Chapter Text
The world is a flurry of colors.
It is a stark contrast to the blacks and grays that Pantalone is accustomed to, that decorate the walls and ceilings of his turf back in Snezhnograd. He had almost forgotten, by now, how vibrant the world was— how terrifying it could be.
Most prominent is the firelight, dancing and dashing and licking at his skin; it has grown to sweep the entirety of the surrounding area into the confines of its gaping maw. The heat culminates in a single spot at the very heart of the nation, a towering mass that dwarfs them all in its shadow. In the center of it all are the still-intact patches of the tree, the sharp icy-blue that makes up the outpour of data from Irminsul’s core, corrupted by the cloying purple poison that eats at its quivering roots.
There are screams in the background, some of fear and some of warning. He imagines the rest of the cast must be running now, desperate to get to safety before the destruction of the tree swallows them all up.
Pantalone should be running too.
But he does not move, even as the tiny spurts and leaks of information begin to pool at his feet, and data comes bursting forth from the swollen bark in great tides that rise up to his ankles, his knees, a threat to sweep him away and submerge him whole.
Funny. He’s always been the selfish one, the man who would stop at nothing for the sake of self-preservation. Injuries and deaths are liabilities, ones he cannot afford to bear, and the moment he knows there is a danger he cannot win against, his first course of action is to distance himself from the conflict.
But this, this is more important than matters of life and death. This is a day he never thought he would get to see. He had imagined he would be dead long before— that the fruits of his efforts would only be witnessed by his successors, centuries after the end of his short mortal lifespan.
Today, he is granted the privilege of watching Irminsul crumble in all its ghastly glory.
He supposes he has Dottore to thank for that. Dottore, who had gifted him life eternal, and made it so that neither illness nor age would touch him; Dottore, for whom he had come all this way from the frozen spires of Snezhnograd to visit.
Dottore, who is now Irminsul itself, bearing the brunt of all the knowledge in the world on his shoulders as Sumeru burns around him.
He cranes his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what is going on. Yes, Dottore had said there was a plan, and he knows what the plan is, but all that seems to have gone out the window, at least from the carnage he’s seeing. He can’t tell how far along the experiment has progressed, or if it’s even ongoing at this point in time.
Unfortunately, his interference will be to no avail. He knows this much.
So the only option left for him now is to watch and trust the process.
The fire nips at his clothes as he waits, hungry for fresh fuel. He makes no attempt to escape it. Try as it might, the heat fails to even touch him, for the hood around him forms a protective shell around him, warding off any wayward flames. As expected— Dottore had promised as such when he gave him the cloak, and he is very rarely wrong when it comes to things like these.
He pulls it closer now. it is not cold, but a tremor has begun to crawl its way up his spine.
Out of everything he could have seen coming today, fear was not something he had anticipated.
The fact that a sacrifice would have to be made had been established from the start; he had known this well, and had been briefed on it time and time again prior to their departure to the point he could recite it backwards in his sleep. Pantalone had thought himself equipped to face this head-on, come what may, for he had trained himself in anticipation of every situation that had crossed his mind: there had been contracts and deeds and contingency plans drawn up by his own hand, and sent off to his subordinates with clear-cut instructions to make use of them should he come to any harm.
All in all, he should have been prepared.
And prepared he is, for the most part, but there is an empty sense of abandonment that is destined to come falling down your chest at the sight of your business partner of centuries going up in flames, one that no amount of endless rehearsal will prime him to ward off.
Ah. A liability. His brow furrows with distaste, and he lets out a shaky laugh.
Disappointing. He had thought himself stronger than this.
But any attempts to wrench his mind from the Doctor’s glaring absence result in failure as he scans the site with apprehensive eyes. His fingers grasp subconsciously at the fabric for security, something to tide him over for the moment and keep his sanity in place.
A guttural cry rumbles the earth, coursing beneath the soles of his steel-capped boots, and he knows from the quieter, reedy note underlying it that he is in pain. Not even a mind as genius as the Doctor’s can withstand the flow of information at such a speed; it would be futile to even hope.
On the off-chance that he makes it out alive, he will be himself no longer.
Pantalone does not want to think about that.
He kneels, plunging his hand through the swirling pool of knowledge and to the ground. Runs his hand along the grass, in the hope that one of the tree’s roots will pick up on his motion and understand.
An insignificant attempt at consolation, but an attempt nonetheless.
The earth groans, and shudders. By now the bark of the tree is peeling, and the flood has gone up to his thighs, making any motion at all difficult. If he did not have three limbs pressed into the ground he thinks he would have been swept away by now.
Whether his endeavor has succeeded, he will never know, but he will choose to think that it does, if only to bring relief to himself.
He withdraws his hand, but does not retreat.
Now, he should have left a long time ago. He had been specifically instructed to run before the flames caught up, watch the burning from a safe distance. And that had been the plan for him, too, at least until he found himself here, standing beneath the crumbling body of his partner, by himself for the first time in centuries.
And Pantalone, by nature, is a contrary man.
So here he is, in direct disobedience to Dottore’s orders, waiting from the shadows with his heart in his throat, readying himself for the eventual collapse of Irminsul.
It is a lot harder to step any further now, given how fraught the air is with the buzz of electricity, and the rising level of data ebbing upward at his trousers. It comes gushing out of every crack and orifice of the tree, pulsing red as the flames eat at its tender heart with a greed greater than even his own. He sees the knowledge that comes rushing past in snatches: silhouettes from Teyvat’s vast history, playing out before his eyes in real-time; memories of ordinary civilians going about their days; snapshots of himself, even, captured from the teary-wide eyes of his subordinates. (He purses his lips at that last one— he thinks the memory portrays him just a little more cruel than he truly is.)
The color and sound from the influx of knowledge is unpleasant to the ear. It overlaps and merges and blends itself into a singular uneven chorus. Pantalone finds himself tuning out the untuned choir as he watches the leaves crinkle and burn, trying to find a singular voice to focus on so he might distract himself from the dragging weight of his worries before it swallows him whole.
He catches it, then. A garbled voice amongst thousands, fighting through the torrent to get close to him. The energy in the air changes— a hum of a different frequency, sharp against the fray’s dulled monotone. It grows louder as time passes by, more insistent, and beneath him in the flood a surge of warmth bursts forth, racing through the deluge in a stab at capturing his attention.
He squints into the flames and does not flinch away as it warps his field of vision. The light stares in warning; he stares stubbornly back, for he is too far gone to depart now. He can sense the stray memory weaving through the rest in his mind’s eye: quick as a wink, bolting eagerly in his direction.
Then the haze parts a fraction, like curtains at the sides, and the wayward piece comes shooting through, blazing a trail with little regard for the other memories trapped in its path. The streak is streamlined with color that the remaining lack: dancing between ocean-blue and sunlight-gold and everything in between, as if deliberately trying to make itself known.
What piques his interest most about the entity is how oddly intimate it seems. It is this flamboyance, this directness that throws him off— the sheer absence of any subtlety or shame whatsoever, darting to and fro in the firelight, daring the tide to come into its way.
And just as he is about to go after it, it disappears.
Pantalone narrows his eyes, frustrated. Was he imagining things? He would not put it past himself— he has been sleeping rather poorly these days. Or maybe not; he can’t see a damned thing now that the smoke’s covered everything in a brown-gray haze.
His eyes are burning as he forces himself to move forward, steering himself out of the worst of the suffocating cloud. His joints ache from the long journey here; he doesn’t remember how long he’s been standing here. He blinks as the smoke seeps into his eyes and curses the flames for their disrespect.
Before him, something is beginning to take shape. An array of colors, converging into one blurry mass in the distance, lit up from all sides by the surrounding firelight. First a smile, then the distant far-off sound of laughter, then the stretching and popping of limbs and neck.
Pantalone wavers. He is not in any real danger— at least, not from the unusual lifeform that stands before him now.
He can’t shake the premonition, however, that this thing wants something from him.
Then, as if on cue, it appears. The mist ripples, and the flames part.
From seemingly nowhere, a hand is extended, offered up to him in an open invitation.
At first Pantalone thinks it must be a distortion of the flames, a trick of the wavering smoke, for it flickers in a way that resembles a system glitch. It could be his mind, even, weakened by the lack of oxygen, playing games with his field of vision. He is known to hallucinate when exhausted. Perhaps this is just one more of those strange manifestations.
But then he stares for long enough, and the figure refuses staunchly to fade, and finally after an extended period of time Pantalone can make out individual faces from the glitching mess several feet away.
Faces. Ones that he knows. He catches small glimpses, smiles and frowns, the glint of sharp teeth between mouths agape. The brief flash of a bowtie, the curved beak of a mask. Bits and pieces of coattails and earrings that stand out to him in the ever-changing blur.
No matter what form it takes, each and every iteration is characterized by the exact same achingly familiar teal hair and scars that he would recognize anywhere.
The blood pounding in Pantalone’s ears seems to have reached a crescendo. He stumbles forward to meet the apparition and along with it his hand leaves his side, extending of its own volition in reach of the man waiting patiently from across.
It’s him.
Archons, it’s him.
Perhaps his gesture was not as fruitless as he had initially believed.
Dottore reaches out, lips parted in a silent cry; Pantalone reaches back.
The swelling and receding throes pull insistently at his waist, trying to force him down, but he stands his ground, heels digging firm into the drowned-out grass as he wades through the flood in an attempt to get to his partner. The heat amplifies as he approaches, fueled by the burnt branches, but he forces himself closer, undeterred by the warnings that the firestorm screams at him.
Pantalone’s mind is in a state of hysteria now, incapable of any proper logical reasoning whatsoever. It doesn’t make sense that he is here now, but he cannot register that just yet. Il Dottore is inches away. He is waiting. He has found him.
He has found him.
By some sort of miracle, or perhaps on sheer spite and willpower alone, he manages to fight his way through and come to a stop by Dottore’s side, to where the man waits, flickering, in and out of his segmented state.
How different he looks now, from the man he knows.
How wrong.
For once, Pantalone is at a loss for words.
He wants to be petty, cruel. Vindictive as he always is, and reprimand Dottore for the losses he has caused him.
He finds, subsequently, that he cannot.
“Doctor,” he starts, as he closes in on the silhouette.
But even that goes unheard, for the howling wind surrounding them seizes and dashes his voice to pieces before it can reach his partner’s ears.
Pantalone’s knees buckle as he collapses forward onto his partner, gasping and exhausted, finally unable to withstand the might of the storm.
Their fingers touch, and clasp.
Dottore’s hand is weightless. It is like he is touching smoke.
—Not him.
Everything turns bright, and then they are falling.
Pantalone pulls into the blinding light as the world goes up in flames.