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Scaramouche awoke in the middle of the night to a thud outside his door.
Perhaps it was his second nature as a thief by trade, or perhaps it was fate that the sound awakened him—it was, after all, quite subtle in the grand scheme of things, as a heavy rainfall also tapped on the windowpane of his ground-floor flat.
He looked carefully outside the window, and saw a woman with light-coloured hair collapsed on the pavement, her clothes already soaked in water.
He let out a groan. Of course, it had to be something like this; it couldn’t simply have been a raccoon that made a trashcan fall down.
Begrudgingly, he put on his raincoat over his pajama and headed outside to check in on the stranger. If she was dead, he would leave her there; if she was alive, though, he’d be forced to take her inside. Scaramouche had seldom wished so wholeheartedly for someone to be dead.
And, of course, because fate is a fickle master, when he pressed fingers into the young woman’s neck, he found a pulse. When he ran his fingers under her nose, he felt a breath.
He would have been able to call an ambulance. He didn’t want to—for fear that people would ask him embarrassing questions, and it would somehow raise suspicion against him.
Talk about great timing.
Scaramouche heaved a sigh, and then took the young woman in his arms to get her inside. She was more than heavy from all the water weight of her soaked clothes, but he managed to make it. In doing so, he saw her face—and that almost made him drop her before he even reached the three stairs leading into the building.
This wasn’t just any blonde woman. It was Chief Inspector Lumine Viatrix. The same one who, almost unwittingly, kept him from stealing the Holy Lyre der Himmel.
“Today, the city of Mondstadt rejoices, for its national treasure is safe!” announced a young woman with light blonde hair in a trench coat and heels.
She stood on a podium with a plethora of microphones, all the spotlights on her. Triumphant, she explained how they managed to stop the thief in action, through a carefully executed strategy, meticulously planned in advance.
Scaramouche watched the scene play out in black and white on his TV screen. He knew she was lying; or at the very least, she was not saying the whole truth. In reality, it was because she personally broke from their strategy and decided to do a quick check on the Lyre that she managed to catch Scaramouche red-handed…or almost red-handed. He dropped the calling card he intended to put in the Lyre’s place, but managed to sneak out the same way he came in before she could see his face. Which, truly, was all that mattered—and the reporters knew that, too, when they grilled Chief Inspector Viatrix about what had become of the Balladeer, whose card was found on the scene.
She dodged it gracefully, saying that with these new clues it was only a question of time before they’d catch him. Scaramouche chortled at that. It’d certainly take more than proof that he was there during the Windblume Festival’s peak to catch him.
She ended the broadcast by telling everyone that the Lyre was safe, and it was what mattered the most. People cheered.
When he made it inside, Scaramouche thought about grabbing some towels to dry her, but then stopped in his tracks. He had an Anemo Vision, didn’t he? Those towels would have nothing on the power of the wind; he gathered it in his hands and blew her dry with a strong gust of wind, taking the water with it and sending it in the sink.
On the way to his bedroom, his eyes stopped on the wall of his office, on which were pinned tons of newspaper clippings, museum brochures, and lists of items to purchase or craft. Under the eyes of an elite detective, these would make him suspicious in less time than it took to say ‘Balladeer’.
As soon as he was able to set her down in his bed and tuck her into the covers, he ran back to his office and frantically took every piece of paper off the corkboard, along with the strings and sticky notes affixed. He stuffed everything in a drawer of his desk, with little care for order or neatness, which made him cringe in apprehension for when he would be able to hang everything back.
There was only one piece of paper he didn’t stuff in there with everything else: the newspaper clipping announcing the upcoming showing of the Electro Gnosis at the Inazuman Embassy. This one, he held carefully in his hands as he set the corner of it on fire, before dropping it in an empty metal wastebasket. He watched it burn until all that was left were ashes, and until those ashes stopped glowing red and turned to nothing but black dust. It was too big of a risk to even leave it amongst his other papers—Lumine could not, under any circumstance, not only suspect that he was the Balladeer, but also guess his next target, a heist for the ages, which would write his name in the history books…
But was there a risk that she would even recognize him? Scaramouche was still stuck on that question when he went back to his room and pulled up a chair next to her. She stayed unconscious, unmoving, if only for the regular rising and falling of her chest as she breathed.
To his knowledge, the only police sketch to have circulated in the newspapers didn’t even get close to looking like him. If the police had been able to get another sketch drawn, they'd have to have kept it under wraps. Which wasn’t impossible…but still unlikely. To his knowledge, no photograph of him in action existed either. The only thing that could possibly identify him would have to be fingerprints… But he had been extremely careful about those. Besides, she’d have to fingerprint him at a station, or suspect him enough to take samples in order for that to be a real risk.
She kept on sleeping. Time kept on flowing.
After long minutes of staring at her, Scaramouche got up from his chair and paced the room. He stuffed his hands in his pockets as his mind reeled. If she even seemed suspicious of him, what could he do or say that would discount him? If she stumbled upon his drawer, what would he say?
He glanced back at her. She stirred in her sleep, her forehead now slicked with sweat.
Scaramouche walked back to his bed and tossed the sheets off of her, to allow her to cool down a bit. He wiped her forehead, tossing the wet strands of golden blond hair out of the way.
By the gods, she was pretty.
Just as he was getting up to walk off, her eyes fluttered open with great difficulty.
“Wha…what…happened to…me…?” she muttered, before her eyelids tipped down again.
Her voice sounded sluggish, as if even articulating the words was a gargantuan task.
Scaramouche walked off again, and then came back to his bed, sitting down. As the hours trickled by, he repeated the routine many times. Many times, too, she stirred again in her sleep, as if fighting against a thick fog.
There was only one possible conclusion: she had been drugged.
Still, he couldn’t just stare at her like that. There would be no way that she, of all people, should be allowed to make him feel useless in the situation. While he waited for her to come to her full senses, he made some plain white rice, and prepared a cup of iced water for her to have.
This definitely wasn’t because he wanted her to have a good impression of him—quite the contrary, it would be much better for everyone involved if she left his apartment by dawn. He didn’t know what sort of trouble she had gotten herself into; maybe the people who had drugged her and dumped her there would come back to finish the job. Maybe the fact that he was helping her out right now would earmark his address for a future random house search.
However, given the choice between worrying about these minute details and observing Lumine from the corner of his eyes as he prepared her food, he wound up choosing the latter. Good for him—it didn’t take much longer from that point until she woke up from this strange haze, definitively. Still, her eyes seemed to struggle with focusing—citrines irises remaining hooded as her gaze slid over him, barely grasping that this was reality and not another strange dream. Although, there was one thing she seemed to immediately notice, before she even took note of his presence—the food.
As she started scarfing down the rice, he noted, “Slowly, or you’ll be sick.”
She was instantly startled, and stared back at him. “Wait… Where am I? Who are you? Why did you take me here?”
Even before truly assessing the kind of situation she was in, her tone was suspicious, her gaze suddenly piercing as she glared at him.
“Relax, relax. I found you passed out on the sidewalk. It was raining, so I brought you in,” Scaramouche replied, a faux velveteen lilt in his voice.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” she bit in response, her eyes narrowed in even more suspicion at him.
“I don’t know who you are more than you know who I am, so I think the answer should be pretty obvious.”
All pretense was already gone from his tone. It was useless to keep it up—she was already trying to assess him like he was a suspect in an interrogation room, and he understood why.
“Fair,” she simply replied, getting another spoonful of rice from the bowl.
Still, the sharp edge of her gaze wasn’t letting up; it felt like a knife to Scaramouche’s throat.
Scaramouche sat silently at her side, letting her do her own thing.
After a while, she said, “You’re not asking me any questions. Are you not even a bit curious?”
“No,” he replied dryly. “I don’t want any part of the dubious affair you’ve involved yourself in.”
“Ah, to have the luxury of choice,” she sighed. “And yet, you’re ready to protect me from the police. If that doesn’t make you suspect… I don’t know what would.”
Lumine tried to put down the bowl of rice on the bedside table, but she groaned as she interrupted her movement.
“Dizzy?” Scaramouche asked.
“Mmmh,” Lumine sounded in assent.
“You were probably drugged. Give it a couple of hours.”
“Can’t promise it. I need to find out who did this to me.”
“With what detective superpowers?” Scaramouche asked, knowing full well the answer to his question, but curious to see whether she would disclose her identity to a complete stranger or not. He cocked his head to the side, fingers tapping along the arm of his chair.
“None of your business,” Lumine replied, giving him a side-eye as she laid back down into the bed.
She kept to herself for the next few hours, staring out the window into the dimly lit street beaten up by a steady downpour. She ate some, she drank some, but she mostly left him alone. It became a silent agreement between the two of them—that trying to find out who Lumine was, or by which strange twist of fate she ended up on Scaramouche’s doorstep, and how Scaramouche fit into this whole puzzle, all of that could wait until she was able to get herself to a hospital on her own. Preferrably, it could wait indefinitely; but Scaramouche knew from the first moment their gazes crossed that that wouldn’t quite be possible.
And so, when Lumine tried to leave barely a few hours after he found her, he didn't let her. Not that she tried very hard—her voice was still croaky, her head still heavy; nevertheless, it was visible that she ached to spring into action.
Scaramouche was aware, though, that keeping her here was selfish—likely, curiosity begat him, and this was the main reason why he opposed letting her leave. He found it hard to believe that she was obeying—perhaps she was in a worse state than she looked.
It had been long hours of preparation leading up to his Holy Lyre der Himmel heist. He’d calculated everything. Everything but her .
Her handgun was aimed right at him when her voice echoed in the hall, commanding him to stop. But alas… he was just about to step into the tunnel that would lead her to his escape, and he had a detonator in hand ready to trigger a small explosion to collapse the tunnel behind himself as he got away.
He cackled as he looked at her, despite not having the Lyre in hand.
“Inspector Viatrix, good evening! I’m afraid you’re a bit too late… Catch you later!”
He barely had the time to see a glimpse of her offended expression as he disappeared out of her sight. She was too far away to get into the tunnel before he made it explode—this plan had been hatched so long ago that even her presence wouldn’t throw a wrench into his escape arts.
Nevertheless, he was leaving empty-handed, and her visage haunted him for days, now that he had seen her fierce yellow eyes and pale blonde hair and determined pout in person. So beautiful, so perfect… He wondered if he would get to see it again.
Eventually, though, morning came, and with it the pouring rain slowed down, then magically stopped. At this point, Scaramouche no longer had a reason—and frankly, neither did he have the will—to keep Lumine at his place. It was best for her to get out of his home as soon as possible… Lest she discovers Bluebeard’s secret basement in the form of the papers he had haphazardly taken down from his pegboard, or any piece from his thief costume or his equipment.
She asked for a phone; he gave it to her. She called a taxi, and then she left—and she left many traces of her passage behind, from the smell of her perfume clinging to his bedsheets to the used tableware.
Scaramouche sat in silence for a long time.
Truth be told, before tonight, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to go through with the Electro Gnosis heist. Its disappearance would constitute a diplomatic incident between the Mondstadt Police and Inazuma authorities; it would also put a lot more eyeballs on the search for him, as many more people would suddenly have an urge to collar him. He would have to move from here ASAP, and change his IRL identity once again to cover his tracks.
But now, he had another, different reason to want to go through with it—he wanted, no, needed to see Lumine again.