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Ajax’s father was a man with countless stories -- all of them just as curious as the last.
While father and son sat peacefully outside, bundled up in so many layers that their arms could hardly move past their sides and they could hardly see through the scarves billowing in the wind in front of them, stories were told that left the young child breathless in excitement. His father’s eyes sparkled with the joy of sharing tales that had previously lay forgotten for centuries, waiting for someone to uncover them and pass them down to his children. The son’s eyes were blown wide with interest, fully leaning forwards in his seat and paying little attention to anything else until his father had to point out the fish tugging on his pole.
Each morning, Ajax would be the first of 7 kids to scramble out of his bed, small feet covered in fluffy, warm socks hitting the rug beneath it with hardly any noise at all. He would race to the door, ignoring his brothers’ shrieks as he woke them up with his noise, and practically slide downstairs to get breakfast as soon as he could.
His mother was an expert cook, always creating the best food for her kids with the little money they managed to scramble together each weekend for the market. Ajax constantly looked forward to the mornings when they had more food and he could eat until his belly was full and warm, but he was just as happy with the bread, nuts and jam that they sometimes had in the mornings. However, this was one of the days mentioned first, where the table was full of food that sent an aroma of goodness throughout the house.
His dad was already seated, munching away on some pastries that spilled the signature reddish-purple colour of blueberry jam all over his fingers. He was seemingly distracted from this though, as his nose was once more buried in a book of fairy tales. Ajax had tried reading the book once, but found it much too difficult to understand and instead made his father tell the stories himself.
“Dad!” Ajax’s voice was louder than he intended it to be as he cried out a greeting, practically leaping into the old fisherman’s arms. “Good morning!”
His father jumped out of his skin and nearly dropped his pastry, but didn’t seem very angry. Instead, he merely set his book face-down on the table and wrapped an arm around the little boy, ruffling his hair fondly. Ajax squawked like a startled bird and shoved his hand off, before his lower lip stuck out in a pout.
His father chucked. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, son. Your hair will be f--...”
A loud thud echoed through the room, startling Tartaglia into immediately grabbing the sword sheathed at his side. His hand, covered in scars that suggested years of battle yet still containing the chubbiness of youth, gripped so tightly on the leather handle that his knuckles turned white. However, upon seeing the man currently glaring at him from across the room, he nearly immediately relaxed and let go.
“Do not daydream so much in my office, you will get yourself killed even before you can react.” The voice was as bitter as Tartaglia imagined its owner liked his coffee.
Tartaglia merely heaved a sigh, completely unaffected by the disrespect. “I get it, Pantalone, you have it out for me. And I wasn’t
daydreaming
, I was-..”
He trailed off as he realised that he didn’t really have a defence for himself. It's not like he could tell Pantalone some poetic ramble about how he was remembering a time where things were much more peaceful than this. He couldn’t tell anyone about that time lest he be harassed with questions such as “You used to be a quiet kid who was only so energetic around his dad? What happened?” or “Stop remembering such pathetic things or you’ll get tempted by times that don’t matter anymore and desert your spot.”
Il Dottore was particularly fond of the latter statement. Rumours had it that he was still as pained over Scaramouche’s disappearance as Tartaglia himself was.
The raven-haired man before him let out a sharp scoff and sat so hard in his chair that Tartaglia wondered how he didn’t break his tailbone. “You were daydreaming, as far as I am concerned. Do I need to send you back to Il Dottore for a renewal in the medications you are meant to be taking, or will you focus on what I have to say for one second?”
Tartaglia ground his teeth together so hard that they began to ache, and refused to grace Pantalone with an answer. Instead, he kept a level gaze on the 9th Harbinger’s stone-cold violet eyes as the man began some ramble about finances and how he was wasting them with his constant, “nonsensical” purchases. He found himself unable to care very much, and eventually the words became much more akin to the noise a fly made when it got stuck in window blinds in a pathetic attempt to escape the house it got itself trapped in.
At some point, Pantalone finally finished and merely sighed when he realised Tartaglia was not paying any attention to what he was saying. He untangled his hands from where they were poised on his polished wooden desk and raised one finger, pointing to his far-too-extravagant door. Tartaglia got the message and very swiftly rose to his feet, temporarily mourning the soft red cushion.
“I will be informing Pierro of your reluctance to comply,” Pantalone added as Tartaglia opened the door with a soft click. “I am sure you won’t have anything to waste our money on if you don’t have any access to it in the first place.”
Tartaglia chose to ignore that Pierro would truly have no problem with his decisions, and it's more likely for him to scold Pantalone for throwing such a fuss. He wasn’t spending very much to begin with, only the occasional gift to all of his siblings. Sometimes he spent a fair amount of money on his subordinates if he’s particularly proud of them after a mission, but that was rare and he much preferred to buy for his family.
However, since he was the only one of the Harbingers to have any sort of family, and also the newest one, he could understand why Pantalone thought he was spending too much. The man was known for being paranoid with his money and, though it was annoying to be scolded like this, Tartaglia recalled how Dottore had explained to him why that was. Oftentimes, men who grew up in poverty protected their money like a mother hawk with her eyasses.
“So,” Tartaglia thought as he walked down wide, silent castle halls, “I suppose I can spare him some trouble and refrain from spiting him.”
As soon as Tartaglia turned a corner and entered the long string of bedrooms that each belonged to a different Harbinger, he was struck with a relatively unpleasant sight. He sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, blue eyes widening with an expression that was questionably similar to a cat that sniffed its human’s unwashed sock.
The hall before him was coated in dark red, blood splattered all over the walls and dripped from the ceiling with little plats of noise. Standing directly in the middle, hunched over what looked like a deformed human arm, was the 3rd Harbinger herself. Tartaglia thought he’d grown desensitised to Columbina’s tendency to make huge messes when she fed, but it seems there were some things that not even he could get used to.
When she finally seemed to notice him, her head snapped up in surprise. There was more blood that had sprayed over her mouth, flecks of it staining her dress and the silk she had over her eyes. They didn’t open to greet him -- which he was secretly glad for -- but her mouth certainly did, splitting into a wide smile that revealed teeth as eerily sharp as a shark’s.
“Hello there!” Columbina chirped, setting down the arm that she was
gnawing
on like it was a snack. “I apologise for the inconvenience, but I got rather hungry and this was the only person nearby.”
Tartaglia was unable to keep a very loud sigh from escaping, puffing out from his nose as he stopped to seriously consider how to reply. There were some things that he could never prepare for, and Columbina was always so erratic and chaotic that not even Dottore could understand her.
Dottore
, who managed to diagnose every single disorder in a person within a single, thirty-minute discussion about their life and world views, could not fully understand nor predict Columbina’s actions.
“Ah--” Tartaglia shifted uncomfortably, trying his best not to seem so visibly disturbed but failing miserably. “It's- alright? Can I get in my room now, please?”
Columbina seemed to startle a bit, as if she didn’t expect this reaction, and then let out a laugh. Her laughs always reminded Tartaglia of a wind chime at night when you least expected it -- horribly creepy at first, but beautiful once you got used to it. And, as Tartaglia remembered the very first discussion he had with Arlecchino on the night of his ascension after Columbina tried to kill him as a “welcoming gift”, they seemed to agree with this sentiment.
“Of course, I never stopped you!” Columbina laughed again and gestured to Tartaglia’s room with one arm.
He just smiled tightly, a learned tactic from Pulcinella to express disgust without openly admitting it. It was purely a subconscious thing though, a side effect from spending hours with the man he considered his own father. Sometimes, he was fully convinced that Pulcinella would simply wither up and die if he was openly disrespectful for once in his horribly long life instead of hiding behind passive aggression and barely-concealed eyerolls.
Politicians were fascinating.
Tartaglia had to step very carefully to avoid getting blood on his new boots, but he managed to make it without any grievances. Once he reached his door, he nearly dove inside to avoid the sound of Columbina continuing to crunch on bone. Sometimes he was glad that their massive difference in rank led them to hardly interact at all, despite how he occasionally wondered what it would be like to get in a fight with her.
Though, given her track record of simply exploding people she’s not fond of, Tartaglia suspected that fight would end with him in the same spot of whatever Fatui soldier she had decided to eat earlier.
Tartaglia slumped against the wall once his door was closed, the sound-proof strips along dark wood allowing him a moment of bliss from noises that he really didn’t want to hear right then. Ghouls had been nearly hunted to extinction centuries ago, but Columbina was one of the few that remained. And as Tartaglia moved from his door to curl up in bed for an afternoon nap, he wondered how long it would take for either Dottore or Pierro to get tired of her and make the species count even less.
There was a very slim possibility that would happen though, since both men had grown very fond of her.
A shame.
Whoever had to clean up her mess tonight definitely deserves a raise too.