in her company for longer than a few minutes. That intolerance had grown by astronomical levels in a mere month—he could almost touch a living thing. Buer hadn’t known Scaramouche before his fall; she could only imagine who he’d been before. Still, to know that he was so uncomfortable with the presence of the living, especially with the loss of his memory, spoke volumes of his past life.
During the brief period of time they’d spoken in person, he’d been calamitous, furious, and unflinching. He’d expressed disdain towards life and was not detached from the pain he inflicted on others. Knowing Scaramouche as he was now had torn away that facade.
Without his past at the forefront of his mind, the puppet was forced to bear his soul to Buer. In return, she allowed him to catch glimpses of hers. Scaramouche had once preached about the betrayal that had put him on the path he’d followed, had told how much he’d offered of himself to people who forsaken him in the end. She wouldn’t contribute to his pain in that respect. She had the power to do that much.
It was odd, truly, to watch the innocent puppet interact with the world as if it had only just been born. He couldn’t grasp his expressions, empty in every way that mattered, except in small moments where Scaramouche—where Kunikuzushi —bled through.
Those moments were agonizing; there was never a way to tell when they would come and go, save for ensuring that all contact with the living was limited. Buer could only watch as Scaramouche cycled through the course of his life, a tapestry of agonizing memories, bright and burning, torturing his features. Every time he fell back into a vacant expression was a relief.
The puppet’s hand fell to his side, fingers twitching. His shoulders were tensed almost imperceptibly, remorse for his violent reaction written across his stiff posture. Buer offered him a soft smile, soothing the bird in her arms as she met his stare.
“It’s alright. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
o0o
Buer hadn’t quite lied when she’d told the Traveler that Kunikuzushi was comatose, her words chosen carefully so that they could easily be misconstrued. The puppet had, in fact, been unconscious for quite a while, but he’d woken up far before she’d had the chance to meet the Traveler after their battle with the failed god. It had been a surprise when he’d finally awoken, unreactive and emotionless in a way that she would never associate with consciousness.
Truthfully, she feared how Scaramouche would react when he met the Traveler once more. Signs of the return of his memories had shown themselves from the very beginning—his already shattered psyche couldn’t afford to be prodded any more. For now, she would try her best to introduce him to the world in a way he could palate.
“This way,” she whispered, a theatrical finger pressed to her lips. She grinned at the puppet from behind it; he didn’t return her excitement—he never had, head tilted with a confusion that didn’t reach his features. Nonetheless, Buer kept the smile plastered on her face.
She pushed against the doors at her back, revealing the glittering lights of the Grand Bazaar. Despite her attempts at surreptitiously entering, the little puppet made no such effort, his vacant gaze scanning the market as he walked through the door Buer held ajar. In the end, it didn’t matter. No one noticed their entrance, through both planning and providence.
The stands in the Bazaar were unoccupied, the sellers and customers preoccupied with the performance currently being held on the Grand Bazaar’s only stage. The performers were already on stage, one of whom was half-way through the spoken prologue.
Buer pulled at the fabric of the little puppet’s sleeve, grateful that she’d managed to confiscate his hat as they weaved toward the stage through the small spaces between stands. She shivered at the thought of his owl-wide eyes, staring at her complacently as she tried to explain that the hat was too cumbersome for where they were going. He hadn’t expressed any grief at losing his hat at the time, but that did nothing to assuage her guilt. It felt like she’d taken sweets from a child.
They ended up at a higher vantage point, sneaking through foliage until they reached a stone wall surrounding one of the Divine Tree’s roots. Sitting down on its ledge put them almost level with the stage—a perfect view.
“This play is called ‘The Legend of the Knight of Flowers,’” Buer explained as she settled on the wall, pulling once again at the puppet’s sleeve to bring him down to sit beside her. “I thought you might like it.”
She looked up to the stage, catching a wide-eyed smile from one of the performers—a young woman with red hair—which she returned with a shushing motion. Today wasn’t supposed to be about her, after all.
As the play went on, every so often Buer would glance to her side, watching the puppet’s excitement lift his shoulders, pushing him forward until he was clinging to the wall to keep himself from tumbling forward. Every so often she would pull him back, unsure of his ability to keep himself from falling.
For the most part, she was able to enjoy the show. It was more mature than she expected for what was advertised as a children’s play, heavy with themes of duty versus loyalty, of purpose versus freedom. The themes served her purpose well, she decided, though she wasn’t entirely sure if the puppet would even recognize them.
Eventually, the story came to an end, retired on a slightly ambiguous note that left Buer wanting.
They knew the fates of every other character but the Flower Knight. It was as if he’d stepped back, his happiness secondary to everyone else’s. By the end of the story, he’d been all but forgotten and everyone else had their happy ending.
He wasn’t a perfect character; he was human, making terrible mistakes, and, more often than not, exacerbating the problems faced by the other characters. It had been portrayed comically—this was a children’s play, after all—but that didn’t lessen the gravity of his errors. Regardless, the heart he displayed in the face of his mistakes had been more than enough to convince her of his value as an individual. She grieved his disappearance and what it meant for the tale.
It wasn’t over quite yet, though, even if the story had been completed.
The final display of theatrical talent was a dance, one of the lead performers depicting a bloody dance from which Padisarahs grew. The sight was breathtaking, to say the least, a glorious show of beauty and macabre that would recur in the dreams of Sumeru’s inhabitants for years. A finale in honor of a journey and all who’d been lost along the way.
The wall creaked beside her. The imagery hadn’t crossed Buer’s mind when she’d picked the play and she glanced at her ward. She sucked in a breath, careful not to let her concern wear on her features when she saw his expression.
For the first time since he’d awoken, Scaramouche bore a tight-lipped frown, eyes alight and seeing.
The day was nearing where the little puppet as she knew him would be gone. And when that day finally came, even with all her wisdom, Buer wasn’t sure what she would do.
o0o
There were, as there always are, bad days.
The worst of them were the result of dreams.
The little puppet slept often under her care, easily worn out by the day’s stresses. Buer didn’t know if it should have been possible; he didn’t need the maintenance required by an organic being. She met his need for sleep with apprehension, unsure if it was the symptom of a greater issue that could detrimentally affect his physical health or something more benign. Physical health notwithstanding, with sleep came nightmares. His memories were insignificant in comparison to his dreams, obscenely vivid as they were in comparison to a fleeting moment of recollection.
The connection he held with Irminsul only served to magnify their strength. In moments when Buer traveled into his dreams, she was met with the crushing weight of betrayals that could fell lesser gods, forcing her to withdraw or awaken him lest she be lost to his buried emotions.
So deep was the depth of his despair that, when he woke, he was apparently unable to discern that she had entered his dreams at all despite her prompting. He didn’t respond in words—he hadn’t spoken once since waking—but the few times his expression fell into that terrible tapestry of remembrance told her all she needed to know. She stopped asking details about his dreams not long after that.
One night, after a long period of searching Irminsul for news of the Traveler’s sister, she opened her eyes to find him standing before her. She could make out the line of his shoulders against the tiles of the Sanctuary of Surasthana, pointed upwards at the ends, telling her more than his barren gaze ever would. If it wasn’t for his ruffled hair and half-lidded eyes, she would have never guessed he’d fallen asleep, probably stirred into consciousness by yet another nightmare.
She was briefly delighted by the sight, pleased by the idea that, even filled with fear, he thought of her and sought her comforting presence. Her elation was quickly quashed, pursued by the guilt that came from wanting him to depend on her.
“Bad dream?” she forced herself to ask.
That phrase seemed to shake him. His fixed stare trailed down to her feet, fingers seizing at his sides. The dream had been one of the harrowing ones, she guessed. When those came along, he could never meet her eyes for long. It didn’t help, of course, that his eyelids dipped with exhaustion.
“I thought as much. I’ll be back in just a moment.” Buer walked past him, focus already directed toward finding something soft for him to lay on.
She was struck by his sudden vice-like grasp at her shoulder, yanked back with such force that she gasped. It was a sharp sound, shocking even against the low whistle of the Sanctuary. Spurred on by her confusion, she spun around to face the little puppet.
The horror on his face was palpable. He wrenched his hand away from her, shuddering as tears built in his eyes. Buer winced at the sudden motion, regretting it when she saw his shoulders sink, his mouth widening in fear.
In that moment, with a certainty she wasn’t sure she could possess, she knew that tomorrow they would never again share the closeness she’d been permitted for the past few months.
It was hard, keeping the sorrow from showing as she forced herself to smile.
“It’s alright,” she promised. “You’re alright.”
Smoothing down her dress, Buer took a seat at the edge of the raised platform centered in the Sanctuary.
She patted the spot beside her.
He settled next to Buer, head limp and leaning on his own shoulder, careful not to touch her. Eyes closing, an oasis buried in sand, his hand sat a hair’s breadth from hers.
Words fell from his lips as he drifted, strained and quivering.
“Don’t… Leave…”
And Buer cried.
The little puppet fell asleep by her side, lulled into slumber by silent tears.
The next morning, Kunikuzushi awoke.
o0o
“Get your hands off of me.”
Buer pouted, not put off in the least by Scaramouche’s scowl. His distaste was unwarranted, of course; she’d resigned herself to the space they maintained between each other, a byproduct of the missing segment of time between Scaramouche’s fall and the moment he regained himself. He was still in a state of mental transition. Distance, she supposed, would be best to help him heal.
That didn’t mean she left him to his own devices. At first, she held firm to the idea that Scaramouche had to be punished for his transgressions to some extent, no longer the blameless puppet that lacked self-awareness. This meant heavily restricting his freedoms, keeping him contained in certain areas of the Sanctuary of Surasthana.
It took only a couple days before she realized that that particular punishment was ineffective. It took three more for her to realize that he was perfectly capable of punishing himself.
She crossed her arms, trying and failing to suppress her amused expression.
“I’m just trying to fix your hat.”
He scowled at her, clutching the brim of his hat. “I don’t need your help.”
“That’s not what you were saying when you accidentally locked yourself out of Irminsul.”
“I didn’t ‘lock myself out.’ You’re the one who locked me out. And you made me say ‘help me’ eight times before you let me back in.”
“I didn’t make you do anything.” Buer wiggled her splayed fingers in the air next to her face, trying for humor. “You have something called *Free will.*”
Free will.
That was the crux of what she used to ensure that he wasn’t left with too much time to himself. Or, at least, the semblance of it in a controllable space. It was intended to be a trial run for when he was finally released from her care, not that she would explain that to him yet. The specifics were that he was permitted access to Irminsul to search through the Tree at Buer’s behest—at a restricted level, of course. He’d proven to be skillful at scouring Irminsul for what Buer needed when she didn’t have time for more in depth searches.
Scaramouche soured at her ‘free will’ joke, pulling his hat over his eyes. “As if I’d need such a thing.” As if I deserve such a thing , the curl of his lip seemed to say .
“Well, if you don’t need help and you don’t need free will, what do you need?”
He released his hat, momentarily losing himself to her question. Buer kept her features schooled into neutrality, adopting an innocent stare.
“We can figure that out together, if you like,” she supplied.
It was her added comment that pulled Scaramouche from his discomposure.
He scoffed, voice rough.
“I’m your prisoner, aren’t I? Stop with all the niceties. You’re just evading what you really want. Drawing out this process so you can use me as much as you desire.”
She paused.
What she wanted? Buer knew what she wanted, and it wasn’t something he could grant her. At least, it wasn’t something that would be fair to request. She opened her mouth to assure Scaramouche that she didn’t want anything from him, much less to use him, only to find that somewhere in the midst of her consideration he had left. He always did when she faltered.
What he’d said, however, remained with her.
Perhaps she didn’t want something from him, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in giving him something. Material gifts would never work—and seemed far too shallow—so what else? She pressed the side of her hand to her lips, thoughts rushing. What could she offer him? Knowledge? Understanding? She shook her head. Again, far too shallow. Could she try and correct the misconceptions he’d grown to accept as fact?
She blinked. That might work.
The only remaining question was how .
He wouldn’t listen to her reasoning, caught as he was in his own world views. There was nothing she could say or do herself that would convince him that equal exchange isn’t a necessary facet of life. And no amount of kindness she could gift him would prove that he was cared for.
A lesson, then , she finally decided.
In the end, it was Irminsul she looked to for answers. A clear path slowly set itself before her as she took in the knowledge the World Tree held. But before she began down it, she created a backup. Scaramouche’s power over Irminsul was a concern; one that she planned to use to her advantage, but a concern nonetheless. She had a vague notion of the decisions he would make when he encountered the knowledge Irminsul had to offer—to say that they would be drastic would be an understatement.
She didn’t have to search for Scaramouche when she had her solution. No, he came to her, lips thinned with a response to the question she had posited.
“I need protection,” he said. I want to feel safe , the dip of his brows told her.
Buer pulled in a breath.
“Then I have an offer.”