Chapter Text
Scaramouche is waiting.
He has been waiting here at the city gates in the stinking snowmelt, next to the coachman with the yellowing moustache, and the old women carting goats down the road to market, and the squalling beggar-children chasing the heels of the rich merchants, and the sickly old crones sitting by the side of the road warmed by nothing but tobacco, for so long he’s ready to strangle the nearest pedestrian just to relieve some of his anger.
He shifts his back against the gatepost, the iron a dull ache between his shoulder-blades. If he turns and cranes his neck, looking beyond the great dirty mass of the city outskirts and the heavy plumes of bruise-coloured smoke, he can just barely see the sun glancing off one of the Palace’s crystal spires. A shard of dying sunlight flashes on a stained glass window, cutting a hole in his vision, and he blinks the tears free.
He knows he should be immune to beautiful things, especially dangerous ones, but even from this distance the Palace is a majestic thing. A quartz-and-marble beast, every inch the spotless white of long-dried bone, it perches on the crest of the mountain like a plumed dove. The long shadows of its bulb-shaped towers stretch out over the streets as the afternoon begins to slide into sunset.
One of the horses tied to the troika lets out a spluttering sound halfway between a neigh and a cough, breaking Scaramouche out of his reverie. It stomps fitfully, spraying slush all over his standard-issue coat.
As the coachman tries to calm it, leaning against its flank and making hush-hush sounds into its ear, Scaramouche makes a mental note to eat that horse first when his travelling companion inevitably steals his share of rations.
He flicks a blob of oily snow off his lapel and glowers. He doesn’t even care about the mission anymore; the moment he sees Ajax, he’s going to kill him. Scaramouche wonders if the boy’s blood is as red as his hair.
“Excuse me! Hold it there, sir!”
A familiar voice rings through the thronged bodies. Scaramouche closes his eyes for a moment, bracingly, then turns.
Through the clamour of hurrying legs and goathide jackets, a carrot-coloured head is bobbing toward a bearded man towing a cart.
Ajax.
But what in Teyvat is he doing?
Scaramouche can’t quite see him through the bustle. Finally, he admits defeat and, glaring at the nearby passersby in case anyone dares to notice, pushes himself up on the tips of his polished boots to look.
The bearded man has come to a halt. Ajax’s head is bowed over the cart’s contents; Scaramouche can’t see his face, but he can see what the man is selling.
It’s candy. Ajax is buying candy.
Scaramouche allows himself a moment to decide which parts of Ajax’s body he will remove first in order to cause him the most grievous suffering possible. When he’s done plotting each moment of his fellow recruit’s grisly demise, he takes a steadying breath and orders the coachman to watch his bags.
Ajax’s face has the indecency to brighten when he sees Scaramouche storming toward him—actually brighten, like Scaramouche is one of his fishing buddies and Ajax can’t wait to tell him about his newest prize catch. It’s the same awkward, soft-jawed face Scaramouche hasn’t been able to escape ever since he joined the Fatui, covered in freckles and somehow permanently sunburnt despite its owner living in the darkest, iciest corner of Teyvat. He has a ruddy ski-slope of a nose and a mouth that dimples on one side even when he’s not smiling, and curiously large ears that have provided Scaramouche with ample taunting material over the years.
But Ajax’s eyes have always sent a chill spidering down his spine, because they don’t look the way eyes should look. They have no depth to them at all; they’re the colour of winter and just as cold, reflecting the sky like frozen puddles.
Ajax beams out at Scaramouche from his furred hood, a ray of sunlight in the snow. His coat is several sizes too small for him, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“Can you believe it?” he’s saying, rattling a little glass box of what appears to be blue pebbles. “Rock candy, straight from Apalchik. Teucer’s been asking me for this stuff for ages!”
Scaramouche feigns awe. “Really? Can I have a closer look?”
He doesn’t even wait for Ajax to hand him the candy. Instead, he slaps the box out of his hands and onto the cobblestones, where it shatters with a satisfying crash. There, he grinds it into candy gravel with the heel of his boot.
The seller opens his mouth to protest, but before he can make a sound, Scaramouche flashes him the bronze Fatui insignia pinned to his chest. The man’s face turns a colour akin to the slush underfoot.
“Unless you want to lick that overpriced shit off the pavement,” Scaramouche hisses at Ajax, “we have a mission to get to.”
Ajax gives the candy seller an apologetic smile and tosses a gold coin into the cart. The man gapes at it for a moment, then paws it frantically into a pouch and blubbers his thanks.
“Keep the change,” Ajax says, every inch the charming bachelor. Scaramouche mimes throwing up behind his back.
The coachman stands to attention as Scaramouche and Ajax approach the carriage. He tips his hat to Ajax, who waves back. Then, hesitating, the poor man begins to bow to Scaramouche, before thinking better of it and instead giving him an awkward little nod that might have amused him had he been in a better mood.
Their bags are already trussed and loaded into the back, but Scaramouche triple-checks them just in case the porter was feeling a little light-fingered. Then, making sure Ajax isn’t watching, he tucks himself behind one of the troika’s many-spoked wheels and reaches into his pocket—the hidden one he sewed into the fabric of his trousers. His fingers let him know that everything is still in place, as it should be.
Finally satisfied, Scaramouche gives the coachman a signal and squeezes into the little wooden box behind the horses. It smells of cigarettes and stale hay.
“Is this really all the Tsaritsa could afford?” he grumbles.
Next to him, Ajax is making himself comfortable.
“I doubt she oversees her soldiers’ transportation,” he reminds Scaramouche. “Such details are beneath Her Majesty.”
Scaramouche scoffs. “Soldiers is a big word for what we are. This mission is nothing but an overblown road trip, and you know it. She just wants to get us out of the way.”
“What’s wrong with a road trip?” Ajax grins, plumping the hood of his coat into a pillow and settling back against the tatty cushions. Scaramouche thinks he could probably look at ease anywhere; he has always had an uncanny ability to simply belong.
Scaramouche squashes the unexpected spark of envy burgeoning behind his ribs and turns to squint at the frosted window. Around the wooden frame, he notices the remnants of long-faded engravings poking through layers of flaky paint.
He scrapes some of the pigment away to reveal a carving of a fox chasing a rabbit over the whorls of wood, teeth bared, its eye an empty socket where a precious stone might have once been lodged. It’s exquisite—or it used to be.
A piercing whistle rings out and the troika sets off with a jolt, wheels clattering over the cobblestones. Scaramouche can hear the coachman swearing at the crowd to clear a path as they rattle down the street, away from the city.
He resists the urge to snatch one last glance of the Palace as it fades, mirage-like, into the fog. Every time he’s away from it, part of him wonders if it was ever even real.
Quiet. Scaramouche digs his nails into his palms, as he always does just to remind himself he exists. Not that he can feel the pain.
Next to him, parchment crinkles. Ajax has conjured a map from one of his many overstuffed pockets.
“So I’m thinking we should make a few stops,” he muses. “I hear there’s a beautiful birdwatching spot right over—”
“This is a reconnaissance mission, idiot,” Scaramouche snaps, swatting at the map. “Nothing more, nothing less. We get to the base, check out the source of the claims, and report back here. Or is that too much for you to remember?”
Ajax sounds wounded. “You tell me. I’m not the one who forgot my gloves.”
Scaramouche shoves his bare hands into his pockets, hiding the crescent-shaped welts on his palms, and glares back at Ajax. “I don’t get cold.”
“It’s almost winter solstice, Scaramouche.”
There it is—the moniker he gave himself so he wouldn’t have to hear his real name from the mouths of common folk who didn’t deserve to speak it. Everyone else treats it with respect, uttering it like a title: civilians, the other recruits, even some of the higher-ranking soldiers.
But Ajax forms the word like a jibe, each syllable a dagger-point. Scaramouche has to suppress the urge to strangle it out of his throat.
Ajax senses he’s winning. “You sure you don’t want to borrow my extra coat?” he asks, lip curling in a half-smile. “It’s my baby brother’s, but I’m sure it’ll fit you.”
“Say one more word and I will cram that extra coat somewhere you’ll never see it again.”
“Woah, woah!” Ajax covers his face with his map and peeks out around the edge. His eyes are rock-candy blue in the milky light. “Be nice or I might tell the coachman my travelling partner is threatening me.”
Scaramouche flashes Ajax a gesture that could be construed as nice only by a blind man. Then he turns and tries to count the fresh-falling snowflakes to calm himself.
It doesn’t work, and not just because Ajax chooses that moment to start whistling a nursery tune.
So Scaramouche resorts to his previous strategy. A shucking knife would hurt the most, he thinks, for the tongue. Then those stupid ears. Then the fingers, one by one.
This activity gives him enough peace of mind that when they pass over the last bridge and finally break free of the crowds surrounding the city gates, the atmosphere inside the troika is almost tranquil, punctuated only by the clop of hooves and the occasional whipcrack.
Outside, the world drifts by like a ghost. Here in the heart of winter, everything seems softened somewhat, clad with a layer of fresh snow: the log houses tucked into the folds of the hills like rotten teeth, the boulders smoothed by years of constant bitter winds, even the fur caps of the men scraping rime from their gutters. Swathes of ice hang from the trees like linens on a washing line.
In front of a hut decorated with colourful cloth banners, a yellow-haired scrap of a girl turns a boar carcass over a flame. She stops to watch them roll past with wide, blank eyes. Scaramouche wishes she'd look away.
Past the cluster of houses, the other carriages and wagons rumble on down the main road toward the market. But instead of following them, the coachman leads his horses down a side road that’s barely more than a shallow indentation in the ground. The path dips into a copse of evergreens.
Here, the trees are black skeletons, their overhanging fingers tapping a tattoo on the top of the troika. Frozen pine needles crunch under the wheels with a sound like breaking glass.
“This is Father’s favourite kind of weather.”
Ajax is resting his elbow against the window frame, his face sliding in and out of shadow. His usual brash confidence seems to have faded, replaced by a thoughtful serenity.
The sight makes Scaramouche feel violent. How dare Ajax be enjoying this?
“And why, pray tell, is that?” he drawls, knowing nothing he can say will stop Ajax from expounding. His father is his favourite topic of conversation, matched only by stories of his skill on the battlefield, the weekly letters he sends to his siblings, or Her Majesty the Tsaritsa—the Ice Star, the Queen of the Tundra, long may she reign.
“He says it sharpens the senses,” Ajax says, ignoring Scaramouche’s theatrical yawns. “When the weather is unforgiving, you have to match it. You can’t waste time on anything other than your own survival, or you’ll pay for it.”
“Seems like the weather could teach someone a little bit more about not wasting time.”
Ajax doesn’t pay him any heed. “Isn’t it beautiful? The way the sun hits the ice?”
Even Scaramouche has to admit, grudgingly, that the spears of pale light piercing the canopy are a sight to behold. As the sun sets, the light deepens to gold, then a startling crimson.
Beneath it, Ajax’s hair is an even more garish shade of orange than usual; the cowlick on top of his head is a candlewick set aflame. He turns to grin at Scaramouche, and his teeth look almost bloody.
Scaramouche finds himself caught for a moment in his gaze. Ajax’s eyes burn into him, brighter even than the vision glowing on his belt, that ever-present reminder of his power—the power Scaramouche will never have.
The thought twists a knife in Scaramouche’s chest. He forces himself to look away, a strange heat in his face.
They still have a long way to go.