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One of Arlecchino’s first memories was in peering down at their hands, much like the form they were before, yet much smaller and adorned with piercing red nails.
They were as small as a child, and the walls of the Ordo and the people around them seemed to stretch into the sky. Arlecchino felt vulnerable, caged in and unable to find the freedom they once had, nothing but a pet, an experiment for these humans to test the mettle of their final shot at redemption.
For years, they’d barely seen the sunlight, their only knowledge of it coming in the forms of books or in the words of the researchers that surrounded them day in and day out.
The researchers treated Arlecchino as they would a child, but always held them at arms length. It was strange, isolating, at times. They knew they were a freak, as sometimes when their emotions grew too great for their body, they lost control over the form that allowed them to pass as human.
Even still, there were days that Arlecchino was afforded the niceties of a human’s day-to-day life. There were fancy meals afforded on Friday’s, or bedtime stories read that Arlecchino could pick out. Better yet, there was a promise for a possible field trip if they behaved well.
So Arlecchino behaved well, always going to sleep on time and cleaning up after themself.
Yet, when that supposed day was to come, there was no such field trip.
“I’m sorry little one,” Basil murmured, patting their head. “We have an important guest coming.”
Arlecchino scarcely had the time to respond before the aura of something greater-than filled the room. They glanced toward one of the many entrances, finding a figure clad in blue cloth, much better kept than any of the rags they or the others in the Ordo ever wore. They eyed her wearily, sneaking behind Basil.
The figure tipped her hat. “I apologize for the suddenness of my arrival!”
“It’s no trouble at all, though I don’t think the others will be able to greet you.” Basil answered, patting Arlecchino’s head.
“I don’t mind,” she hummed, summoning what looked to be a wheel, with spokes adorned in bubbles and delicacies. “Do they have a liking for sweets?”
Arlecchino peered from behind Basil’s leg. “I do.”
“Wonderful,” the woman responded.
Though she was scarcely any taller than Basil’s chest, the presence and confidence the stranger exuded was nothing short of overwhelming. Perhaps, there was a reason for that confidence. Arlecchino had no idea why they were so full of it, nor why their superiors cared so much for her.
“There are only sixteen slices of these sold a day. I hope you enjoy it, and make sure to thank me, of course.” the woman rambled, picking out one of the bubbles and popping it, handing the small plate over to Arlecchino.
Though it was small for her, the plate was rather large for Arlecchino, and he had to hold it with two hands. He awkwardly shifted, grabbing the accompanying fork and stepping away from the two adults.
He paused before going too far, and murmured a small, "Thank you."
It didn't seem like the stranger heard. As he scooped the slice into his mouth, he eyed the two women in the distance.
They seemed very focused on whatever they were talking about, prophecy and neohuman leaving their mouths more often than any other word.
Arlecchino had no real care for it, obviously enough. Yet, the stranger's eye would catch him from time to time. Though he was a mere child, he could tell the stranger was looking at the anomalies of his arms and eyes rather than at him as a human.
With time, the stranger left, and Arlecchino was left to the usual routine of the Ordo.
Since then, many things had changed.
Arlecchino was now Fourth of the Fatui Harbingers, a Father to many, and even more importantly, a hunter of Fontaine's Gnosis.
It was suffice to say the naïveté he once had was long gone. Growing into an adult meant understanding the ways of the world, the cruelty of the divine, and how Fontaine's sins would sink it whole.
He had no intention of letting this happen, of course.
He now prowled the streets, surveying the city and hoping for any lead that could guide him closer to the redemption of his homeland. As with everything, it all came down to the Gnosis, and now he sat in wait for a way to learn how to access Furina's chambers.
Yet, when that promised day was to come, there was no such reprieve.
An idol to Fontaine, someone not quite a paragon of justice, Furina was exhausted from another day at the Opera. It wasn't that long ago where her fallibility was laid bare for her entire nation to see. She was fortunate - perhaps unfortunate as well - that the incongruent sentencing of that man drew attention away from her and towards the Oratrice.
So now, she chose to unwind.
As Fontaine's Archon, Furina was gifted with fame and fortune, though her status meant that even her most fanatical of paparazzi never bothered to find her chambers.
It also meant that she was, quite often, left unguarded if she wasn't in the Epiclese. It meant she was alone, more often than not, left to her own devices and whatever fantastical pet she could bother herself with. Perhaps one would find her pathetic, scouring for pets to keep her company. She chose not to think about it too closely, lest she spiral.
Now, in the dead of night, she found a cat.
Try as she might to coax him closer, he only moved further.
As if he, a cat, somehow knew of her status!
"Come back here!" she yelled, uncaring for whomever could be up this late or attempting to sleep.
It was only then that her mortality was threatened, a dark shadow phasing into the corner of her eye before knocking her to the ground, a clawed hand digging into her chest and finding purchase on nothing.
Furina cried out, willing for the arm to be removed from her, and it was only then she was thrown to the ground, witnessing her assailant.
They stood above her, cloaked. Red eyes peered down at her as if she were some prey to be hunted, and dark, inhuman hands with sharp claws glimmered in the moonlight. Even as their claw removed itself from her, she feared seeing blood that wasn’t there.
"Please don't kill me," she began to sob, her tears blurring whatever detail she could gleam.
Arlecchino stood above her, disgusted.
Nothing had changed about the woman.
If anything, she had gotten worse, more pitiable than chivalrous. She was no god, no pillar of justice meant to hold Fontaine above the waves intent on drowning it.
No, Furina was a celebrity who spent her time enjoying the drama of the theater, crawling out in the middle of the night when boredom struck her. She dined on rare sweets as her people inched ever-closer to their demise, a god in nothing except the act of forsaking.
She had no purpose to Arlecchino's plans, not immediately. But it didn't mean that the revelation quenched the fury now evident on his features.
Furina held up her hands, hoping it would be enough to keep at bay the stranger who had quite literally toyed with her life mere moments ago. She wept, the noises leaving her mouth sounding less like words and more like a final breath. To accept her fate so easily when there was so much left to be done, there was nothing more infuriating to Arlecchino.
Those clawed hands pinned Furina to the ground, wrapping around her neck and squeezing.
"You are a distraction," Arlecchino hissed, nails deep enough to cut. "A harbinger of your own people's deaths."
"I'm not, please let me go- "
One hand began to undress her as he growled. "You are nothing, an empty vessel for an empty promise, a failure."
Furina scarcely noticed how her clothes were stripped from her, ripped and torn, buttons popping with the fullness of the Knave's anger.
She knew the prophecy foretold of an eternal punishment - of isolation while floating amidst her people's souls. All that this stranger said was true. She was a failure, a fuck-up in the chess game of divine beings and mortals.
But she was already bearing her punishment, was she not? She spent her nights alone, away from her people. They rarely spoke to her, lest they were hired specifically to stay by her side. She had to turn to the company of creatures who could not speak back, and yet the world still demanded a greater punishment for her shortcomings.
So perhaps that's what this stranger was.
This stranger, familiar yet unfamiliar, clawing away anything that kept her modest in their anger, telling her everything she already knew.
"Look at me." they hissed.
Furina's eyes glanced down at her body, naked, with the smallest beads of blood scattered throughout her skin from her assailant. The way that blood shone in the moonlight almost seemed beautiful.
She was sure her own tears, the way her body tensed and prickled from the cold of the evening, looked the same way. There was beauty in suffering, at least that’s what Furina told herself when watching any case in the Opera come to a close.
The Hydro Archon looked them in the eye.
Arlecchino removed their mask.
There was something familiar in what she saw, but Furina felt too resigned to think on it further.
Warm hands groped at her breasts. "At least you feel good."
Furina broke the gaze, looking towards the moon behind her assailant. She'd never been touched before, not in any of the ways she'd been touched tonight.
Her body writhed and her skin grew goosebumps. The warmth of their hands was nothing short of scalding, as if their anger couldn't be contained in words alone. When their claws dragged against her skin, leaving shallow cuts, her body was begging her to fight and flee.
She wasn't stupid. She knew this was the Harbinger that presided over the House of the Hearth. Yet, she was already trying to remove herself from thinking of this as anything more than what it was, but her mind wasn't strong enough.
But it also meant that someone so important had come to her now. Had taken the time to know her intricacies, to know she was a sham and a false idol for all of Fontaine. And yet, they were still touching her, albeit roughly.
So it was a punishment, but it meant that the Knave also cared for her, did it not?
Cross-shaped pupils drifted up and down Furina's body, eventually landing on the space between her legs. In the moonlight, the slick that had begun to gather was only further highlighted by the celestial body, unable to keep Furina's enjoyment a secret.
"Even when I hurt you, you like it." Arlecchino hissed.
There was disgust in those words, a contempt that made it seem like the Harbinger was looking at the lowest of the low, of scum that stained their shoe.
"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm sorry."
A click of their tongue and Arlecchino pulled back, only to be grabbed onto by Furina.
Though the latter's vision was too blurry, she tried her best to look them in the eye.
Whatever anger Arlecchino had started to put away only came back with fervor.
He growled, shoving Furina to the ground and huffing, pressing his crotch down onto the idol's. Furina pursed her lips, unwilling to think of what she felt, how it throbbed and of how it threatened to burn her.
Claws like iron were shoved into Furina's cunt, a wailing cry ripped out of the Archon.
The lapse of judgement she had in pulling him closer was now forsaken, her weak, untrained arms trying to shove Arlecchino away. He paid her no mind, scarcely even looking at her face as his fingers pumped and curled within her, sharp nails likely shredding divine flesh.
It hurt, and it hurt in ways she didn't know she could be hurt.
"You like this, don't you?" Arlecchino snapped, fingers knuckle-deep before pulling back.
It hurt.
The moonlight danced across the beads of arousal and blood racing down Arlecchino's fingers and arm.
Furina hated this.
Her body was screaming at her, and thoughts ran through her mind a mile a minute. This was horrible, wrong, a perversion of what Furina's first time experiencing such intimacies was supposed to be.
This was wrong.
"N- No!" she choked out, hands finding purchase on grayed lapels yet unable to do anything at all.
"Be quiet, you bitch." Arlecchino growled, a slap crashing against a pale cheek.
Furina took pause, then.
She'd heard that word before, felt its shape with her tongue, at times. But whenever she bore witness to it, it was hurled between defendant and prosecutor, even shouted at the Chief Justice. Something to hiss beneath a breath, a secret kept between Fontainians.
Never, never had anyone even dared to levy that kind of phrase against her.
Her tears, hot and unrelenting as they were, came two-fold now, the pain between her legs and the futility of her situation crashing down upon her like a blade of her execution; and, as she knew she was guilty, made no response.
Furina knew she looked ugly then, wiping her tears as claws used her, a hole and a waste of fame. She wept, unaware of how her own blood streaked her cheek, how Arlecchino leered at her.
In silence, the Knave's palms pressed Furina's legs to her chest, spreading her cunt before they undid their pants, grinding themself against her.
The fabric of their boxers stung, and strangely enough, hurt more than what had just happened prior. She deigned to look down, bearing witness to those boxers get pulled down beneath a length that matched the color of Arlecchino's arms, throbbing with orange veins that hissed with an unspoken anger.
"I can't," Furina pleaded. "Please don't do this, I'll get the Gn- "
Arlecchino shoved themself in with a sigh. "Shut up."
Furina's gaze snapped up and at the moon, hoping for solace and isolation. Yet, the skies denied her such a thing, demanded her to accept their company and enjoy it.
After all, it wasn't like anyone else would take Arlecchino's place.
"This will be the one thing you can do, Miss Furina." they added. "You can at least let your own citizen take their rightfully earned anger out on you."
Furina weakly shook her head, looking down at her body, marred by blood and newly-forming bruises.
She could see where Arlecchino's cock was, pressing forward against her belly, a dim, angry glow.
After a moment, the briefest moment of respite, Arlecchino's hips drew back and slammed forward, scraping Furina's back against the pavement. It stung, how the Father stretched and carved her, but it no longer hurt the same way their claws once did.
Perhaps, she joked to herself, she made them wet enough with her blood and tears.
Her tears, yes, those were starting to fade. Her body, damned divine vessel it was, numbed some of the pain she'd suffered, but didn't choose to suture the cuts nor cool the bruises littering her body. Her body, a shortcoming of what a divine vessel was supposed to be, only did so much, a limit placed on how well she could truly take the punishment doled upon her.
Above her, Arlecchino's eyes returned to hers.
"Go on, Miss Furina," they chuckled.
Weakly, Furina's hips shifted experimentally, trying to find whatever pace Arlecchino had set. It was foreign and awkward and uncomfortable at best, but the Harbinger above her didn't much care.
Arlecchino didn't care.
Furina studied their features.
Cross-shaped pupils dipped in blood and laid against the void of night. A sharp brow and nose, and an equally sharp jaw that carried their sweat to singular points onto their face before dripping onto her. Thin lips, pulled in a knowing smile.
"You're certain about the reason for this, now." Arlecchino finished.
Yes, Furina pondered.
She was sure.
She left her chambers tonight in the hopes of finding company. Though a cat shirked her, this Harbinger didn't. This Harbinger, the Knave, knew that she was nothing more than a figurehead of Fontaine, the splendor of witnessing justice without ever being its perpetrator or victim. It was only a matter of time until she could be judged the same way she so often judged others.
They understood her isolation, her inability to live up to the expectations of her people.
And here they were, touching her, using her, keeping her company when all she did was will them to stay.
Arlecchino harmed her, the way the deaths of those she'd fail would. A prospective punishment, a rehabilitation for her sins. She'd have everything taken from her and everything given in return.
Furina, the idol bitch, would have her innocence and façade stripped, and have the wealth of Arlecchino's touch in return.
It was all well and good, anyway. It was the scale of justice tipping everything even for all that she had done - perhaps not done - for the sake of her people. She wanted to save them, and yet at every turn she fell short.
Furina's gaze, once blurred, now met Arlecchino's openly. She gently took one of the clawed hands coated in her blood and pressed it to her cheek, gaze unbreaking.
"Thank you," she whispered.
If something in Arlecchino's psyche shifted, their face didn't make it known. They let Furina move a bloody thumb to her mouth, let her lips part and invite the appendage in, sucking it as her body rocked against the pavement, seeking that corrosive friction.
"That's better." the Knave sighed, pushing their thumb deeper.
Mismatched pupils widened, Furina's throat catching the edge of that claw, bile and blood threatening her. But she paid them no mind and continued sucking, even threatening a smile when she felt the other palm crash against her chest and grope her breasts once more.
Furina accepted when Arlecchino yanked her mouth open to spit into it, swallowing as she whimpered. She’d never heard of anything like that, nor had she ever seen such a thing be done to anything but trash or a wayward bush. It was only another part of the judgment. Arlecchino's heat and pulse within her, something she once loathed, was now begging to be brought deeper.
That pulse was now a pounding rhythm, insatiable and demanding for the only thing Furina could truly give.
She panted, drooling upon herself as Arlecchino crashed down onto her, their hips aided with gravity to hurt her, to deliver what she had been promised. Furina moaned, whatever pain she once feared now welcomed with open arms.
"Please," Furina cried, her momentary naïveté leading her to try and lean for a kiss that would never come.
Arlecchino chose instead to move faster, the heat of exhaustion and whatever this desire was consuming the both of them. Furina obeyed the feeling, meeting his thrusts with equal fervor and messy squeaks and cries.
It was only when she heard Arlecchino's voice grow dim, his hips snapping in weaker, but deeper thrusts, that she realized he had cum. The pain of the heat that followed sent her over the edge, Furina's voice keening as her hips bucked up against Arlecchino, hoping to take him deeper than he already was.
It was pathetic, she knew. But it was the only thing she could give him.
The two lay there for some time, the moon shifting against the sky as if in a lazy dance, meandering to its end without will or purpose. Furina looked up at it fondly, her hands holding Arlecchino's body and feeling his breath return to its usual pace.
"Do you fear being seen as you are?"
Whatever tone had been employed was far too vague for Furina to read. Taunting, it was most likely. Though a part of Furina naïvely hoped it was laced with a poison resembling something like empathy.
Arlecchino sat up, pulling Furina onto his lap.
He added a small, "To see you as nothing more than a toy to be put on display as the trophy of Hydro."
Furina whined at the newfound pressure within her.
"You whore." he hissed.
Furina glanced around, hearing the footsteps of heels and boots, seeing women on their secret strolls starting to come around in the late evening.
She pursed her lips. "You wanted more?"
The look in his eye said enough.
Whatever discomfort she had, she reminded herself that this was a blessing. Arlecchino wanted more time with her, perhaps in a way that was no longer intended to be a punishment. Of course, it only made sense. Punishment was surely just pretext for his own indulgences, a way for him to get close to her without alerting his subordinates.
Furina looked downward at her legs, thighs stained with her own arousal and whatever other mess she had made of herself. Though it was too dim to make out, a part of her believed she could catch the shine and glow of blood on her skin.
“Okay,” Furina steeled herself. “Thank you, Knave.”
While there was the beginnings of a resurgent anger in Arlecchino’s gaze, jaw locked and tongue held from spouting whatever simmered in his mind, it melted the moment Furina uttered thanks. His hands reached to hold Furina’s waist, gripping her as if she was a toy to be shifted and moved with any whim.
Without a single noise of effort made, Arlecchino lifted Furina upward, before letting go to slam her back down onto him.
Furina squeaked, the last bit of her consciousness making her look around again, hoping that no one wandering around the city would take notice of their display. Realistically, she knew that any sound she’d make would draw eyes - she was the center of attention in Fontaine, after all.
But a distant part of her, the part that was now sinking beneath the waves of pleasure, wanted to run and hide. Her people didn’t deserve to see someone they held in high regard - even if for their entertainment - like this. Or perhaps it was simply her own guilt, another perceived indulgence while the doomsday clock ran closer to its end.
That same part of her believed that this was nothing more than a whim, that Arlecchino didn’t see this as anything more than what it was.
Now, Arlecchino returned to their brutal pace.
Furina was pistoned into, a gear in an uncaring machine. She wept, though she was numbed to the pain. It was sweet, bitter, but all that she could possibly hope for. She leaned forward, wanting to see if she could capture Arlecchino's lips in a kiss. The Knave sneered, moving one hand to grab at her jaw and bite into her neck instead.
The idol of Hydro seemed to turn into mist with each thrust, the eyes of those seen and unseen drawing to the exhibition. It wasn't enough for Arlecchino to strip her of all that made her distinguishable, they had to turn her into a puppet, a doll.
It was as if the last remnants of autonomy flowed into obscurity without resistance.
"Please, more?" Furina sobbed, though she knew not of what.
Claws dug into her back and thighs and hips, streaks of blood and accompanying bruises drawing Furina further into the depths.
"I should've known you'd break so easily," they spat. "You never deserved to be an Archon."
Furina didn't care about how her chest tightened, how her tears painted rivers down her body to meet where she and Arlecchino were most intimate. No, of course, the heat burned hotter.
The gazes of a thousand eyes and those cross-shaped pupils branding her skin, Furina knew well that her people would see her like a common whore. It was all well and good, as she would finally be seen as the fraud she was and be given a newfound experience from it.
"Tell them," Arlecchino growled. "Tell them who's shown your true nature."
"Knave!" Furina answered. "Thank you,"
The two's bodies met like the high tides of a full moon, crashing against one another in ways more painful than pleasurable. Each shift in Furina's body stung, partially from her injuries, and partially from exhaustion. Yet, she still rode, shutting her eyes and tilting her head back.
She could hear the murmurs of people speaking about her in hushed voices the same way Arlecchino yelled at her. She was no spymaster, but she heard it all.
"Knave," she moaned out, her jaw falling slack.
Claws dug into plush skin, harsher, more desperate.
Furina could feel her body at its limit, a limit far lower than that of an Archon. But she did not mind, she reveled in how she would be broken for all to see and hear. She was a doll, a puppet to be strung up and played with by a Harbinger likely more powerful than her.
She smiled, her tears dry once again as her hips lost their precision, her climax caressing her before ripping the ecstasy out of her.
Furina keened, slamming herself down onto Arlecchino and jutting her hips, small, weak movements from her as she rode out her orgasm. She scarcely noticed that Arlecchino was doing the same until she felt something drip from her.
In silence, she was pulled off Arlecchino and placed where she once lay.
"Knave?" she crawled forward, reaching for him.
He zipped up his pants. "Go to your room. We're done."
Furina blinked, watching her reach toward Arlecchino falling short as he walked away. She looked around, seeing those thousands of eyes upon her until she blinked.
Whereever Arlecchino was walking to, he was no longer seen. Where piercing eyes were there were the buildings of Fontaine. Where she had once felt pleasure, she simply felt an empty, dull throb.
There were no eyes on her, yet she covered herself in the hopes of gaining modesty.
She sniffled, a small moment of clarity glimpsing her mind before consuming it entirely, and she sobbed. She sobbed on that empty pavement, shakily trying to piece her clothes together. She shook, her body now reminding her of the horror she enjoyed.
When Furina stumbled back into her room, she swaddled herself in her blankets, summoning every pet she had to comfort her. Though they kept her cool, her body burned like she was struck with a fever, and she wept, pondering her choices.
She had been attacked and punished, and yet she enjoyed it. She enjoyed what she was not supposed to, and her body trembled at the thought of the Harbinger while her cunt grew slick. She wept, she wept until she could cry no more, and yet her fingers slipped between her legs.
Furina did not sleep that night.
Later, when Arlecchino requested a tea party, he did not expect such little intervention by Furina's keeper. In fact, he was quite sure he'd have another boring, proper meeting. The kind that so often kept Furina’s true nature from him, the kind he loathed.
But now…
Furina sat across from him, her eyes downcast on the sweets.
"No need to play so coy, Miss Furina." he hummed.
"It's- I'm okay, really." she swallowed. "I…"
"You should eat it." Arlecchino repeated, voice drawing into a thin, deadly edge. "I wouldn't want you to waste your people's efforts."
Furina's eyes snapped toward the Harbinger's gaze, a momentary fury in her eyes and a retort on her tongue. But a look in Arlecchino's eyes was more than enough to whittle her back down, and Furina's hands reached out toward the table.
Hands, gloved and small as they were, shook as they caressed the plate.
Arlecchino watched as Furina seemed to hide within herself, not wanting to make herself seem like the grand idol she was so fond of being. He leered, a twisted joy igniting that flame from their previous tryst, the space in his pants growing tighter.
He could see the warble in her eyes, the sheen of tears making those drop-shaped pupils seem to glow.
"There are only sixteen slices of these made a day," Arlecchino remarked. "I hope you enjoy it, and thank me, of course."
Furina's eyes returned to theirs, a distant recognition and a newfound fear warping her features. Her hands shook, unable to bring the fork and the cake any closer to her mouth. She looked so small, like this. Smaller than she did that night.
Arlecchino found their temper short, picking up the fork and holding it to her lips.
"Eat."
Furina's breath abated, and her lips parted, the piece of cake placed into her mouth. Arlecchino pulled away, handing her back the fork and smiling.
"Thank you," Furina whispered, voice too distant to make it sound genuine.
Arlecchino chuckled. "Don't act like you don't love it."
Furina knew not what they referred to.
But she nodded, knowing that no matter the answer, Arlecchino was right.