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Sandrone was one-of-a-kind.
Created by the Lord-Artificer himself, it wasn’t surprising that she would be a piece of advanced technology, like the gardemeks that patrolled the Court of Fontaine. Even so, there was a marked difference between her and Alain Guillotin’s other creations.
She was not created to benefit the world, only to benefit herself.
At least, that was what Alain told her, many times over, while she filled out the blank pages of the notebooks he provided her with. He had created her, but he refused to give her a direction or a goal to fixate herself on. She found this to be confusing, but accepted his words at face value.
“And you?” he asked her. She looked up from her notebook, filled with recordings that he had called ‘impressive’. “What do you want?”
Sandrone’s answer came instantly. She said, “I want you to be healthy.”
This question was abstract, nothing like the ones he usually asked her. It felt as if it had no correct answer, no beginning or end. She dismissed it as useless, and went back to carefully logging the day’s events.
Alain clearly disagreed with the way she viewed the world. Although he never said as much to her, it showed in the way he approached research. She frequently accompanied him as he worked, but the reasons behind his desire to create things eluded her, leaving her only with the basics of how to put things together. Of course, that was the most important part, and she picked it up rather quickly.
His health was deteriorating, and he did not allow her to remain present when he spoke to the doctors. Sandrone could not tell if it was his illness that ‘saddened’ and ‘angered’ her, or the fact that no one held the ability to cure him.
Even without medical expertise, she could tell that what ailed him went beyond the physical, into a realm she had little knowledge of. Alain called it ‘guilt’, the emotion that she could not grasp. In the beginning, she felt something akin to anger at her limited abilities.
But she eventually realized that in order for Alain to be healthy, he would have to shed his feelings of guilt, and he seemed to lack that ability. Sandrone’s initial feelings at being unable to understand the emotion faded into a cold acceptance. It was not necessary for her to be able to express guilt, if it was causing her creator such harm. As long as it did not interfere with her ability to carry out tasks as she wished, it could remain absent from her repertoire for all she cared.
On a sunny day when Alain was with the doctors, Sandrone occupied herself by tending to her potted plants. Their emerald-green leaves spilled out of their pots and stretched up towards the sunlight that danced on the window panes. She touched one of the thriving stalks. They had done this without her assistance. Even if she had not given them care, they would have found a way to survive.
Sandrone saw a parallel in herself. She, too, didn’t rely on anything to grow.
She clung to this realization in the weeks before Alain’s death, as his health deteriorated further. His hands shook too terribly for him to even sit at his workstation and put parts together. Sandrone took to doing it for him.
One night, he told her of the few wishes that he still had in his old age. Sandrone listened dutifully, until he told her of the last one: his childlike ambition to save the world, emphasizing that it was a long time ago. Although he had created her, Sandrone could not conceive of herself having such a foolish desire.
“Is this a wish you want me to inherit?” Sandrone asked. She was grateful that he firmly shook his head. Even then, he only wanted her to live her own life– whatever that meant.
“Is there anything you wish for?” he asked her at last, before she left the room.
Sandrone hesitated for only a moment, holding back an emotion that he had defined for her as ‘grief’. “Not really.”
He died a week after that.
Years later, Sandrone thought back on the night she had spent in the rain, keeping his body company as it cooled beneath the ground. She’d stared up at the moon in the sky, half-shrouded by the clouds, and thought about the path forward.
Alain and his friends were brilliant, beyond even her capabilities, but they were still only human, and that was where they fell. Mortals, terrified of surrendering to death without accomplishments to their names, clung to lofty ideals with their short, pitiful lives like dying leaves on a branch.
Although she wore the face of Alain’s sister, and felt emotions as humans did, she could avoid the pitfalls of humanity. It was simple, truly; never allow yourself to become shackled to meaningless ideals. Only fools would do such a thing, and Sandrone was no fool.
Sandrone rose from the soaked ground and began to walk back home as the sun rose. She closed her eyes, remembering the warm sunny day when she had watched her plants thrive. The vibrant green color had not yet faded from her memory.
She was just like those plants, she reminded herself. She needed nothing, and no one, to go on living.
That day, she fulfilled Alain’s last wishes, burning his journals after reading them and making arrangements for his few possessions. The only one of them she ignored was his desire for Pulonia to be entrusted to the Fontaine Research Institute. She had two reasons for doing this.
The first was that those fools at the Research Institute lacked Alain’s intelligence, and wouldn’t know what to do with Pulonia. Just the thought irritated Sandrone. She could use it much better than they ever would.
The second was that she remembered the failure that had hung heavily on her creator’s shoulders in his final months, the failure to calculate ‘the unknown’, as he put it. Even now, thinking of the concept made her roll her eyes. It reminded her of the directionless question Alain had once asked her, what do you want?
Despite the obvious foolishness of her late creator’s notions, she took Pulonia with her. As the closest thing he had to a child, Sandrone felt that she should protect his creation.
She set out to travel the world. After traversing the high cliffs of Natlan and the serene fields of Nod-Krai, she found her way to the ice and snow of Snezhnaya. It was freezing, and the rare days of sun struck her as a kind of cruel irony. All it did was give people hope, when it would be dashed the next day with incoming snowstorms and overcast skies.
Sandrone hadn’t planned on sticking around long, but an unexpected job offer from the Tsaritsa ended up getting her to stay. She was offered the chance to acquire as much funding for her research as she wanted, and well, she couldn’t say no to that. After all, what was the point of being the sole bearer of the Lord-Artificer’s knowledge if she didn’t even have the resources to use it?
Although she took the job and became one of the Fatui Harbingers, Sandrone stuck to her rule of refusing to get caught up in ideals, especially another’s. She couldn’t care less about Her Majesty’s goals, as long as she was given the space to do whatever she wanted.
As she worked in her lab, Sandrone would occasionally deliver a complaint without looking up, only to be met with oppressive silence. When she raised her head from her work, she was mildly startled at how still and empty everything was. Nothing in her lab moved to answer her, not even Pulonia, at her side as always.
“Right,” she would mutter, forcing herself to go back to her calculations. “I’m alone now.”
Sandrone knew it was better this way. She had already seen her creator wither and die. Other humans would inevitably do the same, but she would remain unchanging with the years. Her research and mechanical work was something that could last as long as she did. She could accomplish more than any human ever could. She’d never been a person who wanted to grasp aimlessly at the stars, so what was the point in surrounding herself with idiots who thought differently?
So Sandrone drew her curtains shut, cloaking her lab in darkness so she didn’t have to see the Fatui soldiers around her age and disappear, only to be replaced by fresh, new faces. She spent her days like this, until–
“Why do you keep following me, huh?”
Sandrone snapped, whipping around to see Columbina, clad in white, drifting after her. The Third Harbinger paused abruptly, head cocked. Although the winds raged outside the palace, she’d left her heavy coat unbuttoned. She didn’t wear proper shoes either– how was she not freezing?
Columbina stood there for a moment. Sandrone crossed her arms, feeling irritated. “I’m talking to you, you know. You can’t just not answer when someone asks you a question.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was serene, without a hint of apology in it. “It’s only that I’m curious about the key on your back. I wanted to know how it worked, but it seemed rude to just go up and touch it.”
Sandrone rolled her eyes. “Well, if you’re so curious, why don’t I put one on your back, and you can see for yourself?”
She didn’t really mean it seriously, of course. It was annoying enough that all Columbina did was sing in the gardens, while she remained locked in her lab, slaving away on the higher-ranked Harbingers’ orders. But to be doing extra work on the Third Harbinger’s behalf… she wouldn’t be caught dead.
Columbina nodded earnestly. “I’d like that very much, dear Sandrone.”
“...What?”
Despite her previous convictions, Sandrone ended up fitting a key to Columbina’s back. She watched her turn in circles in the mirror to catch glimpses of it.
“It feels so… strange. How do you roll over at night?”
Sandrone felt a headache coming on. “I did what you wanted, now no more questions! Get lost.”
She took out her journal for the first time since joining the Fatui, and scribbled a brief entry.
Columbina is so annoying!
Her harsh words to her colleague during their brief interaction had the opposite effect than she’d intended, since Columbina kept coming back to her lab. When she was refused entry, she’d sing outside her door, even in the middle of the night.
Eventually, Sandrone started inviting her in, if only so that she wouldn’t be sitting on the dirty floor and spooking every patrol that came by. It was simply more efficient to give her a cup of tea to shut her up.
Like Sandrone, Columbina had lived a long life, yet she floated directionless through the many places that welcomed her. First the Frostmoon Scions, now the Fatui, and Sandrone suspected this wasn’t the end of her path.
Columbina cared little for the benefits that drew Sandrone herself to becoming a Fatui Harbinger, and she wasn’t interested in the Tsaritsa’s mission either. She was concerned with only one thing: finding a place to belong. Her pursuit wasn’t as foolish as some of the others Sandrone had heard in the past; trying to contemplate the fate of the world, for example. Still, she thought it was stupid.
“Why bother with that?” she asked Columbina once, taking a sip of tea. It was an old brew that she’d brought with her from Fontaine, and the taste stirred up memories. “You know you have a stable place here, so why waste your time on such meaningless pursuits?”
Columbina answered, “The moon is a funny thing… it seems to shine from afar, but up close it’s cold and unforgiving. I can’t help but feel disappointed. Perhaps I should reach for the stars instead.”
Sandrone squinted. “What does that even mean?”
But Columbina had gone back to humming under her breath.
“Oh, now you decide to shut up.” Sandrone pulled the plate of pastries away from her when she reached for another. “Ugh, you’ve had four already! Leave some for me!”
In time, their little tea parties increased in number, growing to include Arlecchino, Rosalyne, Capitano, and even Childe. With all of their bickering and, in Columbina’s case, unsolicited singing, Sandrone could barely remember how silent her lab used to be.
She took note of the flavors that her colleagues enjoyed the most and kept them in stock in her cabinet. It only made sense, after all– they wouldn’t drink tea that they didn’t enjoy, and it wasn’t any good for her money to go to waste.
One day, when she was baking some pastries in preparation for her colleagues to come over, she realized that it had been a long time since she thought of the vivid green of the plants that had flourished without her touch.
Sandrone never should have expected it to last.
The people around the table began to diminish in number. First Rosalyne, who had burned away in a foreign land on the Tsaritsa’s orders. Then Capitano, who had sacrificed himself for the people of Natlan, and now lay in eternal sleep.
Finally, Columbina left the Fatui.
The sun was shining on the day that Sandrone got the news. She shed her heavy white coat and drew her curtains closed to get some respite from the heat. She almost wished to pull them back and see white snow falling against the panes, a return to the routine she had long since grown used to.
Sandrone glanced at the chairs leaning against the wall. She’d dragged them to her lab for the purpose of the tea parties. Now, they sat gathering dust, as though they too felt the absence of her once-frequent guests. Her hands clenched into fists and she shouted to a nearby guard, “You! Take these stupid chairs away. I don’t want to see them.”
He complied with her orders, but she didn’t feel any better once they were gone.
She tried working, but her mind felt scattered, splintered into pieces just like the moons of Teyvat. In a last effort to collect herself, she closed her eyes and tried to remember the green of her plants, the softness of the leaves and strength of the stalks as they grew without her help or guidance. She was just like those plants. She didn’t need anyone. This would pass.
Yet, the exact color had long slipped away from her mind, to be replaced by more recent snatches of memories: a serene singing voice, red cross-pupils, noisy high heels. Sandrone opened her eyes and stared at the calculations before her. They all pointed to the conclusion that Columbina must be alive. She couldn’t be wrong. She rarely was. But even so… Sandrone would probably never see her again, if she’d hidden herself so well that the Fatui was struggling to find her.
Her lab was empty and silent again, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that brought her relief and allowed her to work undisturbed. This kind felt like a blade against an old wound. It was like the silence she had endured when she sat at Alain’s grave and kept him company, when she returned to his house alone, when she set out to see the world, eager to shed the memories that weighed upon her like her Harbinger’s mantle.
The Sandrone of many years past, who had decided that both relationships and ideals were never everlasting and therefore not worthy of her pursuit, would have called her a fool, and maybe she was. But the truth was as harsh and cold as the ice that coated the walls of Zapolyarny Palace.
Sandrone was tired of losing people.