#clervie

Growing up in the House of the Hearth as a healer with Arlecchino.

Summary: Reader is an orphan at the House of the Hearth that grew up alongside Arlecchino. Reader possesses some healing abilities and because of this, was sent off to Dottore to be experimented on.

A/n: I tried my best to incorporate all of your ideas and suggestions into these headcanons! You have some very interesting ideas! Characters: Arlecchino/fem! reader

Warnings: mentions of physical and emotional torture, child abuse, spoilers for Arlecchino's story quest and real name, mentions of death (side characters) and please let me know if there are any more!

You were a child recruited into the House of the Hearth at an extremely young age. You didn’t know who your parents were, you didn’t even know where you had come from. You didn’t know if you were abandoned or taken, though you had your own suspicions as you grew older. You were given a name by some older orphans when they decided they needed to call you something other than “comrade”. 

Crucabena had a deal with Dottore, a business deal. His experiments were always lacking willing test subjects, so the object of their deal was to overcome that obstacle. The House of the Hearth provided him with a plethora of interesting test subjects, mostly young children, who could do nothing to fight back. You were chosen as a candidate for such an experiment. 

You had no living family, arrived at the orphanage early in life, and were observed to have few friends. You were the perfect candidate for such experimentation. Basically, no one would miss you if the experiments went south.

You didn’t have any clue about any special abilities you possessed. You were selected for a pretty standard experiment so an ordinary lab assistant was administering the selected substances to you. They were able to observe that your regeneration cycle was far faster than a normal person. They informed The Doctor immediately.

Because of this new hypothesis, The Doctor found it fit to begin a new experimental regime with you at the center. You endured unimaginable pain and cruelty in The Doctor’s clutches. You were poked and prodded with different instruments, inflicted with various lacerations to see how quickly you would heal from them. When you did, they even injected you with poisons to see if your regeneration abilities extended to the more internal systems of your body.

Even though you healed, everything they did to you still hurt. Horribly. So, periodically, you had to be sent to the House of the Hearth. The Doctor would have kept you in the perimeter of the lab, however Mother, Crucabena, insisted you be taken back. This was not out of any genuine love or care, no. She just realized she had some potential leverage over The Doctor and wanted to exploit it as much as she could.

The Fatui learned a lot about you, yes. But you also learned a lot about yourself and your abilities. You had a hypothesis of your own. You predicted that your healing abilities don’t only apply to you. You were soon able to test this out when Clervie fell one day. Clervie was Mother’s biological child, but you were never taught to view her as any different. You were all Mother’s children after all.

You were able to heal her small cut, but you noticed very quickly that it came at a cost. It took a lot of energy to heal someone else, especially compared to yourself. Your body was naturally wired to heal yourself, doing it automatically. To heal someone else requires a good amount of concentration from you.

Healing powers were not unheard of in this world. However, that was when the user was using the borrowed power from the heavens. That is, they had a vision. You had none. So, your healing powers were not borrowed, but inherent to your very being.

You were young, but you already knew that this didn’t mean anything good for you. You didn’t want Mother to find out, you didn’t want anyone to find out. Unfortunately, Clervie already knew. And, by extension, so did Peruere. You begged them not to tell anyone.

Things went well for a while. You had found two new friends, Clervie and Peruere. Clervie was cheerful and full of life, Peruere was much quieter. You enjoyed the contrast, you were somewhere between the two. Quite the little trio you made. You played with dolls, you played pretend, you held each other when one of you was frightened or nervous. You even had childish little fights, pulling each other's hair, yelling that you hated each other but making up 10 minutes later. It was grand. For a while, you could almost believe that you were normal.

You and Clervie held hands often, but Peruere wasn’t so fond of hand holding. You saw that the tips of her fingers were blackened, but she never acted like she was in any pain so you let it be. She revealed to you that she was cursed. She didn’t know much about it either, but she didn’t want to risk it hurting anyone else.

You disproved that theory when you had a nightmare. You often had those. You would usually scamper over to your friends so they could help you, this particular time was no different. That night, you couldn’t help it. You held her hand and wouldn’t let it go no matter how she struggled. You needed it. You held her hand all night long. It turned out to be fine in the morning, so from that moment on she let you hold her hand.

You only tried to heal her once. It didn’t work at all, leaving you to feel discouraged. She wasn’t very hopeful to begin with though, so she and Clervie comforted you.

One day, another child that had been used for The Doctor’s experiments was returned to the House of the Hearth due to some pretty severe injuries. You knew how that pain felt. It was excruciating. So…you healed them. Long story short, you managed to sneak into their room. Mother was visiting them and went to go fetch some water. Obviously there is no way to logically explain a child being in terrible pain being fully healed in 5 minutes. Also, healing that much physical injury exhausted you to the point of passing out.

You weren’t shipped off to the Doctor immediately. Mother wanted to supervise you. In those couple of months…it was nice. Logically, you knew that a woman that would have you shipped off to be hurt by a madman was not a good woman. But…you were a child. You longed for a mother, you longed to be held and cared for, to be kissed goodnight and loved. So…you didn’t resist.

Mother kept you close, instructing you to do various things for her, to see if you could heal animals and different types of injuries, also how exhausted you would get depending on the injury. She treated you well when you did what she said, calling you her “little miracle”.

That came to an end when The Doctor found out. To this day, you have no clue how. You guessed he may have had spies near the House. Or maybe one of the children, who now knew of your abilities, accidentally let it slip while they were being experimented on. Either way, Mother and The Doctor managed to come to an agreement, the details of which you weren’t privy to.

You were dragged off one day. You figured that they thought if you knew about it you would’ve made a fuss. You did make a fuss, managing to run off before they could take you and hide. Peruere found you. You told her everything, sobbing and crying. You didn’t want to leave, you didn’t want to be hurt again. She held you then and you didn’t want to let her go.

You had been close to both Clervie and Peruere, however you found Peruere to be more of your kindred spirit. Similar to you, she was an orphan. She had felt pain, she also had unique abilities that were beginning to show themselves. You felt for each other, related to each other in a way that no other child could.

She made you a promise as you were dragged away, that she would get you back. She ripped a piece of her sleeve off, shoving it into your hands before you were gone. It was the only thing she could think of to give you at the moment.

The Doctor experimented on you personally this time around. He had several queries about your abilities and how they worked. You weren’t informed on anything he was doing to you, sometimes at the darkest hour. He worked in very strange conditions, you learned. It wasn’t until later that you learned that there were multiple versions of him, each with their own worldview and preferred procedures. Although apparently one specific version was in charge of your case primarily.

As the years went on and more things were known about you, you were used more and more as a tool. The Doctor had managed to find a way to amplify your healing abilities and decrease your exhaustion. When you were younger, healing a single person of your choosing could leave you passed out for an entire day. Now, you wouldn’t get that exhausted unless you healed an entire platoon. 

You thought of your friends daily. After realizing you weren’t so detached, the guards made sure to keep any news of the House out of reach. Mother didn’t visit you. That broke your heart, truly.

You were allowed to visit the House, heavily supervised by the Doctor himself, only to heal the other orphans when needed. These trips were not fun. You would carry the guilt of them for the rest of your life. Yes, you were healing them. Unfortunately, many of these children would end up becoming experiments or were already used as test subjects. They were hurt from experimentation, you healed them, and they were shipped right back out for more.

They were only allowed to return to the House so Mother could visit them and read to them some of her stories. She read to you as well, welcoming you back with a sweet kiss. She read to you all of becoming stronger, of fulfilling your purpose, of banding together to serve a cause. As you grew older, this was less effective. You began to see that it wasn’t done because she wanted to calm you or help you, only indoctrinate you further.

Your salvation came when a new Knave was anointed. You didn’t know what happened to Mother, you didn’t even know what happened to Clervie. You only learned of this when the new Knave, Arlecchino, happened to be your good friend Peruere. She was still young, despite her title. Still a teenager. She brought you home that day. 

She didn’t expect you to remain in the Fatui, to remain in the House of the Hearth with her. But what else were you meant to do? You didn’t want to go back to Snezhnaya. You very much doubted you could live outside of the Fatui and become a “normal citizen” at this point. No. You thought you were too traumatized for that. 

You stayed with her. Despite everything, you stayed with her. You were convinced that this was the purpose Mother spoke of. You believed you were meant to be here, to help and support her, as you had always done. Now though, you could help her. You had learned a lot in your years. You weren’t always being experimented on, no you also were allowed to further your education. You had no clue what The Doctor and Mother had planned for you before her demise, but you didn’t care. You were just grateful you were able to fulfill your role now.

Arlecchino, as you had now taken to calling her, was your friend. It took you two years to break down your individual traumas enough to really rationalize everything and build on your relationships. You just knew that she was Father now. But…she was still Peruere.

Your closeness never quite had a label on it. The children like to mess around and joke that you are now “Mother”. You don’t mind if they see you like that, oddly enough. In this world, Arlecchino was one of the very few people you trusted, after everything. And, as she shared with you on a dark and moonlit night, she felt the same.

No, you never decided to label what your relationship with her was. Still, when she offered an arm to you, you took it. When she gave you gifts, you gave her some too. When she kissed your hand, you kissed her cheek. It worked. And it will continue to work.