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“Knave,” she says, voice soft.
“Lady Furina,” Arlecchino responds. “You wished to see me?”
“Yes,” she nods once more, straightening herself. “Neuvillette informed me that he gave my letter to you. Have you read it?”
So they are not dancing around the topic, then, but Arlecchino finds herself once more wondering what is contained within that envelope. “I regret to not yet have been able to.”
“I see,” Lady Furina says, visibly steeling herself. “Then may we speak somewhere private? I believe that we need to talk.”
“Of course,” she answers, gesturing behind her. Arlecchino’s office feels too impersonal for this, even if she does not yet know what the ex-archon wishes to speak of, and so she leads her to one of the more secluded sitting rooms.
Lady Furina takes her seat, hesitancy lined in each movement of her hands, but opens her mouth to speak regardless.
A sitting room that has been forgotten, or at the very least ignored, by its House's inhabitants does not feel like the appropriate place for this conversation. But as it is, Arlecchino doubts there is anywhere in the world that will make her feel any more ready to be faced with Lady Furina.
Not after what had happened the last time the two of them spoke. Not after the realization she'd made, nearly too late.
Lady Furina does not look hurt, at least. Perhaps a little frail, almost swallowed up by the ruffles of her white dress, but that is only to be expected. And there is the question of her hair — the two long tails she'd worn for years, the ones carved into the Statues scattered across the nation, have been cut, leaving her hair short and curling at her nape. It suits her beautifully, strange as it is.
She looks almost nothing like the Hydro Archon that had ruled Fontaine for so long. She looks like someone new.
Arlecchino does not know how to face this someone new.
She may have been the one in the coma, but it seems like Lady Furina is the one who learned and changed while Arlecchino was the one left behind. She is the one who had come, isn't she? Arlecchino had merely let herself stagnate in fear of that letter — how can she face this version of her?
She swallows, straightening and letting her face settle into something properly neutral. She can handle a conversation. She owes it to herself, and she owes it to Lady Furina, who had come all this way to speak. If it is scorn, hatred, at what she's done — at what had almost happened — then she will have no choice but to accept it.
At least there will be something to accept, she thinks. Already, to have her sitting in this chair alive is nothing short of a miracle. For that, at least, Arlecchino will have no regrets.
"Please," she says, gesturing, and she hopes her trepidation isn't so obvious. "May I ask the purpose of your visit?"
Lady Furina takes in a deep breath, raising her head to meet Arlecchino's eyes. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, but it does not shake. "I wanted to apologize. To you, Knave."
Peruere is ten years old when she wakes to another child holding a knife to her throat. Her age would matter, if she were somewhere else or someone else, but only strength means anything in the House.
He's young, too. Younger than she is, though that means little when he is so much taller, without the years of malnourishment and chronic agony she'd been born into. It will take her many years before she truly grows into her height and strength, into what her heritage has determined for her already. At ten, she is agile enough, clever enough, to make up for it, but the fear of the knife on her skin freezes her still regardless. The sting of the blade cutting into her throat, more so from the boy's hands trembling than from any real intention, is almost paralyzing in its intensity.
She isn't unused to battle. She isn't unused to the cold bite of metal spilling blood all over her, a pulsing, aching wound that will leave its mark permanently, matching all of the others already marring her skin. But it is still different somehow, when the battlefield becomes her own bed and blankets and her enemy is one that she eats with.
She does not remember his name. She still will not, years later, bestowed with a new name herself along with the title of Harbinger scavenged from the corpse of the old House. If there is something she'll wish for, something that she'll truly regret never doing, it will be to find a way to remember all of the children broken beneath their Mother's cruel hands and left buried and forgotten. So many had suffered. So many had died. At ten, she's already long since given up on trying to remember them all, and she had been even younger when she'd abandoned trying to mourn them.
Clervie is unique, firstly for her blood, and then for her kindness. Beyond her, Peruere's memory fails, their faces amounting only to brief flashes of recognition. Only the vision of the boy's eyes, wide and brimming with tears, will stay with her all those years later.
In the end, it amounts to nothing. He does not manage to commit himself to the deed, shocked to stillness by her awakening. It is not a good sign for him. In a place like this, the slightest hesitation is weakness: physical and moral. Even half-asleep as she is, she snaps out of her stupor quickly enough to dig a clawed hand into his wrist and pull the knife off of her, twisting it around into his own arm.
He jerks back with a spasm, falling off of the bed and hitting the ground with a thump. He blinks up at her for a moment and she stares back quietly before he bolts out of her room, clutching his wrist tightly where the blade had left a deep, angry line, dripping blood through his fingers. It leaves messy splatters across the floor, matching the red already rusting from the last time she had stumbled back into her room to patch herself up.
She doesn't try to chase after him. There isn't any point. In Crucabena's House, this sort of attack has long become a commonplace occurrence, and Peruere should've expected this from the moment she'd started rising through the ranks. Though it breaks their Mother's rules, children going missing under those so-called mysterious circumstances has never been unusual. As long as the perpetrator doesn't get caught, nothing will be done about it, and all of the other children would instead reap the benefits of having one less competitor.
It's practically encouraged, really.
Three days later, Peruere breaks her leg in a mission, unprepared for the level of difficulty she certainly shouldn't be cleared to handle. None of them sent on this job are truly strong enough, honestly, but Crucabena will not hear that as an excuse, so they have no choice but to keep going. Luckily, it's a clean break from a target wielding a staff. The boy finishes off the attacker and splints her leg for her silently with the same practiced movements they all learned. He does not meet her eyes, focused entirely on her injury, his hands tying the gauze with one wrist wrapped in bandages as well.
She offers no apology. He offers none, either. There is nothing to be shared between them except this awful, sickening understanding, the type of solidarity that no one will ever be able to take from them.
He ends up surviving another year, before finally falling to another sibling's hands, one who will die soon after as well. Peruere could not mourn either of them. Now, more than ever, Arlecchino wishes there had been somebody who would.
Arlecchino is silent for a long moment. Lady Furina does not twitch or fidget, that same imperturbability that she'd wielded for centuries settling over her face once more, though it would be impossible to miss the tense line of her shoulders.
"I don't follow," she says finally, because she does not and there is little else for her to say. For a brief moment, she wishes desperately she'd known that something like this was going to happen today so that she could have spent her time preparing herself. Instead she'd spent her morning completing busy work to take her mind off of that letter. How foolishly ironic, but any sort of explanation as to what is happening seems to have escaped her entirely.
Lady Furina coughs lightly, one hand coming up to cover her mouth in the same way she's seen her do hundreds of times in the past, echoes of Fontainian nobility engrained into her that have long since disappeared from their current society. Sometimes she flicks her hand in a manner well-suited to a fan, an old court language that nobody speaks anymore, and Arlecchino wonders how much she has carried with her over the years. "Well," she says awkwardly, "certainly you must be aware of the great many, um, wrongs I have done you in the past. You said you did not read my letter, so I wanted to apologize to you in person."
The repetition does nothing to clear things up for her. Arlecchino closes her mouth and tries her best not to appear as blindsided as she is, but she has no doubt she must be failing. Is Lady Furina not aware of their situation? Is she not aware of the many days that have passed, during her coma, granted to her by the very action that only Arlecchino had been able to witness?
Their relationship is irreversibly tainted by the weight of so many deaths: those of Fontaine and the prophecy, and those of the Hydro Archons. Both of them, Furina and Focalors, wherever that line may be drawn, if there is any line at all. What sort of apology is to come from that?
For a second, she considers that perhaps Lady Furina had been afflicted by some sort of amnesia, but that seems illogical. From what she knows of the Iudex, he would have never allowed for her to leave the Opera while still injured, and this seems like the sort of thing he would have made sure to heal. Or at least mention to her.
He has been wracked with guilt over the last trial. Arlecchino feels no solidarity in that, as she did not participate, but she does understand his complete and utter terror at trying to lie to Lady Furina ever again.
She sees no point in lying, either, and it is not like she has ever made an effort to soften her words around the ex-Archon. "What wrongs are you speaking of?"
"Certainly, the way in which I had addressed the issue of the… prophecy had not been greatly appreciated by you," she hesitates. Then her eyes widen, and she waves her hands in front of her frantically. "Not that it wasn't fair, on your part! I understand completely why the people of Fontaine are less than pleased with my performance."
Arlecchino doubts she is referring to her centuries-long lie. No, instead, she's apologizing for not doing enough, and even now can only see her actions as a performance. What a truly tragic mindset.
She straightens, crossing one leg over the other and resting her hands in her lap in an attempt not to betray her unease. "The people of Fontaine are fools, most of whom know nothing of what truly happened in that trial."
Lady Furina winces, but to her credit, does not react any further.
"From where I stand, you have long since repaid every single debt you might have owed this nation, and then more. We sit here now alive due to your diligence. There is no apology necessary."
As she had said, she sees no point in lying.
Lady Furina stares. Blinks. Readjusts the hem of her dress nervously, fingers tugging lightly on a skirt ruffle, and presses her mouth into a sharp line as if to seal back her words. "I know of a great many people who would disagree with you."
"Their opinions matter little to me," Arlecchino says calmly, because it's the truth. There are, of course, far more than just a great many people who would disagree with a Fatui Harbinger. If she has never let it stop her before, she sees no point in letting it happen now.
"But — surely you are upset about Poisson," Lady Furina says almost desperately, voice dropping low as she speaks and then cracking entirely on the last word. She worries at her lip, looking away, in the most obvious display of guilt Arlecchino has ever seen. So obvious that she would consider it faked did she not know the ex-Archon so well.
There is no possible way to deny how deeply Poisson had devastated her.
"Of course," Arlecchino agrees. "It was a tragedy. I believe there are steps you could have taken to prevent it." Lady Furina nods slowly, wilting. "But there is also no way for us to know, and when it happened, I understand that there was very little you could do to stop it."
After the catastrophe occurred, it had been clear exactly how much she had cared. Though her attempts at sending aid were scorned by the inhabitants of Poisson, Lady Furina had not given up on trying to do what she could for their relief while still maintaining her image of the celebrity-archon.
Arlecchino had thought it tasteless, at the time. Why should she continue to cling to her persona even as people died around them? Especially with her grief so obvious — the people of Fontaine were not asking for a theatre star to save them! She had to truly step into the role of archon, not actress, if she truly did want to help.
Hindsight, as many say, is as much of a curse as a gift. Her hands were tied. She could not do more without beginning to shatter the lie she'd built over centuries, and yet doing nothing was just as heartbreaking.
Perhaps not the most perfect approach, but Lady Furina is only human. The fear must have been paralyzing.
Arlecchino cannot hate her for that. Her hands, too, are stained irreversibly by the blood of those she loves. If she had only tried a little harder — if she had been a little smarter — could she not have also saved those she holds dear? Just like Lady Furina, she had been aware for years of their impending doom.
The two of them made it out of the end alive. Poisson did not. Clervie did not.
Fontaine may have a right to despise Lady Furina, but Arlecchino can understand her. Arlecchino does understand her.
They're more alike than they thought, she muses. The idea is bittersweet.
Arlecchino is not the sort of person to be mimicked.
Though, in this case, in regards to their ages — perhaps she was the one doing the mimicking. Perhaps this is what it means for them to be born as tools for their nations.
"You can't mean that," Lady Furina says, leaning forward almost unconsciously.
The Harbinger glances at her. "I don't say things I don't mean."
She flinches back, eyes widening, and Arlecchino feels her mouth click shut sharply in realization. She tamps down the wince, but regret blooms bitter in her mouth regardless. She didn't intend for it to sound like a personal slight, but with the context — with the knowledge that Arlecchino has never shied away from saying things like this to her in the past, cruelty spilling from her mouth with far too much ease — it must sound like it.
How wonderful. Freshly out of a coma, coming here to apologize, and she greets Lady Furina with insults instead. The ex-Archon does not deserve that. She deserves so much more.
"That was," she hesitates, biting at the inside of her cheek. "Unnecessary of me. I apologize."
"No, no, no," Lady Furina says quickly, shaking her head. "There's no need for that at all."
Is she serious? Arlecchino furrows her brow, opening her mouth to interrupt, because while she sees little that she needs to apologize for, it would be a lie to say that Lady Furina does not deserve it in general. Merely in the last year, she has been betrayed by nearly everyone close to her, and in the past five centuries, used by a god with no remorse.
"Lady Furina," she says, and watches her fall silent abruptly, neither of them willing to break eye contact.
She's never met anyone with eyes like hers. She's never met anyone with eyes like Lady Furina's, either. One of the last true Oceanids, albeit given human form — all the others have either been warped beyond recognition or their blood diluted over the centuries.
They're beautiful. They serve only as a reminder of tragedy.
"Has anyone ever apologized to you?"
Peruere stares at Clervie. "…What?"
"Has anyone ever apologized to you," she repeats. She tilts her head, frowning, but the serious expression only looks comical on a face still so full-cheeked and rosy. Everything about her is rosy, truly. Her hair, her cheeks, her smile, and most of all her youth: something impossibly lively in a place intended to burn away all innocence.
"What for?"
"You know." Peruere does not, and the look she gives Clervie conveys this perfectly well. "What — you know! Everything. You don't think it's not fair that she treats you guys like this?"
It's true that Crucabena has never treated Clervie quite like the rest of them. But she knows her friend better than anyone else — Crucabena's favor has never been a gift. The spare crumbs of it that she had offered Peruere in the past is more than enough to promise her that their Mother's indifference is far kinder than her attention ever would be.
Like a god, Peruere thinks, and almost laughs from how accurate it is. Even in the House of the Hearth, with figures like Focalors or the Iudex or the Tsaritsa weighing heavy on their backs, their Mother has always been most like their god. It does them no good to worry about the Hydro or Cryo Archons when someone like Crucabena is there to judge them instead.
"She's a Fatui Harbinger. She can act however she likes."
And Peruere is a disastrous inversion of life, even beyond Crucabena's standards. Nobody else in the Hearth has dark red crosses for eyes and shadowed claws for fingers. There is something fundamentally different about her, something wrong, and everybody knows it; so how could she ask anything from their Mother at all? How could anyone be expected to listen to what amounts to a mere shadow of a human?
By that logic, it really is understandable why Crucabena acts the way she does. Clervie is overflowing with humanity despite her weak body. Her Mother has to treat her harshly to make her strong, but her favor is a reward for her life.
Peruere, in comparison, is not meant to be anything more than a weapon. You don't apologize to a weapon for wielding it harshly; if it breaks, then it means that it merely had not been made strong enough. Crucabena might not bother to wield her with grace, but the manner in which she is used is not up to her. It never has been.
Clervie sighs, pulling her knees up to her chest and then resting her head on them, trailing one finger on the ground morosely. "But Mother isn't being fair to you. I could ask her to be kinder, maybe."
What isn't fair, Peruere thinks, is how easily Clervie keeps herself locked in her fairytale world. The rest of them were dragged out of it long ago, but it doesn't matter how many hits she takes, how many times she collapses from poison. She refuses to break the image of Crucabena as her true mother, not the Harbinger.
Their Mother has never been any kinder to her than she is to Peruere, even if it's in different ways. What does Clervie truly expect to happen? How does Clervie think it won't make anything worse?
Bile fills Peruere's mouth, the bitterness sinking into her tongue and making her teeth ache, and suddenly she cannot stand to be here any longer. She pushes herself up from the ground abruptly, the sound of her too-sharp nails clicking against the cool tile like some final damnation, and doesn't spare a glance for the way Clervie falls out of place from shock.
"Do what you want," Peruere says, exhausted, even though everything within her wants to tell Clervie no. To yell at her, to cry at her, to grab her by the shoulders and shake until all that knowledge finally falls into place. But how could she do that? Bitter as she is, it's nothing less than a miracle that the girl has managed to remain so hopeful. She could never try to break the last good thing left in this godforsaken House. "It's not my place to stop you."
"Peruere," Clervie pleads, reaching out a hand as her brow furrows. Her eyes are always shining, but the way they're looking at her now holds a glassiness that doesn't seem quite usual. Peruere hates it. Peruere cannot do anything to change it. She isn't the sort to hope for it to get better, either. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"You don't need to apologize to me, either," she says. "Nobody—"
"—ever has."
It's like looking in a mirror.
It's like looking in a mirror, except worse, because Arlecchino doesn't know if Lady Furina reminds her of herself more or of Clervie, and the thought is so incredibly raw that she inhales sharply from fear of forgetting to breathe.
It's not very considerate of her to be thinking this. Clervie and Furina are nothing alike, and she is even farther from the worlds they live in.
Lived in.
"Did I say something wrong?" Lady Furina asks, eyes flicking across her face as she bites at her lip. Arlecchino's gaze is snagged by the movement for a second longer than necessary, tearing her eyes away to meet Lady Furina's, bright and clear and concerned. "It's alright, really. I am — was — the Hydro Archon, of course there's no reason for anyone to apologize to me. I am — was — in service to Fontaine, after all!" She tries for a smile, curling it up at the corners the way she did on all the newspapers, the one that was labeled as "blindingly-bright" and "star-worthy" on the headlines. Arlecchino can see glimmers of that here, but Lady Furina has never once smiled at her like that before and she doesn't start now, her expression off-center and as fragile as porcelain.
Arlecchino has always been very, very good at destroying things. "Do you still consider yourself to be?"
Only a fool would miss the way she still can't break herself out of that role yet. All of these constant contradictions between what was in the past and what is happening now, accompanied by tense shoulders and a smile that twitches with each word that escapes her lips.
Clervie watched nearly all of her siblings die and joined them while still referring to Crucabena as "Mother" for the last time. Arlecchino thinks, abruptly, that she cannot imagine the possibility of Lady Furina ever doing the same. She cannot let that happen. Focalors is long gone, now. She will not die as the Hydro Archon, and she must stop living as the Hydro Archon, or it'll kill her just as quickly.
Then again, she supposes that is what Lady Furina had wanted.
"No," Lady Furina says, and the force of it takes them both by surprise. Her mouth stays open, eyes wide, as they stare at each other, before she clicks it shut and leans back in her chair, resettling herself with an air of someone particularly disturbed. Her eyes flick around the room before settling back on her almost sheepishly. "I meant to say — no. I know my duty is over."
Arlecchino watches her for a long moment, and when she thinks the other isn't at risk of jumping out of her skin anymore, she says slowly, "I'm glad. I hold no love for the Hydro Archon, but the Lady Furina is someone I should like to make the acquaintance of."
She truly did admire Furina-as-Focalors as a child. She grew out of that as she grew up, finding instead only frustration towards the god who seemed to live off of her people with no care for the prophecy, but it was only after it had been resolved that her feelings about Focalors had solidified into true dislike.
She cannot hate Focalors, because the god's plan worked, and Arlecchino has always wanted to save Fontaine. But the sort of person who would create a tool and use it carelessly for so many centuries, only to throw it away at the end — how could she respect a person like that? Focalors is pragmatic, and intelligent.
The same had always been said about Crucabena.
"Yes," Lady Furina says softly, looking at something that she cannot see. "You've said as much. Even — even before." The word lands heavy between them, though Arlecchino does not dare address it properly when the ex-Archon doesn't elaborate, either. Furina looks back at her, mouth pressed into a thin line. "I don't understand. Why won't you accept my apology, then?"
"I don't see much point in doing so."
Lady Furina's eyes shutter, something dimming, but her voice does the opposite. She doesn't shout, still holding onto her composure with an iron grip, but there's something tight and weighted in her voice when she says, "I see."
Arlecchino is seized with an abrupt urge to try to explain herself further. It's irrational, completely unnecessary, but Lady Furina's eyes are so, so dull, and hadn't she sworn not to hurt her again?
"Lady Furina," she says, the name falling out of her mouth almost like a plea, "you haven't done anything wrong."
Furina stiffens.
Her hands clench in her lap, twisting up the lace of her dress and wrinkling it beyond recognition, and she slowly raises her head to face Arlecchino. Her eyes are brighter now, something lighting them up almost furiously, and the Harbinger has only a moment to recognize the warning for what it is before her face twists and she spits out venom from behind her clenched teeth.
"No? What about Clervie?"
The cell is cold.
There's little to see beyond the blocks of frozen stone surrounding her, blue-tinted walls in a perfect cube that echo her shadowed reflection back at her in some cursed reminder of what she's done.
There's faint glimpses of the sun visible through the window, the soft golden light broken up by heavy metal bars and drifting calmly across the ground.
Peruere watches it distantly. It registers, somewhere, in her mind. Beyond that, she cannot bring herself to care.
What difference does it make for her to sit imprisoned in the heart of Snezhnograd? Her only other option was to leave herself trapped under Crucabena's rule. At least here, she can die freer than she'd ever been, even with heavy manacles wrapped around her hands.
Crucabena had not died quietly. She'd gone from this world with fire licking out of her mouth, smirk still curled across her face and turned sardonic with blood. For someone who wielded Cryo, she'd more than succeeded in burning her mark into Peruere.
Her hands ache, bleeding charcoal-black and still covered in blood. She's never known any pain like this, before. She knows without needing to be told that no healer will be able to fix the damage done to her.
The damage that Crucabena did to her, because she would have never needed to use those other, dark flames, had the woman not pushed her so far.
Crucabena had not died quietly, but her daughter had. She'd left Peruere with last words amounting more to a death sentence than anything else, so hopeful and kind that it could not be anything other than a curse. And then she'd slipped from Peruere's sword and out from her hands — not yet charred beyond all recognition — and let herself collapse onto the ground, closing her eyes to bright sunlight with a smile on her face.
She hates it. She hates it! Clervie knew what she was doing when she'd stood in front of Peruere's sword and not bothered to dodge. She knew what she was doing when she'd let herself slip away, smiling all the while.
She's never seen much similarity between her beloved friend and their Mother, but those smiles that they'd worn upon death will haunt her forever. Different as they may be, there is still something so immutably damning about them.
She will never be able to hate Clervie for as long as she lives, but forgiveness slips from her fingers when she tries to reach for it. She had done her part, paid back Clervie's death by digging Crucabena's with her own two hands. The rest of the House is free now, no matter what they do with it. Peruere, too, should be free.
Those smiles hang heavy around her neck regardless.
Hopefully, something else will replace it soon enough, she thinks. She holds no doubt as to what awaits her. She hadn't done it out of betrayal to Snezhnaya, but there are very few other ways to interpret killing a Fatui Harbinger.
If all goes according to protocol, Peruere will be executed.
She shifts in her seat, feeling the chains clink together and tap against the legs of the chair. She can't bring herself to mind. She's done her part, completed the duty required of her from the moment Clervie had offered up that smile, and she wants nothing more than for this all to be over.
Her only true question is how long it should take. Do they mean to do it slowly? Forget her here, in the stomach of Zapolyarny Palace, until hunger and thirst steal her away first?
Peruere is willing to be patient, for this. There is someone waiting for her, but she'll take anything as long as she can be assured of its finality. Clervie will understand.
She swallows, taking in a deep breath, and then closes her eyes to wait.
"I must have misheard you."
Arlecchino steps foot in Fontaine once more in a daze. The journey had not taken long, and in comparison to the time she'd spent in Snezhnaya it was hardly anything at all, and yet the version of herself in Snezhnograd seems so far away from her now.
She had been so proud there. Even shackled to the ground in metal cold enough to leave violet burns on her arms, she'd kept her back straight and her hands still. Even when faced with the Director of the Fatui and the Tsaritsa herself, she had refused to falter.
The cold eyes of the god of love was nothing compared to watching the light fade from Clervie's.
Of course, it was the promise of her impending execution had drowned out most of her fears. There was very little they could have threatened her with, not when she'd gone into that battle with Crucabena fully aware of what it would do to her. With no status, no desires, and no Clervie to accompany her afterwards, what could the Fatui do to her?
And should they have found something — anything — that might have been able to provoke her into emotion, there was still the calm assurance of what awaited her. No matter what they did, or how long they took: Arlecchino knew in certainty that she would reunite with Clervie.
Snezhnograd's cells offered assurance. Snezhnograd's cells offered the harsh comfort that at least — at least! — her duty was over.
Fontaine does not offer this.
Clervie had liked to talk to her about her dreams, filled with an ideas of the House turning into a real family. Even she had never dared to speak of Crucabena as anything other than what she was, her stories absent of any mother, but Arlecchino had listened to her talk of a world where their siblings could grow up with the assurance of the House's protection behind them and without the damnation of the House's cruelty.
Rarely did she ever speak of a world where they could leave.
Arlecchino had never said a word to her those times. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't be filled with her old resentment, and much as she could never understand it, Clervie's fanciful dreams were to be protected.
Clervie had wanted to grow flowers.
It doesn't seem fair now.
Everything she's done has been for Clervie. The girl had told her, twelve years old and so far away from the name of Arlecchino it seems an impossible distance, that the two of them would make it out.
And yet, here she remains, still under the House's mantle, sent back to Fontaine to continue her work in service to the Fatui.
Peruere should have died. Peruere had died, in fact, killed in that silver-blue cell and replaced with another woman, but Arlecchino does not know how to continue the work left behind.
Clervie, and then Crucabena, and then Peruere. Three names and three ropes wrapped tightly around her own neck.
She cannot be any sort of Mother. She can hardly be a leader — for all she'd won the title of "King", she'd only done so through spilling blood all around her. She holds none of the innate empathy Clervie had in droves.
She doesn't know what to do, she thinks. She always has, but for the first time in her life, Arlecchino is lost.
Lady Furina swallows, eyes wide, and Arlecchino registers, vaguely, that she'd stood up. Her hands flex, stinging faintly and smelling of smoke, and she knows without looking down that her nails have crossed the line from sharp to clawed, faint red-black flames licking through her fingers and burning charcoal.
She hardly recognizes herself when she speaks, low and echoing in her chest more like an animal's growl than a human noise. "I would ask you to be very, very careful with what you say next."
The ex-Archon swallows again, glancing at her hands, before steeling herself. "Crucabena's daughter," Lady Furina continues, a decision either horrifically brave or utterly foolish. "She died, and soon after, the Harbinger herself was killed."
"Yes," Arlecchino says. There is nothing for her to deny. She has never tried to hide it.
"It's — that was," she hesitates, chewing on her lip again. It's an obvious tell. Too obvious, for someone so practiced with lying. Or perhaps that is simply Arlecchino, on edge. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything about this. "That was my responsibility," Lady Furina says finally, guilt soaked in her voice and dampening it to almost nothing. "It's because of me that so many children died. Clervie included."
Arlecchino's mind goes blank.
She freezes, taking a step back almost involuntarily, drawing herself back from where she'd begun to loom over her. She wants to say something, to agree with her, to refute her, anything that can be considered a response, but her jaw feels as if it is wired shut, teeth grinding against each other like her body is trying to eat itself alive.
Distantly, she realizes that her hands are trembling.
Her hands don't tremble. They didn't tremble when Clervie died, they didn't tremble when she killed Crucabena, and they didn't tremble in that cell, kept warm only by the flames of her blood and anger.
Yet her body seems to have forgotten that fact, stunned as she is from Lady Furina's words.
"The Tsaritsa and I have never been on good terms," she goes on, as if ignorant to Arlecchino's reaction. "Certainly never at war, but any communication I had with her was ceremonial at best. Honestly, looking back on it, I wonder if she suspected all along." Lady Furina smiles faintly, though it does little to cover up the horror in her eyes.
Even now, the mere concept terrifies her. Arlecchino would say something. Her tongue is nothing more than lead in her mouth.
"So my attempts to change the House of the Hearth, as I'm sure you can guess, amounted to nothing," she says.
To… change the House of the Hearth?
"I'm sorry," Lady Furina says, looking down, and then she bows her head before Arlecchino completely. A few locks of white hair slide off to the side, leaving her nape bare, and the Harbinger thinks, don't you know better than to show your neck in front of an enemy? "I gave up, and I know I shouldn't have. If only I had pushed further, I might have been able to at least limit Crucabena's control over the House, and they might still be alive."
This isn't how this is supposed to go.
There is very little else managing to break through the static filling Arlecchino's mind. This, simply, isn't how this is supposed to go.
Lady Furina has been unchanging and immortal for Arlecchino's entire life, a fact of life made all the more real by her indestructible public image. But it is difficult, sometimes, to remember that she has been an Archon for centuries — that she would have seen Crucabena grow up and take the mantle of Harbinger herself.
She had wondered, so long ago, how many children Lady Furina must have had to watch die over the years. She had never considered whether those children were ever Fatui.
People do not mourn the children of the House, but — Lady Furina has never been part of the people, has she?
Clervie does not have a grave.
Arlecchino considers building her one, a monument as beautiful as the girl's soul had been, when she steels herself enough to step back into Fontaine's court. The sight of the House of the Hearth, unchanged from either Clervie's death or Crucabena's, is almost too much to bear.
There should be something visible. Something that will record, in all of the words that Arlecchino will never let slip out, everything that had happened. The deaths — hundreds of them — that the House had facilitated. Encouraged.
There was a breaking point that each child had reached. A point where ally and enemy looked the same, jobs and betrayals blurring into each other until there was no true end to the mission.
Everything had blurred into each other, by the end — should she not leave a marker? A line? Somewhere so that she can remember what had happened. So she can offer Clervie what she is owed.
Yet the idea seems doomed to fail from the start. There is nothing she can carve from stone that will seem fitting for Clervie, much less when she had struggled to understand the girl for so long. There is no mausoleum she can build that will not feel akin to another prison, and she cannot allow herself to let that happen to someone who longed for freedom so desperately. What epitaph is there that will properly capture Clervie's joy? Her life?
Arlecchino will not be remembered pleasantly, when she dies. This is something she has long expected. The title of Harbinger means that when it happens, it will not be quiet or admirable. Even before Zapolyarny Palace, someone like her — akin to nothing more than another Fatui weapon — would never be allowed anything more than violence in life and death alike.
Her hands are stained with the blood of a dynasty long-gone and the dynasty she had ended with her own hands. There are none left of Crucabena's blood, and there are none left of Arlecchino's, either.
Clervie deserves more than the same miserable end that Arlecchino will meet. She deserves more than to be merely forgotten or scorned. She deserves someone who will say her name, years from now, with a voice steeped in fondness.
But there will be nobody to remember her, and her body has already vanished beneath the earth, sprouting the lumidouce flowers both mother and daughter had so dearly loved.
Arlecchino cannot offer her a funeral. Arlecchino cannot offer her what she is due.
Yet there is no one else left to carry the burdens of the House. Crucabena's daughter, killed too young, cannot take on that flame. The children still alive will be too young to remember her, and they will not know Crucabena with any familiarity, either. It will be only Arlecchino.
It is only Arlecchino.
Clervie has left behind only her House, that which she is owed by blood, and her spirit. Arlecchino has returned with no choice but to inherit them both.
She will mourn, for what she has witnessed, and for what she has done. She will mourn, for she is the only one left who can. And then she will gather up the House in her hands, with only the warmth of Clervie's memory to guide her, and push them out of Crucabena's shadow, no matter how long it means she will have to stay within it.
She cannot leave now. Not without saving the House that Clervie had held so much hope for. Even if it is a curse to keep her here, she will not abandon them.
Arlecchino will learn to accept this.
After all, since the moment she had looked down to see the blood spilling from Clervie's stomach, she has known that she will have to go the rest of the way alone.
People do not mourn the children of the House, and they certainly don't try to help them, either. But Lady Furina looks entirely genuine, and no matter what she does, Arlecchino cannot find a single crack in that facade.
"I asked the Tsaritsa to consider your case, as well," she adds hesitantly. "Though I'm sure she must have already had her plans, it was the least that I could do."
Arlecchino unclenches her jaw with great effort, voice cracking humiliatingly as she asks, "consider my case?"
A shadow falls over Lady Furina's eyes, though it does little to hide how expressive they are. "When you killed Crucabena, of course. I asked the Tsaritsa to consider sparing you, that you might be tried on Fontaine law where I could give you a lighter sentence. It didn't amount to much, in the end, but-!" Her voice cuts off as she looks away. "I'm sorry I didn't do more."
Arlecchino has known from a very, very young age that she is not the sort of person people try to help. Her blood is that of a sinner's, visible on every part of her and staining her hands irrevocably, and then her actions became drenched in just as much sin as the violence of the House began to pile up around her.
It's always the same thing. If she is not afforded a kind death, she will not be afforded a kind life, either.
People die around her. More often than not, she is the one to kill them, and she has long since accepted this as fact. There was nothing to miss when she never had it in the first place. No one cares about yet another orphan, and no one tries to help a murderer.
"I am sorry, I swear," she repeats, and then she shrugs one shoulder, another strand of hair slipping off as she does so. She looks up at Arlecchino, who has no idea what expression is on her face right now. Yet Lady Furina doesn't flinch, only offering up a small, self-deprecating smile, and she adds, "I wrote you a better explanation in that letter, but maybe it's for the best that you didn't see it. There's really no need for you to read about all my failures."
Arlecchino takes in a deep breath, taking another step backwards, and curls her hands into fists. She feels the flames extinguish, a light touch of ash across her fingers before that, too, vanishes, only a faint ache remaining in her bones.
She had known that she had misjudged Lady Furina. This — changes things, certainly, but not quite as much as it would have only a year ago. Furina has already become someone that she respects. Likes, even. How many times already has she been fascinated by the glimpses of the true woman behind the mask?
Only yesterday, she'd thought Lady Furina unconscious, in a coma without end. It was miracle enough to find her at the doorstep of the House of the Hearth — for the ex-Archon to reveal another miracle of her own should not be quite as surprising as it is.
When she speaks, her voice is rough. She sounds as if she had been crying, but Arlecchino knows fully well that not a single tear would have dared to fall. "I would not call them failures," she replies. Furina blinks. "…They would have appreciated it." She swallows, throat dry. "Clervie would have loved to know that someone had cared enough to try."
Her name tumbles out almost involuntarily, forcing its way past her lips awkwardly, in a manner not unlike using a muscle that has long since atrophied. It hurts more than she had ever expected to hear Clervie's name said aloud again, even if it is only with her own voice.
Hearing Lady Furina say it had been unimaginably worse.
Still, she takes another deep breath, settling herself properly, and can rest assured with the knowledge that what she had said is true.
The idea of the Hydro Archon caring enough to try to save them, no matter what that "saving" is, would have been enough for Clervie. Perhaps not enough for Peruere, but Arlecchino likes to think that even that scrap of a girl would have appreciated it, would have tucked that knowledge against her chest and nestled next to her eternal flame, just as she is doing now, nearly two decades later.
"But — it didn't fix anything, though."
"It might not have," Arlecchino agrees. The trial the others had forced the ex-Archon into hadn't fixed anything, either, but they had gone through with it anyway. There are some things that cannot be fixed. Some things that will always be stained with desperation and fear. "But if it's all you can do, then it means all the more. To keep trying. Even if it's just for another day."
It had been just for another day for a long, long time. Somewhere along the line, Arlecchino learned to look into the future for a little longer; to watch her children train and think of a world where they could be freer in her own voice instead of Clervie's. But it had not always been that way, hadn't it?
Lady Furina lets out a wet laugh, halfway between incredulous and amused. "I think I would know that better than anyone."
She would, wouldn't she?
All she did, for five hundred years, was try and try again, day by day, in hopes that in the future, all of her efforts would come together and save Fontaine. She had no assurance of the future, no way to know whether it would work — perhaps not even any understanding of why she had to lie. But she kept going anyway.
Every day, for five hundred long years.
Arlecchino doesn't know how she doesn't manage to stop it, but that same reckless spirit that had brought them here comes across her again. "Then you can keep trying," she says, the words falling out of her frantically. Lady Furina's eyes widen, and she blinks up at her, almost comically if it weren't for the very real fear growing in her eyes. "Even if it's just for another day, Lady Furina," Arlecchino repeats, something tightening in her chest. "It — it means something."
She doesn't know how to do this.
She knows this certainly isn't the right way. That she should have been polite, and follow Lady Furina's example, and pretend as if the coma had never happened. As if — as if the fall had never happened. But they had already brought up so much, the emotional weight thick in the air already, and Arlecchino does not want to lie to her.
She has never been in the position to try to convince someone to keep living, before. Certainly never with someone who has already done so much and for so long. What can she say to someone who is centuries older than her? But all she can think, facing this woman, is that her death would be nothing less of a tragedy.
Lady Furina has been alive for a very, very long time, but how many of those years had she truly lived?
Clervie had never had a chance. Peruere had never had a chance, either. But all those years ago, trapped in a thousand different ways, the Hydro Archon had reached out a hand to try to help them out, even as Fontaine itself weighed heavy on her shoulders.
Arlecchino owes her a debt that she will never be able to repay. The least she can do is reach back.
Lady Furina lets out a sniffle, eyes wide and glassy, and she gets abruptly pulled back to the present with an alarmed jolt.
To her mounting horror, Furina ducks a head down to press a hand against her eyes, which does little to cover the tears starting to drip down her face. If Arlecchino had thought herself unequipped to handle this conversation before, this may be even worse — at least, with everything that has happened, she has never cried in front of her before.
But there is no other way to describe this. She's nearly silent, but there is no way to hide the way her eyes are quickly reddening, hands trembling as she pulls herself in tighter and curls into herself.
Arlecchino's hands come up, hovering, awkward, as she steps closer. How long ago had Furina woken up? She had still been in a coma a day ago, that cannot have been enough time for her to be ready to talk.
Then again, and the reminder is painfully amusing, it has been two decades, and the sound of Clervie's name is still enough to crack her chest wide open, fire and emotion spilling right out.
Perhaps they will never be ready.
"Lady Furina," she says, and if she had any less dignity she could almost be described to be fluttering around the ex-Archon in fear. But as it is, that very fear roots her in place, unable to step any closer and shatter the silence built up around them.
Neither of them say anything for a moment, the quiet broken only by faint sniffles, before Lady Furina whispers, "I'm no lady." Arlecchino blinks. "If you — if you really do think that, all of it, then I want to be Furina. Just Furina. With you. I don't — she's not here, anymore."
Who is she? Focalors, or Lady Furina?
What is the difference?
Does it matter?
Arlecchino can understand this, she thinks. Peruere is not here anymore, either.
Neither dead girl will ever have a grave.
"Alright," Arlecchino says, voice strangely soft, falling out feather-light and drifting between the space between them quietly. It doesn't sound anything like her. It sounds honest. "Furina."
At the sound of her name, another sob spills from her chest, shoulders caving in. "I'm sorry," Furina hiccups, still fruitlessly wiping at her eyes as tears slide down her face and leave it flushed pink. She still looks so beautiful, even as she breaks Arlecchino's heart. "You must think me horribly pathetic."
"No," Arlecchino says, the word torn straight out of her throat before she can even think. It rings painfully true, almost too much so, but she refuses to take it back. How could anyone look at her and see something pathetic? She might be one of the strongest alive, truly. Arlecchino has never known anyone with a will greater than hers.
Furina's back bows further.
She has always been such a proud woman, standing tall in all of Arlecchino's memories, and it that which makes this scene so much harder to bear. Even in all of their meetings, with so much of that arrogance stripped away or carefully shattered, she had still refused to bend. She had looked her in the eyes and continued to lie even as she shook in her seat. She never was very good at hiding her fear, but she'd managed to play her part with a mastery never seen before.
What sits before Arlecchino is wrong on so many levels that she cannot even begin to describe it.
She still does not know how to do this, but the alternative of leaving Furina to her grief is unacceptable. She inhales slowly, digging out half-forgotten memories of Clervie's warm grip from where she'd long buried them, and finally steps closer. Slowly, she leans down to let her own arms come rest around Furina loosely.
Furina freezes, stiffening. Arlecchino does not, but her body is wracked with tension, every breath either of them take almost painfully loud to her ears.
Neither of them move for a moment, neither of them able to look at each other and yet equally unable to push each other away.
And then Furina melts into it, body slumping into Arlecchino's chest as she tucks her head into her shoulder, a faint dampness spreading onto her collar from her tears. Arlecchino cannot bring herself to care.
She shifts slowly, readjusting her grip, before Furina latches onto a hand — clawed, rough, covered in scars and calluses — and tugs it even closer to her, pressing the two of them together and leaning into her grip. It makes it all the easier for Arlecchino to feel her trembling against her. She pulls her in tighter unconsciously, leaning her head against Furina's and doing her best to keep her own body from betraying her.
She takes in a shuddering breath of her own.
Why is she so affected by this? It makes no sense that watching Furina cry would leave her so distressed.
She wants her safe — happy, even — but there's no reason that Arlecchino would — or could — be the source of that. Yet here, even with so much hanging above them both, she finds herself leaning into the embrace just as much.
The flames of her bloodline are nothing compared to the all-encompassing wonder of this. The feeling of Furina wrapped around her, taking in everything and still wanting more, leaves her the warmest she's ever been.
It is terrifying to be faced with the severity of her… attachment, she thinks. Had she any sort of common sense or self-preservation instincts, she would cut this off before it could go any further. It isn't right for an ex-Archon and a Harbinger to act in this way.
It isn't right for Arlecchino to have this.
But she can hardly bring herself to move at all. Rather, she wants to shift closer, hold even more of her, until those tears melt into her skin and fade away.
"I'm sorry. Thank you," Furina whispers into her shoulder, body trembling like a leaf being tugged along by the wind. Arlecchino's arms clench tighter almost reflexively, a desperate attempt to keep her from flying too high. "You've been — very kind."
The taste of iron fills her mouth as she bites down on her tongue in response, the immediate refusal scraping at her teeth. She wants to tell Furina that she has no idea what she is saying, but to do so would be a disrespect to someone who has been around for every year of Arlecchino's existence. Certainly the ex-Archon would not be ignorant as to what she's done as Harbinger.
It was only so long ago that Furina would take Neuvillette or even the Traveler to their meetings merely to have some sort of barrier between the two of them. And now, she has her arms full of ex-Archon, collapsed into her chest and crying.
She knows what had changed, what had happened, but still — to hear the word kind come from Furina of all people is more than surreal. It's absurd.
It's addicting.
Arlecchino has wanted to see more of Furina for ages, even if it had started merely out of necessity. After all, it was plain to see that the Hydro Archon was hiding something, and she had intended to do her best to drag it out. It was her duty to Fontaine, after all, and to her children to try to keep them alive.
And then, somewhere along the line, it had shifted into something else. A curiosity that could almost be called innocent, were they two other people — but never had she imagined that she could be anything more than a mere observer.
Is this really all it takes?
An embrace and a few friendly words, and all of a sudden Arlecchino cannot keep control over her emotions for any longer.
How utterly humiliating. She cannot tamp down the way she flushes, heat on her face and in her core, even if she knows that it will not be visible at all.
"I'm only doing what's right," she murmurs, doing her best to banish all sign of her thoughts from her voice.
"Still," Furina mumbles, momentarily squeezing her tighter before finally letting go, hands unhooking from her vest to settle back into her lap. Arlecchino ignores the pang of emptiness this leaves her, suddenly far too cold. "Thank you, Knave."
"Arlecchino," it bursts out of her like a dam broken, pulled roughly from her throat and impossible to stop. "If you wish to be merely Furina, then allow me to be merely Arlecchino."
Please.
Please.
There is so much between them from so many years of agony weighing them both down — let her balance the scales, at least a little.
Furina's eyes widen, and she retroactively dries the wetness from her face with a gloved hand. "I — are you sure?"
No, she really isn't. But there is no other option for her, because it's been made far too clear that there is no hope of her forgetting this. Of forgetting her affections. "Yes."
"Alright. Alright — Arlecchino," Furina tries, voice quiet, and the smile that slips onto her face is the most beautiful thing that Arlecchino has ever seen.
Has she ever seen her smile so genuinely? Small as it is, still stained with tear tracks, it is like a ray of sunlight has opened up before her. All of sudden, Arlecchino knows that she'll do anything to see it again.
"Yes," she repeats, almost breathlessly. Any other response has long disappeared from her mind, only the sound of her name in Furina's voice and that beautiful, beautiful smile remaining.
Furina flushes, and Arlecchino realizes too late that she had been staring. She averts her eyes, desperate not to scare her off. "I — I should go," Furina says quickly, "I don't want to take up more of your time. I'm sure you have things to do."
There is nothing that can be more important than this, surely, but she's already scrambled off of the chair. The faint warmth that she had held fades away from Arlecchino's skin, causing her to shiver, and she reflexively sweeps her hands down her body to resettle herself. Furina stands by the door for a moment, readjusting her dress and hair nervously, before her head dips back down in a bow. "Thank you, Arlecchino."
"Of course," she says, just barely stopping herself from reaching out to hold her again. "You are always welcome, Furina."
She smiles again, the sight of it like a victory, before nodding once more. "Then, I will see you soon?"
"Yes." Something unfurls in her chest. "Soon."
It feels like hope.