[[ Reader x Scaramouche ]]
"Aren't you lonely?"
Scaramouche thought on that for a moment. Lonely. He would say he's always been lonely, for he's always been alone. He was abandoned upon creation (he would kill someone for calling it his birth), and he wandered alone. Now, even when he stood among many, he was still very much alone.
Even when sitting beside you, he felt very alone. Companionship was not something he often sought, but something he knew he was missing.
But just because he was missing a heart did not mean he needed it to survive. Perhaps it made things easier- or more difficult, were the Tsaritsa to be believed.
He wasn't sure.
"I've always been alone." He answered instead, not wanting to answer the question itself. Since he's known you, it was... Complicated, to say the least, with how he felt.
After all, he knew he'd disappear one day, leaving you behind to live a full life while he ran possibly until he was destroyed - the death of an abandoned creation.
"You can be alone and not be lonely." You said.
That, too, was true.
Alone meant that there was no one beside you.
Lonely meant that you felt there was no one beside you.
But he could not say either, not when he looked at you, and you did not flinch from his gaze, only care and concern. One of those emotions was good, the other bad.
Odd, how well they went together. He could almost crack a joke about it, if he wasn't so... Conflicted.
"I suppose," he said, "I am not lonely." Not when you're here, the words went unsaid. Too sentimental. Impermanent. When. That means there will be a when you're gone.
He does not want to breathe that into existence. He could not endure to do such a thing.
"I'll stay until you're not lonely, even when I'm gone," You say, how charming, how...
How heartbreakingly genuine. Genuine. That was something he forgot, when looking upon masks and facades on and on, the Fatui way, to eliminate the genuine nature of humans.
But he was not human.
He did not know why it, or you, affected him so.
In this moment, it didn't matter when he could rest his head on your shoulder, his body cold, yours warm, as a Human's ought to be.
Perhaps he was a siphon for the good in this world, what you were.
But you did not punish him for these behaviors. Not yet, anyway.
So he'd siphon your care and your warmth until you could endure no longer, or until it was time to run.
Whichever came first, really.
