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The cells are cold, Feofan thinks to himself.
A lazy observation, as one could acertain that instantly upon entering whatever underground bunker they've been shoved in; but he has very little energy left in him to think deeper of his environment. Between the frigid air, the forming bruises in the shapes of fists on his body, and the bullet hole in his arm, he has little energy to put anything into focus.
Not that there remains much to see. From his position sat upon the floor, back against the side wall of his prison and long legs stretched out, he can see just the few cells across the middle walkway, and his own walls and ceiling. Each corner is covered by thick shadows.
Everything is gray. The walls, the floor, the bars. Even the breath that exits his lips.
He'd have truly preferred to die with a bit more color around him, but alas. The only color to be found is the darkened splatter of barely cleaned blood stains that could be decades or days old, and there is no comfort in the stale reddish brown.
Indeed, his environment lacks any of the comforts he'd acclaim if he had been any luckier with his lots in life.
But the worst of it is the noise.
Somehow, of all the rotten ways his life has gone, even at the end of his road, he's drawn the short straw of being placed next to some blubbering religious recreant of an individual. For hours they've been sniveling and wailing, praying loudly to their Archon to save them.
It's the cruelest disturbance of peace he could imagine to have to endure.
Could he find no peace even before his final march? Surely a deity somewhere is laughing at him.
Absorbed as he is in his dwindling patience, he doesn't hear the footsteps approaching as his last grain of tolerance falls.
"Would you cease your relentless wailing already?" he snips out haughtily. "Your God isn't listening, and if they were, they've deemed you unworthy of answer, or perhaps even deserving of your plight. So spare the rest of us the sound."
Temper sizzling beneath the surface of his exhaustion, he leans his head back and huffs despite the pulse it pangs of his bruises.
What I would do to have a cigarette right now.
A shadow moves within the hall, and Feofan finally realizes there's someone near. The footsteps had halted during his outburst, before taking two more long strides to his cell.
Coming into view through the bars and haze of pain and fatigue, they're unmistakeably different than the other Fatui grunts he's seen so far. If the feather collar on his cloak wasn't a give away, then the pointed mask and posture would carry the rest. But Feofan hasn't lived in Shneznaya without hearing the heated rumors of the Tsaritsa's latest and most controversial Harbinger.
How timely of him to show up just now.
"Ah. You must be the Doctor," he greets with his ever present smile. He has nothing left but his pride, and not even the Heavenly Principles will pry that from him. Broken and bleeding, he will not be found cowering. Never again. "If you're coming to select your next subject, would you be so willing as to take the noisy individual beside mine? I'd like to enjoy some peace and quiet before I'm selected."
The Doctor stands just like a scholar, Feofan notes, with hands behind his back in poise and precision. At his request, Dottore's head tilts in what could be neutral observation, or unexpected amusement. It reminds him of a crow or raven, looking down upon a prey that may or may not survive the next encounter and make for a hearty meal upon its corpse.
The corner of his lips tick up. Amused it is. "I believe I can arrange that. I do want my subjects at their best for most accurate results, after all."
The Doctors voice is different than how he would have imagined. A slight rasp, an assured tone. Human, but a confidence so unconfined, he thinks he's only seen as such in the worst kinds of people; and in the mirror.
"If that is the case, Doctor, then might I recommend some heating in these halls?" Feofan would rub his arms if one didn't have a wound, grateful at least that he'd been sold in long sleeves. "Having your subjects die from pneumonia would be rather counterproductive to your goals."
Dottore hums, entertained. A subject at the brink of experimentation so willing to banter. What an odd variable. "You would be right, of course, but heating is not cheap, and neither is any component of my experiments. Stretched thin for funds as I am, you can understand why I'd cut corners on the comforts of those destined to end up beneath my scalpel anyway, hm?"
Feofan nods, smile still painted on his face as if they spoke at a cafe across a table, and not as one who holds the others receipt of purchase.
"Ah, money. The mother and killer of ambition. I understand that perfectly."
"Do you?" Dottore asks, eyes unmoving from this interesting specimen. "And are your ambitions to blame for your ending up here?"
Feofan feels a familiar spark of anger in his chest. Not at the one inquiring, but at the memories said inquiry brings. He's not one to divulge onto any open ear, but seeing as his current host seems strangely curious to listen while holding his fate, he concedes.
"My ending up here was a mistake. Call it my own for trusting the wrong person, or lay the blame on they who betrayed it. It doesn't matter," he grits out between his grin. "I'd hoped for a partnership of equal exchange, as I believe all the world should be weighed. But my associates deemed they should tip the scales their way, and thus I sit before you now, Doctor."
"Hmm," the harbinger brings his hand to his chin in thought. "And what was your ambition then? Before you so unfortunately arrived at my door."
Feofan smiles wider. "Why, to be rich, of course."
The corner of Dottores lips drop with a click of his tongue. "I must say, I'm decidedly disappointed at such a mundane answer."
A wheezy chuckle leaves his prisoner. "Ah, apologies. I'd gotten used to short-handing my words, if you will. More efficient in business, you see. And even more, perhaps, I've never admitted it to anyone but myself."
This seems to draw the Doctor back in. He steps closer, hand coming to rest on one of the metal bars. "Oh? I'm listening."
Feofan nearly laughs outright. Oh the irony, his captor being the only person to ever want to know his deepest desire. Either way, he is a man with nothing left. What more does he have to lose?
Violet eyes open, and turn to the ceiling. "I wish to overthrow Teyvats entire commerce."
There's a beat of silence. He continues speaking.
"Morax may be the creator of Mora, but I find it to be under poor management. I would relinquish divinity of it's hold over wealth. Humans would no longer need look to the Gods for such, and receive only paltry scraps at their whims."
Feofan breathes steadily beneath the weight of his words as he finishes, finding the small kindle in his chest has sparked back to a flame. His shelved temper falls back into his hands as he thinks of all he has yet to accomplish, here at his end with nothing to show for it.
A laugh pulls him back to the present. He turns to find the Doctor looking delighted, and would have thought him to be mocking if his body language didn't read pure intrigue. The harbinger has pressed even closer to the bars, his shadow completely falling over the cell.
"My, but that is ambitious. It's rare I hear an idea I haven't thought of myself. Color me impressed."
Feofan closes his eyes again and tilts his head. "And what about you, Doctor? Surely all these experiments have an end goal. What is it that my poor stately body will be contributing to?"
Dottore stills at the inquiry. "Oh? You wish to know?"
"Of course. I've told you my own. Equal exchange, yes?"
For a moment, in the echoing silence, with the stillness of his captor and naught but the sniffles of the other prisoner, Feofan wonders if this is where the conversation ends. Perhaps the harbinger will find it pointless to tell a sitting dead-man his own dreams and walk away. Or worse, tell him to rise and have his final words upon an operation table.
He is unsure, despite observing the other. It's most definitely harder to read a person who wears a physical mask when they stand still. No body language to inspect. Just silence until-
"We may be more alike than you think," Dottore finally speaks. His voice quieter than his crackling laughter from before. This sort of volume falls just between them. "I seek to evolve humans to rival the Gods. Why should humanity be so limited? Why not break these limitations?"
Feofan opens his eyes again, looking upon the man before him in new light. The Doctor is more than the rumors, it seems. Not some aimless madman who takes pleasure in taking children apart. No, he is an ambitious madman who demands sacrifice for his dream. Unafraid to reach for heights that others might deem impossible, and willing to do whatever it takes. A scholar who wants answers, and will stop at nothing to get them.
"I see," he chuckles airily. "Alike, indeed."
Without seeing them, he knows their eyes are connected. Both observing the other, probing, wondering.
"As a man who speaks money so fluently, were you in better circumstances, would you invest in research such as mine?" The Doctor asks to his prisoners surprise.
Dark eyebrows climb as his eyes slide back shut and he looks back to the other side of his cell with a sigh. "Would but that I could, Doctor. But that I could survive to see it come to fruition too."
Dottore hums, contemplative.
Feofan rests heavier against the wall in the quiet as his wounds fester and exhaustion tugs him into the dark. He fights to stay conscious beneath the gaze upon him still. He doesn't want to lose the tail end of this conversation, interesting as it has been. In all twenty years of his life, he doesn't think he'll ever quite meet another man like the one before him. He should like to stay awake for it, pride and limited time left aside.
A snap, the sound pulling some of the dark spots from his vision and back to awareness. The Doctor has summoned three grunts to his side, their bulk taking up a majority of the narrow hall between cells.
Without turning his head, Dottore commands them; "Collect Subject 302 and prepare them for the experiment. And prepare another room for medical."
Without question and a clink of keys, the cell beside them rattles open, and the subject who'd been wailing earlier is pulled roughly from his crouch in the corner.
"No, please! Have mercy! Please!"
His screams and pleas fade as he's dragged away down the long corridor by two men.
Then his own cell door is opened and Feofan sits up as straight as his body allows. Surprise colors him as the Doctor himself steps in and crouches. Before he can even think of reacting further, gloved hands are on him, methodically probing his torso, turning his face this way and that. He bites back a hiss when they press at arm.
"As I thought. A bullet wound clean through, two lacerations, and multiple areas of bruising," he mumbles, more to himself than anyone. "Tell me, were you in this sort of shape before or after my men handled you?"
Feofan, still reeling a bit from the sudden proximity and even worse, the twinge of something like hope in his veins, swallows a stutter before replying. "I believe it was a culmination of both. Perhaps I have a rather aggravating air to me that makes others eager to injure?"
The Doctor huffs, something amused and frustrated or inbetween. "I suppose I'll keep that in mind if I am to be your personal physician for the foreseeable future. Come, rise slowly."
Two hands help Feofan's unsteady form upwards. Everything spins, and there's pain blooming across many parts of his body, but he leans heavily on the wall, and finds the arms that were meant to cut him open now aid him.
"Help me get him to the medical wing," Dottore calls back to the remaining subordinate, who seems to jolt in surprise.
"Y-yes, My lord!"
Soon, two bodies are on either side, and Feofan is staggering forward down the hall. The same hall others have been dragged kicking and screaming, he is gently guided.
What a strange twist of fate, he thinks. The fog of pain makes it hard to truly grasp all that is happening before him. But he thinks he may have somehow, someway, through a single conversation, circumvented his demise.
"Is...this subject to be relocated to a different lab, sir?" The Fatui to his left hesitantly wonders aloud.
Bold perhaps, to ask a harbinger their intentions. But Feofan is happy to have it asked. He'd like to know as well.
"No. Subject 3- ... Actually." They come to a stop. Dottore tilts his head. "What is your name?"
A flutter of lashes. Purple, sumeru rose purple, flickers open and meets the inquiry through his waning strength. "Feofan," he answers softly.
A nod. "Feofan here has other uses than to be a subject of this experiment. Once he is healthy, he will likely be joining your ranks."
There's a motion like a nod of surprised understanding to his left, but he ignores it. Before they can continue their labored walking, Feofan has to ask-
"And yours?"
Another head tilt. "Hm?"
"Your name. I'd like to know it as well."
There's silence, the two men watching one another once more on shared stares of pondering.
Equal exchange, he says without speaking. It seems he is heard.
"Zandik."
Something loosens in his chest. Perhaps, in both.
"Then, Zandik. I look forward to working with you."
A grin. "Indeed. I look forward to seeing what you may yet become, Feofan. But for now, let's focus on getting you hale and whole to my medical wing. The details can be discussed later."
Feofan nods, and they continue forward, the start of a new chapter settling around him.
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