Chapter Text
The first time Childe kills Scaramouche, it is a mistake.
They're on a mission together, hunting down a major threat to the Fatui cause. Scaramouche stops Childe from pursuing their target—says his plan is a stupid idea, and too dangerous, and that they can find another way around—and then the moment Childe's back is turned, he goes and does it himself, without a word.
When Childe finally catches up, he finds Scaramouche swaying on his feet, standing over the mangled corpse of the enemy.
There's no one but Scaramouche left for him to take his fury out on.
"How dare you go around me like that," he hisses. "What the hell is wrong with you? That should have been my kill." His hands itch for blood, and violence. He lets the urge take control of him. He lunges at Scaramouche.
Scaramouche deflects the blow, dancing backwards like the motion had been planned and choreographed. And maybe it had. They've fought often enough now that their counterplays have become well-worn and predictable, to each other.
Childe doesn't try to change up his moves to take advantage of Scaramouche's expectations. That sort of thing—conniving and scheming—was what other Harbingers did, not him. Childe only ever aimed to overwhelm with pure force. And he's too angry to think straight, anyway. Right now, there's only instinct carrying him.
"Throwing a fucking tantrum, Tartaglia? Really?" Scaramouche taunts, his upper lip curled into a sneer. He'd always been able to figure Childe out at a glance, from the very first day they met.
"Yes," Childe hisses, swinging his weapon through the air.
The fury clouds Childe's judgment, makes him push further and harder when normally he would have stopped. Scaramouche is worn down from taking on their target alone. His reactions fall out of sync with their practiced dance. Childe's attacks get closer, land closer to Scaramouche's vital points than they ever have before. Childe can see it happening, right in front of his eyes. It should give him pause. It would have, any other day. But, today, it only makes him angrier.
A mistake.
The result is both inevitable and unexpected.
Scaramouche dodges left instead of right at the exact wrong moment. Childe doesn't have enough time to react, to even try to redirect the rain of knives he'd flung in Scaramouche's direction. Scaramouche takes two hydro blades to the chest.
He looks surprised as he crumples to the ground.
The red fog in front of Childe's eyes goes white. His heart freezes in his chest. "Scaramouche!" he tries to say, but he doesn't hear himself say it. His ears are ringing.
He stumbles to Scaramouche's side, all of his hydro weaponry dissipating into nothing. He falls to his knees next to the other man.
"Scaramouche? Scaramouche?" Childe repeats urgently, his voice trembling. He can hear his own words this time, but they sound like they're coming from very far away. Scaramouche's gaze drifts towards Childe. He's still alive. But Childe doesn't know for how long. And he doesn't know what to say, or how to fix this. He blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. "Wh… why the hell did you…"
Incredulity overcomes pain, for a moment, in Scaramouche's expression. "…Why did I—?" Scaramouche starts to reply, before choking on the blood in his throat.
Childe feels Scaramouche's blood splatter on his cheek. He imagines it's burning his skin like acid. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," he says. "I didn't mean to…" His hands are hovering helplessly. With an effort, he jerks them into motion, pressing them hard to the wounds on Scaramouche's chest. Maybe if he can staunch the bleeding… But no, he knows already that it's no use. Scaramouche is coughing up blood. Childe had pierced his lung.
But something jostles loose in his memory. An offhand jibe from Capitano, something about how injuries didn't stick to Scaramouche. "We can't all vanish away our war-wounds whenever we want to... eh, Six?" their colleague had said. Or something like that. Childe only really remembered Scaramouche's reply.
"Eat my ass, you jealous bitch," Scaramouche had riposted instantly, accompanied by a rude gesture. And so Childe had laughed, and Capitano had stomped off, but… Childe hadn't cared enough, then, to ask either of them what Capitano's words had meant. He'd just been left with the faint suspicion that Scaramouche could heal himself, though he'd never seen it happen in all the time since.
"C—can't you heal? I thought..." he tries—even though, surely, if Scaramouche could, he'd be doing it by now.
And Scaramouche's chest shudders in what must be a laugh, making his blood bubble out of his wounds and well up between Childe's fingers. "Not exactly," Scaramouche says.
Which meant that Scaramouche was really about to die, at Childe's hands.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Childe says. He's breathing fast, and his face is hot. His eyes are prickling, the sensation needle-sharp. He can feel the drying specks of blood on his cheek. "Scaramouche, I—"
"Stop… blubbering," Scaramouche says, the sound wet and sticky with his own vital fluid. His hand reaches up to grab hold of Childe's jaw.
"It's… fine," he says, as though he isn't dying in Childe's arms, of an injury Childe had inflicted on him. "We'll… see each other again… soon."
And then, with that pretty lie hovering in the air between them, Scaramouche lets his eyes drift closed. His hand falls away from Childe's face, and then he breathes his last breath from those punctured lungs.
Childe buries Scaramouche nearby, with nothing but his own two hands. He doesn't say a single word over the grave. He leaves their target's corpse for the vultures to find.
He begins to make his way back to base. A gray numbness has set into every part of him. All he can really do is put one foot in front of the other. There's still dirt under his nails, days later, when he gets within sight of the towering walls of the Fatui headquarters.
The first voice he hears is Pulcinella's. The Fifth of the Eleven, the Harbinger who'd brought him here in the first place. And what a Harbinger Childe had become.
"Oh, good, now you're back," is what Pulcinella says. Childe wonders vaguely if some other Harbinger had returned from their own mission recently, but he can't quite bring himself to care. "How'd the mission go, then?"
"Scaramouche was killed," Childe replies, roughly. Those are the first words he's spoken aloud since it happened. He feels like a liar saying them. Saying that Scaramouche was killed, but not by whom. The admission is on the tip of his tongue. All Pulcinella has to ask is how it happened.
"Well, that explains it," the other Harbinger says instead.
Childe blinks, slowly. He can't tell if it's the haze in his head that's preventing him from understanding what that could possibly mean, or if it actually doesn't make any sense. "What?" he asks.
Pulcinella shrugs comprehensively. "Well, it might not have been that, but... he's been hanging around for days even though he wasn't due back yet from your mission, and he wouldn't say where you were or if it had been a success or not. Cagey bastard."
"...Days...?" Childe says. "He's… he's alive?"
"Yes?" Pulcinella squints up at him. "Hrm, you are still pretty new, aren't you? Feels like you've been..." And Pulcinella keeps on talking, but Childe has stopped listening, because beyond the man and down the long hallway behind him, Childe sees a familiar figure watching them both.
They make eye contact. The figure—that impossible figure, in his wide-brimmed hat—starts to turn away, and Childe shoves past Pulcinella to chase after him—after Scaramouche.
Scaramouche doesn't wait for Childe. He's stomping off towards his personal wing of the building at a rapid clip. But Childe's legs are the longer ones, and he catches up before Scaramouche can disappear into those labyrinthine halls. He grabs hold of Scaramouche's arm, and is half-surprised to find it solid and warm under his grip—real, and not some immaterial phantasm conjured by his mind. "You're alive!" Childe bursts out. "How are you alive?"
"Not so fucking loud," Scaramouche hisses. And then when Childe opens his mouth to apologize—though for which specific one of his recent crimes, Childe hadn't settled on yet—Scaramouche hisses again, urging him to silence.
He twists his arm out of Childe's grip, and then grabs hold of Childe's sleeve himself. "This way," he says, and starts to drag Childe along in the direction he'd been going before.
A heavy door swings closed behind them, shutting them both into an empty, sparsely-appointed office, before Scaramouche speaks again. "I don't like people knowing, when it happens," he says, flatly. "Now tell me, was the mission a success? Did we take out the target?"
"The… target?" Childe stares at Scaramouche. "I… Don't you know? You were the one who killed the guy. Without me."
Scaramouche tilts his head in consideration. After a few seconds, he nods. "And then I succumbed to my wounds?" he asks.
"You... you don't remember?" Childe feels like the ground is shifting under his feet. If Scaramouche doesn't remember...
"Answer the question," Scaramouche snaps.
Childe tries to imagine explaining what had happened. Scaramouche doesn't remember it—that he's asking is evidence enough. He doesn't remember what Childe had done, or what he himself had said, while Childe was kneeling on the ground next to him. Was this what he'd meant, when he'd told Childe they would see each other again? Childe feels his veins flood with true absolution and a new sort of terror. Scaramouche had forgiven him, in the moment, and he must have meant it, but... maybe he wouldn't forgive him now, if Childe only told him the facts.
So he couldn't tell Scaramouche the facts. He couldn't.
"You…" Childe says, distantly. "Yes, you got wounded." It's the truth, even if it's not all of it. "I… I buried you. Scaramouche, how are you here?"
"Does it matter?" Scaramouche asks. He doesn't give Childe time to answer. "That's all for now, Tartaglia. You can go." He gestures at the door.
Childe takes a half-step in that direction automatically, and then he freezes in place and turns back towards Scaramouche. The way Scaramouche had said 'Tartaglia'... he'd placed the emphasis all wrong. "Tar-tag-lia," Childe corrects, baffled.
Scaramouche's expression goes pinched. "Tartaglia," he repeats, correctly this time. But the name still sounds unfamiliar in his mouth. Like he's never said it before.
Scaramouche doesn't give Childe time to form words out of the sheer confusion now spinning around in his head. "I said, get lost," he snaps. "And go get cleaned up. You smell like shit." Then, he storms out of the room himself, the veil hanging off his hat flapping in his wake.
Childe is too stunned to chase after him. He just watches Scaramouche disappear from sight, gut churning with something unpleasant and unsettled all the while.
Tartaglia returned today. He says he buried you. He seemed pretty fucked up about it, to be honest. Maybe he liked you better than you thought.
I don't see what you saw in him, though. He's pretty enough, but he couldn't even be bothered to clean the blood off his Nevermind, this doesn't matter. The mission mentioned in your last entry was a success—you killed the target and then died of your wounds. I'd say 'good work' but you've left me with a pile of shit to shovel, so instead I'll say 'fuck you, asshole, idiot, moron.'
What were you even trying to do? Impress him? Protect him? What an embarrassment.
I'll try to glean what I can to avoid whatever screwup you made. But, later. Once my ego's recovered from so obviously showing my ass earlier. Which I blame on you as well, by the way. Since you failed to leave a pronunciation guide, I've written one out below for my future self, for next time. Let's not repeat that mistake…