Chapter Text
The worn wooden boards of the stage felt the same under his feet as it always had. The lights were the same as always, casting the same shades of purple and blue onto the stage and the crowd as they’d been doing every Friday night before. The crowd was the same too, the same enthusiastic cheers, the same excited whispering; somehow, though, there was some gross feeling of emptiness in the setting that made him clench his fist around the strap of his guitar.
He couldn’t bring himself to look forward at the lights and the faces in the audience—it would be fairer to say that he didn’t want to.
He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, muffling out the shouts of people encouraging the band to start playing. They were barely audible to him, not that they mattered at all. They were just extras anyways. It’s not like they were…
“—Scara! Hey! Scara!”
Scaramouche blinked a couple of times, the blurry lights clearing from his vision and his eyes focusing on Kazuha, who was waving his bandaged hand in front of his face.
“Hey, are you sure you’re okay to perform tonight? We can just go instrumental if you don’t feel up to tonight’s setlist,” Kazuha said, putting his hand on Scaramouche’s shoulder. Scaramouche shrugged it off rather harshly, shutting his eyes and turning away.
“...I’m fine.”
“Asshole. Don’t lie.” That callous voice came from Xiao, sitting at the drum kit behind them. He was twirling one of his drumsticks around his fingers like a student twirling a pen, with the same bored expression a student would have. “If you don’t want to play today, you don’t have to. Kazuha can take lead vocals for you. Your brooding is holding up our gig.”
Kazuha shot a glare at Xiao, then turned back to Scaramouche with a sigh, the latter not meeting his eye.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”
Scaramouche curtly shook his head. “He’d be an actual dumbass to show up tonight.”
“Isn’t he though?” Xiao quipped. Kazuha gave him another look as the crowd began to grow louder. Scaramouche managed a small scoff at that comment, then strummed a clear chord on his guitar. A cheer came from the audience, and Xiao followed his lead with a few taps of his drumsticks and a heavy foot on the bass pedal.
“He really is,” Scaramouche replied back to Xiao, before turning on his microphone.
“And that’s what I miss the most about him.”
—
“Number Six, you’re up.”
Fourteen year old Scaramouche was on a chair backstage fiddling with his bowtie when his number was called. He huffed and grabbed the violin and bow he had placed haphazardly against the leg of his chair and walked toward the stage, pausing a little bit before taking a deep breath and stepping out into the light.
“Number Six, fourteen, Tsaritsa’s Academy for the Gifted Youth, playing Paganini’s No. 24 in a minor.”
Scaramouche raised his instrument, resting it gently on his shoulder. He turned to make eye contact with his accompanying pianist, a classmate of his who he’d been paired with years ago at the Academy. The two didn’t like each other very much, but none could doubt that they were perfectly matched as musicians. The two managed to sweep the floor with every competition, bringing home title after title for their school.
It was frightfully regular, and frightfully boring.
The girl at the piano closed her eyes and tucked a strand of her exquisitely curled blonde hair behind her ear, and hovered her hands over the piano keys.
Scaramouche didn’t even pay attention to the fact that his hands had started moving on their own. His hands knew what to do, where to push and pull, when to pause and when to move, without him even thinking about it; his mind was elsewhere, as it always was.
Music was a chore for him, and performance was just a matter of stand and deliver, nothing more. He didn’t feel anything for the music, he was excellent purely out of obligation.
It wasn’t always, though. Scaramouche thought back to when he was three, watching his first violin concert. He could almost hear the colors coming off the strings as the soloist played, and he was on the edge of his seat in absolute awe. Of course he threw a tantrum and wailed at his parents until they gave in to their little young master and started him in violin lessons at the Academy.
He loved every moment of it. Scaramouche was naturally gifted with his fingers, with timing, and with eloquence. Every first prize he earned filled him with a warm sense of pride, and the praise he received from his peers only boosted his ego. He was doing his school proud, representing the name as best as he could. Other performers would fear being put in the same recitals as him, god forbid go up directly after the boy.
Excellence soon became expectations, though, and Scaramouche’s golden fantasy began to tarnish. If he performed to perfection every single time, how could he ever outdo himself? There was no competition, there was no more praise. It became routine, and every time he showed any brief half-second of hesitation, his instructors were quick to shut him down.
It was when he was performing at the annual academy showcase for the Tsaritsa herself when he was nine years old that he realized that he could no longer hear those colors he so loved. He didn’t feel any risk or any reward from his performance, and the applause of the audience when he was done sounded like tinnitus in the back of his ear.
“As usual, as it should be,” his instructor told him as he walked off the stage. “We’ll be expecting another first prize at next month’s national recital.”
Scaramouche nodded absent-mindedly and stood firm until his instructor left, then the boy sank to his knees against the wall, eyes half-lidded. All the sounds around him seemed to disappear, and time seemed to speed up as he sat there with his instrument, feeling close to nothing.
There was nothing to feel. It was like that passion that pushed him to excel dissipated into smoke. Scaramouche ran his fingers across the polished wood of his violin and could barely feel it under his fingertips. The feeling had been gone for a while. His music was hollow.
Scaramouche was so lost in his reflection that he didn’t really snap back to the present until he was being dragged off the stage amongst respectful applause. He received a hard flick on the forehead, making him wince and almost drop his violin on the floor.
“You went off on your own again,” the pianist, Signora, complained. She pointed a slender finger directly at his nose. “I had to speed up to match you and it was so stressful and for what? For why?”
Scaramouche rolled his eyes and swatted her finger away. “Calm down. It’s not like it’s physically possible for us to lose. The sky would come crashing down the day that happens.”
“For the Tsaritsa’s sake, you best hope you’re right,” the girl hissed. Scaramouche stuck out his tongue at her.
“When have I ever been wrong? Don’t forget, I still rank higher than you, Fair Lady .”
Signora scoffed, turning on her heel and stalking off.
The smug look on Scaramouche’s face dropped almost the instant the blonde girl turned the corner, and a long sigh escaped his lips as he began to boredly leave the backstage area and make his way back into the waiting hall.
Scaramouche pushed past the other performers chattering in the hall and rushing back and forth between chairs as their numbers were called. He didn’t bother to make eye contact with any of the other kids; they usually avoided him anyway. Eventually he found his chair at the back of the room, in a quiet corner away from all the other gaudily-dressed child musicians.
He was putting his instrument back in its case, when he felt someone’s hand touch his shoulder, causing him to turn around like lightning, startling the person.
“The hell are you doing?!” Scaramouche spat, his purple eyes meeting an unfamiliar pair of deep blue ones. The eyes in question belonged to a rather tall boy with orange hair and freckles dotting his nose and cheeks. He wasn’t wearing a number, so he must not have been a performer.
Probably the most significant thing about him was that he didn’t seem afraid of Scaramouche, instead, the boy greeted him with a cheeky smile.
“My mother took my siblings and I here to watch the competition performances,” the boy explained. “Some of her friends’ children are performing in a bit, but I don’t know them that well, so I snuck back here.”
Scaramouche narrowed his eyes.
“To the performers’ waiting hall? What business do you have back here?”
The boy shrugged.
“I don’t really know...I just watched your performance and thought you looked interesting, I guess,” he replied. Scaramouche wrinkled his nose.
“That’s a bit concerning. And creepy. How old are you? Do I know you?”
The orange-haired boy made a face of shocked realization before chuckling nervously and scratching the back of his head.
“Ah, I should’ve introduced myself first, huh? Well...my name’s Ajax, but everyone calls me Childe.”
Scaramouche nearly laughed.
“Childe? That’s ridiculous,” he said, crossing his arms. Childe glared and mirrored Scaramouche’s actions, crossing his own arms as well.
“I’m almost fourteen years old, and I’m also a student at the Tsaritsa’s Academy,” he declared. Scaramouche tilted his head, squinting at the taller boy.
“How come I’ve never seen you around the school before?”
Childe grinned and put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest proudly.
“I’m in the athletics division!”
Scaramouche scoffed and turned around to go back to zipping up his violin case.
“Ah, no wonder,” he snickered. “You’re one of those meatheads that think running fast and hitting hard is a talent.”
“And you arts division kids think that moving your hands and looking down on people is a talent,” Childe rebuked with playful annoyance. “Although, looking down at me would be impossible for you, given that you’re that small.”
“I’m done talking to you!” Scaramouche shot back, not even turning his head to face Childe. “I have to get back to the Academy for rehearsal.”
“Rehearsal? Childe asked, confused. “But the awards ceremony hasn’t even started yet. There are still a lot of other kids who haven’t gone up yet—”
“Yeah, and?” Scaramouche rebuffed, swinging the strap of his violin case onto his shoulder, looking as unimpressed as ever. “I have no reason to stick around...I have to practice for the next competition.”
“Hold up. Right away? You don’t get to take a break? Even Coach Pulcinella gives me free time after my competitions. Making you go back to practice when the concert isn’t even over yet is kinda dumb.”
Scaramouche looked away and shut his eyes, his hand holding onto the strap of his case tightly.
“It’s not exactly like I have a choice. I don’t get to decide these things,” he said, his voice a bit quieter than it had been before. Childe instantly took notice of Scaramouche’s reaction and awkwardly shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
“...don’t you play music because you like it?”
Scaramouche shot him a look.
“What?”
Childe pulled something out of his right pocket. It was a small silver medal. Scaramouche still didn’t understand.
“This medal’s from the first competition I ever entered,” he said, looking at it fondly. “I was five years old.”
“It’s silver,” Scaramouche commented judgmentally. Childe laughed.
“I know,” Childe continued, “but I keep this one as my lucky charm because that day was when I first felt that adrenaline rush I get when I’m moving, and the first time I felt super proud of myself and celebrated with my brothers and sisters after a hard day of hard work.”
“...why are you telling me this?”
“Coach Pulcinella was there too, and he told me to enroll in the Academy. It was the best decision I ever made, because I love what I do there...you don’t look like you feel the same way about your music.”
Scaramouche looked offended, and took a defensive step back.
“Who are you to tell me I don’t love playing music?”
Childe pointed at Scaramouche’s face, catching the smaller boy by surprise. Before Scaramouche could say anything, Childe interrupted.
“You told me yourself,” he remarked. “In your face. When I watched you play, of course I thought your performance was good, as good as music written by old dead people goes. But you didn’t look like you were into it. Something about your eyes...you looked faraway, not really there at all. It’s like you’re doing this because it’s just something you have to do. Did I get it right?”
Scaramouche did not answer. Childe jabbed at Scaramouche’s chest with his finger.
“My mother always told me that you should do something because you love it. Put your heart into it, because people who are really watching can tell what it means to you.”
Scaramouche looked taken aback, and pushed Childe’s hand away from him. He had a rather sour look on his face, but Childe didn’t seem fazed by it at all.
“How dare you talk as if you know me!” Scaramouche growled. “You’re not even a performer here, what are you even doing back here, telling me how to live my life?!” Scaramouche huffed and stomped off towards the door.
“When was the last time you played anything for yourself?”
Scaramouche didn’t need to turn around to imagine what mocking expression Childe was making as he called out behind him. There was a prolonged silence between the two; Childe stared at Scaramouche’s back for almost a minute, before the purple-haired boy swung the door open with a mumbled “whatever, weirdo” before slipping out and slamming the door behind him.
While he was sitting in the car on the way back to the Academy, Scaramouche’s phone buzzed.
Signora - 11:58
Where the hell are you??????????? The performances are almost done!!
Scaramouche rolled his eyes and began typing out a reply.
Scara - 11:59
Omw back to the academy
He shoved his phone back into his pocket and sighed, leaning back into the seat. He leaned his head against the car window and was about to drift off, he was startled by his phone ringtone.
Scaramouche took his time unlocking his phone to answer the call, and braced himself for the barrage of yelling that was yet to come.
“You can’t just straight up leave the concert hall whenever you want! Do you have any idea how bad it’s going to look if you aren’t there to receive your own first place award?!”
“What does it matter?” Scaramouche replied lazily. “You can receive my award for me.”
“What am I supposed to tell them?!”
“I don’t know, come up with something? Tell them I had to go take a shit.”
“You are positively repulsive, Scara. And you’ve got a foul mouth for a kid.”
“You’re not even a year older than me, hag.”
“You’re lucky you’re not still here right now.”
“Oh, you know you love me. Who doesn’t?”
“You don’t know when to keep your mouth shut. I’ll kick you the next time I see you. Count on it.”
With that, Signora hung up. Scaramouche snickered to himself.
Messing with Signora was one of the little joys he got to have, between his studying, practicing, and brooding. They butted heads every chance they got, but he had to admit that she was freakishly smart when it came to other people. He knew how to play people, but she knew how to read them.
“You’re unpredictable, but I’ve spent enough time with you to know what you’re doing,” she’d told him before. “Everything about you is fake, whether you realize it or not. You can’t hide anything from me.”
He thought about that orange haired boy from the concert hall. Childe, he noted to himself, looking down at his chest where Childe had poked him earlier when he commented on his emotions.
“When was the last time you played anything for yourself?”
Scaramouche frowned at his reflection in the car window, brushing his bangs away from his eyes. Was it...really that obvious?
At one point, there was a gleam in his eyes and a spark in his heart when he played. Now, it all felt as dull as the gray sky outside the window. The way his reflection seemed to fade into the background made it feel a bit too true.
“I thought I had everyone fooled,” Scaramouche laughed to himself, leaning back and letting himself nod off, eventually falling asleep.
—
Smack.
Scaramouche bolted awake, his hand flying up to his throbbing cheek. He turned to the girl sitting next to him, who shook her hand in the air and cracked her thumb and index fingers.
“What the hell was that for?!” Scaramouche exclaimed. Signora tapped his shoulder with her clipboard.
“Orientation’s over, idiot,” she chastised, standing up as Scaramouche grumbled and rubbed his eyes. “We have to clean up.”
Ah, that’s right. First year orientation, the most grueling six hours of his life.
It wasn’t by chance that Scaramouche and Signora ended up in the same university program the prior year. The best of the best at the Academy would normally receive full-ride scholarships to the prestigious Zapolyarny Palace, an extension of the much larger University of Celestia that received substantial funds personally from the Tsaritsa to foster the talents of those who she believed were blessed.
The two were in their second year now. Signora decided to pursue a career in acting, and Scaramouche had abandoned his violin to bounce between various branches of natural science, finding a particular interest in astronomy. It was a huge disappointment to his peers when he decided to abandon the violin. There was quite a bit of conflict about it, both inside his home and among the members of the Academy, but at that point Scaramouche really didn’t care.
Virtually everyone at his own first year orientation already knew who he was (and steered clear of him because of his bitter disposition and unfavorable reputation). His orientation leader—a rather eccentric third year who called himself Dottore—teased him about his prowess, while quite annoyingly ruffling Scaramouche’s bowl cut. That guy, Scaramouche thought at the time, was a total nut job. To be fair, he still was a total nut job, but no one could deny the young man’s erudite accomplishments in mechanical engineering research.
Dottore was the one who roped Scaramouche into becoming an orientation leader during the summer before his second year. He wasn’t really up to it at first, stating as always “I have better shit to do.” Unfortunately, Scaramouche could not escape Signora.
The two were folding and stacking the chairs on the green alongside some other orientation leaders in their tacky red and black t-shirts; a few of them had gone off to show the new students to their dorms. Scaramouche certainly wasn’t expecting for someone to come barreling directly into him, causing him to knock over his neat stack of chairs.
Scaramouche stumbled back, tripping on the uneven grass and falling onto the ground. He groaned, more from exasperation than from any actual pain, then pushed himself off the ground.
“What’s wrong with you?!” he snarled, brushing the grass off his shorts.
The other person rolled up off the grass, revealing a mop of orange hair, deep blue eyes, and a face dotted with freckles. Scaramouche grimaced.
“Oh. It’s just you, Childe.”
Childe gave Scaramouche a nervous laugh.
“Long time no see, Scara!”
“Don’t call me that,” Scaramouche spat, glaring up at Childe. It angered him even more than the younger boy had grown up to be significantly taller than him, like an annoying, relentless, muscular tree with leaves for brains and an insatiable taste for a good fight. He was also ridiculously social, much to Scaramouche’s chagrin.
Childe clapped Scaramouche on the back—the latter stumbling forward from the difference in force and size and earning Childe a chilling look from Scaramouche.
“You touch me again with that hand and that hand will be sitting on my desk in a jar of pickling liquid,” Scaramouche hissed, his eyes narrowed into slits, much like a snake. Childe backed away with a forced grin.
“Someone’s prickly,” he commented.
“He’s always like that,” Signora added, lazily stacking the fallen chairs back up. “He’s like a little kid trapped in the body of—no, that doesn’t work. He’s still got the body of a little kid. Hm, perhaps everything went into that clever brain of his, and there was nothing left for his legs.”
Childe tried to hold back a snort, which failed rather miserably. Signora smiled innocently when Scaramouche turned around and flipped her off.
“Anyway,” Signora continued, “very considerate of you to show up after orientation has already ended, Childe. Your first year in university is off to a great start, isn’t it?”
Childe cleared his throat.
“Teucer wouldn’t stop whining about me leaving the house,” he explained. “It took a whole four scoops of ice cream to get him to go back home with the others.”
Signora laughed sarcastically.
“That brother of yours is truly something special.”
Scaramouche paid no attention to the next few minutes of that conversation; it mainly consisted of Childe rambling to Signora about his siblings and their reactions to him leaving for college. The sooner he finished re-stacking the chairs—no thanks to Childe—the sooner he could return to his dorm and back to literally anything else.
The evening could not come soon enough. Scaramouche decided to skip dinner that day, practically teleporting back to his campus apartment building to lock himself in his bedroom.
The elevator dinged when it reached his floor, and he wasted no time stepping out of it. His apartment was at the end of the hall, away from everyone else. The quiet suited his taste; it allowed him to feel in control, and gave him space to think.
As usual the apartment felt empty. He was its only occupant all through his first year, despite the apartments being built and arranged for two students, two individual rooms with a kitchen, living room, and bathroom between them. Scaramouche was banking on not having a roommate for his second year as well, and had already taken the liberty to spread his personal belongings throughout the apartment.
A nighttime shower and a set of pajamas later, Scaramouche trudged back into his living room, shaking out his damp hair and pulling his bangs away from his forehead with a cloth headband.
He took a brief glance at the photo frame on the bookshelf between all his textbooks and old novels he’d found at secondhand bookstores; it was a photo of a tiny version of him with his very first trophy at his very first violin recital, and the big smile on his face was very much genuine.
That wasn’t him anymore. His music was a thing of his past, and he had to fulfil the world’s expectations another way. A way that wasn’t so meaningless and bland.
With a sigh, Scaramouche reached past the photo to pull a book—pretentiously titled A Legend of Sword —off the shelf. He opened it to the page he had marked with a random receipt from the campus cafe.
“Whoever wrote this must be a high schooler or something,” he said to himself as he settled onto the cushions on his couch. “It’s not that bad though. Hmph.”
It was nearly midnight when Scaramouche heard an incessantly loud knock on the door of his apartment. He narrowed his eyes. He knew it wasn’t Signora; that girl had always been really big on beauty sleep.
Scaramouche figured that if he didn’t respond, whoever was knocking would go away. He ignored the knock and continued reading, hoping they wouldn’t knock again.
They knocked again, louder than the first time.
After another ten seconds of Scaramouche not responding, the knocking continued, and the apartment’s resident had had enough.
“This better be important!!” Scaramouche yelled toward the door, marking his page and tossing his book onto the couch before stomping over to answer the door.
“You better have a good reason to be pounding on my door at this godforsaken—”
Scaramouche was absolutely not expecting Childe to be at the door, a couple of large backpacks slung over his shoulders. He grimaced and put his hands on his hips.
“What do you want?” he demanded, sneering up at Childe. Childe reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, and looked quite amused when he asked his question.
“Is this Suite 611?”
Scaramouche gestured to the number on the plate next to the door as if it was painfully obvious.
“You can read,” he drawled.
“You live here?” Childe asked. Scaramouche tsked, looking extremely unimpressed.
“Evidently.”
Then, a conniving grin spread across Childe’s face. Scaramouche found himself being shoved aside as Childe pushed past him into the apartment. Scaramouche grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him around to face him.
“You better explain to me what you think you’re doing,” he ordered. “You show up at an ungodly hour and come into my place without any explanation and that stupid, stupid smile and for what? Hm?”
Childe handed Scaramouche the piece of paper he was reading earlier. Scaramouche snatched it from his hands, his eyes skimming over the print.
Scaramouche absolutely refused to look Childe in the eye for fear that he would pounce on him and bite a chunk out of his orange head. The amused expression on Childe’s face did not help his dismay, and frankly, his disappointment.
“So,” Childe teased, drawing out the ‘o’ and dropping his bags on the floor. Scaramouche handed the piece of paper back to him, and in doing so, had to look at that unnerving grin.
“...”
“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, and as my senior, I trust you to take care of me...right, roomie?”