Chapter Text
Freminet held many titles in Fontaine. To the public eye, he was known as one of the best divers for the Court of Fontaine. To willing customers, he was a toy maker, specializing in mechanical contraptions mimicking the underwater world. To those who knew him to be more than just a mere passerby on the street, he was also the younger sibling of the famous magician duo, Lyney and Lynette. To his family, he was a member of the House of the Hearth, and by extension, the Fatui. What he did as part of the organization was his business, but it wasn’t a secret he liked to keep.
Freminet preferred to be one of those in the crowd, someone unassuming who wouldn’t leave much of an impression. Someone with a face indiscernible from the rest in a sea of people. Most times, he achieved this. With his increasing notoriety as a court diver, however, it was getting to be just a bit harder to blend in with regular citizens.
Despite what his older siblings told him, Freminet wasn’t anything special. He wasn’t someone who could put a smile on others’ faces with a performance; in fact, he despised the spotlight. He wasn’t someone who could make others’ days better with just a few comforting words; more often than not, he had no idea what to say to people to get them to even continue talking to him, much less cheer them up.
The most he could comment on would be something meager, like the weather or the latest news in Fontaine that- by now, everyone already knew about. The ash blonde only really had one interesting thing about himself, and that was that he was a Court Diver. Due to his intense fascination with the ocean landscape, he could name all the organisms swimming in the water around them, could talk from sunrise to sunset about the different relationships going on between them, and could label (in extensive detail) all the underwater contraptions and ruins. But that wasn’t what people found interesting. The only solace was that with as bad at communication as he was, Freminet easily caused the people around him to end the conversation on their own. He never found it to be particularly vexing when people would excuse themselves from the interaction the moment a lull opened in the conversation- in fact, it just meant he gained more time for himself.
In addition to being a diver for the Court of Fontaine, Freminet was a mechanic. Self-taught, that is. He’s been tinkering with mechanical parts ever since he was a child, and continued to do so in the years of his late adolescence. It was his second hobby that had (and still does) brought him immense amounts of joy, especially when he was younger; his mother would leave him alone in a dark house due to her late work hours, and he’d have nobody but the appliances in their home to keep him company. He’d been able to survive a good decade like that, having no friends nor anyone to talk to but the lamps that flickered when they were on and the clocks that always ticked five seconds behind. Freminet would take them apart and put them back together again, time after time until they worked properly. When his mother sold off the things that he made, he felt as though his worth had gone up. Thus, in his teen years, he decided to start selling toys on the side. They were nothing special, just replicas of a certain automation penguin he carried around with him all the time.
Pers was Freminet’s best friend, and he confided in the little automation when he had no one else to turn to. The diver never took too long to think about how their relationship formed, and instead relished in the comfort of having someone (something) that didn’t judge him at his worst, that didn’t scold him for his failures, and that didn’t see him as worthless and replaceable. Yet, despite all that, Pers was only a toy. He could never congratulate Freminet during his good moments, as rare as they were.
The diver instead would take to talking to himself; when he was out working on making his newest toy, when he was underwater and no one but the tidalga would be able to hear him, or whenever he had time in the morning to utter a few words to his reflection whilst getting ready for the day. Every time Freminet would look into the mirror, however, his detested reflection would stare back at him. It wasn’t as though he hated himself, although that could be up for debate if he was willing--which he was not, and never was--he never outright liked himself. Coupled with his poor communication skills, he seemed to have low attractiveness to boot. People usually overlooked bad charisma if one’s aesthetic appeals were more than subpar, but the diver was severely lacking in both. He never minded it, as he’d seen what could happen if he did have the good looks of his siblings- Lyney was always greeted by a fangirl more than once whenever he went out, and even Lynette had a few people asking for her autograph. That could’ve also been attributed to their fame as magicians, but who’s to say their appearances didn’t play some part in their overall attractiveness?
No one found scars to be particularly attractive. At least, not to Freminet’s knowledge, they did. He had many; most were from underwater excursions turned into heinous battles, some were from jobs he’d been assigned to by Father, and others he’d gotten from fooling around recklessly as a child. Most of the cuts he got never went deep enough to scar, as he was far too cautious for that. Some wounds never left him, however, no matter how hard he tried to forget them; the ones the previous director of the House of the Hearth left before Father came into power, and the ones he’d been instructed to give himself. A strong reminder of how useless he was, and how he’d yet to change for the better. It wasn’t as though he liked the pain--he hated it so much that he stopped hearing short-sleeved shirts entirely--but he needed the reminder.
The old director’s voice echoes in his head occasionally. Once you reach rock bottom, the only way to go is up. But if you dwell on the floor for too long, you’ll become unable to arise on your own. At that point, once you’re gifted a reminder of how weak you are, you’ll come to your senses.
The gifts that the old director left were still with him, in more ways than one. He could always cover some up to avoid looking at them, but others would stare him dead in the eye when he least expected.
They itched sometimes- the scars. All of them. But Freminet knew better than to scratch at a scab- doing so would result in the wound reopening again. And he never liked the pain that it brought- the worry it elicited from his siblings. The diver didn’t want them to be concerned, didn’t want anyone to be concerned, so he kept it to himself, just as he kept everything else. He hoarded his problems in a neat little safe, where no one knew the code to get in except for him. Where no one could take them away from him, until he himself got rid of them.