Chapter Text
The Wanderer often finds himself wandering Mawtimyma Forest.
Perhaps it is because of the serene quiet, the way he is given room to let his thoughts run freely amongst the vast, iridescent mushrooms that tower above him.
Today, however, he is not here for himself. The stillness of Mawtimyma Forest is disrupted by the throes of battle, and the Wanderer is at the centre of it.
Ruin drakes do not stray this far north, usually. It is as though even ancient machines know to respect the fragile peace the forest holds.
The one in front of him appears not to. It carelessly swings its tail, narrowly missing the Wanderer, who has the foresight to call upon his vision and swiftly deliver a sharp blow of wind towards the front of the mechanical beast. This attack only sees the ruin drake become agitated, the large, rusted gears on its back vibrating with static. The Wanderer curses under his breath. He had hoped that this battle would be a fleeting one; ruin drakes are usually quick to stun and defeat. The one at hand prepares to strike, the large cogs at its back spinning and generating the missiles he so dreads. He has only a few moments before he is knocked out of the sky by a burning projectile.
Performing a quick, last-minute manoeuvre, the Wanderer dodges the first missile, hovering over the volatile tail of the ruin drake. The rest of the machine’s attacks fly harmlessly above its head, while the Wanderer takes the opening and delivers a final blow that finally stuns the ruin drake. Its lights dim as it falls to the ground with a thud that shakes the ground. Exhaling a breath he didn’t know he had retained, he cautiously lowers himself to the eye of the machine. He curls his lips into a sneer.
“How pathetic.”
With his veins alight with sadistic glee, he condenses anemo energy into a dark, swirling mass that he tosses directly at the ruin drake.
The ruin drake does not awaken again, thoroughly shredded by the violent winds.
The Wanderer scoffs. His feet meet the ground, the damp grass a welcome reminder of his place in this world.
He is not an all-consuming power any longer; he is merely a piece of society, fit to be used in any way the dendro archon wishes.
The goddess of Sumeru is a benevolent deity. It seemed impossible that when the Balladeer emerged from his induced coma, he was forgiven for his crimes. It angered him, for a time. Even death would have not been fair punishment for the sins of his past life. But somehow, somewhere in his rotted soul, Buer had seen something worthy of a second chance.
The traveller bestowed upon him a name, but he does not use it. He is undeserving of such a privilege. Accepting it would warrant belonging.
He does not belong.
So that is why the Wanderer exists. For redemption, however impossible that may seem.
The adrenaline pumping through his body post-battle is quickly wearing off. With the absence of that high, he is overwhelmed by a wave of familiar queasiness, so powerful that he rocks on the balls of his feet. His hand grabs weakly at his stomach, while the other is slapped over his mouth in a futile attempt to stem the vomit that threatens to force its way out of him. He stumbles towards the nearest mushroom structure when it becomes clear that his breakfast is making a reappearance. Catching himself on the thick trunk of an enormous fungus, his body convulses, and he is sick all over the bioluminescent stem.
Preoccupied with the lurching feeling of throwing up, he does not notice the aranara. Cheerfully, the little blue cabbage-like creature flocks over to the Wanderer while he is in the throes of his misery, not observant enough to figure out the reason why he is bent in half. It squeaks, barely dodging the stream of regurgitated harra fruit. At last, his stomach is empty; he can feel the hollowness. With some semblance of dignity, the Wanderer straightens.
His voice mercifully remains steady as he turns to the aranara. “Did Kusanali send you?”
If aranaras could look horrified the same way humans do, he is certain an expression of alarm would be painted on its face.
“Is Scara-nara okay?” The level of meekness in the blue vegetable’s voice is uncharacteristic for this specific aranara; usually, Ararycan is ever-optimistic, much to the Wanderer’s dislike.
Again, inexplicably, the aranara remembers his previous self. Scaramouche. His first encounter with Ararycan was brief, forgettable, with the Balladeer grudgingly introducing himself and apologising to the child-like creature after stepping on it while strolling in the ravine where the Joururi Workshop was located.
Even now, even after his erasure from Irminsul, Ararycan still calls him by that stupid nickname.
Scara-nara. How childish.
“Yes.” He keeps his answer short, clipped. While he cannot be outright rude to this creature, it deserves not his full respect.
Ararycan seems to wilt. “Ararycan thinks there is something wrong with Scara-nara. Scara-nara is sick.”
The Wanderer draws in a sharp breath.
Part of him wants to scream, to break down, to sob and confide in this little aranara. He can allow himself the comfort of not bearing this burden alone, allowing another into his heart. He can feign ignorance, pretending that he truly is not what he thinks he is.
But his life is never that easy.
He knows exactly what is wrong with him.
Only, there is nothing wrong with him.
He is not sick. He is not breaking down, not collapsing from overwork.
He is-
His fingers curl into fists, so hard that his nails dig into the meat of his palm.
“There is nothing wrong with me. I am perfectly fine.”
-a liar.
But that is what he is used to. His life is built on lies, ever since that day at Mikage Furnace. What is one more lie, this time to himself, to add to his list of untruths?
“Is Scara-nara sure? Ararycan thinks Scara-nara looked sick just then.”
He exhales. And lies again.
“Yes. Very sure.”
Coward.
________________________________________
The first time his artificial womb bore fruit was an accident.
Introducing the Kabukimono to village life had been a monumental struggle. He was, essentially, a child, and children were curious creatures. It was a shame his curiosity had latched onto Katsuragi. The Kabukimono was not only following the bladesmith around, but pursuing him obsessively. At first, Katsuragi was amused. Then, as it became clear that the Kabukimono was not going to leave him alone, he began to soften to the young puppet.
The Kabukimono was enthralled by this attention, and felt something akin to romantic love for that haggard swordsmith.
The concept of lovemaking was foreign to such a being. In theory, it sounded innocent; if two people loved each other, then they performed the act of making love. That was how it was explained to the Kabukimono, and the vague words and awkward laughs whenever he brought it up only piqued his interest.
Bluntly, like children are, he asked Katsuragi, “Can you teach me how to make love?”
Most adults would have been horrified. And Katsuragi was, at first, but the Kabukimono was persistent in his pleas.
The first time he had sex, it was anything but magical. The Kabukimono was confused, inexperienced, and a virgin; the process was terribly unpleasant. He bled, cried and giggled, overwhelmed by the high of his first-ever orgasm. When the deed was finished, the Kabukimono was disappointed. He had been told that the act of lovemaking was beautiful and symbolic of a love like no other. Instead, it was a warm, sweaty body grunting against him as his purity was taken from his divine being.
With his curiosity sated, the Kabukimono returned to his normal routines. That was, until his body betrayed him and rejected food, and a firm bump appeared under the smooth skin of his abdomen.
At first, he was confused, then that confusion turned to shame. He hid away from the villagers, covering the bulge under his kimono, until his belly outgrew his clothes and people, people who he’d helped, befriended, began to shoot him with judgmental stares. It seemed that the entire village knew what was happening to him before the Kabukimono himself. When it was finally explained to him that the swelling of his abdomen was not some rare, contagious illness, but a baby, the Kabukimono was, at first, delighted. He’d seen the women of Tatarasuna carrying around cute, chubby little humans, and thought they were adorable, especially when they giggled in his arms or chewed their fists. But then the Kabukimono asked how the baby would come out, he was distraught to hear that he was to push it out of his body, and that it would be a vicious pain like no other. He cried for days upon hearing that, and harder so when all his friends began to look at him with disgust. Katsuragi attempted to help the Kabukimono, to comfort him, but he saw the ways the bladesmith looked at him. Guiltily, pitying.
But the Kabukimono endured the insults and stares, from shouts of ‘whore’ to the sad, wordless stares of the elderly ladies whom he used to help pick herbs. He endured, because he could do nothing else. He did not know if he loved his child. Did not ask whether the terror he felt when the creature inside him kicked was love, because the Kabukimono did not know what love was. When he lay awake at night, gasping in pain from the sharp movements of the thing in his womb, he felt nothing but bleakness, and an empty, endless pit of despair.
When warm water, mixed with the red of blood gushed out of him, he cried out in fear. It was too soon, by a number of weeks, and some sick, vile part of him hoped that the child would die before he had the chance to kill them himself. The child was born several hours later, a weak, deformed creature that garnered nothing but hollowness from the being that was supposed to be its mother. It lived to take its first breaths, then died minutes later, in the midwife’s arms, because the Kabukimono did not wish to look upon the monstrosity that came out of his body. The midwives desperately reassured him that it was not his fault, that many of the babies born recently had met the same fate.
It was not until many years later that the newly named Scaramouche, the Balladeer, Sixth of the Fatui harbingers, discovered that the cause of the inexplicable deaths of many villagers and his own child was the high levels of tataragami, that the residents of Tatarasuna were having the life leeched out of them by the land that they built their beloved home on.
Scaramouche could not find it in him to care. The harbinger thought too highly of himself to concern himself with the matters of long-dead mortals.
So the Balladeer continued in his relentless pursuit of obsession; to regain his heart, the electro gnosis. And it continued like that for decades.
Until Il Dottore approached him one evening, sporting that oily smile that promised some sick, twisted experiment. Scaramouche barely paid him any attention, mindlessly agreeing to whatever the Doctor had planned. If it helped him in his ambitions to reach divinity, he would have agreed to anything. If he was going to use the Fatui for his own personal goals, it was only fair he allowed them to use him back. Mutual agreement, or so he’d thought.
He’d assumed Dottore wanted to study him once again; after all, that was not an uncommon thing. So after returning from a particularly gruelling expedition in the abyss, he decided to humor the Second harbinger and return to his labs. After his usual repairs - and with it the liberties Dottore took with his body - the Doctor kept him strapped to the table, much to the puppet’s dismay.
It was then Dottore’s newest obsession was revealed. Apparently, this particular experiment had been in the works for years - and Scaramouche was going to be his means of completing it.
The experiment?
The creation of clones - Dottore’s key to immortality, and also to simple convenience. If the Doctor had multiples of himself, multiple Dottores that all thought the same, performed the same, and distributed them throughout Teyvat - his influence could stretch far and wide, and his experiments on a much larger scale.
It was genius, even Scaramouche could admit that. The problem was, however, that the clones - or segments, as Dottore called them - needed a vessel to bring them into being.
The vessel was Scaramouche.
Upon realising that the Doctor intended to reduce him to a uterus for his spawn, an incubator, Scaramouche fought like he’d never fought before. Screaming, kicking, biting, and in a particularly desperate, final act of defiance, he released a destructive surge of pure electro energy.
It did nothing. Dottore continued preparing his body, sterilising it, making sure all of his… parts were functioning as they should. Once he was deemed fit to bear one of the embryos Dottore had prepared prior to his arrival, his stomach was penetrated by a needle as thick as one of his fingers. Scaramouche could do nothing but spit obscenities and squirm as slowly, with a precision no other man could hope to achieve, the man-made, genetically engineered embryo was implanted directly into his womb.
And so the deed was done.
Scaramouche ran after that. He engrossed his mind by coating his hands with the blood of countless subordinates, busied himself with missions, hoping, no, begging, that the experiment had been a failure, that nothing grew inside him once again.
But of course, he was not favoured by the gods, forever scorned by divinity, thus soon he began to feel that wretched nausea once more.
He denied it, at first. Brushed it off as maintenance issues or whatever bullshit he tried to to convince himself of. It wasn’t until his stomach began to distend that he swallowed his pride and ran back to Dottore, like a dog with its tail in between its legs.
When Scaramouche turned up at his labs, pale-faced and shaking, the Doctor was more than delighted. It was sick, the giddiness in his eyes as he spread a cold, sticky gel on his abdomen. When he showed the puppet the fetus that had taken residence within his uterus, Scaramouche, instead of hollowness like his first pregnancy, felt a surge of pure revulsion.
This time, there was nothing but hatred in the empty hole that could be called his heart for the creature Dottore showed him on via a blurred, dark screen. He felt sick, looking at the abomination that had been forced within him. In a moment of desperate, fleeting rage, Scaramouche twisted on the cold, metal table he lay on and made a grab for one of the many scalpels carelessly strewn on the surface beside him, his hands finding nothing but the freezing, gloved hands of the Doctor.
The Second harbinger did not appreciate the Balladeer’s attempt to exorcise the fetus. Dottore was not one to let his precious experiments go to waste, much less be stabbed by the vessel carrying them. Scaramouche cried as his role was explained to him- he was to carry the foetus until thirty-six weeks gestation, when Dottore would surgically remove the newborn segment via a long, deep incision along the bottom of the puppet’s abdomen. He cried, not out of fear like last time, but with an anger so potent it showed in every line of his perfect, unblemished face.
Scaramouche tried one more time to rid himself of the foreign being in his womb. Once he was released from the Doctor’s labs under strict orders to avoid any combat or strenuous activity for the safety of the fetus, Scaramouche immediately disregarded said orders, and stripped down to nakedness before burying himself under a thick layer of snow during one of Sneznaya’s worst blizzards.
The Doctor discovered him early in the morning, tears frozen on his face. He was quickly taken back to the labs, though this time, he was given a bed and heating blankets. Upon his arrival, Dottore scanned his belly once more to check on his spawn. The creature lived. Scaramouche’s hours spent under the cold embrace of snow had been for nothing, for the fetus had been designed to withstand even the most extreme circumstances. Worse still, the puppet had proved himself to be unstable and unfit to leave Dottore’s labs, and was to be kept under supervision for the remaining six or so months of the pregnancy.
And so Scaramouche could do nothing but wait for the thing inside him to be removed. Kept under the watching eyes of the Doctor, he was granted a small room and a pair of sterile white clothes to wear.
It was only when his bulging stomach began to press against the stiff fabric of his shirt that he was given a bigger one. It disgusted him, the way his body swelled to accommodate the freak of nature, how as the months dragged on, the foetus’ movements became visible even from the outside, pushing on the taut, delicate skin of his torso. It hurt. The demon inside him was strong; its kicks left his ribs aching from constant abuse. He could feel his organs being compressed to give the thing more space to grow, inviting it to stretch his body to the very limits. Dottore came by daily to check on the fetus’ growth and to inject nutrients into the puppet’s veins. Though Scaramouche did not absorb the sustenance, the creature’s needs were being met through those injections. As a result of that, the demon was quickly becoming stronger than its incubator, who was thoroughly weakened by the effects of the pregnancy. Dottore was intrigued by that; he’d come into Scaramouche’s room to simply coax the tiny segment to show its creator its strength by roughly tapping on the puppet’s round stomach, causing pain for the vessel. He had no doubt that Dottore found some sort of perverse satisfaction, seeing his favourite test subject crumpled against the wall, the proof of the experiment’s success protruding from beneath stretched white clothes.
After what seemed like an eternity, the day came when Scaramouche was strapped to the table, his bulging stomach exposed, with the Doctor standing beside him, scalpel in hand, before proceeding to bring it to the underside of his belly.
Scaramouche was awake the entire, painful, process, and when the creature that had been growing in him for nine months was presented to him in all its sticky, ugly glory, Scaramouche could barely even lift his head to look, all-too aware of the blood pooling beneath him, too weak to move.
The first segment was a weakling. Born too early, was what the Doctor said when it died a week after it was removed from Scaramouche’s uterus. Dottore disappeared for a while after that, only coming out of his office to toss Scaramouche’s uniform back at him after he was done healing. Otherwise, the Second was not seen by many, and those who did whispered about Dottore’s fevered whispers to himself.
The Doctor’s second attempt at that particular experiment came several months after the failure of the first. This time, the Balladeer was not even informed of the embryo’s implantation; he was simply left to slowly realise it on his own. When he did, he howled in pure rage, tears streaming down his face, and sat curled in the dim corner of his bathroom, clawing at his arms, legs, and abdomen; as though trying to tear the thing out of him.
He still came running back to Dottore, in the end. He screamed at him, begging the Doctor to get rid of it, to find someone else to be his incubator. Dottore just plastered on that oily grin, before strapping him to that cold, metal table to look at his precious experiment.
The Doctor was optimistic about this second trial. He upped the dosage of supplements, and kept Scaramouche in more spacious, comfortable quarters with many windows. He’d been reading about the benefits of sun exposure for fetuses, he told the puppet at one of his many check-ups.
The windows were bolted shut. Scaramouche checked.
When he reached thirty-six weeks, he expected the Doctor to collect him from his room and take the creature out like last time, but Dottore never came. He continued to check on the foetus’ growth, measuring Scaramouche’s abdomen, but he never turned up with a scalpel. After a week of that, the Balladeer grew impatient. The next time the Doctor came into the room, the puppet stood, though he supported himself on the bedframe, and demanded that Dottore perform the surgery on him.
The Doctor was perfectly calm as he told him that, this time around, the fetus was to be extracted at forty weeks, instead.
When the time came, the fetus was removed, this time full-term, Dottore was ecstatic. He held its dripping, hollering body up like a trophy over Scaramouche’s bloody, contorted form.
The segment was named Alpha.
For a time, it was Dottore’s greatest success. The Balladeer often sighted the little menace, now a young child, wreaking havoc amongst the halls of the labs. It gave him reassurance, led him down a path of foolish hope that perhaps he was done being a brooding mare.
But the Doctor was a greedy man. The Balladeer should have known that Dottore would never settle for just one segment, and the time came when the Doctor implanted yet another embryo within him. He was given the small mercy of being told about its injection; though his reaction to the news was as violent and destructive as it was the first time this happened.
But he let it happen. He let his stomach swell, ripen beneath his kimono. It wasn’t any easier than the last two times, but it wasn’t harder either.
And when the second segment was extracted, Scaramouche knew it would not be the last.
The fourth time, he was allowed the comfort of staying in his own quarters. He didn’t know whether that was better, or worse, but he accepted the offer graciously, or as gracious as someone who could not walk properly from the weight of Dottore’s abomination.
The fifth time, Scaramouche could not even bring himself to be angry anymore. He’d long since accepted that Dottore was using him, and if he was to become a god with the other’s assistance, he had to let him.
There was a sixth time. Then a seventh.
In total, the Balladeer bore seventeen segments.
____________________________________________
He is not a mother. The word ‘mother’ suggested that the puppet cared for the things he had birthed, loved them before they came into the world. Saying that he is a mother meant that the creatures he had borne were formed of his own flesh and blood, untainted.
But something grows in him once more. He is no longer a child, and the thing that grows in him is not an experiment, but a mistake.
A parasite.