Chapter Text
You came into my world
Settled me down in spite of my wild life
Wanted, dead or alive.
The posters were yellowing and they still hadn’t caught him.
Tartaglia was worth a mere 25,000 mora the spring before his bounty expedited into knighthoods and castles. He was the bane of merchants, then. Not an enemy to the state, but a small fry with wayward hands and a reputation that was generally disillusioned from the bravado he put on around the ladies as Mondstadt’s most wanted, wanted criminal. In actuality, his greatest crime at the time had been stealing fresh snowstrider from a vendor at the Falcon Coast and cindering it in a way that laid waist to hours of hunting. The posters in his arms had been stolen by the dozen and were flying from his open satchel like a flock of uncaged birds threatening to take flight, his hands slamming the unbuckled, leather flaps as he wrestled with the wind coming down from the slopes of Favonious Castle. The long winding pipe system granted him just enough footing to stand properly on the rooftops and inspect his new batch of wanted posters, still warm from the press as he unfolded them.
A pathological liar (Tartaglia) might say that they were collecting their own posters “to get the guards off his pack”, but an honest motivation for his hoard of wanted posters, which were honestly becoming quite problematic for covert missions, was that he just liked looking at himself.
When he saw his image smouldering on the papers he fancied it was how artists felt when they met the eyes of their masterpiece and knew it would be their magnum opus.
It was this arrogance, as one might imagine he had in abundance, that led him to the highest spiral in Mondstadt with a grapple settled over his lap and his own, shit-eating grin illustrated in his calloused hands.
This headshot was good enough. It left plenty for the imagination. A young woman could stick his picture up on a chair in a well-to-do tavern and pretend she was sharing a candlelit dinner with the criminal of her dreams. How wonderful it was that they might be able to kiss him on his paper white lips now that he was avalible to the masses in cream, ivory and yellow. There was a slight issue with his posters, however. One that had nothing to do with his lack of legs in the poster (though, the omission of his dashingly tall stature was a travesty of its own) and everything to do with an artists slanderous, creative liberty.
Something was wrong with his hair.
Tartaglia’s family heirloom was a colour that the Mondstadtians called ginger and what his dear babushka and matushka - whom the colour came to him from - called ryzhiye. It was a colour that he was proud of. One that he thought anyone with two working eyes and a more advanced vocabulary than the three primary colours, would be able to identify as ginger. Yet the forensic artists failed him time and time again. They were entirely incompetent in getting the colour right, from orange tresses, to yellow, reds, browns and most outrageously, pinks! Outrageous colours, insults, thinly disguised as an attempt to replicate his likeness.
“They just can’t get my hair right!” He moaned, waving around a poster depicting him with bright, tangerine hair.
In his retelling of this story he typically names his companions dumb and dumber, though for the sake of the readers and the very fact that everyone in this story would eventually become some magnifier of the word dumb (dumbest, dumber than dumbest, the dumbest of the dumb), the characters will remain as Scaramouche and La Signora. These were the two bandits that had joined him on the roof that day. A bunch of ragtags that had come into possession of a plan that could mould the futures of their families and many generations to come, if they were successful. It was for this reason that his usual catchphrase wasn’t met with the usual barrage of insults.
The shit I put up with from this guy. Scaramouche scowled, hauling himself up the roof with great effort no thanks to his short arms.
What a pansy. La Signora sighed, gently her high heels against the vent, hidden amongst the copper tiles. She pointed a long, clawed finger at the men to get them to come over to her.
There were very few words exchanged as she glanced down at the vent, then passed the rope to Scaramouche, who in turn, threw the rope at Tartaglia as though it were something dirty.
Tartaglia was currently operating as Least Favourite Employee of the month for a fifth year straight. It should have been Scaramouche, threaded through the small opening like yarn through a needle. He had a shorter torso and legs and was therefore more airborn. Even La Signora was better with her slim shoulders. She wouldn’t have had to barge her way down the right vent. But of the three, Tartaglia was the most disposable.
It was for this reason that Tartaglia was tied up like a piece of raw meat.
He said nothing more on this arrangement.
The roof of the Favonious Castle was high quality, to its own detriment. The houses he had learned to climb on in Morepesok were like dry sand, coming apart under his small feet. He was flying across the tiles in comparison, platformed in a way that allowed him to jump from the spirals of the main tower without worrying about a fallen pipe, or a chimney collapsing into the living room. The guards in their uniforms surrounded the castle like a purple mote, their gold, inteyvat crests reflecting the sun like a million stars. It was almost excessive how many of them were in the jewel house.
The king had gathered half the kingdom into a single room to guard a crown no bigger than his outstretched palm. It’s worth, which was more than even the palace itself and perhaps even the kingdom, was not placed in the value of the diamonds. It lay within the unreasonable price the king would pay to have it back, safetly in his home.
The crown was the last trace the mighty Viator had of the princess.
He would burn cities for it.
Start wars that other nations would scorn his kingdom for.
There was no price that a grieving brother wouldn’t trade for the memory of his sister.
Up close the crown was beautiful. A golden tiara encrusted with diamonds and extinct gemstones that absorbed the light of the sun like a prism, whose colour was impossible to attribute to just one. Though, having never been a jewellery man Tartaglia was far more enticed than the sheer number of guards beneath him. To him, rather than a deterrent they were much like a juicy cherry on top of a cake that had “don’t eat” iced into its frosting.
Every fingerprint on the crowns over-polished body was like a bellied laugh in the face of the king.
He dangled in the throne room just low enough to lift it by the crenellations, careful to avoid being punctured by the point of a thousand spears.
Then one guard turned as he lifted the crown.
And another.
And by the fourth, he started to think he really shouldn’t have blessed the guy for sneezing.
“What does this have to do with you fighting a horse?”
The recipient of this tale was a woman that had beaten him until the shape of his cranium was changed forever, so he might be forgiven if “getting to the point” wasn’t his highest priority in that moment. Through the haze of a trauma-induced concussion, he pushed her frying pan out of his face only to be whacked again like a disobedient dog.
“Will you let me finish pleading my case?” He hissed.
The guards had lost him by the time he entered the forest, and through tragic and unforseen circumstances - La Signora and Scaramouche had been lost, too. The forest opened up and he made his quick get-away, skidding across muddy hills and launching himself with tree branches until his body couldn’t keep up with the heist anymore. His legs locked, and that was when he came crashing down into an old sycamore tree. Or was it cedarwood? It was hard to remember the fine details when the strangers grip tightened around her frying pan everytime he hesitated to think. His elbow had hit a trunk, his chin had split on a rock, and after several roly-polys, he was on his back feeling rather sorry for himself and awfully hungry for some apples.
He didn’t usually eat during missions, he interjected to clarify, he just hadn’t had breakfast that morning.
“I’m nothing, if not for a professional.” He even had the audacity to say.
So there he was, starving and lulled into a sense of security by the sound of the Calvary charging in the wrong direction, and the apple was great. The best thing he had eaten in his lifetime in fact, which he wagered was due to his half-starved state and the adrenaline rushing through his body like a busted dam. Archons. The second bite was even better, his teeth sliced through the apple like a butter knife and his toungue lapped up the nectar.
With this in mind, it might be understandable how under the right circumstances, he might not have wanted to share his only food with a sweet-toothed horse that had been lured to his location by the smell. He didn’t realise at the time that the horse was Paimon, a member of the calvary so vigilant that the local crooks had named her after a demon, and a horse rumoured to be owned by Viator himself. But, one thing led to another and the horse that had never been taught “no” in her life had begun to wrestle him for his apples. That was when the real trouble started. Her snout was wedged in the bag and she he had sought to tax him of his apples, when her teeth clamped around a crown that the guards had been looking for since 5am in the morning.
It didn’t take long for the chase to start up again.
“So there,” he said, flexing against the binds and feeling the soft, golden hairs fall through his fingers. Everytime he thought a little too hard about the fact that he was covered in inches of hair he had to thickly gulp down the apples from earlier. “I don’t plan to steal your hair. I’m not here for your hair. I didn’t know about your hair. And the only thing I want to do with your hair is get out of it!”
The sceptic kept her pan poised at his throat, hot oil dripping down its sides.
She circled around him like a wild animal sizing up its prey, her eyes bearing into him with the intensity of the very stars they shared their molten colour with. Her feet danced around a sweet madame that had been launched onto the floor.
“You.” She said, sharply.
“Me?” He replied, curiously.
It was this alertness that made him doubt the very next words that escaped her mouth.
“You’re saying that horses are real?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.
He stared at her for a long while, trying to comprehend her question.
”With all due respect, I really don’t think they should be your main -“
The pan smacked right into his throat.
“Yes m’am!” He choked. “Real as can be.”
She uttered by the archons as she crept closer to the window, never turning her back to him as she glanced outside from the corners of her eyes, for the fabled, four legged beast. Her shoulders sagged dramatically when she realised it wasn’t there.
There was something almost cute about her.
Almost.
She had still taken him captive.
The stranger didn’t seem to have much inclination to hide her feelings, her eyes blown wide, like saucers, in one instance and narrowed to slits the next. As such, he could tell that she was feeling uneasy about what she was going to do with him.
“Listen,” he said, interrupting her train of thought. “If you let me go I’ll forget all about this. What’s a few beatings between friends? We can put this all behind us. I go on my merry way and you … go back to cooking undisturbed in this cosy little tower.”
He might as well have called her an idiot with the dirty look she gave him.
“Okay, let’s humour that.” She said, taking a seat on the windowsill. “I let you walk right out of my binds as promised. Then what? You knock me out as soon as your hands are free, steal my hair and leave my mother stranded outside the tower to die of starvation.”
Tartaglia dragged both hands across his face. Or tried to, as he struggled against the binds.
“For the love of your anemo archon!” He hissed. “I am not here to steal your hair.”
“That’s exactly what someone that was here to steal my hair would say,” she said, folding her arms.
“Oh sorry.” He glared. “I’ve just stolen so much hair in my time that I know exactly how to swindle a poor maiden of her tresses.
“You do look like the kind of guy that steals exclusively from women.” She frowned.
“Oh please. Because kidnapping men and keeping them tied up is a much better pastime.”
Not to mention, she could try to at least hide her enjoyment when she whacked him across the face with a frying pan.
His poor, defenseless smoulder…
The stranger, he would learn, was incredibly stubborn, and had the audacity to argue that what she had done wasn’t kidnapping if it was done in self defense. To which he argued that what he had done wasn’t breaking and entering if he had climbed up the tower in self defence.
She threw up her hands. “It stops being self defence once you’re about a mile away from the person attacking you!”
“What you did can’t even be considered self defence.”
“You broke into my house,” She gawked. “I don’t need to wait for you to attack.”
“Who kidnaps a man in self defense?! I was on my way out of your house when you came running at me.”
By the evening they hadn’t gotten any closer to figuring out who was in the right and who was in the wrong, but he had learned a lot about the stranger between the fighting, which had simmered down into something more like a conversation over the hours.
“I still don’t see why she’d choose to live here and not -“
“Lumine.” A sweet voice rang from the bottom of the tower, causing his captor to rush over to the windows like a dog called for dinner. “Mothers here. Why don’t you let down your long hair?”
“Coming, Mother.” She called, locking eyes with a man that her mother certainly wouldn’t approve being in the center of her room.
Mother would never allow guests.
Of course she had never specified, as such. But Lumine was pretty sure the last people to come into her tower hadn’t made it back out.
“You need to hide,” She said suddenly, helping to untie him only to usher him towards the wardrobe.
“This is still far beyond what anyone reasonable would define as self-defence.“ He said, eyeing the window as Lumine looked at it as though it were a bomb about to explode. Her every movement, clumsied by a desperation to get him out.
“You’re about to die.” She hissed, shoving him towards the wardrobe. “If mother sees that I’m currently harbouring a wanted criminal in my room she’s going to throw you out of this tower herself.”
“Harbouring, okay,” he muttered to himself as he climbed into the wardrobe. “That’s what we’re calling it now.”
“You can thank me about still being alive later.” She called back as she slammed the door shut and rushed around to attend what he could only assume was the cold remains of the dinner she had thrown at him in “self defence.”