Chapter Text
Pierro stood at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the Tsaritsa’s throne. It was a striking, if too gaudy for his taste, thing, ice curling around the back and seemingly viciously lashing out at anybody who dared to step before it. It stood in an unsettling contrast to the lithe form of his Majesty sitting between the claws.
He had always thought it strange how anybody else would look like they were about to be consumed by the grotesque display while the ice seemed to curl protectively around the Tsaritsa.
His Queen tapped her nails on the arm piece, the sound echoing through the vast hall.
“It has been brought to my attention that my harbingers are…,” she paused, letting her eyes drift over the elaborate artwork of mosaic taking up the floor, “hesitant… to cooperate with each other?”
Pierro inclined his head, “Your Majesty, they are in no way neglecting their tasks or causing trouble.”
He chose to leave out the really astonishingly high pile of property damage reports that a murderous looking Pantalone had slammed onto his table yesterday, with the words “This is no longer my problem, goodnight.” (It had been 10 am.)
He cleared his throat, “However, there have been reports stating that the communication and especially the cooperation is not as effective as it could have been.” It was abysmal, actually.
“So, the target of the most recent mission had not quite been achieved to satisfaction.” They burned a village to the ground and destroyed the ore supply they were tasked to secure.
The Tsaritsa watched him with a glint in her eye that he would have called amusement if he didn’t dislike the implication of that. Sometimes it was almost eerie how she always seemed to know what he was thinking.
She hummed, “What do you propose?”
Pierro would just kill them all and hire new harbingers, if he had the choice. Actually, he would prefer to not replace them at all. Anybody strong enough for the position would inevitably prove as…unstable as their current lieutenants and throwing a whole group of such eccentrics together could only end in blood and death. (And property damage, apparently.)
While the idea of a group of highly trained soldiers to execute their plan was a good one, Pierro had doubts that the effort was worth it.
But something told him the Tsaritsa wouldn’t like that proposal. As much as Pierro valued her wisdom and strength, he feared that the warmth-filled heart she claimed to be rid of, the weak thing of love and hope, was still beating somewhere behind the icy walls her Majesty had set up around and inside of herself.
And he loved her for that. But it would be futile for their plan to reign with that softness. The attachment to the harbingers he suspected his Queen to have would only serve to bring her more pain. They both knew she couldn’t afford that weakness.
And yet.
“Maybe a deliberate effort at increasing their abilities to work together would be appropriate,” Pierro said.
“A reason for them to work together? Something to force results? Will you find a way to achieve that, my dear First?” the Tsaritsa cocked her head to the side in question.
"If it is what my Lady commands."
She held his gaze," It is."
"Then it shall be done."
☆
Two years later
Capitano threw a longsuffering look across the table at Sandrone, who was (in his humble opinion) the only other sensible person in this room. That was saying something considering the frankly concerning number of times Pierro had had to keep her from murdering someone because they were pretty, and she wanted them in her marionette collection.
Arlecchino choose that moment to throw a whole potted plant at Tartaglia (not that there were any potted plants in the room, but Capitano had a feeling, questioning where she got it from would do no good for his sanity) who effortlessly dodged it and made a move to jump over the table and tackle her, the same gleam in his eyes that he always got when on his merry way to murder people. Fortunately(?), Scaramouche stuck his foot out from where he was slumped into his chair and tripped their youngest at the last second, making him slam into the table.
Arlecchino’s laughter managed to drown out the heated debate of Tsaritsa-knows-what that Pantalone and Pulcinella had been busy with for the last 24 minutes. ’Heated’ meant that they were both smiling politely while throwing increasingly violent death threats at each other. It was honestly terrifying, and Capitano had vowed not to be the one to get between them after what happened last time. (It involved fire, a concussion and three chicken. They didn’t talk about it.)
At the head of the table Pierro stood, looking like he desperately needed a drink or a nap. He had given up on trying to get everybody to shut up about half an hour ago and while he would normally have resorted to violence by now, it seemed like he didn’t think it was worth it considering half of the harbingers weren’t even at the meeting today.
And really, Capitano didn’t envy their First for his position. At the beginning it might have been a job of honor (and it still was, following her Majesty was their greatest pleasure) but if he wasn’t dealing with outsiders or missions, he was basically functioning as a glorified babysitter. With the habit of beating the shit out of people who annoyed him. Which, Capitano could sympathize.
He didn’t even really know when it became normal, these… chaotic shenanigans. Certainly, at the beginning they all avoided each other like they had some deadly disease and now it was like watching the plot of one of these drama novels, Scaramouche pretended not to read.
It might have been the attempts of the Tsaritsa to make them get along, if he was honest. If they hadn’t been forced to interact, they would still sit quietly in their respective corners, scurrying the others paranoidly and not trying to throttle them mid-meeting while they were attempting to make new export contracts.
Well, they were still all paranoid assholes, but the paranoia mostly moved from “do they want to trade my organs on the black market” to “I know one of you fuckers ate the last of my mochis” (at least usually, you never quite knew with Dottore and Pantalone, fearing for your organs might be sensible in some cases).
Capitano was 49% sure that any death threats were mostly lighthearted, even if they did try to stab each other with cutlery on a daily basis.
Sometimes, Capitano wondered.
Once, Tartaglia said they were worse than his relatives at annual family dinners (“at least they don’t try to murder each other, they just judge you quietly and wait for you to leave the room to talk shit. I am honestly pretty sure half of them don’t like each other and only come for the drama. On second thought that sounds like us, too”)
He didn’t have fond memories of his family. He never needed one and frankly, he didn’t want them, either. The idea that there were apparently parallels between them and Childe’s homelife… it made something in Capitano thoughtful. Even though he was pretty sure the metaphor was quite flawed.
(For one, there was nothing familiar in the way Tartaglia and Scaramouche seemed two bad life decisions away from either beating the shit out of each other or making out at all times, maybe both) (not to mention that he didn’t know—or want to know –what was going on between Columbina and Arlecchino and who knew what else his ’colleagues’ did behind closed doors)
(He was sure Scaramouche knew all about it though. He always did, it was quite literally his job to know things. And if he knew there was a good chance that Dottore did too. You wouldn’t think it, but the two of them were probably the one most invested in whatever gossip was going on at the moment.)
Still, Capitano couldn’t deny a certain level of…. not fondness (he was pretty sure half of them were too broken for any positive emotion and the other half wouldn’t value it anyway) but maybe camaraderie between them.
There was something freeing in not having to pretend to care, not having to deal with the looks of disgust and fear for being yourself. No matter how fucked up you were, nobody here had any room to judge and most of the time nobody even questioned it. Tsaritsa’s sake, he had seen Pantalone do unspeakable things with a stapler when some Adventurer’s Guild asshole tried to scam them and the only thing he felt was impressed.
(He was pretty sure Tartaglia almost drooled.)
So, what if they were all a little fucked up, none of them gave a shit. Capitano could admit that it was sort of nice to not be questioned, even if he refused to show anybody his face or when he dissociated mid-talk and instead of weird looks and pity, he got mild annoyance and an impatient repeat of the conversation. Like it wasn’t strange, just barely more than an inconvenience. Like it was normal.
Honestly, they were all socially inept and awkward even if they were trying to mask it with rudeness and murderous intent. But nobody cared.
Capitano got pulled out of his thoughts by a hand on his arm. Sandrone gave him a questioning look. Well, more of a tilt of her head as her face remained impassive.
“I am here,” she probably assumed, he was gone again, instead of lost in his own thoughts. He threw a look across the table.
It seemed like the meeting was deemed ’not worth the struggle at the moment’. Pierro’s face said he would attempt this again when the Tsaritsa was back. Everybody was always more well behaved when she was there.
But for now, Capitano deemed his day free.
“Would you care for dinner?”
He turned his head a little, so Sandrone knew he was looking at her in question even with his helmet.
“If you let me choose the place this time,” she did the Sandrone-equivalent of raising an eyebrow (which largely consisted of a blank face while tilting her head and a slow blink of her eyes)
He felt his mouth twitch in amusement, “It wasn’t my fault that you are allergic to shrimps and didn’t bother to look at the menu before ordering.”
That earned him the barest hint of a smile (a slight crinkling in the corner of her eyes) and a firm “I am still choosing.”
And well, he couldn’t exactly argue with that.
Turning to the door, he held his arm out for her to take. Sometimes she liked it, some days the thought of touching someone else made her skin crawl. Today seemed to be the latter as she just passed him without a word, holding the door open for him.
“As you wish, my lady.”