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It is a cold, snowless, night with few clouds covering the darkened sky, when a familiar star crashes down upon Teyvat.
His long purple hair splayed all around him in a mess, blood seeping into the eternal layer of sneznayan white, he lays there deathly still. And he remains there unmoving.
Whatever brought the sinner's return to this earth, he is weakened, and he does not get back up.
So, that's why Pierro now has the collapsed body of his ex-friend, ex-academic rival soaking blood into his couch!
He couldn't exactly leave him unsupervised out there. He has tried strangling the man to death, but, as expected, two minutes later even the sinner got hit by the good old immortality curse as his system kicked back into action.
Pierro scoffs at the unconscious man on his couch, he should be incredibly grateful Pierro chose not to use a knife, those wounds tend to heal very, very, slowly. Painful too, to constantly choke on your own blood.
Besides that, after that disappointing failure, Hroptatyr had been well taken care of, Pierro had dragged him out of the snow, patching around his wounds with bandages. His body is full of sharp uneven lacerations now invisible behind tight white wraps. Even if he bears many signs of a struggle, the reason he remains out like a light is a mystery to the fatui commander.
Pierro grits his teeth. He wants nothing to do with this man at all, and yet, he doesn't leave. Didn't leave. Leaving him here would be foolish because this is his house.
But, Pierro supposes leaving the sinner unsupervised would be equally unwise.
Still, despite common sense Pierro does not immediatly drag him pretty and tied up to her majesty.
Instead, with some gentle care, soft feelings that Pierro despises and thought he had long since smothered, he brushes Hroptatyr's long hair out of his face, carefully sifting through the hair knotted with blood.
The fool better wake up soon.
He does, wake up soon. And something is deeply wrong. His inner corruption perhaps, or if not that his very long time in whatever is out there.
The man's eyes are very far away, even when Pierro speaks to him, complains and threatens knowing full well there is nothing he can do to cause him fear. It looks like he's perpetually lost in his own thoughts. Of course he is, the bastard.
"Why are you here?" Pierro asks eventually, speaking bluntly.
He startles however in surprise as Hroptatyr answers, finally turning his eyes upwards and responding equally as bluntly, "I didn't know where else to go,"
The truth causes him to quiver.
He quivers even more so when Hroptatyr refuses to elaborate on the matter, regardless of how much Pierro questions him. Over the next few days as he moves throughout the house though, he looks.. haunted. His eyes never stop being locked onto the horizon.
"Thank you, Eftirvit, for keeping me around," the words come out of nowhere, the two of them sitting in silence in Pierro's living room, although they really should've been spoken earlier by about 500 years.
"You have lost your right to call me that," he answers, "If you must address me, let it be as lord Pierro, director of the fatui harbingers."
Hroptatyr scoffs, a small laughing noise so condescending Pierro leaves the room.
It is two mornings later when Pierro comes to him again, outside a snowstorm has started to rage and he does his best not to walk the grayish blob of watery snow into the house.
With purpose he slams Hroptatyr's notebook on the table.
"Take it back. I want nothing to do with it," he states. He travelled all the way just for this.
Hroptatyr's dull eyes settle onto the worn object, "You haven't burned it…" he states, causing Pierro to scoff. Still he does not take the object from the table.
"I have no need for it," he says and Pierro wants to strangle him a second time.
No need for his humanity. No need for the parts Pierro was once so fond of, no need for the parts that he has somewhat learned to forgive, or maybe only tolerate,
"If that be so," he gets up, finally letting go of the book, leaving it on the coffee table. He walks to the front door opening it to raging winds outside, the temperature in the room dropping instantly.
Hroptatyr shivers.
"Then get out of my house. I have brought you inside for some vague resemblance you bear to the man I once knew. But if this is how you want it to be, then leave."
For a long moment, both of them are still, then, Hroptatyr gets up.
As he walks past Pierro he opens his mouth, wanting to say something, but nothing does come out.
Then, he disappears into the snowstorm, and very quickly the footprints his bare feet left behind are the only things left of him.
An hour passes, then two, then six, then ten, and finally a whole day. It is three days later when Pierro ventures back into the snow.
The snowstorm has long since subsided, and there is no trace to be seen of the man who disappeared into the storm thirty six whole hours ago.
That is until the choking starts. Pierro knows that noise.
Really, the fool is once again lucky Pierro finds him.
The way the curse of immortality works is that it might boot you back to life, but it barely does anything to sustain your existence once you are back in awareness. It's very easy to get stuck in a continual loop of dying to the same thing over and over again until your body, a few minutes of life at a time, has finally healed.
And, of course, there's some things it can never truly come back from.
Luckily freezing to death isn't one of those things.
Pierro just so manages to catch the noise he makes right after his revival, buried under the snow freezing with it in his lungs, or so it seems.
He's sure that'll help with the hypothermia he no doubt died from.
That experience is a fate Pierro wouldn't wish on anyone. Maybe he even regrets his actions, now he has, if you'll pardon the expression, cooled down a bit.
The anger still lingers, but, he should've expected something like this to happen.
Digging Hroptatyr out of the snow is a trivial effort, Pierro presses the man close against the heat of his own body, wrapping his cloak around him.
Those dull purple eyes still stare at him. They are however dazed, Pierro doubts he's registering much of anything right now.
He presses their bodies just a little bit closer, letting out a long sigh into the crook of his neck, muttering softly,
"I really do hate you," Then he trudges back home.
He really should talk with the Tsaritza about this…