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The night of the Ninth’s annual charity ball is one of Snezhnaya’s most important events, and this year, it seems to be one of the liveliest.
In spite of their recent loss of Rosalyne, the higher-ups seem to have decided the show must go on, and as consequence, this year’s ball is bigger and flashier than ever has been. Champagne towers, brand-new chandeliers, the very image of excruciatingly unnecessary opulence.
Sandrone, personally, hates it.
What a waste of time, she fumes to herself as she hunkers down in a corner with a glass of untouched champagne in her hand. She doesn’t see the point of it all.
Well, maybe there is a point, but it lies primarily in having insipid discussions with shallow, self-absorbed businessmen, buttering them up in hopes they’ll loosen their purse strings and cough up the Mora. And these things, of course, should be left to equally shallow and self-absorbed people like Regrator.
Her, on the other hand?
Well, she wasn’t kidding when she told Pierro she’d sooner eat her own foot than be here, but much to her disappointment, he was insistent on having the full delegation present, and now she’s stuck here, in her brand-new silk skirts and embroidered stockings, wishing for the sweet, sweet release of death.
Oh, how she misses being back in her workshop, tinkering away at her machines without having to make small talk with guests she couldn’t care less about. She thinks of Pulonia, sitting quietly in her lab with nothing to do, and the frown on her face twists into an even more spiteful scowl.
She should have insisted on bringing Pulonia, really. At least they would’ve had fun looking down on all these stuffy old coots together.
But no, she’s alone, and tired, and somehow it’s still only eight o’clock, with four more tedious hours to go. Oh, the torture; oh, the despair. She can’t wait to get out of here, change into comfier clothes, maybe pour herself a cup of tea and complain to Pulonia—
“Sandrone?”
Sandrone jumps, so startled the goblet flies clean out of her hand. She whisks away her skirt just in time, but the sound of spraying shards that follows lets her know the glass is unsalvageable.
The worst thing about it is that she immediately recognizes her assailant’s airy, high-pitched voice. Her face pinches as she whips around, insults already forming on her tongue.
“Col-um-bi-na!” she snarls, leaping to her feet and getting out of the puddle’s way before the alcohol can start eating at the soles of her newly-bought shoes. “What the hell did I tell you about walking in on me?”
Anyone else, Sandrone reckons, would have bolted from the room in fear.
But no, not Columbina, the only person in the whole wide world that’s stupid enough to interrupt her when she’s lost in thought. In fact, she seems completely unperturbed, holding a plate with a single slice of gateau on it as she smiles at her fuming colleague, pink spots appearing on her dimpled cheeks. Her ribbon-adorned ballgown flounces around her as she moves, the hand-sewn pearls gleaming in the room’s milky-gold lighting.
“I was just going around to say hello to all my colleagues.” She waves, seeming to take no notice of the champagne now staining her pristine white heels. “Hello, Sandrone.”
Had she not possessed such an incredible amount of self-restraint, she would’ve bitten Columbina’s head off by now.
“Please don’t do it to me, thanks.”
“Hm.” Columbina completely ignores her request. “You seem sad today. Sadder than usual.”
What a load of rubbish. Sandrone can feel her hackles rising.
“I’m not sad, you idiot.” She gestures wildly to the sorry display on the floor. “I’m angry, because you made me spill my drink!”
One would have thought a century-old Harbinger would have known that by now, but apparently decency is too much to expect from some people.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” says the girl, finally— finally!— showing some sign of remorse. “Would you like me to go get it cleaned up for you?”
“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary.” Sandrone waves a hand dismissively. “The more rich old farts slip and break their hipbones on it, the better.”
Columbina giggles and takes a bite out of her gateau, getting chocolate frosting round her glossy-pink lips.
“You really do hate it here,” she observes, but there’s no judgemental note in her voice like how the others (cough, cough, Pulcinella) talk to her.
“Well, duh, what’s there to like about this?” Sandrone pulls her best everyone-here-disgusts-me face as her gaze sweeps the ballroom, filled to the brim with the dullest conversational partners in Teyvat’s history. “Admit it, Columbina. Everyone here is mind-numbingly boring.”
“The cake is nice. I like that.” Columbina licks off the frosting on the corner of her mouth and holds out the half-eaten gateau to Sandrone. “Regrator always buys the nicest cakes for his parties. Do you want to try some?”
Sandrone makes a show of wrinkling her nose.
“Yuck! It has your saliva on it. I’m not touching that.”
“Okay. Do what you like, then.” The feathers on the back of her head fluff up happily as she takes another bite. “You are correct, by the way.”
Sandrone blinks, caught-off guard. Then she sobers up and tries to phrase her question in the most impatient way possible.
“Correct? Well— I’m always correct, yes, but what on earth are you talking about?”
“Boring, like you said.” Columbina hums non-committally, angling her head towards the congregation in the center of the room. “One of them tried to talk to me about investment strategies. It was a very sleep-inducing discussion.”
Sandrone nods emphatically at her remark.
“Ex-actly!” she snarls, clapping her hands together. “They keep assuming I want anything to do with the crap they’re spouting in my face. You know, one of these days I swear I’m going to go crazy and have their vocal cords ripped out of their throats.”
Annoying as her colleague might be, it doesn’t win over the jubilation that courses through Sandrone at the thought of someone finally agreeing with her.
Much to her surprise, Columbina laughs again, like she finds no issue whatsoever with the suggestion of irrational violence. Her laughter resembles the tinkling of fairy bells.
“I see.”
Frankly, Sandrone doesn’t have the foggiest why she sounds so amused, but at least she doesn’t disapprove. She harrumphs in agreement and balefully watches the girl finish her cake.
It looks good. Maybe she should’ve gotten some. But she can’t be bothered to go back to the snacks table now, especially with the active risk of being ambushed by yet another overeager banquet guest. She wonders if she can go nab some leftovers after the event ends.
But that would require waiting, and she’s impatient. Ugh. She’s busy thinking about ways to get her hands on a slice of gateau when a voice cuts into her train of thought.
“Sandrone?”
Sandrone glances beside her, startled. She hadn’t realized Columbina was still here. What does she want now? Can’t she see that Sandrone's not a talker?
“What now?” she snaps.
“… I have an idea.”
She crosses her arms.
“It had better not be a stupid one.”
Columbina smiles, happy to be heard, not the slightest bit discouraged by Sandrone’s disparaging tone. She puts her now-empty plate down and holds her hand out.
She seems to look straight at Sandrone, even with the lace veil draped over her eyes.
“I was thinking, maybe we could get out of here?”
And there it is. A stupid idea. As expected.
“What, and get called in for a disciplinary meeting with the Jester tomorrow at dawn?” Sandrone grimaces at the thought. “Tempting, but no.”
Funny. She’d never pegged the Damselette for the rule-breaking type. And yet here she is, offering to skip town with her.
“I will just tell them I was not feeling well, and you came to help me.”
Sandrone does not point out how vastly out of character it would be for her to offer anyone assistance, much less Columbina.
“And where, exactly, do you suggest we go?”
“I haven’t thought that far yet.” Columbina shrugs. “We could just wander about.”
“Wander aimlessly?” huffs Sandrone, unimpressed. “Doesn’t that make our escape as pointless as this ball then?”
“Well, it could be fun.”
Upon hearing the word fun, Sandrone’s face twists into one that looks as if she’s eaten a lemon whole. Fun and hanging out with coworkers are phrases that should not ever belong on the same page, much less the same sentence.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
She looks disappointed for a second— perhaps she’d been seeking out some excitement— then shrugs, deciding not to press the issue.
“Hm. If that’s what you want.”
“...Hmph.”
She barely makes a response as she folds her arms and leans against the wall, back to her vacant scowl once more.
Unfortunately for her, there’s not even enough time for an awkward silence to form between them before Sandrone’s sharp mechanical ears pick up the traces of a conversation from halfway across the room.
“Marionette? Ah, her creations are a wonder indeed. If you would like to meet her…”
She jerks her head up, gaze honing in on the source of the noise. It’s hard to pinpoint at first, and she finds herself squinting to locate them in the throng of people.
And then she catches sight of them, weaving through the crowd.
A dark-haired gentleman and his well-dressed companion. The reflected glare of half-moon glasses, and a tailor-made suit, and the most infuriating smile.
The Regrator and his benefactor, making a beeline towards them.
She whirls to face Columbina.
“Disregard what I just said,” she snaps, grabbing the girl by the arm. “We’re heading out.”
“Really? But—”
Sandrone shoves a finger in front of her lips and glares, practically dragging her along.
“Shut up,” she hisses, stalking towards the back door with Columbina in tow. “I said, we’re heading out.”
The hallway hits them with a blast of cold air the moment they step into it.
Sandrone flinches as the wind whacks her square in the face, and is silently glad when she senses her engine kicking into gear to heat her body up. She’s lucky she installed that thing when she did, or her system would’ve frozen to death otherwise.
“Oh, you’re warming your hands for me,” says Columbina after a second. “That’s nice.”
Sandrone turns back to shoot her a disparaging look.
“It’s not for you,” she retorts, but she doesn’t withdraw the hand clamped around the girl’s wrist.
She drags her down the hallway, decorated on both sides with portraits of kings and queens past, alongside newer ones of the Harbingers. They got my nose wrong, she thinks huffily, as she sweeps past a painting of her with her hands folded on her lap.
“The Knave took me on a tour through this hall once,” chimes in Columbina behind her, unhelpfully. “She said your paintings look a lot like you.”
“They do not.”
Columbina giggles. “She thinks they got your expression just right.”
Sandrone spares the portrait a second glance. The girl in the painting looks disgruntled, her lips pressed together in an unimpressed grimace.
Indeed, it looks like her.
“Don’t you think so too?” says Columbina.
Sandrone yanks her along and keeps walking. She’s not wasting her time dissecting portraits that Columbina can’t even see.
“You almost make me wish I’d stayed at the ball instead,” she growls.
That is a lie. Irritating as she may find her colleague, she would much prefer to be in a room with one of them than all ten. And she would much, much prefer to be here than falling asleep to the droning voice of Pantalone’s awful benefactors.
But she doesn’t say so. She just sticks her chin high in the air and keeps walking.
They continue their silent escape from the palace throughout the rest of the evening, slipping into shadows and peering around corners to evade the palace guards striding through the hallways.
All through their escapade, her hand stays tightly closed around Columbina’s.
It’s just because she doesn’t want the girl wandering off and getting them both into trouble. It’s not like she needs it, or anything, just to be clear. She doesn’t need company like mortals do. She really doesn’t.
(—Or does she?)
At some point, they find themselves wandering the greenhouse on the exterior of the palace, the only place on the Tsaritsa’s grounds untouched by the sounds of wine-clinking and merriment and businessmen’s chatter.
In the background, the castle windows are aglow with chandelier-light, a deceptively warm spray of gold winding up each turret like the sprouting of an ivy trellis. It would be quite the beautiful sight, had Sandrone’s impression of it not been marred by unpleasant memories.
She’s glad to be away from all that, even if it means facing off against whatever monstrous creations the Doctor has been cultivating in his lab over the course of the past few centuries. They manoeuvre the house with expert care, having been at the receiving end of Dottore’s man-eating plants one too many times, and Columbina pokes her tongue out at the largest one when they’re well out of biting range.
Sandrone’s lips turn up at the corners by instinct, but she quashes it and keeps walking.
Emerging from the motley arrangement of sunflowers and hellspawn alike, they came to a halt at the entrance to the atrium, where foliage gives rise to a small clearing, set with a table for four. A series of fairy lights wrapped around the pavilion beside it offer the area’s only source of light.
Signora’s plate has yet to be removed from the table, and the Harbingers have yet to give instructions for its removal. Sandrone doesn’t think they ever will. She turns her head away from the arrangement, like it won’t be true if she doesn’t look at it.
“Do you come here alone often?” pipes up Columbina’s voice behind her. “The others mentioned that you seem to like it here.”
“It’s nice and quiet,” says Sandrone, fluffing out her dress and taking a seat on the chaise lounge before the table. “I come here whenever the others are ticking me off. It’s a much better place to sit and think than in the meeting room with those losers.”
“It’s nice,” agrees Columbina, who’s hovering at the entrance, already with a butterfly kissing the tip of her finger. Sandrone hasn’t the foggiest how she attracts animals the way she does. “I liked it better when Rosalyne brought her record player, but it’s still a lovely place to be in.”
Sandrone huffs at the suggestion. “So sorry to break it to you, Columbina, but I didn’t bring a record player.”
“Can’t you play the music, then?”
Sandrone’s brow quirks upwards, surprised. She makes it a point to look as affronted as possible at the suggestion.
“I don’t sing. If that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“No, of course not,” nods Columbina, and now Sandrone really doesn’t understand what she’s getting at. “I was thinking about something else.”
“Spit it out, then. I’m no mind-reader.”
Columbina giggles, clearly excited at her idea.
“Does the key on your waist play music?”
Sandrone rolls her eyes so far back they might as well hit the ceiling. Of course she’d want to know.
“What a ridiculous question.”
A disappointed pause.
“Oh. So they don’t?”
Sandrone grinds her teeth. Curse Alain-Guillotin for adding that pointless little function to her system that she’d completely forgotten about up till now.
“Unfortunately, they do,” she bites out, feeling her cheeks overheat in shame. “Don’t you dare tell a soul!” she adds as she sees the small grin slowly spreading across Columbina’s face.
Oblivious to her coworker’s tone, she’s already clapping her hands together. Sandrone can’t see her pupils, but her eyes seem to crinkle into happy crescents as she speaks.
“Can I see?”
Sandrone’s mouth flattens into a line.
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, have you tried? It could be fun.”
Drat. There’s that word again. Fun.
“Did you just nab me from the ball so you could poke and prod at me?” she demands.
Columbina giggles. She comes over to Sandrone’s side with a spring in her step, the butterflies dissipating in response to her sudden movement.
“Maybe, if I gave you something in return…”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Columbina, we live in the same palace, on the exact same budget each month,” replies Sandrone, twisting her body to keep the key out of Columbina’s grasp. “What is it that you have that I could possibly want?”
“Hmm.” She taps a finger to her lips, deep in thought.
Sandrone puts her hands on her hips, frustrated. That was a rhetorical question!
Archons, she can’t really be thinking of negotiating, can she? There’s no way in hell she’s going to—
“I’ve got it,” she says, beaming, a few seconds later. “I’ll stop singing outside your door at night for a week.”
Tsk. She’s got her there, fair and square.
Because this is, unfortunately, exactly what Sandrone wants.
Oh, well. If that’s what it takes for her to be quiet for a bit.
She sighs deeply, and relents, letting Columbina take hold of her from behind.
“Push it in till you hear the click,” she instructs, angling her head towards the key on her back. “It won’t trigger unless it comes into contact with the right gears.”
She feels the long-dormant gears inside her creak tentatively into action as Columbina’s hands grip the key and turn it slowly. Reluctant as she is to have someone touch her key, the turning gives her a strange sense of gratification, like stretching her back after a long day.
But she doesn’t say so, because admitting that would mean Columbina is right.
“All done,” comes the voice from behind her after finishing up with the rotations, and Sandrone feels the hands leave her key as the prelude of a song springs to life in her system.
She’s never paid much heed to this function of hers before, considering it’s not seen any use since her Fontaine days. Now she notices its tune— an old children’s lullaby tuned to the tinkly chime of a music box.
It’s pleasant, she thinks begrudgingly. If not a little juvenile.
Behind her back, a sweet humming arises, an accompaniment to the tune playing from her music-box, and she turns to find Columbina, watching with her hand outstretched. Her dimples are back, paired with that soft-lipped smile that constantly adorns her face.
“What is it?” says Sandrone. “Why are you looking at me like this?”
Columbina shrugs her shoulders.
“I was thinking…”
And it’s the slightest bit more hesitant this time, more drawn-out, like she too isn’t sure,
“—that you might want to dance.”
Had Sandrone not toned down her functions, she’s certain the installations in her cheeks would have gone completely red by now.
“Why in your right mind—!”
Ugh, she’s so flustered she can’t even finish the dratted sentence.
Columbina doesn’t retract her hand, unperturbed.
“Isn’t that what people do at balls? Dance?” She wiggles her fingers invitingly. “Hmm, are you too chicken to try?”
Sandrone’s face twists, appalled. Oh, she can sense the fire sparking in her wires. If she had blood, it would’ve been boiling by now.
Who taught you how to provoke people!
And the nerve of this girl! To even suggest she’s too scared to dance!
“I’ll have you know that I am in fact a lovely dancer,” she snaps, snatching her by the hand. “Professional, in fact. I was modeled after the very best, after all.”
Columbina beams. Sandrone lifts her chin and refuses to acknowledge her victory.
“You must show me, then,” says the damsel, lashes a-flutter as she lays a hand on her colleague’s shoulder. Her toes point to the floor, tapping in time to the song already.
She looks so absurdly content. Even a little excited.
It makes the notion of dancing with her almost… enticing.
Almost.
And so, for the first time in her life, Sandrone accepts her advances and lets herself take flight.
Now, being a puppet, she is of course flawless, and as a result has no need to tread carefully, for the instructions on dance are ingrained into her system; step, hop, leap-and-twirl. The grass parts ways under her feet, which follow the motions with ease, every joint bending gracefully in the prescribed moves to a ballroom waltz.
She goes back, then forward. Grass stains gather at the base of her heels. Columbina is surprisingly steady, matching her energy with close to no struggle at all. She weaves, nimble and delicate like a fairy’s gait, in and out of the light.
Slender fingers drape themselves along the top of Sandrone’s collarbone, semi-exposed by the cut of her dress, and then something in her completely stops.
She wouldn’t be able to break away, even if she wanted. It’s like the music, or something else in the air, is keeping her entranced, guiding her along each little step of the dance.
She’s lost her free will, but she doesn’t fight it.
So, she lifts her gaze and fixes it on Columbina’s soft, humming lips. She lets the song worm into her ears, string her up into this puppeteered movement that comes out in gestures far gentler than she’d expected. It amplifies, inch by inch, till it bursts, and she finds himself in so close a proximity to the girl her engine is beginning to creak with apprehension.
Her system is warning her, but she pays it no heed.
She clamps her hands around Columbina’s waist and lifts her into the air as they spin, a full three hundred and sixty degrees, layered skirts flouncing outward from the momentum. She lets go, then, and the floating goddess lowers herself to the ground once more in an elegant flurry of motions that would have looked clumsy on any other.
It is here, then, that Columbina looks best, with the ends of her bangs falling over her closed eyes, smelling of sweet moonvine, feathers a-rustle and skirt blossoming out from her waist like flowers.
Sandrone’s breath catches in her throat.
The music swells. The key continues to turn. The garden fades into the backdrop.
And Sandrone, with her impeccable memory and rigid personality, forgets.
Forgets, momentarily, that they’re Harbingers, and that this is her colleague, that they’ve got work lives to return to after this. That there will be consequences for her bunking off tomorrow. For the both of them.
She feels the mindless bliss that floods her and wonders if this is what being human feels like. She’s not thinking, which is something she’s not used to doing.
And somehow, comes a little voice, hidden deep within her engine’s core, you’re happy.
Up till this day, Sandrone wasn’t sure she’d ever been able to feel anything outside of irritation. At times, she’d suspected her core was built solely for the purposes of deflecting everyone who got in her way.
But then the key on her back is unwinding itself to sweet music, and her puppet joints are relaxing, letting her gait relax into a less mechanized version of her preprogrammed dance.
And their hands are entwined, rocking delicately in time to the rhythm of the song, a soft blend of Sandrone’s speaker and Columbina’s delicate humming.
And she’s flushed, unnaturally so, her engine overheating past the point of what she’s normally capable of.
And her face is inches from Columbina’s, safe within kissing distance.
(This is stupid. She should pull away. She really should.)
(But for some reason, she doesn’t.)
It’s almost cinematic, the way the music slows to a stop, the key fixed on her waist turning slower and slower, their lips just barely meeting in the heat of this unanticipated moment.
And when they touch, something in her burns, radiant like the flames of a stoked hearth, hungry and anxious and wanting for more. She takes it in, all of a sudden acutely aware of what she is sensing; the bittersweet taste of Columbina’s lip gloss, ripe like berries, slipping onto her tongue, the hand pressed up against her cheek, pulling her in with no qualms.
And then her heart does something, one thing that shouldn’t be possible to her artificial, unfeeling core.
Like fireworks. Like shooting stars. Simple and gentle and almost fulfilling.
For the first time in centuries, it thrums, energetic in her chest, tugging and beckoning and asking for more.
It’s true.
She’s… happy.
By now, the melody has petered out into nothing, and the key’s control over her has likely been relinquished; she could let go at any moment, but no, she ends up holding the kiss anyway. She tells herself it’s because she’s dizzy, giddy from all the spinning. There’s a lightness in her chest she doesn’t recognize.
Against her better judgement, a laugh bubbles up in her chest; she stays there, unmoving, unresistant. Content.
World be damned, she’s in love.
It must’ve been at least a full minute before the kiss is broken— Sandrone makes a little dissatisfied noise as they part— and in seconds they’re stumbling back, spell broken, minds a jumble as to what just transpired between them.
Sandrone’s swaying, gripping the sides of the round table, her free hand wiping the remainders of pink-tinted lip glaze off the corners of her open mouth. Columbina’s still hovering in the same position she was in earlier, hands lifted as if to cup around invisible cheeks.
They recover as quickly as they can, fluffing out their dresses and primping their hair, and then they’re left to face each other, both flushed in their own roiling mixture of emotions they’re too inexperienced to comprehend.
And there Sandrone stands, deathly silent, lips stained in pale red, staring almost-astonished at her colleague, who then curtsies and smiles at her like she’s had the best time in the world dancing with her.
Sandrone’s breath catches in her throat.
Someone liked her company.
Someone liked her company.
“Columbina,” she starts, and then stops again, feeling the heat under her skin.
What is there to say?
What can she say that doesn’t make her sound like either a coward or a lovey-dovey idiot?
Quick as a flash, she lunges and grabs Columbina by the shoulders, shoving down the stupid fuzzy feeling brewing in her inner core. She’s not going to let this spiral out of her control. She’s quashing this while she still can.
“Tell anyone what happened here,” hisses Sandrone, still furiously warm, “and I’ll have your vocal cords out faster than you can sing a single note.”
“Mm. Sure.”
“And remember,” she adds starkly, stalking out of the clearing, “you owe me a week of no singing.”
Columbina giggles and saunters after her, taking her by the hand. Sandrone hisses in irritation, livid at the unasked-for gesture, as they begin the long walk back to the palace.
(And yet, throughout the entire journey, it does not cross her mind a single time to drop Columbina’s hand.)