Scaramouche woke up in the middle of the night without being able to tell why, in the first moment.
The night in and around Scaramouche's tent was almost complete and filled with natural sounds like the low caress of wind against the tent's cloth or the howling of wolves in some distance. Because Scaramouche was a light sleeper and woke easily, he had made it abundantly clear to his subordinates that if anyone ever woke him, they better had an extremely good reason for it or would suffer the consequences of their foolish actions.
Strangely, neither of those were why Scaramouche lay in the tent's darkness with open eyes, body and mind still heavy with sleep.
He hadn't woken up because of a persistent feeling nagging at him either, per se. Rather, he subconsciously felt something was off, and his sleepy mind forced him to shake off the drowsiness and focus, which felt like the effort of swimming towards the water surface after having dived deep into the still sea. With every arm stroke, Scaramouche came closer to clarity.
With another deep breath, Scaramouche turned over on his bed onto his back - and froze when realization hit him.
Albedo was gone from his side.
Scaramouche's eyes had adjusted to the almost complete darkness in the tent so that when he sat up, he could make out the crumpled-up bedsheets on his side, which were already cold under his touch.
Irked, Scaramouche rose from the bed, buried his naked feet in a pair of shoes on the ground, and with a shiver that ran through his body reached for a thick coat he'd thrown down before lying down to sleep. He stopped with a frown when his fingers brushed over the additional coat he'd originally given Albedo to wear. Had they left dressed in only a thin shirt?
Scaramouche's annoyance grew with every step as he dressed, amplified by having to leave the comfortable warmth of his several blankets. For whatever reason was Snezhnaya so damn cold?
He slipped out of his tent in the worst possible mood and gave his surroundings a scrutinizing look, searching for any indication where his ... prisoner could've disappeared to. Not that, strictly speaking, Albedo was a prisoner in the most common sense. Scaramouche didn't have a habit of allowing his prisoners around himself, especially not as closely as into his bed. Hell, had anyone dared tell him some days ago that he'd keep and even enjoy someone else's close company on this hunt, he wouldn't have hesitated to fry said person to death on spot.
Then again, meeting Albedo had felt like being surprised with a bucket of ice water above the head. Maybe, just maybe, this was another of Rhinedottir's logical ruses and a tactic to shake Scaramouche off her trail and get him to surrender. She wasn't above playing dirty tricks, as she'd proven many times before.
A part of Scaramouche - one he didn't treat very kindly - wanted to believe that this was a lie. It wanted to believe that Albedo's behavior was genuine.
"My lord." A mirror maiden standing guard in respectable distance waited until Scaramouche turned his attention to her and pointed to the side where most of the subordinates' tents were located. From here, their fireplaces and torches could be guessed through the darkness.
"Why didn't you stop them?", Scaramouche asked flatly and reached for a torch at his tent's entrance, igniting it with Electro sparks and holding it up to illuminate his surroundings.
The mirror maiden had inclined her head submissively.
"We weren't sure whether or not your guest was allowed to move freely in our encampment. The Pyro Agent who stood guard with me followed them in case that they're supposed to stay by your side, my lord."
"Guest, huh." Sinking into thought, Scaramouche started walking into the general direction the mirror maiden had pointed him to. Technically, he didn't fault the other Fatui for thinking this way about Albedo. None of Scaramouche's previous prisoners had lived through this many days unharmed as Albedo had. Interestingly enough, Scaramouche hadn't considered explicitly instructing his subordinates about what Albedo was allowed to do and what not, mainly because he hadn't thought about it himself.
What if their promise to help you hunt down Rhinedottir was only to deceive you?, Scaramouche asked himself. The vivid picture of Albedo's void expression in their eyes, their empty face and the thought about their careful behavior as if they might break any moment came to his mind unasked.
No. This wasn't the behavior of someone who plotted betrayal.
(Why would Scaramouche go out of his way and go look for Albedo personally? Did the feeling as if looking into a mirror really influence him that much?)
When Scaramouche passed through his subordinates' camp, he drew surprised gazes followed by hurried rising, saluting, and shouted greetings from any Fatui member awake as he passed through. He didn't credit any of it as it was expected.
"Where did Albedo go?", Scaramouche demanded to know and being shown into the general direction where he thought he remembered an iced lake, Scaramouche pressed his torch into someone's hands and walked on without light.
He didn't have to search long because aforementioned Pyro Agent manifested out of the darkness and appeared by his side like a shadow, giving a brief report that Albedo was sitting at the lake's edge ahead without any sign of other activity.
"Dismissed." Scaramouche waited until the agent bowed and left, eyes trained to where he could now barely make out Albedo's silhouette against the ice stretching endlessly before them. They sat on the ground, one knee angled up to rest their arm and head on it.
The wind at the lake's edge picked up and made Scaramouche wrap his coat tighter around himself, shivering. Still, he stepped forward and next to Albedo, looking out onto the ice as far as he could see, into the same direction as them.
Albedo made no move to acknowledge Scaramouche's presence. They picked up bits of snow with their free hand and threw them onto the ice, repeating the action without any words.
"The bed is warm", Scaramouche said, turning his head to look at them. He'd been right: Albedo didn't wear anything more than what they'd worn to bed. They were sitting as comfortable in the snow as Scaramouche kept his coat around his figure, but contrary to Scaramouche, Albedo didn't tremble in the cold.
"The cold is fine for me. I quite like it." Albedo made a sound when Scaramouche crouched down and reached for their hand, enclosing Albedo's fingers between his palms.
"You're an icicle", he scolded and leaned forward. "How long have you been out here?"
Scaramouche exhaled with hot breath against Albedo's fingers, rubbing his hands with Albedo's to bring back warmth into them. "Is falling sick how you plan to repay me for saving your life?"
"I ... didn't want to burden you." Albedo met Scaramouche's angry eyes when he looked up with an apologetic smile and retracted his hands, but Scaramouche didn't hesitate to drop into the snow next to Albedo and press against their side. Albedo tensed but didn't seek to establish distance to him.
"The real burden would be if the consequences of your action slow me down", Scaramouche explained courtly, glaring at them. "Start repaying your debts to me by taking care of yourself, moron."
Albedo laughed under their breath, and strangely, it didn't feel faked, but lacked the mirth or other emotion to be genuine.
"Moron, huh?", they asked and sank against Scaramouche. His hair tickled their cheek, but they made no move to change that.
Scaramouche cursed internally that he hadn't taken their coat with him, so he wrapped his arm as best as he could from this angle around Albedo's exposed arms, hissing at the cold burning against his fingers.
If Scaramouche was listening to his every instinct screaming at him in one voice, he'd stand up and force Albedo back into camp now, back into the warmth. But something about the way Albedo behaved, something about their current emotional state, made Scaramouche compare them to a snowflake: they might melt under as simple as his touch if he wasn't careful.
Which didn't mean that they'd keep sitting here until either of them was frozen stiff. The question simply was how Scaramouche could force Albedo to move back. What was the reason they'd left to come here in the first place?
"I didn't mean to wake you", Albedo mumbled against Scaramouche, growing heavier in his arms. It took Scaramouche a long moment to realize that they grew comfortable being held by him. He couldn't remember the last time when somebody has relaxed to his touch.
"It's not your fault that I'm a light sleeper", he replied sincerely, taken by surprise. "I can't sleep unaware of my surroundings anymore."
He guessed that Albedo would relate this information to Scaramouche's life as Fatui Harbinger somehow, most likely, even though the reason for this sleeping habit reached back much further, years before the Fatui. Scaramouche didn't feel like opening up and explaining that his fears were associated with the fear of falling into another slumber from which he might not be able to rouse himself from. This was a piece of personal information he'd never disclose readily.
"Someone has warned me once that standing still in Snezhnaya is inviting death", he abruptly changed topic, pressing against Albedo so that they sat up. He rose and brushed off the snow clinging to him. "Let's head back, Albedo."
Scaramouche extended a hand to Albedo.
For a breath or two it seemed as if Albedo was reluctant to take it, and they stared at the offered hand with a strange look on their face, caught between confusion and caution. Scaramouche might've imagined it though, because a moment later Albedo reached up and allowed him to pull them to their feet, patting off the snow as well.
"Let's go", they agreed, avoiding Scaramouche's questioning eyes.
Albedo followed closely behind Scaramouche back to where they could see the camp's lights in some distance, aware of his occasional glances in their direction. Albedo waited, but the questions were left unspoken, so they asked one themselves. It wasn't exactly the one burning in their heart, but they'd been taught to only ask the right questions.
(Scaramouche had assured Albedo time and time again and if they wanted to know something, they should ask, no matter what it was. Albedo wasn't sure what classified as 'right' and 'wrong' anymore anyway.)
"Are you ... are you going to punish me for this, Scaramouche?" Albedo kept their arms wrapped loosely around themselves and made a conscious effort to stare forward instead of meeting his thoughtful gaze.
Albedo understood Scaramouche to a certain level, they believed. And then, they didn't understand him at all because they had watched and learned and then Scaramouche did something like following Albedo to the frozen lake's edge in the middle of the night and Albedo was left as naked as they'd been at first.
This wasn't just about 'right' and 'wrong', was it?
"Who do you take me for?", Scaramouche asked in return, familiar irritation seething in his voice. He couldn't muster the strength to hide it, but he also wasn't able to be angry at Albedo.
If Scaramouche's anger were flames, Albedo was snow snuffing it out with their presence alone. But Albedo talked lightly tonight as if they commented in passing on how beautiful their surroundings were in the almost perfect darkness, a scenery like sprung from a talented artist's paintbrush and mostly untouched by human hand. They talked carefully, in a detached manner.
(It was a way of talking that made Scaramouche angry for them rather than at them.)
Albedo shrugged, a weak smile around their lips. "I might've run away."
And then, did they really say what they wanted to say?
Scaramouche felt like the answers he was seeking to understand Albedo's reasons were just out of range during this conversation, but he didn't know how to get there in a manner that wouldn't leave Albedo scarred.
(Scaramouche didn't know how to handle this situation. He wasn't Katsuragi. Katsuragi once had found a wandering eccentric at the warm beach in Inazuma, marveling at the waves and the far distance, and had extended a hand with friendly smile and words that healed. Scaramouche found a hurt soul adrift at the frozen lake's shore in Snezhnaya that woke memories long forgotten, and only knew how to extend a hand but not how to heal - he'd discarded compassion like a piece of clothing he'd outgrown long ago.)
"Why didn't you run, then?", Scaramouche asked. "And don't tell me that you knew I'd catch you anyway."
Albedo closed up to Scaramouche to walk next to him, the strange expression back in their eyes, reflected by the camp's fires. They didn't flinch away from Scaramouche's gaze this time when they asked: "Would you have hunted and caught me? Or would I have managed to slip away?"
Albedo asked so many unspoken questions at once, silent pained sounds that Scaramouche finally understood because he was familiar with these questions: could I leave if I wanted? Would you abandon me too, or do you believe that I'm worth being pursued by you?
What am I to you?
Scaramouche remembered the sight of his own hands asking his creator for mercy, spotting the pity in her eyes as she seemed to relate to his fear of death. Scaramouche hated pity. He hated seeing it ever since then. What was there to ever pity him for?
(Nobody among the Fatui pitied him. He had made sure of it.)
But just because Scaramouche knew, didn't mean that he had answers. Answers were something everyone had to look for on their own.
"Is that what you came out here for?", Scaramouche asked. He didn't feel pity for Albedo, never had. Albedo didn't need it. Albedo deserved better than pity. Especially from Scaramouche. "If that's what you want, I'll respect your decision. However", Scaramouche stopped at the first tents and turned to fully face Albedo, now his turn to hold their eyes captive, "respect doesn't control how I counteract. If you try to sneak away, know that you've promised to assist me. You're my subordinate as long as we hunt your creator. And I take care of my subordinates. In which ways ... is entirely dependent on them."
Scaramouche couldn't hold eye contact with Albedo any longer, crossed his arms in front of his chest with a frown and exhaled sharply. In a sense, letting them have this much control over him was utterly senseless. Rationally, he should be over it. But the open look on Albedo's face was priceless, and Scaramouche was scared he might not get it out of his head if he kept staring.
"Get a move on", he barked over his shoulder as walked on ahead, not turning to look whether Albedo was following. "I don't want to freeze out here!"
Of course, Albedo closed up to him. They looked like they wanted to say something but were overly aware of the camp's attention on their Harbinger coming back with Albedo in tow. Even those Fatui who had been sleeping previously seemed to have woken up just to not miss Scaramouche pass by their tents, but Scaramouche ignored most of them. He only gestured a certain Pyro Agent to approach them, and they did with a coat in hands, following the unspoken order and reaching said coat out to Albedo.
Albedo took it and wrapped it around their shoulders wordlessly.
-x
-x
Back in his own tent, Scaramouche freed his feet from the shoes (he disliked the feeling of shoes, ugh) and shed his upper body of all layers he was wearing, practically jumping under the heap of blankets on the bed. He buried himself under their several layers and made room for Albedo, but Albedo stopped at the bed's edge, clinging to the hems of their coat.
The question that had them brought out in the first place still burned heavily in their heart.
"How are you doing this, Scaramouche?", Albedo asked, torn between lying down and keep standing.
"With all love, Albedo, if you don't join me here right now, I'll electrocute you on spot. I refuse to talk until we're warm again. You owe me this much." Scaramouche beckoned Albedo to come under the blankets and when they complied, he made sure to wrap blankets around them to stop the cold winter air from entering the warmth.
"Good", he concluded, once settled comfortably - as comfortably as one who'd spent too much time under Snezhnayan weather conditions with too little to wear could be. "Go on."
In the darkness, Scaramouche could only make out Albedo's rough silhouette in front of him, but since he was holding onto Albedo's cold hands under the blanket, he could feel them tighten their mutual grip briefly.
"You always seem so sure. Even if you're hurt, it doesn't stop you. You and I, we … why?" They had talked it out emotionally before. This time seemed different. Deeper. Meaningful on a different level.
Scaramouche exhaled slowly. "You remember my words about that."
"Yes, I do. Every word." In the darkness of the tent, coated with shadows and judging by how careful Albedo's voice sounded, they were wandering the dangerous edge between losing themselves and finally breaking through the problem's core. Maybe both.
Scaramouche felt the tension with every pore of his body. And the longer Albedo talked once they started speaking their mind without the self-imposed filter, the more Scaramouche wished for some light and at the same time, dreaded to see.
"You say that now that I'm free, I can do whatever I want. But how ... do I … know what I want? I've always only followed her, ever since I can think. I've always only wanted that she was proud of me. I wanted her to look at me the same way she did at the perfect creation, the other Albedo. When she told me that I wasn't … when … when she left me. When she left behind, ever since then, I kept – I keep asking myself: why has she never done so? Why was she never proud of me? Why was I not enough?"
"Who said that, Albedo?" Scaramouche yielded his comfort in favor of giving Albedo a chance to calm down by pressing their freezing hands against his chest. Albedo had to feel Scaramouche's quickened heartbeat against their palms. They had to feel that they weren't alone. "Who said that you're not enough?"
"I know her words shouldn't matter to me. I know that you're right", Albedo murmured, their voice back to the hushed whisper it had first been. Hurt. Not desperate, just defeated. "But why didn't she acknowledge me, Scaramouche? Why did she never praise me even though I did everything right? Why did she not see that I was perfect too?"
"What is her ideal of perfection based on?", Scaramouche asked back. "Based on what? Your own choices? Because you're too considerate?"
"I'm not considerate", Albedo protested weakly.
"Tsk. Explain then: why did you slip out of the tent without that I noticed? How did you move so quietly that I didn't hear you leave when even little things usually wake me up? Why did you grow used to moving like that in the first place?" Scaramouche knew the desperate feeling of wanting to be accepted, only to have this hope shattered. One didn't outgrow it easily. Which was why the hurt permeated his voice too: "Why should it be a weakness to feel? Why would the opinion of the creator matter when you know the truth?"
(Some memories better stayed dormant forever. Tears. A pleading hand. The Raiden Shogun's own memories of death. Pity, disguised as mercy.)
Albedo freed one hand from Scaramouche's chest and lifted it to cup Scaramouche's cheek in the darkness. It was frightening how calmly they could talk about matters that had shaken their respective worlds.
"This is what I meant. You've been hurt too. But it doesn't stop you from moving on. How?"
"I'm my own master. That's all I needed to know."
Part of Scaramouche hated that this person he shared his bed with had seen him cry twice in such a short time already. Part of him hated this vulnerability he showed to them so openly.
Part of him also leaned into Albedo's touch. Part of him wanted to stay like this for longer.
"I was weak once", Scaramouche said, later, when the sun was about to rise. He wasn't even sure if Albedo hadn't fallen asleep by then. "I wandered alone, searching for my sense to exist. For a reason why I woke up and wandered Inazuma."
(Some stories were better off never told. Some stories were better present lessons than remembered.)
"I didn't know who I was immediately. At first, I wanted the same as you. Wanted her to accept me. I did things after I've woken up, met people, learned traditional arts, left memories here and there. But someday, I met a friend. He helped me on this journey. And he asked me, why do you need a reason? Isn't it already wonderful that you exist? And then he clasped his hands and prayed to the Electro archon: may Kunikuzushi never run out of reasons to see the next morning, even if his reason is to watch the sun rise every day. I didn't understand him, then. I think I do now."
Albedo's form had grown visible the nearer dawn crept to the horizon. Scaramouche could make out their face, the shape of their nose, the hint of lips.
"Where's that friend now?", Albedo asked and opened their eyes. So, they hadn't been sleeping.
"Dead."
"I see." Albedo's eyes were clear, devoid of any of the night's hesitation. "I'll try, Scaramouche. I have to see what it means to be my own person. I don't know how long it'll take. But I'll try."
They made a move to sit up, but Scaramouche tugged them down onto the pillow again.
"Stay. The morning will come soon enough. Until then, rest. If you can't sleep, at least rest your body. You have nowhere to hurry."