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Innocence was an unfamiliar concept to the children of the House of the Hearth.
Most had lost it long before they were ever admitted into the orphanage. Victims of human trafficking. Victims of abusive families. Victims of neglectful parents. The list went on and on. Truly, Fontaine was a remarkably ‘beautiful’ nation for all of its hidden degenerates.
Some arrived already hollowed out by the world, their spirits stripped bare by cruelty and circumstance. Others still retained a faint glimmer of hope in their eyes, though even their souls had been worn thin. Those children would find a brief reprieve within the walls of the orphanage, only to lose that innocence as well once the placement evaluations began.
The House of the Hearth operated according to a carefully structured timeline.
Children admitted before the age of seven were allowed to experience a relatively normal childhood, or as normal as one could expect within the House. Between the ages of seven and ten, they would receive their first introduction to the Fatui as an organization. This period was dedicated to observation and assessment, during which their aptitudes would be identified and their talents cultivated.
From ten to fifteen came the years of rigorous education and training. Discipline was strict. Expectations were high. Every child was shaped into a tool that could one day serve Her Majesty, the Tsaritsa. At sixteen, they would graduate from the House of the Hearth and be formally integrated into the Fatui.
The fortunate ones would find positions within the governmental bodies of Snezhnaya under Pulcinella's administration. Those who demonstrated exceptional combat ability would be enlisted into the military ranks. The intellectually gifted could choose between the research divisions overseen by Sandrone or the financial and commercial departments managed by Pantalone. Those with a talent for infiltration, espionage, and information gathering would be admitted into the Intelligence Division under Arlecchino herself.
As for those who were less fortunate—
They would either become cannon fodder, as the Rooster so bluntly called it, or end up on an operating table under the Doctor's knife.
“Why did Dottore send you for this appointment?”
Arlecchino had never considered herself particularly fortunate. She had been denied a childhood, endured the bleak years of the old House of the Hearth, survived the brutal games the previous Knave had forced upon her generation, watched the only light of her youth fade by her own hands, killed the old Knave, and then assumed the title of ‘Father’ out of sheer spite for the woman who had called herself ‘Mother.’
No, Arlecchino was not fortunate by any measure. Yet neither would she have counted herself among the less fortunate.
Though, by her own previous definition, perhaps she did qualify. As ‘less fortunate’ that is. After all, she was currently sitting beside an operating table, ready to be put under the knife.
It was not quite an operating table. Merely a low metal examination table positioned in the middle of a spacious, sterile surgical room, cold and clinical in every sense of the word. It was only one room among dozens within the medical wing of the Fatui Headquarters. Her right arm alone was secured upon the table, bare from her usual long overcoat sleeves to expose the blackened flesh of her corrupted limb. The table sat to her right, while she occupied a medical recliner chair beside it. Her gaze remained fixed on the person seated across from her.
“Hm? You say that like I’m not Il Dottore.”
That was the response she received. The speaker was currently inspecting a neatly arranged row of sterilized instruments resting upon a tray. Tufts of pale blue hair bounced lightly as he rocked forward in his seat, barely sparing Arlecchino a glance. The underside of the table was hollow, allowing her to catch sight of his feet swinging idly in the air.
“You are an eight-year-old child.”
Arlecchino practically hissed the words, her expression darkening into the look that countless children of the Hearth had learned to fear.
That finally earned her his full attention. Bright scarlet eyes met Arlecchino’s own deeper crimson ones. Neither looked away.
“And that eight-year-old kid is capable enough just for this simple procedure, taking your fire sample and treating your spreading curse,” he replied, lips jutting outward in a manner dangerously close to a pout, but Arlecchino would rather kill herself first and throw her remains to the primordial sea, rather than admitting Dottore —an eight-year-old Segment of Dottore, but still Dottore nonetheless—was pouting at her.
The child segment rolled his eyes with a degree of sass that no eight-year-old had any right to possess. “If you wanted one of the older Segments instead, perhaps you should have damaged something more difficult to repair. Try losing your hand. Or, better yet, start smoking and hope your lungs need replacement.”
Alright, the kid had some fire in him. Arlecchino had to admit that much. Throwing random shots at Pantalone was unexpected, but a welcome one nonetheless.
After another minute or so spent fussing over his instruments, Kid-Dottore finally seemed satisfied with the arrangement before him. He adjusted a tray, shifted a pair of forceps half an inch to the left, then reached for a glass vial. The moment his attention settled on Arlecchino's exposed arm, however, his expression darkened.
A frown tugged at his youthful features as his gaze traced the black corruption spreading across her skin. Usually, the corruption remained contained beneath her upper elbow. After the mission last week, however, she had pushed her power well beyond its intended limits. The consequences were obvious. The blackened corruption had crawled all the way to her shoulder, swallowing the tattoos beneath it until not a trace remained visible.
“How do you even let it get this bad, honestly?”
The disappointment in his voice was immediate. And, somehow, insulting.
Arlecchino decided not to answer. There were many things she could tolerate. Being reprimanded by an eight-year-old was not among them.
The silence earned her a look.
Kid-Dottore paused in the middle of preparing an injection, one pale eyebrow arching upward as he studied her. When it became apparent that she had no intention of responding, he sighed through his nose and returned to his work, murmuring ‘What a stubborn woman’ under his breath.
The room fell quiet once again, save for the faint clinking of glass and metal.
“Let me rephrase my question, then,” Arlecchino said at last, watching Kid-Dottore draw a dark solution into the syringe. She had heard the tale regarding Dottore's treatments for Abyssal corruption. The man himself had mentioned that Arlecchino's curses were somewhat similar to those of Abyssal corruption, but not quite. Whatever that means. She had heard of the various compounds and procedures. Most involved the remains of dead gods as their primary ingredient. How exactly divine remains managed to neutralize something as foreign as the Abyss, or her curse, was a question she found herself increasingly curious about.
“Why does Dottore keep sending you to all of my appointments?”
Kid-Dottore shrugged, tossing the empty vial into a nearby bin. “Beats me. Is the answer to that question important to you?”
“It is.” Arlecchino unknowingly clenched her fist, causing the leather strap securing her upper arm to strain against the metal table. “Because I am under the assumption that Dottore keeps sending you because he knows I hate him.”
Kid-Dottore didn't answer immediately. His wide scarlet eyes remained focused on her elbow. Using the hand that wasn't holding the syringe, he gently felt along the blackened skin, searching for a suitable vein beneath the corruption. His small fingers traced the triangular hollow at the crook of her elbow, pressing lightly here and there before he finally huffed in satisfaction and carefully inserted the needle.
The pain barely registered for Arlecchino. Compared to the injuries she routinely sustained on missions and the constant agony that accompanied the use of her own power, the needle felt little worse than an ant bite.
As the child slowly pushed the dark, purplish concoction into her vein, he finally addressed her accusation. “But that helps you, doesn't it? You don't have to see the Dottore you hate.”
“…”
It was almost cute, actually. The boy had spent far longer than necessary searching for the proper injection site, exercising an almost excessive amount of care not to hurt her. If one of the older Segments had been here, they would have found the vein in seconds. More importantly, they wouldn't have cared in the slightest whether the process caused her pain. Her comfort would rank near the bottom of their priorities.
“Or are you upset because you can’t properly show your hatred if it’s me instead?”
“…”
Right. Still eight years old. The age when children had absolutely no filter, and every thought that entered their heads immediately left their mouths. Also, Arlecchino needed to remind herself that kid or not, this boy was a younger version of Il-fucking-Dottore.
“Did I guess correctly?”
Arlecchino immediately discarded any thoughts regarding Kid-Dottore's supposed cuteness and defaulted to glaring at him instead. “Careful. I'm not the sort of person who would stoop low enough to hit a child, but you're testing my patience.”
Her warning only made him giggle harder, though thankfully, his hand remained steady on the syringe.
“Prime knows about your hatred, so that's why he sends me to deal with you.”
With one final push, the last of the god-remains solution disappeared into her bloodstream.
The effects were almost immediate. A numbness spread throughout her entire arm, similar to the sensation of a limb falling asleep, except amplified a hundredfold. This time, Arlecchino couldn't suppress her grimace. Despite the discomfort, however, she could already see the treatment working. The blackened corruption slowly receded, patches of darkened flesh gradually returning to their natural pale complexion.
Nodding to himself, Kid-Dottore reached for a nearby clipboard and began scribbling down observations. “But then again, this is the fourth time we've repeated this pattern, and the result remains the same.”
The child glanced up and flashed a smirk so reminiscent of his older counterparts that Arlecchino immediately felt her eye twitch.
“You can't get angry at this Dottore.”
“...”
Alright. Maybe Arlecchino would stoop low enough to hit a child.
Patience— Arlecchino inwardly chided herself. The children of the Hearth were, by and large, good kids, but every so often there would be one or two bad apples who demanded considerably more patience than the others. Refusing to rise to the obvious provocation, she merely exhaled a frustrated huff, closed her eyes, and allowed the discomfort spreading through her arm to run its course.
“No reaction?” the boy teased. “Meh. What a bummer.”
When the buzzing sensation eventually diminished into nothing more than a dull ache at the back of her awareness, Arlecchino opened her eyes once more. Kid-Dottore was still seated across from her, diligently scribbling notes onto his clipboard.
“The corrupted part is gone,” he announced matter-of-factly.
Sure enough, when Arlecchino glanced down at her arm, it had largely returned to its usual state—or as close to normal as it ever could be. The corruption had receded back below her elbow, and the tattoo markings that had previously been swallowed by blackened flesh now stood out sharply against her pale skin once more.
“Alright. With the corruption dealt with, we can move on to your medicine request.”
Kid-Dottore hopped off his chair and trotted toward the far side of the room. Arlecchino followed him with her eyes.
There, occupying nearly an entire section of the laboratory, stood a massive reinforced glass tank. Thick metal bolts lined every edge of its frame, securing it to a web of machinery and tubing. Standing before it, the child looked absurdly small.
He activated a nearby control panel and waited as the machinery slowly came to life. Monitors flickered awake one by one, displaying rows of measurements and diagnostics. Only after the loading sequence finally reached one hundred percent did he reach for one of the tubes connected to the apparatus.
This was the usual procedure whenever Dottore needed to harvest her ‘fire’.
Several months ago, one of the children of the Hearth—long since graduated and integrated into the Fatui—had come to Arlecchino with a request: She wanted out.
Even now, Arlecchino could remember the way the girl had trembled while speaking. Tears had gathered in her eyes but had not yet fallen. Fear had practically radiated from her.
Arlecchino had regarded her coolly before informing her that she would be assigned one final mission. As one of the agents under her Intelligence Division, the girl was more than qualified for the task. It was a straightforward assignment, little more than an extended reconnaissance operation. Afterward, they would conduct the ceremony for her departure.
The answer had immediately reduced the girl to tears. She had assumed that ‘Father’ intended to dispose of her once the mission was complete.
Well, technically, ‘Father’ would indeed be killing someone. Just not the girl herself. The ceremony—or, more accurately, the drug administered during it—would erase every trace of the Fatui from the child's memories. Everything the House had made her into would disappear alongside them. The agent who had sworn herself to the Tsaritsa would cease to exist, while the person hidden beneath that identity would be allowed to walk away and begin a new life.
Arlecchino simply hadn't told her that part yet.
The final mission had been nothing more than a convenient excuse. The House had run out of that specialized medicine required to erase those memories, forcing Arlecchino to submit a new request to Dottore.
Kid-Dottore returned to his seat, dragging the tube along with him. Attached to its end was a metallic bracer, a locking ring large enough to fit around her forearm.
This part, Arlecchino had to prepare herself for. Unlike the injection, this procedure actually hurts.
The inner surface of the bracer was lined with dozens of tiny needles. Kid-Dottore secured it around her arm with none of the excessive care he had shown earlier, and Arlecchino had to bite the inside of her cheek as the needles sank into her skin. Not that precision mattered this time. The device wasn't searching for a particular vessel. It simply needed as much contact with her blood and flesh as possible.
The needles themselves barely hurt. The moment Kid-Dottore switched on the machine, however, agony tore through her senses.
“Ngh—!”
Arlecchino's breath caught in her throat. She bit down hard enough to draw blood, her body instinctively jerking backward as she tried to pull her arm free. The leather restraints and the locking bracer held firm, pinning her in place while the pain continued to rip through her nerves.
Gritting her teeth, she threw herself against the backrest of the reclining chair, silently cursing every Dottore Segment in existence.
The extraction had only just begun.
A violent pulling sensation radiated from her arm and spread throughout her body, as though something deep beneath her skin was being forcibly torn loose. Each pulse sent another spike of pain through her system, intense enough to make her vision swim.
Across the room, through the haze clouding her senses, she could just barely make out Kid-Dottore standing before the reinforced glass tank.
This time, the container was no longer empty. Slowly but steadily, deep crimson energy began accumulating inside, swirling like liquid fire beneath the glass.
Prime Dottore had once explained the process to her. Extracting energy from a living being was entirely possible, but it was rarely painless. The same technology currently attached to her arm was used throughout the Fatui. Similar devices harvested Kuuvahki energy from the air of Nod-Krai and drew elemental and ley line energy directly from the land itself.
In principle, the process was simple: The needles latched onto a source and pulled. For Kuuvahki, the source was the atmosphere. For ley line energy, it was the earth itself. For Arlecchino—
Well, she only had her own flesh.
Just as the pain reached a point where Arlecchino was certain she would lose consciousness, it stopped. Not all at once. Kid-Dottore gradually lowered the machine's output before finally switching it off completely. The reinforced tank now stood filled with swirling crimson energy, glowing faintly beneath the sterile laboratory lights.
Arlecchino felt as though she was drawing her first proper breath in minutes.
Cold sweat drenched her from head to toe. Her sleeveless top clung uncomfortably to her skin, soaked through, while the harsh sound of her own breathing echoed throughout the otherwise quiet room.
Fortunately, the boy made no comment on her lapse in composure.
He didn't look particularly concerned, but the frequent glances he cast in her direction were enough to tell her he was keeping an eye on her condition. Every few seconds, his attention would flick from the machinery back to her. At one point, he even returned to his clipboard, double-checking the procedure notes and treatment guidelines left behind by the older Segments.
The gesture was almost amusing: An eight-year-old Dottore Segment making sure he hadn't accidentally killed a Harbinger.
Arlecchino swallowed hard, trying to find her voice through the lingering haze clouding her thoughts.
“I'm— okay,” she said at last. To her satisfaction, her voice wasn't trembling. Slightly breathless, perhaps, but otherwise steady. “Just... dress the wound, please.”
The kid nodded and retrieved a fresh set of dressings from the medical tray he had prepared at the start of the appointment. He carefully unlocked the bracer from her arm and removed it. The moment the damaged skin beneath was exposed, even he winced.
The flesh underneath was a mess.
Dark bruises had already begun blooming around the puncture sites, ugly blotches spreading beneath her skin. They were severe enough to remain visible even against the blackened corruption creeping up her arm. Tiny wounds dotted the entire area, many of them still bleeding sluggishly.
Without comment, Kid-Dottore set about cleaning them one by one.
The silence stretched comfortably between them. Arlecchino welcomed it. After the extraction, her thoughts felt sluggish, as though the machine had taken more than just her fire. She closed her eyes briefly while the antiseptic stung against raw skin.
“Tell me, Knave.”
Of course, it couldn't last. Young or old, Dottore had always liked the sound of his own voice.
Arlecchino cracked one eye open and offered a noncommittal hum, enough to acknowledge that she was listening and that he could continue.
Kid-Dottore's attention remained fixed on her arm as he spoke. His small hands continued their work uninterrupted, dabbing antiseptic-soaked cotton against each wound. “When you found out about our involvement in the experiments on the House of the Hearth children, you said you would ‘kill Dottore with your own hands.’”
Another hum. Arlecchino did remember saying something similar to that.
“Did you only mean a specific segment?”
The cotton paused against her skin as the boy lifted his head, meeting Arlecchino's weary gaze directly.
“—Or did you mean all of us?”
Well. That’s a difficult question. Especially for her still-fried brain. Arlecchino had a strong suspicion the little menace had chosen this exact moment on purpose.
For a few seconds, neither spoke.
The truth was that Arlecchino had never given the matter much thought. When she first uncovered Mother's actions and her "collaboration" with the Doctor, she had believed that the Doctor was a single individual. Imagine her surprise when, after her official promotion to Harbinger, she learned that the Doctor was not one man at all.
She still remembered her first formal audience with Her Majesty as the newly appointed Knave. Dottore had sent one of his Segments to attend in his stead. That same Segment had attempted to establish a working partnership between them, much like the collaboration he had once maintained with the previous Knave. Arlecchino had rejected the idea before he could properly finish explaining it. That had also been the day she informed him, with absolute clarity, that one day she intended to kill Dottore with her own hands.
The Dottore she had been speaking to then was—
“...Prime,” she answered at last. “He is the one I will kill first, that's for sure.”
The answer felt obvious in retrospect. The older Segments were bearable enough, if endlessly irritating. The younger ones, she rarely had any contact with. Yet none of those distinctions had ever seemed particularly important to them. Every Segment Arlecchino had encountered insisted they were all the same person, merely existing at different points in time.
At the end of the day, they were all Il Dottore, weren't they?
“And if you insist on considering yourself the same person as him, then the least I can do is respect that,” she continued, her voice remaining cold and even as scarlet eyes briefly flicked upward to meet her gaze. “I'll make sure it is quick and painless.”
Not that the statement appeared to bother him. If anything, the boy seemed amused by it. His hands never faltered from their work, carefully cleaning away the dried blood around the puncture wounds as though they were discussing the weather rather than his eventual murder.
“Hehe.” The child laughed softly, the sound light and entirely devoid of offense. Arlecchino had, in essence, just informed him that every version of Dottore would eventually find themselves on her kill list, yet the boy looked more entertained than threatened.
“Good answer,” he said, the smile lingering on his face widened ever so slightly. “Zandik would've liked that.”
The mention of the unfamiliar—yet somehow strangely familiar—name caused both of them to pause; Arlecchino, out of recognition. Kid-Dottore, out of realization.
“Come to think of it...” The boy tilted his head slightly. “It's only you and Childe who have never met the original Zandik.”
Zandik. The original Dottore. The person behind all these Segments.
Arlecchino knew remarkably little about him. Granted, according to Kid-Dottore, every Harbinger besides herself and Childe had known the original Zandik before the Segments came into existence. Over the years, she had heard enough passing remarks to piece together an image of the man, though none of them seemed to fit together particularly well.
Scaramouche had dismissed the distinction entirely. Original Zandik or Segment, it made no difference to him. According to the puppet, every version of Dottore was equally insufferable. Capitano had once remarked that Zandik had been surprisingly extroverted in his younger years, only to gradually withdraw into himself as he grew older. Columbina didn’t even answer her question, or technically she did answer, but it had nothing to do with Zandik whatsoever.
Pierro rarely spoke of personal matters, but when he did mention Zandik, it was always in reference to his brilliance. A rare intellect, he had called him. One capable of advancing Her Majesty's plans farther than most could imagine. Sandrone, meanwhile, had described him as eccentric in a manner that somehow managed to surpass even her own, and not in a flattering way.
As for Pantalone—
Arlecchino immediately discarded anything Pantalone had to say on the matter.
From what Rosalyne had told her, the Regrator owed Dottore far too much to be considered an objective source.
“Rosalyne told me that the original Zandik was actually quite pleasant to converse with,” she said at last, choosing to repeat Rosalyne's assessment over everyone else's.
Of all the Harbingers, Rosalyne's opinion was one Arlecchino trusted.
“He was. It's actually rather unfair in your case because you've only ever met his Segments throughout your time in the Fatui,” Kid-Dottore said. “But Zandik was human. Humans change as they grow older. By the time he died, he had mellowed a lot.”
Arlecchino found herself staring at the top of the boy's head.
The statement itself was strange enough. Stranger still was the casual way the boy spoke of the original Zandik's death, as though discussing a former colleague rather than the man from whom every Segment had originated. The very man he himself was originated. The boy was Zandik’s child version.
“Do you know how Zandik created his Segments?” the boy asked, gently turning her arm this way and that as he inspected the cleaned puncture wounds. Satisfied that he hadn't missed anything, he gave a small nod to himself before reaching for another piece of cotton.
Arlecchino barely had time to consider an answer, or even shrugged, before he continued, apparently deciding that her input was unnecessary. “Irminsul is a tree, right? That tree stores data. Every person in Teyvat is recorded there. Think of our souls as the veins running through that tree. Information keeps flowing through them. Past, present, future. Everything.”
As expected, the question had been entirely rhetorical.
“Most people think information is static. It isn't. It's always moving. Memories, experiences, emotions, knowledge—they're all part of the flow. Every second adds new information. Every choice changes the current.”
The kid reached for a small glass jar of balm and began applying it carefully to each wound along her arm. “Normally, it's very difficult to isolate one specific moment from all that information. It's like trying to pluck a single drop of water from a river,” he explained, surprisingly expressive. He made a grasping motion in the air, as though attempting to catch something invisible between his fingers.
There was a distinct glimmer in his scarlet eyes now. Arlecchino had seen that look before on other Segments—a spark that appeared whenever a Dottore found himself discussing a subject that genuinely fascinated him. For all their differences in age, that particular expression seemed universal among them.
“That's it, unless you know exactly what you're looking for,” he said after a while. By now, every wound along her arm had been treated with the balm. The substance was thick and cool against her skin, and although unpleasantly sticky, it dulled the lingering ache considerably.
“A strong anchor is all it takes. Then you can find it, copy it, and put it into a new body.” Kid-Dottore delivered the explanation as though it were the simplest thing in Teyvat. As though copying information from Irminsul and transplanting it into an entirely new body to create a Segment was a perfectly ordinary procedure.
Arlecchino merely blinked. She remained seated where she was, her arm still numb from the extraction, her thoughts still sluggish from the lingering aftermath of the procedure. Now, unfortunately, her brain was also attempting to process an absurd amount of information being casually explained to her by an eight-year-old.
This situation was ridiculous.
Oblivious to Arlecchino's growing mental exhaustion as she sat in the reclining chair, Kid-Dottore reached for a fresh roll of bandages and began wrapping her arm with practiced care.
“All the Segments have something that makes them easy to find. A very strong memory. Something important enough that Zandik never forgot it,” he explained, guiding the bandage around her forearm before smoothing the fabric flat with his thumb.
Then he paused. The boy frowned slightly, as though reconsidering his choice of words.
“You could even call them scars,” he said at last.
Arlecchino raised an eyebrow.
“Scars?”
“Mh-hm.” The boy tapped his temple. “Scars are easy to find. People remember where it hurt.”
A brief silence settled between them, and Arlecchino did not like the implication of that.
“What is your anchor?” she asked. Part of her was genuinely curious. Another part very much did not want to know the answer. Unfortunately, the question had already left her mouth. The damage was done. All she needed to do was prepare for the answer—
“Zandik was eight when he almost died for the first time.”
“...”
Eight. Just a year older than the youngest children admitted into the House of the Hearth. The age group that was still allowed a semblance of normalcy. The age at which they were meant to have a childhood free from abuse, free from pain, free from the scars that had followed them into the House from the outside world. Eight.
“Hehe.” Kid-Dottore giggled, tilting his head. Something must have briefly shown on Arlecchino's face before she schooled her expression back into its usual neutrality. “No comment on that?”
Arlecchino ignored the question. Or perhaps that was answer enough. Her gaze lingered on the boy's face for a moment before she asked, “...How do you feel about him?”
That seemed to catch the child off guard. The bandage paused midway through wrapping around her forearm, and for the first time since the conversation had turned toward Zandik, Kid-Dottore did not answer immediately.
“Hmm. That's a difficult question.”
Kid-Dottore swung his legs lightly beneath the chair. “Zandik created me to preserve his... my...” He frowned, briefly stumbling over the wording. “...the way ‘he’ used to see the world. I'm one of the first Segments he ever made.”
The bandage wasn't long enough to cover all of Arlecchino's arm, so he secured the end before reaching for a second roll.
“But Segments are snapshots. Pictures. We stay the way we were when the picture was taken.” The fresh bandage unfurled as he began wrapping it around her forearm. “I can't grow up, Knave.”
“…!”
Arlecchino stilled. She had never considered it from that perspective before. It was easier to think of Dottore's Segments as clones, but apparently, they were nothing of the sort. Clones could still grow, still change with time. What the kid had just described was far closer to preservation than replication.
“I don't mind it, but I know the rest of the Segments hate it. Especially Prime. He loathes it very much,” the kid said, and for the first time since their conversation began, a hint of tired acceptance crossed his face. It was a strange expression to see on an eight-year-old.
Segments were stagnant. A copy of a moment, preserved exactly as it was.
“When you put it that way, it sounds rather cruel of Zandik,” Arlecchino said, a sliver of sympathy in her tone. Dottore or not, this was still an eight-year-old.
“Hehe. Maybe. But being frozen in time is also why we were able to invent the medicine you asked for.”
“How is that related?”
“Your fire can burn anything, Knave. But the most interesting thing about it is that it can be directed and controlled with remarkable precision. We only need to provide the information, the coordinates of what should be burned. In this case, that would be your children's memories of their time in the House of the Hearth, along with any crucial or sensitive information regarding the Fatui itself.”
Arlecchino listened in silence. Truthfully, she had never fully understood how her own fire worked. She knew what it could do. She knew how to wield it. Beyond that, she had never cared much for the underlying principles. Hearing Dottore explain it now was, admittedly, enlightening.
It was also a stark reminder of just how much the man—kid? Boy?—knew.
Her power originated from a nation long buried beneath history. According to Pierro, the source of her curse dated back to a dynasty even before Pierro’s era. Yet Dottore spoke of it with the confidence of someone discussing a familiar machine he had already taken apart and reassembled several times.
“Most people would never arrive at this idea because they assume time flows indefinitely, as a continuous stream. But since we are Segments, we know how to target those exact coordinates for your fire to consume. As I told you before, information is always flowing. You use an anchor—in this case, your relationship with your children—to reel in the information you want, and then you burn it.”
Again, with this kid version of Dottore. The boy described something absurdly complicated with such casual simplicity that it almost sounded hilarious.
“Quite a novel invention, isn't it?” Kid-Dottore smoothed out the edges of the bandage one final time before giving her arm a satisfied pat. “There. It's done.”
Kid-Dottore began unfastening the straps that had kept her arm secured to the examination table. Once they were removed, Arlecchino slowly flexed her fingers and rotated her wrist, restoring circulation to the limb. The fresh bandages were snug around her forearm, but not so tight as to hinder movement. As expected, the work had been done perfectly.
The boy returned to his seat and gathered the papers clipped to his clipboard. After a quick review, he slipped them into a plain brown folder before extending it toward her. It was probably a prescription, or perhaps post-procedure instructions.
“Don't strain yourself for at least two days. Your meridians are still weakened from the fire-extraction procedure. The final batch of medicine should be ready sometime next month, assuming Her Majesty doesn't send any urgent requests.”
Arlecchino accepted the folder and glanced briefly at the documents inside before closing it again. “...You have my gratitude, Doctor.”
Kid-Dottore huffed out an amused laugh. “Well, at least now you're not treating me like an eight-year-old.”
Arlecchino answered the sass with a scoff of her own as she rose from the reclining chair and retrieved the white overcoat draped over a nearby metal chair. “You didn't speak like an eight-year-old.”
“I've been an eight-year-old for at least three centuries, Knave.”
“You joke like an old man, too,” she replied without missing a beat, slipping the coat over her good shoulder while leaving the sleeve on her injured side hanging loose.
“I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't joke.”
“Hm. I suppose you do.”
After collecting her rings and the rest of her accessories from the small table beside the chair, Arlecchino made her way toward the laboratory door.
“But honestly,” she said, pausing with one hand on the handle. She glanced back over her shoulder at the boy. “This version of you isn't so bad.”
The kid blinked.
Then his eyes visibly brightened.
“Hehe.” A grin spread across his face. “I'll take that as a compliment.”