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Distilled memoria, to evoke the past.
A dense blue mist blooms within the glass walls of the vial.
Fruits of Irminsul, to fill in the gaps of human memory.
Red-rimmed eyes observe the silver-white liquid, sloshing around as he taps the vial, once, twice, stirring it till the color blends into one.
He seals the container and fixes it to the side of the computer. A syringe is connected to the stopper, which is then lifted carefully into his hands.
Soundlessly, the needle plunges in.
Beside him, the screen glows. White letters etch themselves onto the bottom of the screen, followed by the beginnings of a trembling green line.
The experiment begins.
The interior of the greenhouse is silent as death, save for the faintest of trickling noises that escape from a teapot’s polished spout.
A pair of gloved hands tilt the teapot backwards and place it back on its stand, then reach for the gold-rimmed china cup that’s now filled with piping-hot tea.
The Regrator takes a long, drawn-out sip from the cup, closing his eyes to savour the moment, then returns it to its saucer.
He looks back up to find Dottore sitting from across him, food and drink still untouched.
“You aren’t drinking your tea,” says Pantalone placidly, sinking his knife and fork into a slice of cherry-cream gateau. “Do you not like pu’erh?”
“I do,” insists Dottore, in spite of the fact he hasn’t refilled his cup once since he got here at three, as opposed to Pantalone, who’s been continuously inhaling the contents of the teapot. “I simply don’t have much of an appetite today— and maybe you should be glad I don’t, because I’d have scoffed the lot otherwise, and then you’d be the one complaining again.”
To be truthful, he very rarely has a real appetite, for it takes very little to sustain a mechanically altered body such as his. Still, on a normal day, he likes to take his meals as a mortal man would, if only to spend more time with Pantalone.
He is trying, still, to eat normally, even if his stomach tends to disagree most vehemently with him these days.
“You’ve gotten thinner,” observes Pantalone, sliding the plate of scones in the center of the table towards him. “Have a scone. They’re made with vanilla honey butter. Just the way you like it.”
Dottore eyes the three perfectly identical pastries sitting on the plate, perfectly flaky and golden-brown. They look appetizing.
“I’m not that hungry,” he gets out.
That much is true, at least. Despite the hollowness settling in the pit of his stomach (when was the last time he ate, anyway?), he seems to be numb to any kind of craving for the taste of food and drink. It’s not helping that he’s got a headache, and part of him is wishing he hadn’t come at all, if all he came here to do was sit and watch.
Pantalone takes no notice of his words and nudges the plate closer. “Just try one.”
“Alright, alright,” mutters Dottore. “Have it your way.”
Reluctantly, he takes one in his hands and bites down.
Ugh, he thinks the moment it hits his tongue.
It tastes nothing like what was promised. Positively tasteless, in fact; he might as well be chewing on air. How disappointing.
He decides to do the nice thing and have enough tact to not spit it out.
Pantalone smiles.
“So masterfully made,” he praises, wiping a crumb off the corner of his lip with a napkin. “The chef has truly outdone himself today.”
“It’s… fine. I’ve had better.” And you’ve definitely had better too, don’t lie, he wants to say, because usually Pantalone would never accept fare this tasteless.
Usually, in fact, he’d be the one complaining.
But he doesn’t.
“I see.”
Somehow, at that reply, Dottore feels a twinge of disappointment.
So docile today. So non-argumentative.
The lack of a challenge seems to irk him more than a word of disagreement would. But he offers no retort, and reasonably gets no follow-up in return, for there is no point in restarting a conversation where neither has an opinion to give.
They resume their afternoon tea. Dottore finds his mind wandering.
The spread is abundant today, all teacakes and scones and flaky buttery creampuffs, but his attention stays trained on the Regrator as they take their meal in silence. For appearances’ sake, he absentmindedly nibbles at the selection of pastries laid out for their perusal, although the taste still leaves much to be desired.
He inspects the glassy surface of Pantalone’s pocket watch, which has been left on the table by the teapot. It reads three o’clock.
His brows scrunch together in confusion. He could’ve sworn he’d arrived at three.
Oh well. More time for him to enjoy his afternoon, he supposes. He doesn’t get much time for tea these days.
The greenhouse is smothered in late-afternoon glow, in a way that highlights Pantalone’s features, and Dottore breaks gaze to observe them closer-up, to dissect that face he’s had imprinted so carefully into his memory that all of a sudden appears foreign.
Pantalone seems to be fairly content as he tucks into his afternoon tea. He hums an old Liyue tune under his breath, his eyes as vacant as the Damselette’s. His lipstick is perfectly shiny and intact, even as he lifts a third miniature jam tart to his lips and sinks his teeth into the crust.
After he finishes, he lifts his head once more to find Dottore ogling him.
“What’s on your mind?” he says.
Dottore pauses.
“You’ve been rather…quiet today.”
Quiet is an understatement, if there ever was one. Pantalone is one of the biggest talkers he’s ever met in his life, second only to him.
It makes the banker’s sudden lack of conversation all the more unnerving.
“Well, I suppose I haven’t much to say today—” Pantalone dabs at the corner of his painted mouth with a napkin, “—and neither do you, it seems.”
Dottore scowls and promptly falls silent.
Touché.
Loath as he may be to admit it, he is incredibly bored.
It is rare— nigh impossible, in fact— that he could ever wish Sandrone were present at their little tea parties, or any of the other Harbingers, in that case. But he can’t help himself, can’t help thinking he’d be a little more stimulated around literally anyone else, even if he were to be arguing with Sandrone, listening to Pierro drone on about meeting minutes, anything. He needs a derisive remark, a pointed insult, something to take umbrage at.
And that, Pantalone cannot grant him today.
The moment the thought crosses his mind, his stomach drops faster than he would a hot stone.
There’s something so wrong with the thought he’d ever want to be away from his most cherished Regrator.
Dottore swallows in poorly-disguised frustration, and his hand curls tighter around the handle of the teacup. The liquid inside sloshes around alarmingly, threatening to spill.
Slowly, he exhales and chides himself.
He is sitting for afternoon tea with his favorite banker. The sun is shining through the glass panels of the greenhouse. Everything is beautiful.
He is content. They are content.
Nothing is wrong. He is simply thinking too much.
He should sit back and enjoy himself.
And yet the numbness persists, plucking at the underside of his skin, nonexistent yet overwhelming at the same time, the steady tick-tick-ticking of a clock hammering away at his brain. He shoves away the feeling, even as it continues to churn.
He lifts the cup to drink; he misses. It slips from his hands and falls, cold tea staining the sides of the table, porcelain hitting the polished marble—
No sound of shattering china follows.
Dottore blinks himself awake, recovering from his spell of dazedness, and feels a weight in his grasp.
He looks down, and recoils in surprise.
He was certain he’d dropped it, but there the teacup is, in his hands, filled to the brim and untouched. He catches sight of himself in the glass-smooth surface of the liquid: eyes wide, clothes unstained, knuckles clenched around the handles so hard they blanch white.
He looks scared, if there ever was such a thing.
“Doctor?”
Dottore’s head jerks upward, startled at the mention of his name. His shoulders tense as his gaze lifts to level Pantalone’s, although he tries to tell himself he has no reason to.
Had he seen it too? Does he know something’s wrong?
If he does, though, he makes no comment on it.
Instead, he smiles blithely.
“You’ve got bits of tart on your lips, love.”
His arm reaches across the table, rubbing around the corners of the Doctor’s lips in an attempt to wipe away the crumbs. His touch is light, eerily so. A feather would have made a deeper imprint on his face.
He feels as if he’s gone numb to all physical contact.
“Thank you,” he mumbles when Pantalone withdraws, unable to muster a proper response.
With great difficulty, he forces his body to relax, and the soles of his shoes graze the dew-frosted tips of morning-fresh grass.
They find nothing.
He flails in his mind for a second, gripping onto the sides of the chair to stabilize himself, overwhelmed with the vague sensation of free-fall. It subsides as he refocuses his gaze on the banker’s blurry silhouette.
It’s what keeps him grounded. He should keep staring.
Silver-framed glasses. The curl of white-streaked hair climbing down his left shoulder. The rings on his hands.
All very, very normal parts of what makes up his beloved Pantalone.
In the recesses of his mind, the ticking amplifies. He presses a finger to his temples, making a poor attempt to ward off the uneasiness. His surroundings blur into a haze of nothing, a mass of sprawling green rising up in twisting towers around them.
He flinches, involuntarily, as if slapped.
Not again.
“You look unwell,” states Pantalone, face contorting into something that looks like— unbelievable!— sympathy.
Dottore smiles tightly at him. It probably looks more like a grimace.
“Headache,” he dismisses. “I’ll be fine.”
“Come here,” says Pantalone, lifting a finger to beckon. “I’ll kiss it better.”
“I’m fine.”
Pantalone hums. “If you say so.”
“I am,” he insists, just because, but the reedy note in his voice does not make his words convincing in the slightest.
“Goodness. Just come,” sighs the banker, brushing aside his objection.
Dottore reluctantly looks up. Looks into his eyes, gold half-obscured by the thick glass of his spectacles, mist-sprayed things whose intentions he can’t even discern.
But his smile is so willing, so sweetly inviting in a way that winds around Dottore’s heartstrings and tugs, tugs, tugs. And in no time, with no difficulty at all, it yanks free.
He slackens, then stills, in tandem with the rhythm of his jankily-beating heart.
And this time, he allows himself to cave.
He stands, brushing aside the growing stab of nausea that eats at him from within, and comes to a stop before the Regrator.
“That’s more like it,” says Pantalone, pleased.
Dottore remains wordless as he lets him caress his cheeks, trail hands up the map of a face whose coordinates are marked by the crisscrossing lines of scars, its longitudes and latitudes and wrinkled valleys that have been explored countless times.
“Dottore,” murmurs the banker under his breath.
Just like old times. Like they’ve done over and over again, across the span of thirty-and-some years. Warm and comforting and ever so familiar.
He can delude himself, he thinks. Even if the banker’s touch is somewhat foreign. He can call this love if he tries. He can pretend it feels right.
The prelude to the storm brewing in his mind dies down momentarily, replaced by a tiny flare of hope.
Against his better judgement, he finds himself reaching back.
“Pantalone,” he replies quietly, and his arm snakes around the man’s waist in a manner so practiced it is clear he has done it a thousand times over.
Pantalone welcomes him without question, with open arms. Holds him close, so deceivingly reverent, with both hands, and presses berry-ripe lips to the top of his forehead.
Cold, dead, weightless.
With a kiss, it all falls apart.
The slowly spreading numbness that’s been gathering uncomfortably under the shell of his skin amplifies to a dull throbbing, to a bullet-like pain concentrated around his forehead that pushes, ever-insistent, in spasms, begging for freedom.
It’s the first real thing he’s felt all evening.
He seizes hold of that feeling and holds on to it. Silently, he narrows the pain down to the needles piercing his head and trains his mind on them.
Part of him tugs on his shoulder, warning him to stop, telling him that there will surely be consequences if he pushes any further. That it is safer, happier, not to ask questions.
But that is not the way of a scientist, and his rationality only affirms this.
Keep going. Keep probing.
So there he remains, in a place so familiar but also not, lifting his gaze towards his partner, focusing on a pair of worried amber eyes that grow more and more distant the longer he stares.
Pantalone seems to have finally caught on to his disturbed state.
“My love,” he’s mouthing now, hands clasped around the Doctor’s shoulders, with uncharacteristic gentleness. “Are you alright?”
Dottore’s head spins. He lets the grip stay, but tenses beneath it.
Pantalone doesn’t talk like that. Pantalone doesn’t hold him like that.
His gaze sharpens further, searching the banker’s features for more inconsistencies. Hair too dark. Face too smooth. Voice too concerned.
Not him—
Discrepancies everywhere. Misplaced moles. Unscarred neck. Gait too stiff. Smile too jovial.
Not him.
He brushes a hand above his brow, and feels no imprint from the lipstick.
Dottore’s breath stalls.
There it is. That’s the truth.
He is not real.
The sharp pain in his head turns blinding. He shuts his eyes and tunes out the world, focusing harder on the pulsing heat lighting his mind on fire.
The minute hand of the watch shifts, less than a millimetre, to a minute past three.
Then, the world seems to implode all at once—
And with a gasp, he breaks free.
He can almost hear the blast that shatters the front of his head, easily as if it were glass. He hears the scream, the delayed stumble of his legs, the fire erupting through every artery and vein in his head, the sound of a script torn violently down the middle.
Something in the greenhouse seems to have shifted. The room, the lighting, the atmosphere itself. He thinks he might be hurt. Maybe he’s bleeding. He can’t tell. There doesn’t seem to be any blood running down his face. He’s not sure.
And when his eyes fly open again, they find a concerned pair of milky-pale eyes, ones that aren't Pantalone's, but that of a complete stranger. A stranger with his hands all over him, impeccable hair a halo, ghosting over his shoulders, expression contorted into some sort of anxiety Dottore doesn’t recognize, not even in his decades of knowing him, and now all he can think is that he’s being touched by a stranger, an intruder, something he has to stay away from.
Abruptly, he lifts both hands and shoves him hard, breaking away from the man’s grasp. A resounding clank echoes in the background and he’s vaguely aware his movement has sent several items crashing to the floor.
He doesn’t care. Most of the sound erupting in his mind now is the blood pounding in his head.
He lets the spilled tea pool around his heels, seep through his shoes, stumbles over the words leaving his mouth in an incoherent mess, and all he can think of is that he is here, alone, his not-Regrator watching him with passive eyes, hand extended, lips parted, saying something he can’t hear, and he barely has time to think properly before everything blanks and his mind sends him bolting from the greenhouse, away from that thing, into falling snow, faster and faster, collapsing in the confines of all-consuming cold, a dream-turned-nightmare before a darkness reaches out and scoops him up in its deceitfully gentle claws.
And then Dottore’s eyes open to the sterile gray-white of a laboratory ceiling.
The iridescent lights blink, nudging him into a fully awoken state, but he continues to lie there, all alone on the polished silver bench. The clock on the counter reads 7:00 A.M.
Beside him, two items rest: a bloody needle that was previously host to his arm, and a computer chip, sizzling with weak pulses of energy.
He touches a tentative hand to his forehead, and feels the shallow imprint where the chip was previously placed. Its memory-suppressing effects are surely broken now.
On the tip of his tongue, the faint taste of dissipating memoria remains.
The results of a failed experiment, no doubt.
His throat is dry. His lungs feel short of breath. He can’t feel anything.
“Pantalone,” he croaks, because he cannot muster the ability to say anything else.
And then it hits him, overwhelming, with the force of a train, so hard his hands fly to his head, trying to soften the blow and keep the truth at bay.
Subconsciously, his eyes stray to the Electro Delusion, pinned to the inside of his coat, a permanent reminder of what’s been lost.
It’s no use.
No amount of conjured dreams can fill that hole left in his molten, mechanical heart.
Because Pantalone is not here. Not in the lab, or his office, or Zapolyarny Palace, or Snezhnaya or Liyue or anywhere.
He’s gone.
He’s departed.
He’s—
No.
No he’s not.
He just showed up. No he’s not.
And then, a quieter, more sensible voice in his ear,
Yes.
Yes he is.
That wasn’t him.
Whatever that was, it could never be him.
An amalgamation, maybe. A jumbled mess of memoria and research and tainted Irminsul knowledge thrown hastily together in a bid to fix his disarrayed mind. No more than the latest in a series of futile attempts to reproduce his likeness.
But someone like him can’t fool himself, no matter how he tries.
Pantalone is dead.
Pantalone is dead.
Emptily, he stares at the Delusion, dulled amidst pristine white fabric, the little that remains of the real Pantalone. He halfheartedly trails a finger down the purple bulb, and it gives no reaction.
He does not cry. He doesn’t cry much these days. He’s long since run out of those.
But his heart wrenches nevertheless.
What has all this effort brought him, but grief?
The monitor beside him lets out a quiet beep, indicating the end of the experiment. He painstakingly gets himself to sit up, his sagging body still stiff from the long rest, and turns himself to face the screen. It depicts a singular flat line, punctuated by a series of peaks and dips, ending in a mess of haphazard dashes.
And then nothing.
He scans the description etched into a corner of the display.
Subject deliberately went off-script. Memory-suppression chip rejected by subject’s body…
And then, at the bottom, in glaring blood-red,
Dream sequence terminated shortly after.
He runs an ungloved finger down the vial latched to the monitor, still half-filled with bubbling memoria. The glass is slightly warm.
He lets out a quiet sigh.
It wasn’t as if he was expecting anything but the pang of disappointment hits him all the same.
Dreams are fragile things, just as human lives are; easily entered, easily broken. They are even more fragile when created artificially, formed from the volatile and unreliable source that is human memory. And when mixed with cold, hard, unfiltered information, it reacts, easily crushed by the weight of knowledge; corrupts, permeating through gaps in knowledge to the very root of a memory’s core.
The result?
A dream, but not. A memory, sacrificed in exchange for a janky, wooden puppet that’s at best a mockery of the late Ninth.
But he’d been hoping. Gripping tight onto the possibility, because grief is one hell of a drug, and he can’t go a single gods-damned day without Pantalone, even with the possibility of it being a warped, defiled forgery of him.
And where’s all that hope gotten him now?
It’s gotten him here, hunched over in his lab with his heart in pieces, as it was every other time he tried.
Try as he might, nothing will ever work on him. Nothing will ever deceive enough to be satisfied by all these shoddy imitations of the late Regrator’s likeness.
In other words, nothing will ever be real enough to replace him.
Wordlessly, he picks up the suppression chip in his hand and rolls it between his fingers. Its faint electrical pulses fail to leave a single scratch on his wire-infused skin. He wills it to hurt more, if only to distract from the emptiness he feels.
The world seems heavier than ever has been.
Why must he punish himself like this? Over, and over, and over again, from failed segments to robots to this abominable caricature of the dead Ninth? Why can’t he stop? When will he learn?
When did he let himself become like this?
His hand flies to his throat, feeling the shallow breaths erupting from his lungs in short, gasping surges. His eyes stray toward the line on the screen, dipping slightly upward in the few moments before the kiss, a gentle slope leading to nowhere. It suddenly seems too bright, too blinding to watch, an unbearable mess of white-hot lines.
His vision blurs, swamped with exhaustion and grief. Frustration bubbles over into rage.
And then, something snaps in him.
His body jerks forward of its own volition, in uncomfortable bursts of motion he can’t control. His hand yanks free the vial connected to the monitor, his movements haphazard and sloppy, and hurls it.
This time, it shatters on impact. This time, the liquid goes spilling all over the floor, memoria evaporating into a weak blue mist as it comes into contact with the cold laboratory air.
Gone, never to be used again.
Dottore stands in the flickering glow of the ceiling lights, panting.
What a fool he is, thinking he can recreate something as beautiful, as tragically human as Pantalone.
What a fool.
Painstakingly, he drags himself down from the bench and pulls his coat over him.
Then, leaving the setup on the counter, he pushes the door open and stumbles out of the lab. A draft from the open windows of the hallway blows his hair astray. A shudder runs through his body, but he is not cold.
He lifts his chin, starkly refusing to look back.
But some part of him knows. Some sad, lonely, miserable part of him that he tries so hastily to shove down, squirming and prodding at him from within, that refuses to live on in the Regrator’s absence.
Like it or not, he will be back by tonight.
Some way or other.