I don't really know

☾ A/N : this is my official application to the scaranation. please accept this fic as proof of my good intentions. all of this happens way before the sumeru arc when scaramouche was still very much a harbinger cause im obsessed with the dynamic. also the fic is named after the song of the same title which i would be nothing without so shoutout to a heart made of yarn. also i know that this fic is not very much atomically realistic but you know what else is unrealistic?? this entire fic!! anyway scaranation you will forever be famous.

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“By the archons, my lord, I have never seen anything like that,” you say, kneecaps uncomfortably rubbing against the carpet that beds the hardwood floor. Soft as a ghost, you remove the damp cloth in the nest of the Balladeer's arm to analyze the marbling burn, and watch a few droplets trail freely down to the sharp end of his wrist. “When did that happen?” 

“A few days ago,” he says unbothered, a ring of kimono where he sits on his makeshift throne, and you kneeling at his feet only makes a king of him.

“But- How?” You rise your chin to be on eye level, notice his gaze idly perched on the frozen pines outside. Cheek crashing into his hand and resting there. A strand of hair falls lazily in front of his eyes, and, unhonestly bored, he lets it. Foolishly, you follow his gaze, wondering what he could see out there.  

Outside, the wind carries a flock of snow that hovers angrily before returning to the earth. Not too far, a curious snow bunny witnesses the scene. Uninvited spectator of this buried part of the mansion that is the Balladeer's personal library. The windows are large enough for you to feel like he’s watching inside a snow globe, and it gives the inevitable effect of being trapped in lacquer, time unending and utterly alone. 

But after all, that’s what this place does. Snezhnaya, secluded no man’s land, country of silence, dregs of this world. 

“Without a vision, I’m afraid it will take days just to stop hurting. Why don’t you let me call another doctor for you?” 

The bunny watches, he does not. Stiffening but barely, fingers hooked around the fabric at his waist when he says, “It doesn’t hurt.” A sharp sigh expends above his rib cage but he discards it before it hits the air. Insincere as he is. Leaving a heavy hush behind and you to wonder; Am I bothering him?

You brush it off, eyes cutting down almost apologetically. “Very well then,” scouring through the case he once gifted to you. “Since this looks like a burn, I would suggest you don’t try to put ice on it. It will probably swell, but as long as you don’t judge it to be extreme, it will just be a normal reaction. In the meantime, I will apply something for it not to get infected and put a bandage on it.” 

He doesn’t answer, except for a trail of shivers that blooms on his skin under the scrutiny of your fingers, breath calibrating misleadingly steady. “I made it with the sweet flower I asked for and-” But, seedlings of words die in your throat. Under the cradled light of the candle, the bruise looks almost alive. Branches of violet burns, thunderous and spilling, and now it seems so obvious that it isn’t natural. 

The study room becomes significantly smaller. A cloister of bookshelves turning into towering stone pillars where the air lacks. “Who did this to you?” 

Notice how quickly his head turns, jaw sharp, accentuating the smooth thread that links his shoulder to his ear. “It matters not.” 

It leaves an unrequited silence, sets the room in glaze.

You sift his gaze, try to find the golden sheen of an answer in it. And suddenly you remember that he isn’t just a man, he is mostly a Harbinger. He builds, he wins, he fears. While I’m just the doctor, you think to yourself, even though it isn’t entirely true. 

 And, since you can’t seem to find the hint of an answer, you resume to cover the injury with gauze. What you don’t notice is the way the Balladeer’s lips part and the way he bites them shut. 

At last, the nook of his arm wrapped and safe, you mutter, "here you go," rising to allow a patch of privacy while you gather your belongings. 

The Balladeer mechanically covers one arm with his kimono, secretly scowl for the other. Eyes a faded orchid, buds unhatched, and you can't help but stare at him. At the way he moves cautious and insolent as if the whole world effortlessly orbited around him, and the way he leans against his desk angular and imperceptibly lovely. A sight to make the sun blush.

He catches your eyes, and you find a newborn task inside your case to set off the tracks. Still, he says, “How has it been at the infirmary lately?”

You push an eyebrow up, fake the surprise, as if you didn't pry for words, “Since there are no current expedition, it has been rather quiet,” pushing onto your heels unsteadily. "I will come back tonight to put more ointment and change the bandage."

He nods, and tap with the emphasis of his finger on the desk once. After a long moment, you nod back. The lack of words rendering you curious about what actually happens in the infirmary. But, as you grab the handle of the door, he says again, “Then, care to join me for a drink?” 

And if the answer seems so painfully obvious, you’ve never brought yourself to refuse anything from him. Not now, not ever.

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The dull hour of the afternoon finds you where it would. The Balladeer behind his desk and you on the other end. A boarder neatly preserved. He pours the firewater in a set of glass between a puddle of loose paper, before sliding yours across the desk.  

“I must remind you that this- business of ours is strictly confidential,” he says, voice low as to not awake the specifics, and you wonder which one of the two speaks; the Harbinger or the man. 

You blink, once, twice, before a laugh deprived of any mirth springs out of your mouth, “You know, my lord, I don’t have anyone to tell that to,” and it sounds ludicrous when it leaves in the frigid air to meet his cold attention. A regretted leap of comfort or an attempt to disguise the offense you don’t know how to take back. 

Because the Balladeer doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t speak. And because you don’t know what to say either, you add, “No one really talks to me here.” 

The Balladeer shifts in his seat, legs expanding in the empty space before him as he straightens up, “And it upsets you.” 

You scoff, “Well, I would like to get along with my peers, yes,” as if stating the obvious. Sarcastic enough in your tone to warn off unwarranted questions, but it only kindles more of his interest.

“Why does it matter so much?” he asks after clearing his drink, conflicted, while your fugitive eyes trail down the handwritten notes and away from his omniscient attention, and you try to decipher their meaning.

After a while, setting a pebble to ripple on your attention, he says again, “This fear of loneliness, being around people at all cost. It’s weak.”

“That’s not what I said,” you respond, voice high and vaguely insulted, retrieving your arms and crossing them defensively across your chest.

“But this is what you want,” he states as a matter of fact. 

“Who knows?” you muse. Which is to say, what do you know about what I want? As a more honest answer, you swallow your drink, liquor burning where it trails, mouth twisting with smoke. “Do you think I’m weak?” 

Suddenly restless, the Balladeer pours himself another one, and you slide your glass across the hardwood in a devious test of power. But, loaded with expectations, the glass ricochets on a pile of paper and rolls around. Instinctively, he picks it up, and obliges. A glimpse of the diplomat when he says, “You’re human.” Compliant and sympathetic, remotely so. A way of bridging a path for all the things it implies. Ultimately, yes. 

“As if you weren’t lonely yourself,” you scoff, insulted, before giving in to the firewater with a swivel of the wrists. It weaves hot threads around your cheeks, indulges you with the halo effect of being totally and utterly indestructible. 

“I don’t share such trivial afflictions,” he says, unbothered.  

Without hesitation, you reply, “I think you’re a liar.”

“It matters not what you think I am.”

The room settles in a wintry silence, and spins slowly.

Outside, the storm stopped. The afternoon sun now mirrors into the snow and an avalanche of light falls from the bays, creating a natural spotlight for the scene, cutting the boyish curves of his face into crueler traits. 

Here he is, the marvel of this world. Eyes fixed on the glass he holds between slender fingers, creating tides with his fire water like some type of god of the seven seas and no care in the world. And it’s as if the very essence of the Balladeer appears like the focal point of the magnificent painting that he is. As if his black matter of a life finally shows colors. 

“You have no idea what it means to be a human, do you?” You say in the epiphany, tilting your head to the side to emphasize a gentleness that overshadows the rhetoric. 

A line of tension rises above the Balladeer’s brows as he rises from his temporary throne, and dawdle to the public side of the room. “Nor do I care to find out.” 

“And yet no one feels feelings like you do. All of them, all at once,” you muse. The silence turns unexpectedly urging as he paces in front of you, chin cautiously dropped and growing impatient. Still, you continue, “You know, that’s the interesting thing with hatred. The things we hate, they always end up devouring us to our very soul, replacing us in some essential way.”

Something shifts in the air, the Balladeer stops dead in his track. 

“What does that even mean?” But it’s less of an invitation than an offense that you disregard with ease. 

“It means you hate humans so much you became one,”  you say, soft as a shared secret. Voice a murmur when it brushes the bud of his ear. 

For a breath, the room is as silent as after an explosion. 

But then, in a tremor, he swallows distance, slamming the palm of his hands against your armrests, knuckles a madness white. Close as to turn the whole world upside down. His eyes, a makeshift shipwreck, no light inside of them to welcome you but hell itself. And your own linger over him, face deceptively stern, as though he has never looked that way ever since you met him. 

Somewhere in the middle of this, a picture resurfaces. The one of a boy who appeared through mist and snow like the eye of the storm. His face screaming ego death, as if he once drowned as a man of bones and reemerged baptized with something expensive in his eyes. The face of someone who never owned anything, even his own life. Still, it seemed as if the wind and the snow and the earth, sky and above were made to forever carry his holy name. Cold and cruel and awfully detached- a god. 

Beautiful. So, so beautiful.

There is an intricate beauty in the tragic. A beauty in all that is bound to be lost and all that is bound to be grieved. And he was indeed his own tragedy spilling like oil on canvas, untamed and urging for attention. 

Some things will never change. 

While most things have, you recall that this man who stands so threateningly close is still him. The one you once chose to spend your life by. The same one who built a place inside his home just to put you in the center of it.  And even after all this time, you would make an enemy out of every country, go to war against the Tsaritsa herself just to see the gleeful curve of a smile. 

“Repeat that,” he dares, a whisper that washes over your lips and creates ripples of shivers down the stream of your arms. As a waterfall effect, the air turns thick with a heady mist, spreading through the large body of bookshelves and the even larger windows. Your heart thrumming an exhilarating rhythm as if it said; finally ! Listen to me, look at me, talk to me ! 

“You hate humans so much you became one,” and it’s awfully quiet for someone audacious enough to profane the divine. Yet, alone with a Harbinger close within breath reach, whispered challenges clog the chasm between a god, and a girl. Build bridges between nations over unmarked ground. 

And he looks betrayed, eyes glowing an abyssal darkness that says how dare you. But his mouth parts and settles for, “You have no idea what you are talking about,” poisonous as a blame. His voice pulled down by the weight of an underworld of things unsaid. A world you wish you could pry open like an oyster just to discover what it tucks safe and away from the blind eye. Wonder if what he keeps in there is from shame or sadness or an overly blurry middle ground, and what it changes in the aftermath. 

So you push. Trying to dabble in mockery, “Then enlighten me, my lord.” but it waves out too genuine. A plea for honesty unbelievably soft as if to say let me stay here, with you, forever. 

Half a darkened smile ripens on his lips as he scoffs. The type of scoff that says don’t look past the boarders, don't shake the bridge. And you look away, as if your eyes could betray you. 

Tethered, face unbearably hot, you place the palm of your hand against his chest to give yourself the space to maneuver. Yearning for closeness, but aching for space. The air unbreathable in the empty space of your two bodies. He captures your wrist on instinct, forging your hand into place like a key into a locked diary. The gesture is indistinctly soft and delicate where it lingers, and your mind swirls like a fallen leaf; let me stay, let me stay, let me stay. Heart line gently pressing where the heart belongs.

In this room where time doesn’t dare venture, a breath passes, and then another. And still Scaramouche waits for you to push him away, and still you can’t bring yourself to.

Slowly, he eases, retreating back to pacing and says soft as breeze, “There is nothing for you to gain down that path, yn,” which is, though you don’t understand it, an awfully complicated way of asking; if I told you, would you hate me? Something about this turns thick in your throat. 

You nod lazily, “Right,” voice stained with an undertone of disappointment. He wouldn’t dawdle in such familiarity. He never does. When someone walks past the walls that divides war and peace, countries and homes, he fixes it. A Harbinger, he builds, he beats, he grieves.

Finally, you say, “I should go,” and rise. Scaramouche tags along as easy. His fingers conquering the uncharted land of the back of your hand, grasping for attention. 

“You don’t-” He starts but never finishes. Fingertips uncharacteristically desperate.

“I don’t what?”

“You don’t get it.”

Gently, you huff, "No, my lord. No, I really don’t," tone high and tired of this waltz. Two people instinctively revolving around each other, swaying between human and god and themselves. When one steps forward, the other steps back. A dance they have danced a thousand times, in this very room they both know too well. 

Yet, alone and hidden between bookshelves so that not even the sky could see, something inherently human bursts out of this. 

“Stupid,” he mutters, eyes a conflicted light wriggling with life and unexplored, chest rising in an aching and vain effort.

And, in one last despair of an afterthought, he presses his lips on yours, snake hand crawling just below your shoulder blade, and the other stresses on yours tighter and tighter. You drink the melody of his lips with bashful thirst, fingers trailing to the back of his neck where the hair is long and soft. Lovely and delicate and humane, Scaramouche releases your hand to cup the boarder between jaw and ear, pulling, aching for proximity words don’t allow. And the sweet warmth of his tongues says Please, stay, while the hand on your back lingers to your waist, pressing you closer to him, and chiming stay with me, stay with me, stay with me.

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So I'll tell you everything. The truth, the ugly truth, no bullshit.

Wanna know what made me make that promise? (I'm really happy you're reading it in a letter and I'm not telling you face to face cause you'd want to kick my ass). The night you proposed, you were sleeping peacefully and I was just a mess. I couldn't stop thinking about our future together, about the fact that it was probably the stupidest mistake we could ever do. But you rolled around, and I looked at you. You had the stupidest expression I had ever seen on anyone's face. Like ever. So fucking weird. I laughed to myself, couldn't stop, or else I'd have to realize that I was terrified because at that very moment I understood that, ultimately, you'd break my heart one way or another.

I walked into our story blinded by your light and it's like I have only awoken at that moment. You said I should trust you, but for a long time I wasn't able to. Because I'm no easy person to live with. Because I love you so much, I was convinced that it would hurt like a bitch, that there wasn't any other possible way. I'm still not sure about that one, but that night I didn't care anymore. I knew there were no going back, that no matter how scary it was, you'd have to be loved and feel loved, and I wouldn't let anyone do it for me.

In the end, it's a very selfish decision. What would I be without you? What would I be for that really fucking stupid sleeping face?

So I put on my big boy's pants and write this letter instead of getting ready. Sykkuno keeps walking back and forth. I think he's desperate at this point. But I can't stop thinking about you. I wonder what you're doing right now with Rae and Brooke with you. Nevermind, I don't wanna know. I wonder what you'll look like walking down the aisle, what dress you chose. Do you think I'm going to cry? I'm probably going to cry because you're the most amazing, most stunning woman I've ever seen, and I really don't know what else I could do. I'm already emo just thinking about it. About how lucky I am to have found someone as wonderful as you and I can’t believe we’re really about to do it. Being in love is cringe, but if you say a world about it, I'll mansplain, manspread, manipulate my way out of this one. Fuck you in advance actually.

Anyway, now I really realized what's happening today and I'm fucking shaking. I can't believe I'm about to marry my soulmate. But I guess I'll see you soon. I'll be the man in black waiting for the love of his life.

I love you so very much

Forever yours,

Corpse Husband.