Work Text:
Pantalone had never been a man of faith, or at least, that’s what he was shaped to believe. He perhaps worked in an organization where it was everything, where lacking such could send one far worse than in the guts of Teyvat – yet, it had never been his first motive. Believing in their project was a given, but if he thought about Tartaglia or Scaramouche – they both had as little trust in this as possible, and both were as fine as a Fatui could be. Not that trust and faith were the same, at the end of the day.
He knew that. He knows that especially now that he’s trying to ignore the grip on his heart and the urge to give back his entire meal. His fingers are white from the hold he still has on the meeting room’s table, and he hasn’t heard a single word they said after Signora’s report.
It’s ringing against his ears as if rain had clouded his senses, even though he was the one to make sure this castle would survive any weather hazard.
He jolts back when everyone rises off their seats at once. He does as well, ignoring Dottore’s look of concern and urges to his quarters, trying his best not to seem too out of place. Hasty people do not have room in Snezhnaya, where everything is frozen until the end of the world.
The number of times Pantalone went out on the field can be counted on his fingers – yet, he’s already picturing himself roaming the entirety of the Chasm in one morning, exhausting himself to no end.
He doesn’t even know what it looks like. He doesn’t even know if he has the legs to last an entire morning there, covered in mud and dirt and probably blood as well, because those three always end up painting clothes together.
He doesn’t have the time to think that far, anyway.
He made it to his room and is clumsily stuffing a sweater in his travel bag – used a total of three times, counting this one. But as if he had time to count.
“What are you doing?” Dottore’s voice travels through the thick wood of the door.
Pantalone freezes with a pair of socks in his hand, determined to get rid of him as quickly as possible. But for that, he must act normal – be normal.
“What are you doing out of your lab? Don’t you have a screaming someone desperate to see you right now?”
He can practically hear his grin through his tone when Dottore responds:
“That can wait. You look like you’d need a good scream as well.”
For a second, Pantalone worries that Dottore can actually see him through the door. Perhaps if it was Columbina, his worries could have been founded, but the man was far from ingenious like that. There was a good reason as to why they all had their own field of experience – he remembers coldly as he takes a last look at his bag, closing it as silently as possible.
“Thank you for your unwanted concern, Doctor, but I’m alright.”
There’s a heavy silence on the other side, and an imperceptible shift of fabric.
“You know where to find me.”
They’re not close enough to actually care about each other. Pantalone never had a lot of thoughts on the matter, but he’s pretty glad now he never tried to change that.
Now he has to leave the palace – and he can’t afford to lose a minute more, can’t afford to wait for the night.
He throws his bag out of the window and watches as it lands one floor lower. This will have to do. He grabs the edge and pushes on his arms with a strength new to him – he knows what it is about, adrenalin or whatever. Dottore told him at times about subjects that’d run faster or punch harder once they were scared.
And Pantalone isn’t scared, not really – or that’s what he establishes as he bends his knees and receives the full impact, not even smoothed by the inches of snow under his feet. He takes a few seconds, eyes closed, to stop his head from spinning and scrambles around him to get his bag.
“What the fuck? I thought you were trying to kill yourself,” blurts an annoying voice behind him.
Pantalone grunts and opens his eyes, abandoning the search for his bag.
“Leave me alone, Childe.”
The youngster looks at him with eyes that could actually be worried, if they didn’t belong to a dumbass doubled of a jerk.
“Are you sure you’re alright? You lost your keys or something?”
Pantalone brushes off the snow of his coat, ignoring the heat in his cheeks. It’s the fall, and everything that goes with it. He’s in a rush.
“I’m in a rush.”
Just as he isn’t sure Dottore wouldn’t throw him under the first hilichurl they cross, he’s fairly certain that Childe never misses an opportunity to keep a secret. Yet, he doesn’t have the time to explain anything.
“Do you need a ride? I could help you get on the next boat.”
They share a look. Pantalone hates that he’s thinking about it. But he must consider his offer – after all, what was he going to do? Walk all across Teyvat and lose even more time? Isn’t his dignity or whatever he’s carrying so close to his heart worth the sacrifice?
“Tell me more.”
Tartaglia bends in front of him and lifts his bag off the ground.
“There. I can not give you details, I can only give you indications.”
“How can you be so sure it’s not a trap?”
Something like doubt flashes across Childe’s eyes.
“I can’t. But I’ve done it a couple of times. Can’t be that dangerous if I’m intact.”
Pantalone nods slowly.
“Tell me.”
And now, the usual malice is back on the ginger’s face.
“Only if you tell me where you’re going.”
“This is none of your business,” growls Pantalone, snatching back his bag.
He’d rather go alone and on foot than tell anything to anyone here.
“Fine, fine,” says Childe raising both his hands, “I’ll tell you where to go. It’s just across the river, south. You have to find a guy with a flock of sheep. He’ll lend you a boat if you pay the right price.”
Pantalone looks at him for a few seconds more, wondering how he could have gotten the cash to do such a trip, but prefers not to ask.
“If I don’t come back in one piece, I will rip both your hands off your arms, Childe.”
The kid only smiles and waves.
“You’re welcome!”
Pantalone doesn’t lose a minute more and, gripping the handle of his bag way too tight, follows the direction the Eleventh Harbinger indicated.
It’s not long to reach the river nor recognize the herd of sheep Childe was talking about. It is, though, extremely excruciating to negotiate with the smuggler – or whatever he calls himself.
“It’s one hundred thousand moras, and I ain’t doin’ discount’ pal’,” grunts the guy for the third time.
“I’m telling you, a thousand will do just fine for this piece of junk,” grumbles Pantalone back, lowering his price every time he answers.
“Listen here,” finally sighs the guy, “I ain’t the one in need of a vehicle her’. If you don’t wanna pay the price, just piss off.”
Pantalone hates men like him. Pretending that he knows anything about business, behaving himself as if he had credit for doing this, as if everything here wasn’t the Tsaritsa’s property… He could use the Fatui card but is too scared that the guy will run his mouth. He doesn’t have the time to hide a body either.
He runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm himself. Past the frustration bubbling up in his chest, it feels weirdly good to have this argument. Far away from what he’s used to, but far away as well from the news that’s weighing on his mind since the meeting. Every distraction is welcomed.
It’s constantly in the back of his head – the slightest shade of blue is enough to put it again on the front page of his thoughts, and for archons’ sake, who decided to make the sky so bloody blue today?
He sighs heavily and takes his purse. It’s a tear in his heart – he never had to spend this much at once. He knows where it comes from, he knows exactly why all of his internal alarms are glowing red like this – but he doesn’t have a choice.
The guy gives him a disgusting smile as he counts the moras in his hands.
“I knew a fine gentleman like you had enough to pay. She’s yours,” he points behind his back at a small motorized frigate. “This is Fontaine technology so don’t worry about piloting. Just indicate on the map where you wanna go.”
Maybe not the junk Pantalone thought it’d be. He goes around the guy and steps on the boat, careful not to slip. He can’t remember if he ever took one in his entire life. Not legally like this, at least.
He settles his bag right next to him in the cabin and doesn’t bother himself saluting the man as he stands in front of the map. He doesn’t hear his last recommendations, pressing the Liuye harbor’s pictogram, the motor buzzing in his ears almost immediately.
He doesn’t really know exactly where he should go – but he trusts that someone there will.
Traveling already takes too long. He spends the first day reading and trying to concentrate on something else than what’s weighing on him, but it’s a failure. He succeeds though in not letting it wash over him: the rare times it happens, he’s quick enough to compartmentalize it all back. It’s something he learned when he was a kid, and something he learned again with the Fatui: he’ll have time to be devastated after . Once it’s done. He doesn’t know what exactly, doesn’t know how he should feel either, but it’s enough to keep him afloat. He focuses on the fish he sees, on fishing even, on drawing sometimes, or doing what he’s actually good at: counting what’s left of the money he took with him and establishing a budget. He doesn’t know how long he’ll stay there exactly, but these types of hypotheses are always better than the doubts gnawing at him.
After a few sunsets and what seems to be an infinity of time spent at sea, Liyue’s colors are finally visible far away. Pantalone fetches his bag and grabs cotton pants as well as a silk shirt to put on. He doesn’t want to be recognized – he isn’t here on official business. He switches his glasses for sunglasses, hoping it’ll hide at least his eyes.
For once, he’s glad he doesn’t have to worry about a vision.
He doesn’t go as far as putting on a hat, but when no one looks twice at him when he gets off the boat, it must mean he’s fine as it is. As soon as both his feet and his bag are on the safe land of the dries, the boat stirs away and before Pantalone can think of a way to hold it at bay, goes deep into sea and back to his rightful owner.
One hundred thousand moras for this…
Pantalone sighs. At least, going from Liyue to Snezhnaya is way easier than the opposite. And his mind will be at peace - and if it isn’t, then even the Tsaritsa herself can’t predict what will happen to him.
He puts his bag on his shoulder and walks across town. It’s actually prettier than he thought. He’s glad he doesn’t remember much from his past visits too long ago: the weight of memories is only a ghost rather than a hand directly on his throat.
He pretends he’s a tourist, pretends he’s from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and goes to the biggest and prettiest inn in town – for what it seems. He leaves his bag there, enjoying the fact that he’ll be able to sleep in an actual bed, and then takes a deep breath as he steps out. He’s so close he feels his fingers twitching, yet something in him is screaming that perhaps doubt is still better.
He goes up along the main road, taking in all the flowers and grass and green he can, to not think about his first destination. The more he approaches, the stronger the scent becomes - burning herbs, remedies he recognizes. He doesn’t even know if it’s useful, actually, but every step makes his throat tighten a bit more and it takes all of his willpower to not turn back and run to his palace once he’s in front of the door.
The building is huge. He feels a sense of unwanted pride tug at his chest.
He knows why he’s here. Having to set his ego aside has always been part of the plan. Taking another deep breath, he knocks.
The voice that invites him in is everything like he remembered. It makes him want to puke – or perhaps it’s the land and the sea and the reason why he’s here.
He enters. It smells even stronger. If there wasn’t an immediate headache looming over him, it’d have been memories - he counts himself lucky. He steps forward in the light and the guy behind the counter loses his business smile for an expression Pantalone never thought he’d see again.
“What on earth-“ Baizhu begins, but Pantalone gets even closer, almost raising his hand to beg him to not say anything. He breathes in, the words rushing off of his mouth in fear that they’d drown in his throat:
“I know I don’t have the right to come back here after we’ve left each other all those years ago but brother-“ he breathes, because he practiced in the boat but seeing Baizhu’s widened eyes and smelling his perfume and realizing no one had ever smelled home like he does, not like this, almost makes him want to back away and undo what he’s just done, “I need your help.”
There’s a heavy silence before Baizhu breathes in.
“This must have just ripped your tongue, didn’t it?”
Pantalone can’t blame him for his tone. His jaw’s white with anger. He sees himself, pathetically crawling in front of the brother he cut off years ago – even though it was mutual, even though it’s much more than a matter of convictions.
“I need your help,” he says again, because saying it once makes it easier.
Baizhu sighs, seems to examine the opportunity of having the banker of the Fatui owe him something. He doesn’t exactly ask what it is about, he doesn’t inquire about how Pantalone feels.
Perhaps he already knows.
Actually, Pantalone hopes he does. He hopes he doesn’t have to lay his whole damn heart on this table. Baizhu might be a pharmacist, but Pantalone knows it means both remedy and poison, knows his brother can choose to crush him or quite literally save him right now.
“Is this about what they say about you and the Tianquan’s spy?”
His voice isn’t soft nor rough. Pantalone doesn’t know if he’s making a conscious effort to stay neutral, but he’d almost say thank you.
“So you’ve heard of her?” he asks, taking the time to weigh his words, and his body, and not grip the edge of the counter like a madman.
Because that’s how he feels.
He made it. He reached her nation, he roamed the seas and now, he’s looking for her and he’s pretty certain that if he doesn’t see her face in the next two hours, everyone in Liyue will suffer from an evil they only ever heard about.
He doesn’t want things to go this bad. He doesn’t want much. It isn’t much, right? To ask for so little, to ask just for love – but it seems that leading a life like his, it was the highest of all the sins he could ask to be forgiven.
Baizhu must somehow feel he’s trying to stay calm, because he doesn’t play games.
“I haven’t. Not recently, anyway.”
“Who has?”
“What do you know?”
Baizhu’s expression doesn’t shift as Pantalone tells him how during his last meeting, Signora came back with this huge smile on her face – and he knew something wasn’t right.
“I thought it was about the Gnosis, or Rex Lapsis. But then she stands up, and she says, “the spy is dead”. She says she wasn’t the one to kill her, but that she died in the depths of the Chasm. I thought of a trap at first-“
“To lure you out. Because they knew that you… cared about her,” Baizhu interrupts his brother’s mechanical retelling. His hesitation goes unnoticed.
“Exactly. But she has this ring-“
And it clings so hard, so heavy on the wooden table. It spins for a moment, but there’s no mistake. Pantalone would recognize it anywhere. He had kissed this jewel so many times that his own lips must be carved in it. He feels the earth open under his feet, and he has to grab the table just to be sure he’s not falling.
This must be a dream. Or a nightmare, at least. It can’t be real.
But the ring doesn’t stop spinning and if he takes another look at it, he’s going to throw up.
“- I came as soon as possible.”
Baizhu doesn’t look impressed, but there’s something of a surprised look in the depths of his gaze.
“You must indeed really care about her.”
Pantalone doesn’t know if it’s jealousy he hears, but chooses to not answer this.
“Do you know who-“
“You have no choice but to go see Ningguang.”
“Is she easily approachable?”
“Not at all,” snorts Baizhu. “But I happen to know someone quite close to her. But before I give you the name…”
Pantalone nods instead of whispering the anything burning up his tongue.
“Promise me you’ll tell her the truth,” his brother concludes, “it’ll bring you further than any lie.”
Pantalone nods. He guesses Liyuean are romantics. He guesses he’d peel the skin of his heart piece by piece if it meant seeing her alive again.
Because she can’t be dead.
He thanks Baizhu and promises himself he’ll come back less pathetic and less desperate, in the near future. But first, he has to keep stomping on his pride.
Beidou is the woman Baizhu recommended. He said Pantalone’s lucky. That she is rarely in Liyue, but that the Northern winds have kept her at bay for now.
Pantalone can’t help to think that the Tsaritsa must be a romantic as well.
He finds the Captain with her men, seated at a restaurant’s table and drinking at least for ten.
He thinks Yelan must have mentioned her before, but he doesn’t have the time to convince himself she’s alive, so he stops near Beidou and washes away the thoughts of blue hair and blue eyes and blue everything.
“What do you want?” she asks after seizing him with her single, fierce eye.
Had he not been in such a hardship and in such desperate need of her help, he’d find her too intimidating to do business with.
“I need a word in private.”
“What you can’t say in front of them doesn’t interest me,” she states as the table gives encouraging nods and some of them even stomp their feet on the ground.
Pantalone wants to die of something.
He leans towards Beidou, careful to not frighten her or the big sword running across her back.
“This is about Ningguang.”
Something passes in Beidou’s eyes, something hard for Pantalone not to understand. He gulps down, because it’s only half a lie.
The capitaine rises from her seat and instructs her men to stay put as she drags Pantalone by the sleeve. They stop behind the restaurant, air full of smelly grease and heavy warmth.
“One should know that one does not freely use Ningguang’s name in front of me, Harbinger. Speak.”
He can feel her desire to draw her sword. He’s not even surprised she recognized him- she’s a captain, after all, and roaming the seas always brings more knowledge than necessary.
He sees it, though. The way her mouth softens around the name. Or how her shoulders are heavy with worry. How she’d kill everyone in this town if it meant having her out of danger.
Getting through shouldn’t be all that difficult: he’s a mirror.
“In truth, it’s about Yelan,” he says, the name tearing his mouth apart.
There’s a silence.
“What about her?” she then carefully asks.
“Is she alive?” it’s a whisper, full of all the fears he had to keep at bay for this past week. He wonders if his knees can carry him still, he wonders if he shouldn’t just collapse on the floor – but not now, not now that he’s waiting for an answer.
Everything he tried to keep far comes rushing back in a breath and almost knocks him out, and he wonders if it’s ashes from the oven or his own tears that make his eyes burn like this.
“I love her,” he says again, voice so small he wonders if he was heard, or if he imagined himself saying this. He doesn’t know why it’s out there, but it is. The words are loud against his ears, mantra he kept repeating himself as if it’d keep her alive from afar.
“I can see that,” says Beidou in the same tone.
Grief, he’s done once or twice in his life. He knows it sinks its teeth deep in his arm and never lets go, and that every time he looks down on his skin there are the scars reminding him of what he lost. But a grief like this, a grief as exploding as this one, he can’t do. He can’t live helpless, he can’t live unable to do anything to repair this. He earned enough money to make a home, a place for himself. Enough to be happy, enough to be with her at times – he can’t Death let it take it all away again. It’d give it all up if he had the chance, but he just needs her to be alive .
He sweat and cried and bled for all of this to happen to him, he gave half of his soul to a madwoman, he killed and spilled blood and spit for two moras if it was necessary – because he knows the values of things. And as such, he knows what it does to lose them. And as such, he knows he could never afford to lose Yelan, not even with all the money in the world at his fingertips. If she’s dead, he’s doing all of it for nothing. A stroke on his cheek is worth every throat he slit. If there’s no more hand to hold, the void would swallow him whole. He’d be nothing. He’d be a ball of pain, going from one day to the other without nothing to hold onto. Even when they’re apart, he sleeps soundly knowing she’s safe – this he can’t do. Doubt like that, hurt like that. He can’t bear a cross built on love.
Grief never disappears, grief lives with the living, but this one would kill him.
He looks up to meet Beidou’s gaze. She hasn’t said anything. She doesn’t save him from his turmoil. He wants to grab her by the collar and shake her and ask – where is she. I know she’s alive. Where is she. I still have hope.
Hope’s for the kids, hope’s for the weak, yet he can’t help but fuel the flame, as little as she is.
“Come with me,” finally says Beizhou, and Pantalone wants to be a kid again.
Suddenly he wants to be a kid again. Not him, but another. A kid that could cry and wail until life would give him what he wants. A kid that could close his eyes so hard that he’d see nothing but colors.
If she’s dead, he isn’t sure he’d remember her face forever. He isn’t sure he could continue this whole masquerade.
He still walks behind Beidou, crossing streets he never noticed before, seeing houses completely different from the ones near the harbor.
“You’re almost lucky there’s wind,” she says as they pass yet another group of children playing together.
Pantalone merely hums, throat too tight to say anything. He wonders if she’s trying to not hurt his feelings before the fall or if she’s just being cruel. He’d take cruel over any caring, right now.
They arrive in front of a little house with a wooden roof, and Beidou opens the door. He enters first. The curtains are closed, just enough so there’s a little ray of sunshine passing through one of the blinds. Pantalone waits a second for his eyes to get used to the darkness and they fall on a covered figure, laying down on the bed, the only furniture in the room.
He smells her perfume before he hears her voice.
“Beidou?”
She’s here.
“There’s a visitor for you,” she whispers. Then she turns towards Pantalone, “Harbinger, if you lied to me, I promise you, Snezhnaya will burn.”
She’s alive. He barely registers Beidou’s threats.
“I-,“ he mouths. She’s alive.
“It’s fine,” says Yelan, her voice rasp from something – fire, burning, wound? Pantalone can’t say. He wants to rush to the bed. He wants to touch her, pull her hair, kiss her nose, make sure she’s really there.
Something is keeping him at bay, and it’s a sigh so heavy he can barely breathe.
“Are you sure?”
“You can leave us,” says Yelan again.
The door closes behind Beidou. Her shadow’s still towering under the door. Pantalone doesn’t blame her.
He approaches, slowly, and falls loudly beside the bed, his knee suddenly hitting the floor, legs shaking.
“Where are you hurt?” he whispers.
“You came,” she says instead of answering.
Pantalone takes one of her hands in both of his, squeezing slowly. Grief makes room for relief, a relief so deep he thinks he’d cry if she wasn’t awake, if it wouldn’t mean losing his voice to talk to her.
“You called from miles away,” he says, kissing her hand.
She snorts.
“Liar.”
He smiles against her skin.
“You smell so good.”
“Liar again,” she giggles this time, and it ignites the fire back. It’s enough for Pantalone to celebrate life again. If she’s here, if she laughs, he can do it all again. If he has even only one second to hold her hand like this, he’d take that damn boat again. Hell, he’d even pay double the price. He’d let Beidou run her sword into him. He’d apologize to his brother a thousand times. If all of this meant kissing her skin like that, hearing her voice like that, he’d do it all over again.
“There’s a bathtub in the other room,” she whispers, squeezing his hand. “Can you…?”
He doesn’t wait for her to finish and helps her get out of bed. He takes the time, lets her put her arm around his shoulder and step by step, leads the way to the bathroom.
He makes her sit on the toilets as he lets the water flow into the tub.
There’s more light here, just enough that he can distinguish her expression. She’s so tired he wants to rip half of his heart and give it to her. He wants to trade, he wants to take all of her injuries. He’s dying to know what happened, of course, but he observes a silence almost religious – he’s never been this religious in his entire life, even working for a god – as the water flows. When the bathtub is filled, she slips out of her bathrobe and settles.
He waits until she looks back at him and takes the shampoo lying around. He puts some on his hand and, still silent, rubs it on her skull. She closes her eyes, slowly bending her neck around so he can reach the spots with more ease. He knows she washes them twice, so after having rinsed them a first time, he takes shampoo again. It earns him a smile.
Even for this mere twitch of the lips, he’d do it all again.
“What does it feel like?” she teases.
“What?” he whispers as he rinses his hands off to put soap on it. He then starts by her shoulders and neck, slowly massaging her skin in the meantime.
“You came all the way from Snezhnaya only to give me a bath.”
He snorts.
“It’s worth it.”
And perhaps it’s the emotion of those past few days. Perhaps he doesn’t know how to act all cold again. Because she doesn’t say anything back, she just stares at him and his voice full of love he doesn’t know what to make of.
He knows it’s the grief. Because what is grief if not love persevering? There wouldn’t be any had he not loved her with all his strength – and he made sure he was as mighty as a god.
She’s so pretty it hurts. It hurts so much that he tries not to focus on the bruises along her arms or ribs, or her legs that had been visibly put back together by strength. He avoids the wounds that are still reddish, and only skims over the deep cut under her arm.
When he’s almost done, he sees the way her eyes are closing by themselves. So, he helps her get out of the tub and immediately wraps her in the larger towel he can find. He slowly and softly rubs her skin, and is proud of himself when he doesn't get one grimace from her. He did it right. It’s more rewarding than anything he ever did in his life – and he killed in the name of a god.
They go back to the room, and she scoots over so he can lie with her.
“I’m dirty from my travel,” he whispers to her as he settles next to the bed again.
“You should have taken a bath with me.”
He smiles. The words fall before he can catch them.
“I got so scared.”
There’s a silence, and Yelan turns to face him. He tries to ignore the pain that flashes across her face.
“I hate that you’re seeing me like this,” she whispers even lower.
“You should have seen me on the way. I was anything but mighty.”
“Ha,” she sighs, “I bet you looked ridiculous.”
“I really did.”
“Tell me about it.”
So he does. A hand going through her hair, using his fingers as a comb, he recites how he had to get rid of Dottore and Childe, how he paid so much to just use a damn boat, how he saw his brother again. She doesn’t say anything apart from some little exclamations and when he’s finished, she’s almost asleep.
“I’m falling asleep,” she murmurs.
“I see that.”
“Don’t go.”
“I won’t.”
“Kiss me.”
He executes. Careful of where he stands, he bends forwards and presses his lips to hers. It lasts only a few seconds, but it’s enough again, enough to make him sure that he’d do it all again.
Tomorrow, when she wakes, he’ll make sure she knows he loves her.
And tomorrow, when she wakes, the grief will have left room for relief, and relief will have left room for anger – an anger he can already feel brewing, an anger keeping him awake, an anger stitching his eyes to her slowly breathing body. He knows intimately that whoever did this, Fatui or not, will not live to see the sun another day. He also knows that it’d be an insult to do that on his own – so he’ll wait. He learned to be patient enough. Love will make him patient enough. He’ll assist her in her revenge, he’ll kill whoever she tells him to kill – and they’ll make sure none of this happens ever again.
What she says he does, because that’s faith.That’s love. He was a soldier at the hands of beliefs and he made himself a soldier at the hands of love. And now he knows where he gets his religion from – the divine is in front of his eyes, soundly asleep, and he lays his head right by her side.