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Arlecchino woke from a nightmare.
For a few moments, she couldn’t see, her vision filled with lingering images of a blood moon stretching out like a yawning chasm in front of her. Whispers of the dead howled around her as she stood in place, trapped in the ocean of viscous crimson liquid that lapped at her feet.
She jolted straight up in bed. Arlecchino stared blindly into the blessedly empty darkness for a few moments, cross pupils dilating, before she began to take inventory of her body. Cold sweat clinging to her forehead. Heavy, labored breathing. Heart pounding, and a metallic taste fresh in her mouth. She moved to sit at the edge of the bed.
She regulated her breathing first. That was the most important thing; she had learned that while she served her ‘Mother’ as a field operative. On a mission, you would only have a few moments to compose yourself while hiding behind a rock or a fallen pillar if things were going badly.
As they so often did, under Crucabena’s reign; she had a tendency to push her children beyond what they could handle on a regular basis. Arlecchino had been in charge of the cleanup in those days, dragging her siblings from narrow beds to shallow graves under the cover of night.
Her breaths were now even, and the other symptoms were no longer encroaching on her ability to conduct herself as she should. Arlecchino finally felt well enough to stand and slip on her suit jacket and shoes. She walked to the door and pushed it open, revealing a dimly-lit hallway.
It was silent except for the faint clicking sound of her knife-sharp heels against the wooden floor. Dawn was near, but the children should still be sleeping.
The children.
She had promised each and every one of them, with her hand resting atop their heads, that she would raise them as a strict and unfeeling ‘Father’.
The silent antonym to her title went unacknowledged but hovered in the room every time she spoke those words, as though she had summoned it into existence by the defiance that her standing implied.
‘Mother’.
Like the whispers about Arlecchino, the tales of her first act as Harbinger differed. The Fatui would say that it was her attendance of a private audience with Pierro.
The children saw it as her reformation of the House of the Hearth, the new rules she laid down allowing them to trace the outlines of the ideals she so rarely spoke of.
The people of Fontaine, so used to their black and white films and similarly-hued dramatis personae, whispered that it was to threaten their ruling force, the impartial Iudex, into doing her bidding.
Arlecchino descended the stairs with one hand on the banister to guide herself through the semi-darkness. Her mind flicked through these memories, keeping them organized and in place as she would her most confidential files.
All of what people assumed about her first act was wrong, which she didn’t mind. The thicker the fog of these quite frankly ridiculous rumors, the more difficult it was to trace the true outline of her character, to find where she stood and what she held dear.
In actuality, Arlecchino’s first act as Harbinger was to make her first, and only, attempt at shaping herself completely and unquestionably into Crucabena’s antithesis.
It had been largely unconscious at the beginning. She now chided herself for not noticing her own behaviors. But in hindsight, it was always clear that although she had donned her new name as easily as her Harbinger’s mantle and burned the girl named Peruere to ashes, there would be remnants of her left behind.
This aspiration to change herself had died, though not in its entirety, a few years after Lyney and Lynette joined the House. She remembered keeping a close eye on them directly after their arrival. Their reclusiveness and proclivity towards keeping each other as their only company rather than interacting with their new siblings was worrying, to say the least. It was imperative that new additions integrate into the House as smoothly as possible.
It was to be expected that there would be difficulties with adjusting to new situations, when two children went through traumatic events with only each other to rely on. Her concern was unwarranted in the end. They were now amongst the most well-liked older siblings and talented field operatives. Arlecchino felt a small flicker of pride when she observed all of her children, but Lyney and Lynette especially.
The matter of Lynette gaining a Vision and consequently being sent on more dangerous missions alone had put strife on the twins’ relationship, some time ago. Arlecchino would not apologize for how she had handled that situation. It was good for them to learn to be self-sufficient, especially if it felt uncomfortable at first, and going on solo missions was an essential skill for any Fatui agent to learn.
She had never asked that Lynette, or any operative under her care, push themselves beyond their abilities. She did not wish for her methods to cause them undue harm, nor for them to take on unnecessary risk simply to earn her affection, as Crucabena’s children had often done. Love gained by exchanging one’s well-being was no kind of love at all, and although Arlecchino might never say it in such simple words, the children would never have to sacrifice anything to be loved by her.
Lyney came to her one evening when Lynette was out and asked, in a steady voice, for a Delusion. She had been aware of her reputation amongst the children in those earlier days, and was surprised that he had dared ask her for such a thing.
Before she could even begin to think of how to reply, Arlecchino was struck with another memory, of a girl with blood the same color as her loose hair seeping through her bandages. For a moment, the face of her son blurred, transforming into her best friend’s.
Arlecchino had gained command over her fire at a young age and as a result, had taken on the worst of the missions that her ‘Mother’ had to offer. In her late teens, she often dragged herself through the dense forests on her way home, her white hair stained dark with fresh blood. By the time she finally gave her report and collapsed into bed, it had dried the color of rust, a perfect match for Crucabena’s.
She wondered if that similarity, amongst others, had truly burned to ashes with Peruere. Perhaps they had lingered in the shadows, only to reveal themselves now.
She had bit her tongue harshly to bring herself back to the present, turning Clervie’s face back into Lyney’s. He looked at her with a mix of hope and respect bordering on fear in his face, and something else. Determination.
Hadn’t Clervie’s concern, when Arlecchino returned to their shared room after those missions, looked exactly like his? Hadn’t she too, begged to join her, even when her pleas drew Crucabena’s ugly wrath? Clervie had been willing to do anything for Arlecchino, just as Lyney would do anything for Lynette.
No, Arlecchino reminded herself, correcting her former line of thought the same way she would alter records to hide the names of the children who’d been burned away by her bottled flames. She would have done anything for Peruere, and Peruere is dead.
Arlecchino could admit now that she’d reacted a bit poorly to Lyney’s request. The crosshairs of her eyes had fixed themselves on his face, glittering with a wrath that few of her children were used to seeing.
When she spoke, her voice was cold. “And would Lynette want you to do this?”
The answer was clear in his face.
She’d been glad to leave him with his thoughts after that. Not only did children require space to work through their personal problems, but it was her duty as their ‘Father’ to ensure that they had it. Selfishly, she’d also needed to be alone to think.
Arlecchino had sat on the blue plush chair Crucabena had favored in life long after the children had gone to bed or left for their respective missions that night. She’d believed that she could become the opposite of her ‘Mother’, tear out the twisted, dead roots that the woman had left in her.
And perhaps she had, to some extent.
There was no more senseless death in the House of the Hearth. No more children sent away for brutal experiments.
But wasn’t this the least of what she could have done? As she thought it over, it seemed like a very meager improvement upon what the House had been before. And even if gratitude shone in the eyes of the children she’d saved from dark fates, she could not allow herself to truly appreciate it, for it was the same way that she and Clervie had once looked at Crucabena.
As Arlecchino contemplated her thoughts and actions, she had found Crucabena’s lessons at the origin of nearly every one. Her cruelty, when it was unleashed against those who posed a threat to her goals, was a distinct, disturbing mirror to how Crucabena had taught harsh lessons to her children. There was much of her ‘Mother’ in her, and as she spent more time as the Knave, it started to become glaringly obvious.
In fact, she believed the last time she had been more herself than Crucabena was the moment when she had destroyed her forever.
She had seen how parents were meant to treat their children when she walked through the streets of Fontaine. The families she observed were encapsulated in their own bubbles of comfort and happiness, the burdens she carried upon her shoulders and passed to the children noticeably absent from theirs.
She wondered occasionally if the children ever looked at those families, and felt pained for what their ‘Father’ could not give them.
Even if she tried to imitate their actions by wrapping an arm around Lynette and pulling her close to her side, or crouching down and speaking softly to Freminet, the actions felt hollow, an echo of Crucabena’s own sweetness, meant only to conceal the rot. It was an annoyance that she had come so far, yet was unable to pass this last trial before she would truly be ‘Father’, and not ‘Mother’.
Flames coursed through her body like blood, yet she felt colder than ice under the watchful gaze of the moon, an ever-present eye trained on the mortal plane. She had passed that night sitting alone in the blue chair, careful to conceal the troubles that plagued her mind. Many called her excessively strict, but few knew that she extended that approach even to herself.
Now, as she opened the curtains to allow the first rays of the sun to creep across the carpet of the sitting room, Arlecchino was perfectly calm, and even allowed a bit of her contentment to show on her face. She knew that examining her true self was a difficult and thankless task, but a necessary one. She had improved both as a Harbinger and a ‘Father’ from her ruminations that night.
“‘Father’?”
Arlecchino turned to see Freminet lingering by the door, holding Pers to his chest. She gave him a small nod, wondering how she hadn’t heard him coming.
“Good morning, Freminet.”
The familiar hum of voices from upstairs alerted her that the other children were beginning to wake up. Arlecchino took that as her cue to retreat to her study with a cup of tea.
She traced the rim of the cup and thought about the question Clervie had asked her so long ago.
What does a real home look like?
She did not know. That was the truth, plain and simple, and she was pleased that it did not sting. She had reformed the House in an attempt to find an answer, not just for herself, but for Clervie as well. The one she had settled on was not satisfying for her, and would not have been to her friend were she alive today to hear it, but it was the most she could offer.
Perhaps one day, when Arlecchino’s curse had finally bested her, or when she raised her blade against a goddess made of ice and lost, Lyney could bear the crown and title of ‘Father’, and offer her a new meaning.