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You didn't know the human body could bleed so much or that they'd go out with such a fight. People die quickly on paper and in the stories your seniors told you. Your allies can be there one second and gone the next, fragile and human.
What they did not tell you was that your enemies don't die like your allies. The people who fight with you die quietly, but the death of an enemy is visceral and raw. They die fighting and choking on their own blood, going out with a bang after leaving harsh scratches clawed into your skin, and it takes longer. You can't say how long. It feels like it should've taken longer to run a knife through their stomach, but everything blurs together into an endless struggle before you lay beneath a wheezing body on its last legs, with blood staining your uniform and coating your skin in an uncomfortable warmth.
Your hands are red. It's the first thing you realise when you push that person off of you, and they collapse beside you in a lifeless heap of flesh and bone.
Your hands are red, and so is your uniform, and the snow beneath you, and your arm, bleeding from jagged scratches—
"You're very good at what you do."
What?
Before you realise what you're doing, you turn up to look at who's there, half expecting another enemy as you grip the bloodied knife still lodged in the body beside you.
Your eyes follow from the shoes up to the face of Pantalone, and you breathe a cautious breath, your hand drifting away from the knife, hoping he wouldn't notice you were on the verge of stabbing him a moment ago.
It sounded like his attempt to comfort or assure you, but all you feel toward him is anger. The reasoning is lost on you, as all reasoning is right now. Your mind is scattered, fighting the urge to empty your stomach and trying to ease your trembling.
How can he treat human life so flippantly? Does this entertain him?
Pantalone steps around the body, eyes trained on you. It seems the sight fails to bother Pantalone as he crushes their hand beneath his shoe without mercy, the sickening crack of bones doing nothing to help the rising bile in your throat. You watch him, unable to form words and desperate to keep yourself from crying in front of a Harbinger.
Instead, Pantalone looks unfazed by it all, stopping as he reaches the other side of you, free of most of the blood. He greets you with a knowing smile as he usually does. His hand disappears into his overcoat, and when it reappears, he's holding something— a handkerchief, you think.
"I knew making you a banker was a good idea," he says. Pantalone lowers himself to the ground, knee resting in the snow as his free hand catches your chin between his fingers, thumb brushing across your bottom lip slicked with blood. His eyes hold an unreadable look, perhaps of admiration, but maybe that's your imagination as you stare him down with a forced, queasy smile.
He chuckles lightly at the display. "Who knew you had so many other talents," he remarks, perhaps teasing you, but you're not sure. You doubt he is.
Murder is not the duty of a banker, not any regular banker, at least. Then again, Fatui bankers were never regular bankers. People say the Northland bank's true currencies are blood and tears for a reason, and you scold yourself for not realising that sooner. You should've figured out from the moment he asked you to accompany him that this was some kind of test, not the rudimentary trip to your homeland you thought it was.
Now, he's admiring you like the most precious jewel of his expansive collection, eyes alight with approval and only exemplified by the evident confidence in himself.
He raises the handkerchief to your cheek, and you instinctively pull away, stopped only by his finger raising to warn you, like telling off a misbehaving child.
"Ah ah," he says, a harshness seeping into even just that sound. "Stay."
You stay put, not eager to anger him. The next thing you feel is pain— stinging pain— as he presses the fabric over your skin with a delicate touch. The action is unusually gentle coming from someone as cutthroat as the Regrator and certainly not what you expected. You're not sure what you expected, just that it wasn't this. You expected him to toss it at you or let you rot in your misery, covered in blood.
"Lord Harbinger," you try to say, wincing as a shot of pain pulses through your head. You must've been injured at some point and not realised.
"You are much like your father." He doesn't wait for you to finish whatever you are going to say, instead simply reassuring you of yourself.
"I am not like him," you retort before you can catch yourself.
He responds with a chuckle, pulling the handkerchief away for a moment before pressing it back against your forehead. "I think you are," he says softly. "You are more alike than you think. Of course, I hope that courage doesn't rob you of your wits as it did to him."
You wince again, scolding yourself, and you mumble a quiet, "It won't."
"Good," he responds.
Overwhelming, you feel like a dog—a well-regarded dog—but no less a dog. You are a fluffy little dog that fits nicely into Pantalone's purse to be admired and used as an accessory, nothing more. Everyone went ahead and told you as much a long time ago. To him, people are numbers; names are for the lucky among his upper echelons.
Yet he remembers your father. You eye him with scrutiny, trying—and inevitably failing—to read the look in his eyes to gauge why he would say that.
Nobody reads the Regrator among his ranks, especially not when they're as wet behind the ears as you are.
Despite your nerves, you swallow the lump in your throat. "Why did you bring me here?" you finally manage to ask, meek and afraid to upset Pantalone after watching how carelessly he treated that body.
"Whatever do you mean?" He's playing dumb; even you can tell that from just hearing the coyness in his voice.
"Never mind," you quickly say, ready to drop the matter like that.
Pantalone's hand that rests on your chin moves. He squeezes your cheeks between his fingers, digging the gloved ends of his nails into the plush of your skin until your lips pucker. His ring is cold. "No, you asked a question, as did I." His smile doesn't falter. "Speak up. When we want things, we ask for them directly. Do I make myself clear?" You hastily nod as best you can. "Now, try again. Dear banker, whatever do you mean?"
The repetition of his question tells you this is your first warning.
"Is this a test?" you manage, words muffled by the way he squishes your face like putty beneath his fingers. Your heart pounds in your chest, threatening to jump out and run away if it means escaping Pantalone's scrutiny.
"Would it please you to know that you would have passed?" he questions, pausing for you to answer with a hesitant nod of your head. "I brought you with me to see if you were worth keeping around," he explains. "I received advice from an anonymous source that you may be better suited to work under another Harbinger's watch. I see now that perhaps such advice came from a…sentimental point of view."
That would explain how he knows of your father; someone must've tried to get you out of this unit, and you know who, regardless of how 'anonymous' that source may have been in his words.
Pantalone releases you to take your hand from your side, and he guides it to hold his handkerchief over your wound. "Hold this," he adds, an unnervingly tender instruction for the way he was just behaving.
He removes his hands from you, robbing you of his touch. It feels strange for the warmth of his hands to have disappeared entirely, your only distraction from the blood itching beneath your clothes gone just like that. You should have guessed it would be
"What was the point?" you ask, eyes following Pantalone as he stands back to his usual height and straightens his overcoat.
His smile fades, eyes wandering from where you continue to sit, looking probably about as pathetic as you think you do. "Whether it is to collect on debts or complete an objective in the field, having such unrefined hands unused to killing will leave you on the receiving end of what you just did. People may believe it's just numbers and accounting, but the Northland Bank deals largely in debt collection as well. You're only an assistant with the resilience of a baby bird, but soon..." He seems to ponder those words for a moment before continuing. "In time, you could do great things at the Northland Bank. Who knows?"
Nobody believes that about the bank. You don't bother to tell him the obvious, however, as you're sure he also knows that.
You don't like that thought. In fact, frankly speaking, it terrifies you beyond belief to even begin to think that could be you. That's precisely what you've been avoiding facing this whole time and what made you sick when you had no choice but to face it. At that moment, there existed no escape but one, the inevitable end of one of you dying, whether because Pantalone stepped in or someone won the upper hand.
The only reason you're not dead is because you were lucky enough for it to be you who won the upper hand.
Your life is so terribly fragile.
It isn't only this that makes you realise such a thing. You knew it before, but until a few minutes ago, the taking of a life was someone else's story. It was something you heard from one of your seniors, a story you hear after a long night of tedious work as if telling scary stories around a campfire like children do. It wasn't something you carried around like a scar.
Watching as the life leaves someone's eyes, knowing you are the reason it's happening, never quite made the cut when describing the excitement, and you understand why.
It is the monster under the bed that makes you curl up in your blankets and convince yourself that it'll stay hidden if it can't see you, but it'll always be there, waiting for you to acknowledge it. Someday, you might have to, but you try to push it to the back of your mind and focus your eyes on Pantalone as if there's not a dead body right behind you. You have never felt so much blood seep through your clothes before, and you hope you never do again. The thought of your uniform sticking to you this way ever again makes you nauseous.
"Once we return, you can change clothes," Pantalone says, perhaps sensing your disgust at yourself. "Oh, and—" he smiles down at you, almost mocking if you didn't know better— "next time someone approaches you from behind, don't wait to stab them. Don't reach for your wet knife with your wet hands, either. Both of those things will get you killed."
Your face feels red from the nerves creeping up from your neck. You imagine Pantalone is looking down at a beet-red banker fumbling to respond. You entirely miss him describing it as if you had water on your hands and nearly lost your grip. "I will— or won't," you quickly assure him, embarrassed that he noticed after all. You managed to kid nobody but yourself into thinking he wouldn't catch you.
There's an amusement in the smirk playing on his lips as he turns back to you. "What did I say about speaking clearly? Repeat yourself, I can't hear you mumbling from down there."
"I won't, sir!" you repeat, much louder than your shame wants to allow, as you force yourself to 'speak up' as he put it, to avoid having to say it a third time. "I won't hesitate next time."
"Good." He turns away, prepared to leave you behind if you can't keep up. "Come now. You want to go back to Liyue, don't you? I'm tired of this cold." The moment you realise he won't be waiting around for you to collect yourself, you are already scrambling to get back on your feet and rush after him.