Chapter Text
The first thing Pantalone noticed was the smell.
Smoke.
It clung to the curtains, the furniture, the sleeves of his coats, threaded itself into the silk lining of his gloves and the collars of expensive shirts imported from Fontaine. No amount of perfume ever fully concealed it. Some evenings he could taste it at the back of his throat even without lighting another cigarette.
Dottore hated it.
Not because he cared about health in any moral sense, Dottore had long surpassed conventional ethics but because he hated inefficiency. Slow deterioration irritated him. Waste irritated him.
And Pantalone, unfortunately, had become wasteful.
“Your bilirubin levels are elevated again.”
The voice came from somewhere behind him, calm and clipped beneath the low mechanical hum of the laboratory.
Pantalone did not look up from the document in his hands.
“Good evening to you as well.”
“Mm.”
Glass clinked softly.
Metal instruments shifted against silver trays.
The sound should not have been comforting. Yet after years within these chambers, Pantalone had learned the rhythm of Dottore’s workspace the same way one learned another person’s breathing during sleep.
Measured and precise.
He finally lowered the papers and glanced toward the far side of the room.
Dottore stood beside a cluttered worktable lit by pale blue lamps, one gloved hand holding a thin file folder open while the other adjusted the lenses of some absurd Sumeru apparatus. Tubes of cloudy liquid glowed faintly beside him. Notes covered nearly every surface in dense handwriting only he could fully decipher.
And there, atop the stack nearest his elbow:
Pantalone’s medical records.
Neatly organized.
Dated.
Updated.
As though he were merely another ongoing experiment.
The sight irritated him more than it should have.
“You continue documenting me in unnecessary detail,” Pantalone said.
Without looking up, Dottore replied, “Your condition continues becoming unnecessarily complicated.”
“How dramatic.”
“You are developing hepatic fibrosis.”
Pantalone’s expression did not change.
Dottore finally lifted his gaze then, red eyes reflecting cold light through the laboratory gloom.
“The humor is less effective when your liver is actively failing.”
Silence settled briefly between them.
Outside, snow battered the palace windows in soft violent bursts. Snezhnaya’s winters had always felt endless to Pantalone. Heavy. Suffocating. White swallowing everything whole.
Tonight, exhaustion sat in his bones with equal persistence.
He crossed the room slowly, careful not to betray the dull ache beneath his ribs. Dottore noticed anyway. Of course he did.
He always noticed.
“Pain increasing?” Dottore asked.
“A tolerable amount.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you are receiving.”
Dottore’s eyes narrowed slightly.
There were moments, rare moments .. where Pantalone could almost visibly observe the restraint operating behind that mind. A colder man would have called it patience. A kinder man would have called it concern.
Dottore would call it observation.
Nothing more.
Pantalone stopped beside the desk and reached automatically toward the silver cigarette case resting near a stack of reports.
The reaction was immediate.
Dottore caught his wrist before his fingers even touched it.
Firm.
Cold gloves against warm skin.
“No.”
Pantalone looked down at the hand restraining him.
Then slowly upward.
“…No?”
“You will refrain.”
“How authoritative.”
“You are jaundiced.”
“How romantic.”
“I am serious.”
“So am I.”
For a second neither moved.
Then Dottore released him abruptly, as though prolonged contact itself had become irritating.
“You continue worsening the inflammation,” he said flatly. “Your albumin levels have decreased again. Coagulation is impaired. Persistent nicotine exposure is exacerbating the damage.”
Pantalone opened the cigarette case anyway.
“Do you intend to recite the entire report aloud?”
“If necessary.”
“How tedious.”
The cigarette rested loosely between his fingers, unlit.
He watched Dottore return to the records with visible annoyance tightening his shoulders.
Interesting.
Most people feared Dottore’s temper because it was destructive.
Pantalone had learned something different over the years.
Dottore became angriest when confronted with things he could not completely control.
“You disapprove,” Pantalone observed quietly.
Dottore let out a short breath through his nose, almost a laugh, except devoid of amusement.
“You have reduced your nightly intake from seven cigarettes to four.”
“See? I am practically recovering.”
“The progression has not slowed.”
“You say that as though my body exists solely to inconvenience you personally.”
“It does presently.”
There it was again.
That strange sharp edge hidden beneath the clinical language..
Dottore did not know how to speak in softness. Everything emerged dissected, sterilized, stripped down to structure and function.
Pantalone studied him carefully.
The lamps cast pale fractures of light across Dottore’s face, illuminating the exhaustion beneath his composure. He looked as though he had not slept properly in days. Ink stains darkened the cuffs of his gloves. One sleeve bore faint chemical burns near the wrist.
And still, despite the state of him, every page concerning Pantalone’s condition had been updated meticulously.
Daily observations.
Blood analyses.
Symptoms.
Dietary notes.
Nicotine intake.
Sleep irregularities.
Pain frequency.
There was even a section tracking the tremor that had recently begun affecting Pantalone’s left hand.
Ridiculous.
Utterly ridiculous.
“You monitor me more carefully than your experiments,” Pantalone murmured.
“That is objectively untrue.”
“Mm. Yet your experiments tend to explode more often than I do.”
Dottore ignored that.
He flipped another page within the file instead.
“The abdominal swelling has increased slightly.”
“How lovely.”
“You are fatigued more frequently.”
“I manage a nation’s economy.”
“You also nearly collapsed yesterday.”
Pantalone’s gaze sharpened immediately.
“I did not collapse.”
“You lost consciousness for nineteen seconds.”
“That is hardly dramatic.”
“You struck your head against a marble floor.”
A pause.
“…The floor survived.”
For the first time that evening, genuine irritation flickered visibly across Dottore’s face.
“You are impossible to treat,” he said.
Pantalone almost replied with something clever.
Instead, unexpectedly, he heard himself ask.
“Why do you care?”
The laboratory fell silent.
Even the machinery seemed quieter afterward.
Dottore did not answer immediately.
His eyes remained fixed upon the records in front of him, though he had stopped reading entirely.
A dangerous question.
Pantalone realized it the moment it left his mouth.
Because there were practical answers, certainly.
The Ninth Harbinger was politically valuable.
Financially indispensable.
Useful.
But that was not what he had meant, and both of them knew it.
Dottore finally closed the folder.
Carefully.
“When a mechanism begins failing,” he said at last, voice low and even, “one naturally attempts repair before replacement.”
Ah.
The deflection.
Clinical language wrapped around something far too human to acknowledge directly.
Pantalone should have let it end there.
Instead he said quietly, “Am I a mechanism to you?”
Dottore’s gaze lifted slowly to meet his.
And for one brief terrible moment, Pantalone thought he saw genuine emotion there.
Gone almost instantly.
“You are,” Dottore said softly, “significantly more troublesome than one.”