Work Text:
Dearest Doctor,
In glowing lamplight, a man writes, then stops.
The scratch of a pen is barely audible amidst birdsong in the background. Outside his window, the clementine tree grows tall, branches unfurling into a canopy of yellow that folds into deep green.
He inhales, feeling his eyelids droop downwards.
This is his sixth draft. In the fireplace, the charred remains of the last five curl and crumble away amidst frolicking gold and orange. If he squints, he can still see the faint ink traces of I miss you inked in neat black calligraphy, dissolving into ashes.
“Too direct,” he murmurs to himself primly, putting pen to paper once more.
It's rare that he concerns himself with letter-writing to this extent. His style is eloquent, to the point and often cold, with a few thinly veiled threats thrown in. He doesn't care for flowery metaphors, or emotional confessions, or any of that.
So why, then, is he struggling to write now?
He presses the nib down and lets a stream of ink flow out in his slanted lettering.
It has been three months since your departure to Sumeru.
Three months.
In that time, he has received a total of four hate letters, and written precisely none.
Those four letters are next to him right now, each in handwriting more atrocious than the next. Demands are scrawled across it– Tell me how you've been doing…reply to my letters…why in hell haven't you been replying?
It makes Pantalone laugh a little, even if it's not funny at all. It makes him think of Dottore screeching these words as he scrawls them under candlelight.
He takes a deep breath and writes the next sentence.
I am not saying I miss you at all. There's simply an emptiness to the palace when you're gone. It's been off, without your irritating voice and everything.
There are segments all over the place, some grumpy and some cheerful. Some of them barge into his office to deliver his breakfast with those dumb grins on their faces. Sometimes he suspects there are traces of cyanide in the toast.
It makes him miss the Doctor even more.
It’s not enough. Not quite the real thing.
He glances at the gold-framed portrait hanging on the wall. Two faces smile back at him, of a cunning masked scientist and his business partner years ago, all young and eager and innocent. He remembers the day they’d taken the portrait too.
Those people. Gossiping as the artist worked his magic on the canvas and immortalized the two Harbingers in all their glory. Gossiping, grinning, shaking their heads in pity.
“It seems the madman has a new victim.”
“Poor thing. He’s absolutely enamoured already. Just look at him. He'll be ruined in three months' time.”
They’d been talking about him.
But he refused to doubt. He’d always known he was stepping into danger— but he had never been one for comfort zones. So he'd smiled demurely and leaned a little closer into the older’s touch, linking their hands tight as the artist sketched out the curl running down the nape of his neck.
And here he is, years later, with piles of paperwork to get through and ignoring them all.
Instead he’s writing (or trying to write) a letter to that damned idiot, and for what?
He doesn’t know. He just wants to.
And he’s struggling to formulate a sentence for all he pretends to be the epitome of smoothness and charm.
He grits his teeth and stabs his pen into the paper in frustration. A blot of ink forms on the paper, dribbling onto the desk and staining the banker’s expensive gloves.
A curse word is loudly muttered. Gloves are pulled off, then irritably cast aside, and the smatter of black staining his snow-white skin is ignored as he scrawls out lines in handwriting different from his usual style.
His usual sloping cursive is formal, elegant, and neatly done. Whatever he’s writing down right now…well, it’s hardly tidy. It’s more real. More raw.
Seems like Dottore’s horrid indecipherable scribbles are rubbing off on him.
—But I digress. After all, this is a hate letter. I will not wax poetic about your ugly face or go on about this newfound loneliness. Couples write that sort of thing, I believe, but we aren’t a couple.
So I am writing to tell you how much I loathe you,
And he almost laughs because of how ironic it is, this obsession they share, where they make exchanges in the light of the setting sun and twine their fingers together and the world falls away, and yet they still claim to hate each other.
You have heard it so many times, I am aware, but it doesn’t hurt to remind you how irritating you are.
I hate your silly grin so much, each passing day feels strange without seeing it.
He doesn’t mention the way Dottore flings his door open at precisely twenty minutes past one in the afternoon, lunch in hand and plans for his newest experiment in the other, flopping across Pantalone’s desk to stop him from working.
“Why aren’t you eating?” he’d say, flashing that dumb grin, and Pantalone would sigh, caving into his hunger.
Dottore would offer him half his lunch.
He would begrudgingly accept it and then complain about being disturbed.
But then he’d smile, and so too would the Doctor.
And that smirk— he hates it.
So that’s what he writes, instead of putting down directly how he feels.
I hate the coffee you brew. It’s bitter, but then you add some sugar in it. Maybe a hint of poison too. A bit like you, if I must be honest, all bitter and lukewarm until you reach the final sips of the drink. Then it’s dripping saccharine sweetness and it’s awful because you never mix the sugar in properly and it doesn’t dissolve. It’s very annoying. Your coffee is horrible.
He glances at the coffee his servants brewed for him. It’s boiling hot with the exact amount of milk he likes and the sugar is fully dissolved in the right dosage.
It tastes wrong, because it was made by the wrong person.
He hopes to taste that awful coffee again soon.
Archons, I hate your lab. It’s unkempt, awfully so, and smells of chlorine gas. I don’t know how you spend your entire day cooped up in that horrid place— and you won’t let me hire a cleaner, either. My clothes still stink of your concoctions, and I’ve been trying to wash them for three whole months.
A scarf is unwound from his neck, still heavy with the smell of iodine and disinfectant. It’s oddly comforting. He strokes it, heaving a sigh.
“You and your stupid lab and your stupid potions.” he sulks, pulling his scarf around his neck once more. “Gods, I should’ve gone to Sumeru with you.”
He knows he’d only have been a liability. Why would the Second need the Ninth to help create a god? There is little use for him, but money; there had simply been no point in going with him. And yet he’d wanted to go so badly.
Not that he’d admit it.
I hate your mask. It covers your probably hideous face quite well, really, but not a day goes by that it does not remain on your face and I wonder when I will ever know what your eyes look like. I despise that mask for obscuring the truth that you have never told me of; the unknown is difficult, frustrating, as is your personality.
“This is disgustingly sappy.” he mutters.
But then he smiles a little to himself, side-eyeing Dottore's four letters.
How he hates this wretched man.
Most importantly of all, I hate you. I hate you for your stuck-up attitude and scornful tone and every lunch break you spend harassing me for funding. I hate you to no end, Zandik, and that is precisely why my life would be empty without that loathing.
Outside, snow falls in tiny pieces of white, fluttering prettily amidst the midnight sky. He watches the still landscape, picturing Dottore grumpily bargaining for the Dendro Gnosis. Wondering if the mad scientist ever thinks of him in return.
Curls fall over his face as he bends closer to the paper and writes one more line.
I hate you with all my soul, so much that your absence these few months has burned a hole in my heart.
When he raises his head, his cheeks are flushed crimson.
“Archons,” he grumbles, putting a hand to his face to hide the blush, “there's something wrong with me, isn't there.”
There is no response. He knows exactly what's wrong. And he has no intention of fixing it.
With a quiet laugh, he signs the letter.
Yours hatefully,
- Regrator