Work Text:
There was child in the Palace.
A fresh faced thing, as pale as the snow and just as blemished, standing unattended in the atrium. His eyes flitted about restlessly, a faint spark of awe present, but the lines of tension running through his body were clear to see, each limb held rigid as if anticipating an ambush.
Only the slightest downturn of her lip betrayed Sandrone's distaste, as she observed from the upper balcony. Pulcinella was not half as subtle as he believed, nor half as clever if he so earnestly thought such information could be hidden from her purview. While he and Arlecchino were free to recruit as they pleased, their rationale would remain wholly lost on her. Children made for curious studies - so blatant in their emotion that the lines could easily be transposed onto any number of her creations - but they were yet to grow into their strengths, and would never survive the harshness of winter unprotected.
Abyss tainted or not, a child remained a child. To truly nurture growth one turns to brighter pastures and offers a gentle hand, but a farmer did not plough at frozen earth with the intent to dig a farm.
If one cared not for who you were burying, there were few better places for a grave.
The Marionette knew this fact well, as did her colleagues.
His age may have dampened his combat prowess, but it was doubtful that Pulcinella would grow senile overnight. The Rooster was more than capable of choosing particularly talented whelps to take under his wing, but he reared them with espionage in mind - all of them orphans as well as skilled negotiators and unfaltering deceivers, and almost always taken directly from the House of the Hearth.
No - the child before her was in every way incompatible with his usual motivations. As he was now he would not survive even a week amongst their ranks, and if her suspicions were correct, nor was he meant to.
Both Pierro and Dottore made no secret of their studies into the Abyss and the lengths they went to in order to retrieve samples for their research. Having shared workspace with him for so long, she also knew of the Doctor's preference for live samples - something the Balladeer could not supply him from their typical excursions.
Nothing drove Dottore to boredom faster than stale materials, and if he had exhausted all current avenues for one project he would not hesitate to gather more substantial offerings for another, all the while lavishing even greater affection onto Pantalone. Most lovers gifted flowers and whispered sweet nothings, but their preference was for severed heads and promises of even sweeter vengeance. For all that their status as Harbingers protected them from any formal reprimand, the Regrator's tendency to leave lists of those who had slighted him (no matter how minor the offence) on the desk of his partner had already lead to two minor incursions that had to be quashed that year, and the past weeks had already seen another uptick in "disappearances".
Stories of snow spirits sent to whisk away wayward souls might keep more rural areas from investigating too deeply, but nobles and politicians had fewer such compulsions and could yelp far louder. Pulcinella had tired of fielding their complaints, it seemed, and had instead settled on a child to be used as a bargaining chip - how quaint.
Sandrone allowed herself to linger a little longer as an agent came to retrieve the boy, offering him a sneered greeting and orders to follow along. The child simply smirked in turn, the expression twisting at his face and highlighting the void imbedded in his eyes, a spark of maddened azure cutting through the cold teal.
"Hm... How about you make me?" the boy taunted, detached glee bleeding through his tone, at once alive and yet not unlike one of her automatons.
A misnomer, Sandrone realised, as the child moved with a speed and precision she had yet to successfully recreate using mechanical components - parrying the agent's dagger with one of his own and incapacitating him within the same breath. She had miscalculated the boy's skills, perhaps owing to a more severe time distortion within the Abyss than anticipated?
Truly a curious case... So unlike Capitano, but with the same unmistakable energy signature that magnified around the child as he fought.
Her earlier assessment still stood, his constitution appeared unchanged despite his exposure to Abyssal energies, and all the martial prowess in the world could not protect you from a poisoned drink or weakness of heart; but the Marionette could not deny her own growing curiosity. Cloaked in shadow, she watched as the boy poked at the agent's unconscious body, careful to keep her presence concealed as the brim of a familiar hat came into view, and contemplated her next move.
Sandrone was rarely a creature of impulse, caring little for rankings and numb to both fear and ego. But not even she could not eradicate every irrational compulsion, and something about the boy called to her - a nexus of potential which courted chaos and power in equal measure.
Dottore would not be allowed to have him, she decided then and there. Even if the boy did survive and come out stronger for it, too much of him would be lost for that path to be considered acceptable. Thankfully, the 7th Harbinger was rarely without contingencies; though she would have to readjust output at her other facilities to compensate for the loss of those in Liyue and Sumeru, Pantalone was unlikely to decline her bribe of what was functionally a month-long vacation for him and his partner under the guise of "foundry inspection" and "cost efficiency reports".
[Though the Regrator had initially brokered the agreement in effort to gift Dottore one of her labs in Natlan, claiming it was an incentive for them both to keep annual costs low lest they lose their facilities to the other, it had only benefitted Sandrone over the years. She let a wry smirk cross her face at the thought, recalling how the depth of his loathing deepened with every failed manoeuvre on his part - only ever visible for a few brief moments but eternally imprinted into her memory.]
Pulcinella would have to be monitored as well, she mused. Though he could serve as an effective teacher of the subtler arts, the other Harbinger had already proven some level of disregard for the child's life. While he played the role of a kindly older gentleman flawlessly, they all knew better than to trust his facade.
For now Sandrone shelved that line of thought, watching as the two exited the room below. She would ensure the child lived to see adulthood and with any luck he wouldn't disappoint her.
[The Marionette imparted few sentiments, for she did not believe in the wholly immaterial, but if for one moment she entertained a notion of hope - that one child might survive the winter - there was no one else to witness it.]