Work Text:
Two years ago, Lyney met a man for the first time post-show in the Opera Epiclese backstage green room, at a time where his fame had begun to reach the crux it rests at now. It was his first truly humbling experience, but also comically strange, such to a point he and Lynette often joke about it even now.
The man had paid little over fifty-thousand Mora to come for a private visit, where noblemen and women of the Opera House or Court or high Fontanian society most usually stop for tea or tricks or to be coyly teased. He had sat in the loveseat opposite he and Lynette, twisting a napkin uneasily in his hands, eyes wide with subtly masked fear and desperation that made the room shrink at its edges.
At a very first glance both he and Lynette could tell the man was far from home, if home were a thing he even had: draped in foreign fabrics, head weighed by a large-brimmed hat with dangling silver tassels, hair deep and indigo. Despite his nervousness and visible, pitiful anguish, Lyney greeted him in all the same.
They sat on opposite couches and stared at each other, Lyney smiling brightly, Lynette setting down a pot of freshly-steaming tea.
“Monsieur Bleu, what a pleasure—”
“Do you remember me?” the boy interrupted suddenly, voice quavering, eyes bright and strong with hope.
Lyney’s brows furrowed only momentarily in confusion, smile never faltering. “I’m sorry, sir?”
The man had taken a deep breath in as if he had been struck, or knocked breathless, biting his lip. He stood very quickly from his seat.
Afraid he’d somehow offended him in their very brief interaction, Lyney stood as well, following him in his quick escape. “Sir?” Lyney had called, catching him at the door. “Sir, what have I—”
The boy turned back suddenly to face him, viciously, and it beat Lyney by surprise: his eyes had welled with thick, unshed tears. Instinctively, Lyney raised his hand to comfort him, resting just above the pale skin of his cheek, not quite touching yet intuitively moved to soothe him.
“I’m sorry,” the boy choked out. “I-I didn’t— I didn’t want this.”
Lyney blinked. “Then why did you pay…?”
The boy bit his lip harder and took a step towards him, then very firmly planted his feet and began stepping the opposite way, as if he were restraining himself; “I’ll fix this,” he said again, melancholy melting to determination. “I’m sorry. I’ll get you back.”
That was all. The boy turned to leave, ducking behind the velvet curtain of the green room, leaving Lyney stunned and feeling innately guilty for something he could not — still cannot — place.
To this day Lynette suggests the meeting had been with some sort of malice, a revengeful promise, someone he had offended in their youth, perhaps, a prior ward of his late master, or simply the offspring of his newfound fame; Lyney strongly disagrees, though he never knows who or when or why — just that the man was truthful, and the subject an inconceivable mystery.
It’s two years later and in the midst of a show when he begins solving it.
Their fame only grew from then. The Opera House tonight is filled seat-to-seat. The trick is supposed to be simple, at least to he and Lynette; they call out an audience member to step into a box, and Lyney steps into the other, on the opposite end of the House, on stage, and within a minute the two have switched places. They’ve done it an innumerable amount before in practice, Freminet as their unwilling subject, yet admittedly this is quite different, standing upon a stage; it always is. It is always more difficult, in the limelight. And in the last few seconds up till the ‘magic’ enacts itself — it always seems utterly impossible.
Lyney thinks so even in his right state of mind. But now a feeling of trepidation overcomes him, as he sinks into a vat of uneasy molasses; his feet don’t move fast enough, his arms are heavy like lead, his voice sounds warbled and underwater when he calls out to the cheering crowd, shrouded in shadow by the juxtaposing stagelight; “Come now, come now! Let me pick a seat number from this machine, generated at complete random! Let us see which fateful audience member shall join me for a moment of magic!”
The trick is supposed to be simple, yes; he’s meant to disappear within the box, then reappear across the performance hall, in the midst of the rows of eager, watchful eyes, emerging from the same box the ruffled audience member was initially herded into, as they come out on stage. Which is to say — a smaller box inside the box which incases it moves down beneath stage whence both are inside, on a rail track, and come up on the opposite end just in time, with none the wiser. It’s supposed to be simple. Isn’t everything?
The counting machine jostles and blinks and lands on a number, and the crowd erupts into anticipatory cheer as they check their own seats for confirmation. When the audience member is spotted Lynette takes to the crowd to guide him — Lyney only glances at him, moving slowly amongst the people like a threatened animal crouched low to the ground, wary of their stares, clad in blues and white, before his attention is ripped away by a pounding in his skull.
There’s a voice in his head, little, inhuman, yet speaking to him. He can’t discern what they mean, or how, or who, or why; the shrill noise and desperation for communication sends an unmanageable tick to his right brow. He presses his fingers into it and grits his teeth. He can hear the crowd cheer as the audience member is led into the box, and the noise too suddenly becomes overwhelming. He feels his mouth slick with nauseous saliva. Anxiety grips him at some sort of show-damning mishap befalling him rather than the sake of his own health; unsteadily he tugs on his collar, but the skin of his neck against his fingertips feels hot and slick with sweat. He tugs on it harder.
When he tears open the box door, still in his state of disheveledness he’s sure to align his feet on the correct markings. It’s always about the show. Always.
He stumbles back and brings the door shut with him, vision hazy. He can hear Lynette speaking to the crowd outside, shepherding the audience member into the box of his own. He stutters down to his knees in the cramped space as his vision whites, muscles searing with agony; he tips onto his hands, clawing at himself and breathing unsurely, terrified. The incorporeal, transuniversal voice murmurs to him in his ear, beckoning him forth: Comeclosercomeclosercomecloser. It’s as if an otherworldly hook latches into the sinew of his spine, tugging him backwards, and —
He falls. Deeply, narrowly, encased in hollow darkness, feeling as if he descends much deeper than the below-stage preparement room.
ONE.
His hands are folded behind him. They’re in a large meeting room surrounding a giant oval table, he and Arlecchino and most of the higher-ranking Fatui operatives, with Pierro at the far end mapping out orders. He remembers this. It’s odd to be thrust back into. It was the first time he had even seen some of the Harbingers outside of just Father’s words; Columbina was more angelic and terrifying than he’d anticipated, Sandrone more condescending and sharp. He remembers this.
His movements aren’t his own, he quickly realizes. The twitch of his foot against the marble floor, the twist of his fingers around his wrist. Lyney stands mostly shielded behind Arlecchino — Pierro at the far edge of the longtable speaks in a heavy, booming voice, something about moving forces into Liyue. Lyney remembers this meeting all too well. He just doesn’t remember him.
In the corner of his eye he can see a boy — the boy. The boy from the green room. He sticks out like such a sore thumb now that Lyney knows, but the version of himself in the memory doesn’t linger on him. Is this — is this how he knew him? An old Fatui operative? And why is he remembering now?
The boy is partially obscured by his big hat, though his lips, pink and full, and pale cheeks are visible. A bubble of laughter escapes Lyney, within his mind, and he remembers the slightest bit; he had always teased the boy about the giant thing. When or where or why he doesn’t know, but he remembers: swatting at the tassels, watching the boy’s face contort, reaching out and grabbing his collar.
Lyney’s eyes flick to the boy, finally, as his gaze wanders in the big announcement hall. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, weight on one foot rather than straight-backed like Tartaglia standing rigidly to his left, paying rapt attention to the Jester, as he always does. As if feeling his stare, the boy meets his gaze, heavy and dark and brooding. And Lyney must do something stupid, then, because the boy’s lip quirks up at the corner with a quiet huff before he’s grabbing the tip of his hat and looking pointedly away.
Lyney feels the burst of warmth in his chest and the grin that dawns over his face, though Father elbows him and he immediately bites it down.
Pierro’s darkened voice pauses, and silence befalls the table. “Is there a problem, Scaramouche?”
The boy raises his head again, grin completely gone. He meets the address so readily. So he must be…?
“The problem is how drawn out your goddamn speeches are getting. The war will be over by the time you finish even a single council, Jester.”
Tight laughter erupts from corners of the room, stifled harshly by a wave of forced coughs. Pierro’s brow ticks with irritation.
“Your immaturity and true lack of understanding regarding the delicacy of warfare astounds me and the rest of this council. Tsaritsa only knows how you landed a position wherein you can think yourself ‘equal’ to the Harbingers at your side.”
So he’s… a Harbinger. Lyney knows that, sort of. There was a Harbinger named Scaramouche. A spike like lightning courses hot through his brain, making him wince, yet the body in the memory remains still and unmoving. But who…?
“Yes,” the boy — Scaramouche — responds, “only she would. So it’s best you keep your mouth shut.”
Pierro leans in heavily upon the table, palms spread against the thick marble surface. Several agents at his side lean instinctually the other way. “Might I remind you, Balladeer — your main purpose now is to be a machine. No one thinks you to be a great warrior, or a wartime mastermind. It’d be best for you to keep in mind your true utility to our cause.” Scaramouche grits his teeth. With fire on his lips he opens his mouth to spit something terrible back, but Pierro interrupts him. “If you have nothing valuable to say, then leave.”
Scaramouche’s jaw sets in a tempest fury. His hands flex and unclench rhythmically at his sides.
“Thank you, Jester,” he says at last, voice venomous, “for your permission.”
He turns and stomps away from the table, footfalls echoing around the long hall accompanied by the resounding bang of the closing wood door as he goes. Every soul and breath in the room is frozen. They wait like terrified sheep led to slaughter until Pierro continues on.
In the newfound, unbroken atmosphere, Lyney surprises himself as he slinks softly and slowly away. He slips out the door swiftly, unnoticed, just a rat in a room of vultures.
Scaramouche is there, in the hall, standing against the opposite wall and pouting. Lyney can’t understand what he’s doing or why the fuck he’s doing it as he walks up directly to a just-chastised Harbinger, similar to a just-poked bear.
Scaramouche’s eyes flick to him, sharp and unrelenting. “Come to beg for your apologies, Fatuus?”
Right. It was him who had made Scaramouche laugh. Rather than fear and guilt, pride erupts in his chest. He can feel the grin that splits his face. “Quite the contrary. I simply wanted to note what a beautiful smile you have.”
“Oh, fantastic,” Scaramouche grumbles, getting off the wall. “A Fontanian. What do you want?”
“What do any of us want in this cold, cruel world?”
“Cut the bullshit. I could kill you where you stand.”
“But you wouldn’t, would you, love.”
“You will address me as your lord, Fatuus.”
“I wouldn’t dream of anything different.” He takes Scaramouche’s hand gently in his own and brings it to his lips. Surprisingly, Scaramouche lets him. The edges of his knuckles press against the cupid’s bow of his upper lip; he thinks, how wonderfully the two of them fit together.
“You have quite the nerve, approaching me. Who are you?”
He lets his lips linger on the skin of Scaramouche’s hand before pulling slowly away. “Could I say… an admirer?”
“Hah. You could, but I would slaughter you for telling lies.”
He feels himself wanting to ask about what Pierro meant by “machine”, but he holds his tongue. “I am but a mere ward of the Knave, seeking guidance from someone so illuminated as yourself.” He settles a hand gently on Scaramouche’s waist, testing the waters. “The wisdom such a position has gifted you in your time as a Harbinger,” he revels, “I wonder what other… talents… it has brought you?”
“I have plenty,” Scaramouche replies. His voice is flat, but slips, becoming a bit taunting: “Are there any in particular you’d wish to know about?”
He grins. “Perhaps a few.”
Scaramouche narrows his eyes. He takes a step forward, into Lyney’s space. Bingo. “Do be more specific. I’m keen to know just what you’re thinking a Harbinger can do.”
Lyney snakes the hand from his waist up against the flat of the shorter boy’s spine. “Then tell me, mon cheri… Do you know how to walk on your knees?”
A smirk flickers at the edges of Scaramouche’s mouth, though he shoves it down into impassivity. “My knees, you say?” he asks innocently. “I don’t know. Would you like to see me trying?”
“Very much so, my lord. Surely the grand Balladeer is magnificent at a wide berth of things, yes? Please, prove me right.”
A laugh escapes him. “What an interesting request.”
He pouts. “Shall I beg, mon cheri?”
“You would have to,” he answers simply. His fingers graze Lyney’s forearm, traveling up his bicep as his eyes, darkened by lustful intrigue, meet his; “I wonder how you would sound.”
“Then I shan’t keep you questioning, my lord.”
He presses his lips fiercely against his.
Scaramouche takes a second to reciprocate, at first awkwardly, before melting wholeheartedly into the notion; his body becoming warm and malleable under Lyney’s hands which hold him flush to him. They hunger for one another almost instantly upon their first taste.
“Please,” he murmurs between languid kisses, a breathless whisper. “ Mon cheri…”
As he’s holding him within the dream — memory? — he wants to grip his shoulders and yell What happened to you?, but he can’t. He tries not to feel shy as his own actions — are they even his own? Is this even real? — lay out bare in front of him. But if it is, if it’s all real — what brings a Harbinger from a Snezhnayan war council to the green room at a magic show, begging him to remember?
When he pulls back eventually for air he realizes Scaramouche hadn’t needed any, and he still doesn’t; for a second before composing himself he clutches to Lyney’s collar and follows him backwards, chasing his lips, cheeks flushed and eyes half-lidded, before stepping back. He coughs slightly.
“Yes,” he begins softly, “I suppose I know how to… walk on my knees…”
Scaramouche, face pink, begins to sink slowly down in front of him when the door to the commencement hall opens furiously. Scaramouche pauses, gripping Lyney’s waist, as Lyney wrenches back to see the Knave standing angrily, looking straight at them.
“Father!” he exclaims, voice high with worry, taking a hasty step backwards though Scaramouche is still attached at waist-level to him, he drags him along. They stumble over one another until they land in a heap on the floor.
“Lyney,” the Knave growls. She shuts the door behind her and approaches rapidly, with her teeth grit. “Up,” she barks.
Lyney remembers this, too, he just never remembers why — the first time he had ever objected to the Knave. He pats Scaramouche’s hip gently instead of rushing to his feet. “Are you alright?”
Scaramouche looks at him strangely, caught off-guard at the tenderness, before the snappiness is back in his scowl and he’s jumping up to face the Knave with a glare. “Fuck you,” he says to her plainly. Lyney, eyes wide and already prepared for the later scolding, rises quietly instead.
Father bristles. “It seems that’s exactly what you were planning on doing with my son.” She rounds on Lyney, who flinches. “And you! Is this a game to you, Snezhevich? When I involve you in Fatui matters it is not to make you feel important, and it is certainly not my invitation for you to sneak away with my coworkers. I am responsible for you. Do you understand me?”
Lyney nods, his head bowed. “Yes, Father. I apologize.”
“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Scaramouche moans. He steps pointedly towards Lyney and grabs him by the collar, tugging him into a kiss. When he pulls back Lyney this time is flushed a deep red. Scaramouche sticks his tongue out at Arlecchino as he turns, making his way down the hall.
With a chastising look Father reaches for him, but the hook attaches itself to his spine once more. Instantly, he’s torn backwards into nothingness.
This time is different.
It startles him, almost. He can flex his fingers in front of him, move his lips and limbs of his own accord, yet the space still feels fuzzy. Real, yet… not, somehow, at the same time.
They’re in a large expanse of blue. When he looks up, the boy is there — Scaramouche. He looks surprised when Lyney first appears, as if he’s, quite literally, popped out of the blue. There’s a tree in front of him, birch-looking yet strangely not, with a large, snow-white trunk and empty branches extending far overhead. It buzzes and ebbs and flows with some kind of energy Lyney can’t place. And Scaramouche is half-knelt in front of it, knees and calves trembling with effort, hands shaking in front of him. With his head craned over his shoulder to see him he falters for a second, falling to his knees, yet he keeps whatever chain he’s got on the tree going. Instinctively, Lyney takes a step forward, eyes wide with concern.
A high voice echoes around the blue-scape, different from the unintelligible trill he’d heard back on stage, yet with the same serrated edge of wisdom.
“Balladeer,” the voice, feminine, pleads. “Please, don’t do this.”
Scaramouche opens his mouth to speak, but only a choked noise comes out. Sweat drips down the side of his face, his arms shaking with fervor. Yet the most startling part — his eyes, struck open with the same sort of desperation and pain Lyney remembers from all those years ago.
“You,” Lyney breathes. “You, from the green room.”
Hope floods Scaramouche’s eyes. He nods quickly, a small yelp of pain escaping his lips as his elbow buckles.
“I—” he steps forward unsurely, a hand over his heart. “Look. I’m sorry. Okay? I need to get back to my show. You’ve got it wrong. I don’t know who you are or what you want with me. I need to get back—”
Scaramouche’s face crumples with disappointment, as tears spill out and race down his red-flushed cheeks. With a cry and a shuffle he shifts to his knees once again and, as if lifting a terribly large boulder, strains and cries as he pushes to his feet, hands raised above him, palms towards the tree. The blue-scape churns with energy and groans in response.
“I know you’re in pain, Balladeer,” the girl’s voice returns, panicked. “But this will kill you. Irminsul is not meant to be used in this way. You made a decision. You must let him go, or it will kill you.”
Scaramouche wobbles on unsteady knees. With a terrible wail he cries, pushing back to his full height, “Then let me die!”
Lyney feels that tug once again, vicious and commanding, like a leash. He falls suddenly and straight down like the floor underneath him has collapsed, though there is no hole near so deep as to take him.
TWO.
Like the screens over his eyes have been flickered, replaced in quick succession like the snapping lens of a Kamera, the scene changes. He is still in his same cognisance, yet his body is somewhere different. This time is a bit unlike the last — like he is a passive observer rather than an active controller of his own devices. He sighs to think he’s back in a memory he doesn’t remember having.
They’re at a Fatui encampment somewhere in Snezhnaya. The ground is thick with snow yet he walks around in his normal attire, kept warm by a Pyro ward kept diligently around the perimeter by Delusioned agents. He remembers this, too, though in his mind he had been the leader of his own sector. He doesn’t remember pushing open a pelt-lined tent flap and coming face-to-face with the Balladeer, reading a book over a table of maps and schematics.
His cheery voice breaks the still atmosphere. “Pleasure to meet you again, mon cheri!”
Scaramouche’s face lights up in shock when he sees him. He lets the book fall weightily onto the table, rattling against an inkwell that nearly spills. “For fuck’s sake. The Knave actually let you back near me?”
He bows lowly as he comes to a stop in front of the other man, tipping his top hat with him as he goes, voice saccharine sweet: “Yes, my dear! For not even Father mine can separate such pure, true love—”
“ Enough. Gods.” He shoves Lyney away by the shoulder. “It was a one-time affair. A momentary pursuit of pleasure. You should consider yourself lucky that your head is attached to your shoulders, speaking to me still.”
“Pleasure?” He sneaks his hand past Scaramouche’s waist to grip the edge of the table, encasing him against it. They both lean, Scaramouche back and away, Lyney near and close; he smells like blackberry and smoke. Startlingly, Lyney knew that already, anticipating the scent as he leaned forward. “You haven’t tasted any sort of pleasure yet, love.”
A flicker of something dark goes through Scaramouche’s eyes, yet he shoves him off again and turns back towards the table. “Shut up. Look, here.” He points to a place on the map. Lyney ignores him, tilting his head instead to study the curve of his face, his soft feature, adoring eyes…
“Hey!” Scaramouche snaps in front of him. “Are you listening to me? If you don’t pay attention and get killed out there, you’ll embarrass me.”
Lyney puts a hand over his heart. “Your boundless care warms my heart, mon cheri.”
“Piss me off and I might kill you myself.”
“What a lovely way it would be to go. Tell me, my love — how would you do it?” He takes the quill from Scaramouche’s fingers and puts it back in the inkwell, instead taking his hands in his own, bringing them up to his throat. “With your hands? Your nails? Your teeth?”
Scaramouche blinks, eyes flicking between him and his hands and his neck and his eyes and lips until it’s all too much and he shakes him off, turning pointedly back to the table, shoulders drawn up to his ears, breathing ragged.
Lyney smirks, studying the pink tips of his ears. “You like me.”
“Get out,” Scaramouche spits, though his voice trembles on the last word. “ Leave.”
“And how will I know what to do, as your defensive officer?”
“I don’t care,” he bites again, voice more insistent this time. “Get out. Go.”
He does, but with a smile on his face. He remembers something else — of the very few recon missions he’d been dispatched for internationally, only one had been in Snezhnaya. It’d gotten him an ugly scar along his midsection, taking the blunt of a claymore’s hit because he’d popped into the wrong place at the wrong time. He remembers Father beating him with a rolled-up parchment for it. Idiot, idiot child. He remembers feeling angry with himself, so unlike his own behavior. Why wouldn’t he have just read the mission plans? Especially if he had been the section leader?
He opens the tent flap and, with one look back at the blushing and furious Scaramouche, hunched over their mission plans like an angry mother duck, takes his leave.
He remembers, now, why he hadn’t.
That same pull comes back to take him, sharp and swift like a fishhook.
He’s on the floor.
This is no memory. The air feels heavy with electrical charge and smells faintly of chimney soot. He’s laying on a hard floor staring up at a giant dome, with light filtering in gently from the top. He flexes his fingers at his sides when his brain suddenly shouts at him to MOVE, to RUN, yet he’s not sure what from — until he sees it.
An enormous mechanical spike crashes just past him, cracking the foundations of the massive chamber as Lyney just barely rolls to the side in short enough time to comprehend it. He feels the wind knocked out of him as the blast sends him tumbling across the smooth floors, scraping the skin of his forearms. For a brief second he allows himself a moment of reprise with a wistful sigh, remembering the intimacy of the scene he’d been just rudely yanked from, before scrambling up to his feet.
There is a monster here with him. At least, he thinks it must be. It’s giant and roaring, trembling the whole room, searching and snarling and rampaging back and forth like a dying, trapped animal fighting to be let out of its cage. The spike had merely been its ‘foot’, though it doesn’t touch the floor as it sears around the room. In awe behind a large chunk of debris he crouches and simply watches. What the fuck is this thing?
“You.”
He yelps, falling onto his side. At his left, short enough to stand without crouching and still fit behind the cracked stone debris, is a girl, with pale skin and white hair pulled into a high ponytail. Though a blast rattles the chamber, she appears unphased as she looks him over, if not terribly exhausted.
“Hello, miss,” he barely has time to breathe as he rights himself behind the stone, another tremor shaking the room, “Pardon me, but do you know what the fuck is going on?”
She purses her lips. When she speaks, Lyney recognizes the voice from the one that had echoed around the space of the blue-scape. “I am Nahida. You must be Lyney.”
“ You. It’s you, from — from back then. With the tree. What is happening to me?”
“Ah… so you do remember.” She looks a bit surprised, beginning to worry her bottom lip between her teeth. “Maybe it could… no, no…” She loses herself in thought, crossing her arms, biting the tip of her thumb.
The robot bellows an agonizing cry behind him, shaking the glass arch at the top of the hole-like enclosure.
Lyney ducks to avoid shrapnel. “Miss? Nahida? Hello?!”
She turns to him fully, her face set, and places her small hands on his shoulders. “Listen to me. You have to listen to me, alright? Think. Think as hard as you can. I don’t know who you are, but he does. And if he continues to meddle with the worldly tapestry this way, it will all come undone. All of it. The branches of Irminsul have already begun to collide. You’ll experience strange encounters that aren’t attached to the primary root — things that are real, yet don’t exist at the same time. Listen to me. You must try and remember.”
“What—” Lyney stutters, overwhelmed by the commands, “I don’t— I’m sorry, I just— I don’t know—”
Then the universe, quick and fierce, tugs him back under.
THREE.
Lyney doesn’t remember this one at all. It startles him when it begins, because he sees himself clad in a red masquerade mask coming his way, shocking him with such an intense fervor it feels like an out-of-body experience. It’s not his memory, he quickly discerns, as he feels his own small hands clutch tightly around the neck of a wine glass; it’s Scaramouche’s.
Lyney approaches with a grin. They’re obviously at some sort of masquerade ball somewhere in Snezhnaya, a meeting for the Fatui, possibly celebrating a recent win. It’s strange — he doesn’t remember this at all.
Scaramouche’s face contorts with a scowl. “You’re such a fucking dick.” He steps forward, shoving Lyney back suddenly, red wine sloshing over the rim of the glass. “Really, honestly. Fuck you.”
Yet because it is Scaramouche’s memory he can feel the emotion churning beneath the surface, the disembodied words that ricochet around his skull: You’re alright. You’re safe. Not dead. Not dead. My fault.
“You wound me, mon cheri, please. I’m still recovering.”
“It’s your fault, not mine. If you hadn’t distracted me maybe I would’ve let you read the fucking mission plans, then maybe you would’ve known where to be, at what time. It’s your fault.”
Lyney grins. “Careful, my lord. Someone might say you were worried about me.”
Scaramouche scoffs, handing off his half-drank wine glass to a nearby waiter. “ Me? Worried? You must’ve hit your head. Go back to the infirmary. Something still must be wrong with you.”
Lyney laughs and, unbothered, slips a hand around his waist. Scaramouche tenses.
“What are you—”
“It’s a ball,” Lyney murmurs, taking his left hand. They sway back and forth to the sound of string music that floats throughout the hall. “A masquerade ball, in fact. Right now, no one knows who we are.”
“No one ever knows,” Scaramouche replies, but his fingers close around Lyney’s hand in reciprocation. “Even when the mask comes off. Not even us.”
Fear, Scaramouche’s brain echoes, Fearfearfearfearfearfearfear.
“No,” Lyney answers softly, a soft smile on his face. “But I’m starting to.”
Pretty, Scaramouche thinks, the word like a gunshot in his mind. Pretty.
He leads them off to dance. By some force of the universe, Scaramouche lets him.
Lyney doesn’t fall this time, tugged back by the hook. Not physically. Instead, it’s the warm embrace of a chest-to-chest waltz that brings him forward.
FOUR.
When he blinks into the next memory, it is slowly and calmly. His vision is fuzzy at first, blurred with sleep. He rubs his eyes, stretching out on the velvet sheets beneath him. He’s home. Yet he’s home quite often. Sleeping in his bed at night is not a rare occasion. What’s different here?
A soft crash and fumble in the hall makes his eyes snap open wide, adrenaline pushing him up to sit.
“Lynette?” He calls out softly. “Fremi?”
Nothing. He reaches to his bedside and presses his fingertips to the wick of a candle, which floods the room with soft light. Pushing to his feet slowly, he makes his way to his bedroom door, and out into the hall…
The corridor fills with candlelight before he can even process his consciousness, illuminating two figures in the dark: Scaramouche, gone of his hat and tresses, cloaked in a thick black hood and cape, stands with a dagger raised against Lynette with her sword en pointe, both with their hackles raised like starved street cats facing off in an alley. Blinking furiously through his stupor he stumbles between them as they pounce towards each other with the same unerring ferocity.
“Woah— Hey, hey!” he yelps, one hand pressed against Scaramouche’s chest, the other holding the candle out placatingly towards his sister. She keeps her sword raised.
“What are you doing here?” he turns, asking Scaramouche incredulously. “In Fontaine? Have you lost your mind? Were you dispatched?”
“I’m a fucking Harbinger, I can go where I want to,” Scaramouche growls. “I just wasn’t aware you had a fucking guard dog.”
Lynette hisses and swings her sword, which Lyney ducks to intercept. It slices through the upper wax of his candle and the flame drops to the floor.
Lyney sighs and stomps out the wick against the carpet before it spreads, sending them back into darkness.“Nice,” he says, frustrated sarcasm dripping over his words. “Now we’re all angry and we can’t see.”
“Who is he?” Lynette demands, moonlight through the hall window only illuminating the crown of her head.
“Lynette, this is…” he refrains from calling him Scaramouche, “…the Balladeer.”
Lynette pauses in what could only be annoyed confusion, then frightened silence. He can’t see her face but he knows the exact expression — brows furrowed, lips pursed. Unsure of whether or not she should bow or slice his throat, she stands awkwardly, yet her sword drops down to her side.
“And he’s here because…”
Lyney looks to Scaramouche for that answer. His hand is still pressed against his chest. No heartbeat. Lyney knows that, but still, sometimes it scares him.
Scaramouche, strangely vulnerable in the darkness, lays his hand over Lyney’s. After a second with no rejection he reaches further, grabbing the fabric of his nightshirt, and tugs him closer. Lyney takes him by the elbow and welcomes him closer, surprised by the movement of his own volition but not for a second questioning it.
“You okay?” he whispers, barely a sound, his lips moving around the words against Scaramouche’s skin.
Scaramouche pauses, then shakes his head no.
“Go to sleep, Lynette,” Lyney whispers, louder but still soft. “It’s alright.”
She listens, sword tapping against the carpeted floor once before she goes, padding down the hall and back into her room.
The second the door closes Scaramouche’s arms wrap around his neck, standing on his tippy-toes to press their chests together, nearly breathing him in.
“Scaramouche, hold on— let me put on a light—”
“Don’t,” he says quickly, tightening his grip. “Please. Just. Please, don’t.”
His voice is trembling. Scaramouche presses his forehead to Lyney’s collarbone and he can feel the tears. He pretends he doesn’t. Instead, he wraps his arms around Scaramouche’s waist, bringing them tightly together.
“You’re alright, love,” he whispers, swaying them softly back and forth. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”
Oh. Lyney hadn’t remembered this at all.
They stay like that for a while, just clinging to each other desperately, like buoys on an open sea. Scaramouche trembles softly and Lyney holds him all the same. He doesn’t fight and ask if Lyney thinks he’s weak, or bite and spit something defensive. He lets Lyney hold him, so Lyney does.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” he asks gently after a while.
Scaramouche clings to him, nails pressing into the skin of his shoulder. He wants to. But…
“No.”
He doesn’t.
“You don’t have to,” Lyney murmurs, rubbing his back. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, love.”
He doesn’t remember how long they stay like that — he doesn’t remember any of this, really. In a fuzzy part of his mind he imagines bringing Scaramouche off to bed, getting him beneath the covers, falling asleep cusped to his side and hushing him to sleep. Then waking in the morning to cook breakfast, sneaking him out the kitchen window. And many more times like this. It all fades and becomes a jumble, and Lyney finds himself asking: did I…? Am I…?
Then the hook returns, and those thoughts escape him.
When he blinks suddenly he is no longer touching bare skin. He is on his knees in the hot sands of a beach shadowed by the cascading sun; there is a boy, youthful, like a baby bird, though so clearly the same Scaramouche, covered in white robes. It feels like as much of a haze as it is when fighting the gargantuan mechanic monstrosity, like this is real, yet not a memory, yet it has never existed before. His hands reach into thin air. His mouth is dry and his throat is hoarse. He thinks about what Nahida had said; that the branches of the world were colliding, and he just needed to remember.
His hands are trembling in front of him, reaching out just as they were in the last memory. The boy glances at them. Embarrassed, Lyney quickly drops them to the sand.
“Um. Sorry.”
This time he can speak words that are his own rather than sitting as a passive observer. When he looks down, his clothes are the same as they were in the Opera Epiclese performance hall. Not a memory.
Then… who is this?
Scaramouche, but also clearly not Scaramouche. A younger, fledgling version of himself, untouched by worldly burdens. It angers him, suddenly. He doesn’t remember this man. He doesn’t remember why he doesn’t.
“Hey—” he begins abruptly, not at all sure what he’s about to say as he says it. “Hey. Can I ask you something crazy?”
The boy blinks at him. He continues tracing his fingers in the sand. Lyney takes that as a yes.
“In another life, I think I knew you. Then, somehow, I forgot. And you— I don’t know. You’re…”
“Angry?” the boy asks. He lets sand fall through his fingers like an hourglass.
“…Yes. I suppose. And I think— you’re trying to make me remember. But this,” he gestures between the two of them, “It isn’t real, you know. Some sort of rip between spacetime. The other you, he’s messing things up. When I leave here, it’ll have never happened. Not really, at least.”
“No?” the boy asks, gentle. “But it’s happening right now.” His hand pokes Lyney’s. “Isn’t that enough?”
Lyney takes the boy’s hand and spins it over to reveal his palm, as if he’s looking for something, but he’s not sure what. He sighs a breath of relief when he finds it unblemished, though he hadn’t expected it to be in the first place, at least not consciously. He runs his fingers along the porcelain skin. The rest of him is as soft and beautiful as he was in the previous dream — memory — nightmare — whatever. He has no idea what’s going on. He just knows he shouldn’t let go.
Though this version of Scaramouche is younger and draped in innocent white robes, so starkly different from the man he knew or perhaps did not, he still cares for him, innately. He knows nothing of him other than his name and the curvature of his palm, the life line that stretches intensely and deeply with an accompanying love line only one-fourth of the distance. He cups the boy’s hand in his own, covering it. He doesn’t want to know about that.
“Sure,” he admits. “Sure, it’s real. Listen to me— something’s going to happen to you. I’m not sure what. But you’re afraid, in these snippets I keep finding, you’re terrified and sad about something and I can never figure out what or why.”
The boy blinks at him with wide, owlish eyes, like the children on the streets of Fontaine eagerly drinking in a quick fluff of cards, a coin pulled behind their ear. Enraptured. He can’t help himself — with softening brows and a free hand he tucks a stray hair behind the boy’s face, softly cupping his cheek. This isn’t the Scaramouche Lyney knows — or doesn’t — yet still, he aches for something he isn’t sure what.
“I’m not afraid,” the boy says. “I know — if you had loved me like you do now, my only fear would be you stopping.”
Lyney doesn’t get the time to respond. He stumbles back though he’s sitting, like his spine has collapsed into an origami paper crane, and sinks deeply into nothingness.
FIVE.
They’re arguing. It’s heated and his face is flushed with rage; he can feel it against the cold night air sweeping in through the cracked window. They’re in Lyney’s study, back in his home. The room is messy with papers shoved off a desk and furniture kicked around.
Lyney yells, “This is what worried you, isn’t it? The night you came to see me?” He doesn’t remember ever yelling like this. Not once in his life.
Scaramouche grits his teeth. “Shut up! You think I’m fucking weak, don’t you?”
“I don’t think you’re weak , love, listen to me! This— This is just insane! You want to fork yourself over without a care in the world like you’re some kind of machine, like you feel nothing, you care about nothing, and it’s wrong! You are not something to be just… puppeted, my love. You are a real and valuable person. Why can’t you understand me when I say this?”
“Why can’t you understand me? This is what I was made for,” Scaramouche bites. His hat is missing and his eyeliner is smudged. “What good are you if you can’t even recognize that?”
“Because you weren’t,” Lyney pleads, and his body shuffles forward on its own. “You’re alive, mon cheri, you are as much of a human being as anyone I’ve ever met, and I will not let you speak such things—”
“You won’t let me?” He scoffs in indignance. “Might I remind you where you stand next to me, Fatuus.”
Lyney sets his lips in a straight line. “Don’t do that. Not to me.”
“Do what?”
“Push me away. You’re putting distance between us, because you’re scared.”
“I am not scared.” He scowls darkly. “Fuck you. I’m going to be a god.” Scaramouche’s gaze is set, hungry and illusioned with power in some self-punishing way, like he knows he is going to be hurt terribly and welcomes it as his due duty.
“Love,” Lyney says, soft, anger dissipating, desperation remaining. “I just want you, as you are now. That's all I've ever wanted."
“You want to control me. To keep me the same weak, malleable puppet forever. You think you can overpower me. You’re scared of what I can become.”
“That’s not—”
“Just forget about me, Lyney.” The words sit heavy in the silent room, books and chairs tossed about like a battlefield. Lyney, watching the memory as a passive observer, wants to bang his fists against the wall and cry, don’t say that, don’t say that.
“Fine,” he says softly after a minute, sadder than he means to. “Fine. If that’s what you want, Scaramouche, I cannot stop you.”
“No,” Scaramouche spits, turning his back, “You can’t.”
He doesn’t remember the man, but he knows this intuitively, in the sinew of his bones, the regret that lingers there as he turns to go, despite remembering scarcely anything else —
This is the last time they speak.
Knowing nothing, immobile in his memory, Lyney lets him go.
SIX.
In the Sumeran Fatui headquarters, there was a room said to be haunted by a ghost. He remembers this, too, just not the origin of it, nor ever entering the room — he had chalked it up to a folktale, something the older Fatui had said to scare him away from the official’s quarters. A ghost that haunted the halls, moaning in discomfort, agony.
He does not remember the ghost himself.
He’s bringing mission reports from Father to Il Dottore. His heels clack the marble floors and echo around the high halls and he walks, gripping the manila folders tightly in his hands. In his present state, he’s not sure why he’s anxious. Until he opens the door.
Il Dottore had beckoned him in upon his knock; Lyney, with shaking hands despite himself, turns the knob and pushes in.
There isn’t a way to describe it.
“Leave it there,” Il Dottore says simply, distracting himself with something on his workbench, pointing disinterestedly towards a table in the corner. Lyney’s breath catches in his lungs, his feet still. He can’t move.
In the center of the room, on a cross-like stand laid horizontal, Scaramouche is pulled apart at the seams. Limbs stretched out by purple wires, porcelain skin drawn over in marker, dotted lines like a pig cut up for slaughter. Lyney wants to weep. Scaramouche’s empty eyes, once so full of witty mockery and sarcasm and life are now dull and depleted, his jaw hanging slightly open. He grunts softly and Il Dottore pays him no mind. Another soft sound slips between his parted lips.
Lyney can’t move. He can’t even breathe.
Il Dottore glances back to look at him, peeved that he’s still intruding upon his space. “Hurry, boy. Now!”
Lyney rushes forward with his head down and places the folder on the table as instructed. Il Dottore turns back to his workbench muttering, fiddling with something new.
He passes around to the other side of Scaramouche as he exits. True to his past remembrance, they don’t speak. They exchange no words. Lyney’s gaze, stricken with horror, meets Scaramouche’s, half-lidded and empty, tracking him emotionlessly as he goes. He wants to say something, he does. He feels the words and fury and disappointment and fear well up in him like a dam — but if Lyney is anything, he is disciplined. He looks and looks and silently, he goes.
Scaramouche will remember that look for the rest of his life.
The hook, sharp and brutal this time like a whip, yanks him down under.
He comes to once again in the room with the monster. The girl, Nahida, isn’t there this time — it’s only he and the machine. It ravages and rampages, tossing around debris. Its warcry sounds less like it's meant for war and more like it’s just a cry.
Lyney lays on his back staring up at him as it wails and flies wall to wall. Like a bird trapped in a cage, losing its mind. He wonders… What kind of monster is this?
And the answer hits him like a freight train.
This is not a monster.
“That’s you, isn’t it,” he says, breathless, more so to himself than the machine. And he knows — he knows. All at once, he remembers.
He remembers everything.
The machine-puppet is Scaramouche, in a falsified vessel for some sort of heretical divination. The Fatui had wanted him to be a god. A god, as if he were a toy. Like the Jester had said in their first meeting, like he had argued with Scaramouche not to — he had done it. Then he was bested, broken, and in his shame, attempted to undo it. Erasing himself from history upon the branches of Irminsul. But in that undoing, erased himself… and he could not live without being known by just one man.
Lyney.
He remembers everything.
Their soft evenings together, their subtle outings, the tenderness of Scaramouche’s gaze in the morning over tea and coffee; his undying care, their secrecy, his love. His love, so much of it, so much of it that it drowns him as it all comes back to face him, overflowing as it saturates his skin and bones and eyes and mouth; his love. His love. How could he have forgotten?
He staggers to his feet. As he rises the machine creature — Scaramouche, what have they done to you — pauses and snaps its head to look at him. In a flash of fury and a roar it races towards him, fist rearing back for a punch. The room shakes and trembles in anticipation.
Lyney doesn’t flinch. He shuts his eyes.
The blow never hits.
When he opens them again, the fist is right in front of him. Merely an inch from his face. Lyney moves to look around the giant thing and gaze into the eyes of the creature, craning up his neck, and — a furious hiss of smoke erupts from its chest. The thing collapses to its mechanical knees, metal grinding and bending and breaking under the weight; the color drains from the wires and lights of its face and eyes. The plates of its face slide open and Scaramouche, pale and battered and eyes shut peacefully, leans forward limply, and falls.
Lyney stutters forward into a run. He runs and runs until his chest heaves and the muscles of his legs burn, yet Scaramouche is falling, falling, falling, faster and faster and faster and he’s just barely underneath with his arms outstretched and he can hardly breathe, begging please, please let me get to him, gods, please —
And then it all goes black.
The first thing he hears is cheering. Excited yips and yelps and cries of joy, counting down backwards from ten.
Nine!
Lyney feels sick. His vision clears as he makes sense of where he is: there is no lingering fuzz like there were in the memories. He’s back. The cheers become clearer.
Eight!
Two years since the green room. Had it taken him that long — two years of endless trying — just to figure this all out?
Seven!
He thinks back to the way Scaramouche had been crying, grunting on his knees in front of Irminsul, Nahida begging him to stop. It wasn’t his first time tampering with the world.
Six!
What had gone on in those rooms when Lyney wasn’t looking? With Il Dottore, pulling him apart by the wires and sticking a Gnosis in the cavity of his heart. What happened to Scaramouche when he turned a blind eye?
Five!
He swallows thickly, wetting his lips with his tongue. His throat is hoarse. His vision stabilizes.
“Come on, Lyney, pull your shit together,” he whispers to himself under his breath.
Four!
He staggers to his knees. Who knows when that moment in Irminsul was? It could’ve been days ago. It could be right this second. The difficult part about manipulating spacetime is that there aren’t any rules for it to follow as it’s changed.
Three!
He shakes out his hands at his sides, wiping sweat from his brow. He’s fine. He’s fine.
Two!
Deep breaths. In, out. In, out. He’s got a show to finish. Don’t think about the love of your life desperately clawing to erase himself from the world. Don’t think about him begging even harder to get you back.
One!
He pushes the doors of the box open and stamps out with his arms spread wide, a grin on his face. And at the same time, on the opposite end of the hall, Lynette pulls open the door to the audience member’s box.
Lyney freezes.
The cheers of the hall die as his face falls, the facade of an energetic entertainer shattered into shock. Slowly and confusedly the noise peters out, thunderous applause quieting to a lone clap.
Lyney takes a tentative step forward. In the silence of the hall, his whisper is heard:
“Scaramouche…?”
Audience members look between him, and — on stage, stepping out of his own box, Scaramouche, with a wide, hopelessly relieved grin at the sight of his shocked gaze.
The voice in his head that always repeats stick to the script! Put on a show! Is immediately, viciously silenced. The space between the audience and the stage has never felt greater as he scrambles over himself down the row. Scaramouche bounds off the stage and comes towards him as well and they meet in a thunderous embrace, hands grabbing at one another’s clothes and skin desperately, as if searching for warmth in a storm.
Lyney touches him everywhere — his hips, his jaw, his back, his lips. He holds tighter than anything he’s held onto before. Scaramouche tries to say something, eyes a bit anxious, perhaps an apology, but Lyney takes him by the back of the neck and pulls him in for a deep kiss.
The crowd erupts back into surprised, deeply amused applause — is this part of the act? But Lyney doesn’t care. He keeps on kissing him. When they pull back for breath Scaramouche goes back for another one just as he did the day they met, not needing air, but stops himself. He lets his forehead fall against Lyney’s.
“You remembered,” he laughs softly, voice wet with tears. “I told you I would—”
“You idiot,” Lyney scolds, “What were you thinking? Why would you—?” He hugs him tighter, so fiercely that his feet lift off the ground. The crowd cheers more. Lynette from her place on stage furrows her brows down at them like they’re insane. Lyney doesn’t care. No one in the world could understand him, not even his twin sister, and he still wouldn’t stop.
“I’m not letting you go,” he murmurs. He can feel Scaramouche’s suppressed grin against his cheek. “Not ever. I’ve got you now. I’m so sorry I forgot.”
Scaramouche half-shrugs as he can being held so tightly. “Not much you could do. I kind of fucked the whole world—”
Lyney pulls back to press his palms on either side of Scaramouche’s face. “I love you,” he says, breathless. “I love you. You’re my whole world. And I forgive you.”
Scaramouche’s eyes widen, his mouth clicking shut. Then the surprise melts to relief, and even deeper relief, like he’s been waiting to hear that for all eternity, and he kisses him back.
“I couldn’t live without you,” he murmurs against his lips, between kisses. “I tried. I can’t.”
“You won’t.” He smiles into the kiss. “You won’t, mon cheri.”
The crowd keeps cheering. It feels oddly fitting.
For the rest of his life, Lyney knows he will remember this. Not even the world could make him forget it.