Work Text:
The laboratory smelled of antiseptic as usual.
Pantalone stood in the doorway of the main research wing with one hand resting on the frame, the other holding a leather ledger pressed against his chest. His eyes surveyed the room. Instruments scattered across every surface, a blackboard covered in equations, and two figures who had apparently been arguing long before he arrived.
"—and I'm telling you, the calibration was off by point-three because you touched it with your bare hands," Segment 35 said, not looking up from the microscope he was adjusting."Your fingerprints compromise the lens."
Segment 18 was sitting on the counter, legs dangling, shoes knocking against the cabinet beneath with his arms crossed.
"I didn't touch your stupid lens. I touched the housing. There's a difference, and you'd know that if you weren't so obsessed with blaming everyone younger than you for everything."
"You are me."
"Unfortunately."
The sound of a throat clearing interrupted them.
Both heads turned toward the doorway.
Pantalone smiled.
"Good evening."
Segment 35 straightened from the microscope. His posture shifted, shoulders back and chin raised. He regarded Pantalone the way a host regards a guest he fully intends to toy with over dinner.
"How kind of you to grace us, Regrator. I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost in your own spreadsheets."
"Your facility has seventeen unmarked corridors and no signage," Pantalone replied, stepping inside. He glanced around the lab, noting the rearrangement of instruments since his last visit. Things had moved. Not much. But enough. "One might think you designed it to be deliberately disorienting."
"One might think correctly." 35 leaned back against the workbench, arms folding across his chest. "But you found your way regardless. You always do. I'd almost call it impressive if I didn't know you've simply memorized the floor plan."
"Third revision of it, actually. You keep renovating."
"A stagnant laboratory is a dead one. Surely even a banker can appreciate the value of reinvestment."
Segment 18 hopped off the counter with a thud.
"He broke the clock," 18 said, jabbing a thumb in 35's direction. "Last Tuesday. Threw a wrench at it because the ticking was bothering him."
"It was interfering with my auditory calibration process."
"You threw a wrench."
"With excellent aim, I might add."
Pantalone pulled out a chair, inspecting it first for chemical stains, because he'd learned that lesson the hard way approximately a century ago and sat down, crossing one leg over the other.
"Just the two of you tonight?"
"The others are otherwise occupied," 35 said, and there was something almost performative about the dismissiveness. He waved a gloved hand as though scattering the question like dust. "I hardly keep a registry of their movements. They're segments, not pets."
Segment 18 snorted loudly.
"Eight got locked in the archive room again. His own fault. He keeps going in there without telling anyone and then the automatic lock engages."
"And you didn't let him out?" Pantalone asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Why would I?"
"Because he's eight."
"He's Dottore."
"He's eight."
18 opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"He has food in there. Probably. There's usually dried samples of something on the shelves."
"You are not feeding an eight year old child dried laboratory samples," Pantalone said. He adjusted his glasses with two fingers. "Where is the archive room?"
"Third floor, east corridor, second door on the—"
"He's fine." 35 cut in. "I checked on him an hour ago through the intercom. He was reorganizing the mineralogy section and told me to, and I quote, 'go away.' Which, I must say, shows excellent taste in boundaries for someone his age."
"He gets that from you," 18 said.
"He gets that from us. Though I'd argue I refined the instinct."
"You didn't refine anything. You just got louder about it."
35's mouth twitched. "Volume is its own refinement, 18."
Pantalone made a quiet sound. He had perfected over centuries of dealing with this. He set the ledger on the least cluttered corner of the nearest desk.
"65? 25? 45?"
35 picked up a pen from the workbench and began turning it between his fingers. The gesture was idle and lazy.
"65 hasn't left his quarters in four days. He does this. The old man gets philosophical and shuts everyone out. You'd think centuries of existence would give someone more to talk about, not less, but apparently silence is what passes for wisdom after 65." He spun the pen once, caught it. "25 is running an extended trial in the secondary lab. Synthetic neural pathways. He asked not to be disturbed, and given that his last interruption resulted in a beaker aimed at my head, I've decided to indulge his request."
"Your head or your head?" Pantalone asked.
35 tilted the mask toward him. The angle of his jaw suggested he found the question entertaining.
"This head. Which, I assure you, is the only one worth aiming at."
"And 45 left for some outpost three days ago," 18 added, tossing a glass vial he'd picked up from the counter and catching it with lazy confidence. "Said something about needing atmospheric data. I think he just wanted to get away from—" He gestured broadly at 35. "—the experience of being in the same room as this one."
"The experience of being in my presence is a privilege most would pay for," 35 said, without a trace of irony.
"And yet here we are," 18 replied. "Free of charge. Lucky us."
Pantalone watched them. Back and forth, back and forth. His chin rested on the knuckles of his gloved hand, and his expression had settled into something.
"I actually came to discuss the quarterly budget," he said, interrupting what was clearly about to escalate into a full dissection of who left the centrifuge running overnight last week. "But I'm beginning to think I should have sent a letter."
"You could have," 35 said. The pen spun again. "Though you and I both know letters don't offer nearly the same entertainment value as watching your face when I tell you the numbers."
"So you know the numbers."
"I always know the numbers, Pantalone. I simply don't care about them the way you do." He set the pen down and spread his hands. A wide and magnanimous gesture. "Enlighten me. What damage have I done to your pristine little ledger this time?"
"Your expenditures in the last quarter exceeded the allocated budget by forty-three percent."
35 went still. His mouth curved slowly and deliberately into something.
"Only forty-three? I'm disappointed in myself."
"Dottore."
"What? I expected at least fifty. Clearly some of the requisitions haven't been processed yet. You should check with your department."
Pantalone uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, placing both palms flat on his knees. The smile on his face was still there.
"You ordered six crates of purified Starsilver from Dragonspine at premium winter shipping rates. For what?"
"Thermal conductivity experiments."
"You ordered nine."
"The first three were contaminated."
"By whom?"
18 raised his hand slowly.
"First one was me. Needed it for something. Second one was also me, but that was an accident. The third one..." He considered. "Actually, that might've also been me."
Pantalone stared at Segment 18 for a long moment. The younger version of Dottore met his gaze with those flat red eyes and something that wasn't quite defiance but wasn't quite innocence either. The particular look of someone who knew exactly what they'd done and had already decided it wasn't their problem.
"You wasted three crates of purified Starsilver."
"I repurposed them."
"For what?"
"Can't tell you. Still in the experimental phase"
"Everything in this laboratory is in the experimental phase!"
18 grinned. A quick, sharp thing and then gone. He was the only segment who smiled with any kind of regularity, and it never touched his eyes.
"You're funny when you're annoyed, Pantalone. Has anyone ever told you that?"
"Several people. Most of them are dead."
"Not because of the joke, I hope."
"Because of the budget."
35 laughed. A low, smooth sound that rolled out because he found the world genuinely amusing when it performed for him. He picked up his pen again and pointed it at Pantalone.
"He has you there, Regrator. Though I must say, the image of you murdering subordinates over fiscal irresponsibility is deeply compelling. You should do it more often. It would streamline my approval process considerably."
"Your approval process doesn't exist. That's the problem."
"And yet the work gets done. Results, Pantalone. Results are their own approval." He spread his arms again. That grand sweeping gesture. "Look around you. Every instrument in this room, every compound, every breakthrough funded by your beautiful numbers and brought to life by my beautiful mind. We're practically co-authors."
"Co-authors imply shared credit. You have never shared credit in your life."
"And I never will. But I'll graciously allow you to fund the footnotes."
18 was watching this exchange like it was the single greatest piece of theater he had ever witnessed. He had pulled his knees up onto the counter, eyes wide with something between glee and disbelief.
"Keep going," he whispered. "This is incredible."
"Eighteen," Pantalone said, his voice pleasant and measured, "shouldn't you be doing something productive?"
"I am being productive. I'm collecting data on interpersonal conflict resolution. Very scientific."
"You're eavesdropping."
"Scientifically."
35 tilted his head. The mask catching shadow, the exposed line of his mouth settling back into that neutral, unreadable line. But there was something behind it.
Pantalone had spent three centuries learning where to look.
"End of week," Pantalone said, his voice shifting, quieter now. "The expense reports. The forms. All of it."
35 held his gaze or rather, held the direction of his gaze, the mask making the actual target of his eyes unknowable. Then he inclined his head and nodded slowly.
"End of week."
"You mean that."
"Have I ever given you reason to doubt my word?"
"Would you like that list chronologically or alphabetically?"
"Dealer's choice, Regrator. I'm feeling generous tonight."
Segment 18 slid off the counter.
"I'm going to go make something warm to drink," he announced to no one in particular, already heading toward the side door that led to what they called the 'kitchen' really just a counter with a kettle, six mismatched cups, and a jar of instant coffee that had been there so long.
"Since when do you make drinks for anyone?" 35 asked.
"I said I was making something for myself. If there happens to be extra, that's a coincidence."
"How generous."
"Don't push it."
He disappeared through the door. The sound of cabinets opening and closing and a clatter, a muffled thud, what might have been a Sumerian curse when something fell off a shelf.
The room changed when it was just the two of them.
The hum of the machines seemed louder or maybe it was just that neither of them was speaking, and the silence was filling the space that 18’s restless energy had occupied.
35 didn't move from his position against the workbench, but something in the set of his body changed. His face turned slightly toward the door 18 had left through, held there for a moment, then swung back to Pantalone.
"You're staring," he said.
"I'm observing."
"That's my line."
"Then you should know how it feels."
35 exhaled slowly. He unfolded his arms, bracing his hands against the edge of the workbench behind him.
"You changed your cologne," he said.
It was such an unexpected thing to say that Pantalone's composure actually flickered. The glasses caught light at a new angle as he recalibrated.
"I didn't think you'd notice."
"I notice everything about you. You know that." A clinical observation "The old one had bergamot as a base note. This one is cedar. Heavier. You're compensating for something."
"Am I."
"The cold, most likely. Cedar holds closer to the skin in low temperatures. You always adjust for practical reasons, even your vanities." He turned the pen again. "I've always found that fascinating about you. Even when you're being sentimental, there's a formula behind it."
Pantalone was quiet for a moment. His fingers adjusted on his knee.
"You know," Pantalone said, his voice lighter now. "most people would simply say it smells nice."
"Most people don't have my olfactory recall. And most people aren't worth the observation." The pen stilled. "You are."
Oh.
Pantalone leaned back in his chair and studied the man across from him. This version of him. This specific, frozen, impossible iteration. The one who carried the weight of Dottore's prime years like a crown, all that arrogance and brilliance compressed into a form that would never age, never soften, never outgrow the ruthless certainty that defined it and yet possessed fractures so carefully concealed that most people never noticed they were there at all.
"You look tired," Pantalone said.
"I don't get tired."
"You don't admit to getting tired. That's not the same thing, and your mouth does something specific when you haven't slept. The left corner drops by approximately two millimeters."
35's hand stopped on the pen.
"You measured my mouth."
"You measured my cologne."
The silence that followed was loaded.
35 moved. He pushed off the workbench and walked to the blackboard, picking up a piece of chalk. His back was to Pantalone now. He didn't write anything.
"Three hundred and twelve years ago," he said, his voice low and smooth, "you tripped over a bedpost and got a nosebleed."
Pantalone went very still.
"We filed a medical report on it. Do you remember the recommendation?"
"...'Put on glasses,'" Pantalone said quietly.
"And your annotation?"
"'I'll have to find them first.'"
"And what was written back?"
Pantalone paused but longer than either of them expected.
"'You have to keep an eye on them, then.'"
35 turned his head slightly and enough for the line of his jaw to catch the light beneath the edge of the mask.
"I wasn't talking about the glasses, Pantalone."
The kettle screamed from the kitchen.
Neither of them flinched. But the sound fractured whatever had been building in between them.
35 turned back to the blackboard. Drew a single line of an equation.
"He's burning the water," he observed.
"Can you burn water?"
"18 can burn anything."
Segment 18 emerged from the kitchen carrying two mugs and holding a third pressed against his chest with his forearm, navigating the doorway sideways. The mugs were steaming. One black coffee, pitch dark and bitter. One that smelled like it had been sweetened, which 18 would deny under torture. And the third one was tea.
He set the black coffee on the workbench near 35 without comment.
He placed the tea in front of Pantalone with slightly more care.
He kept the suspicious sweet one for himself, dropping back onto the counter and cradling it in both hands.
Nobody said thank you.
Pantalone looked down at the tea. It was brewed correctly. Not too dark, not too light, steeped long enough to draw out the flavor but not so long as to turn bitter.
"You remember how I take it," he observed.
"No, I don't," 18 said immediately. "I just made it however. Lucky guess."
"You put honey in it. You remembered the honey."
"There was honey nearby. Coincidence."
"There is no honey in this laboratory. You would have had to bring it."
18 took a very long sip of his drink and didn't answer.
35 picked up his coffee. Brought it to his lips and drank.
"Adequate," he pronounced.
"High praise from the one who threw out my last batch because it was 'two degrees below optimal temperature,'" 18 fired back.
"It was four degrees, and precision matters."
"It's coffee."
"Everything is an experiment, 18. Even coffee. Especially coffee." He took another sip. "Though I'll concede this one falls within acceptable parameters."
"Wow. I'm honored. Should I put that on my resume? 'Made coffee deemed acceptable by a egotistical thirty five year old who's technically four hundred.'"
"You could. Though I'd workshop the phrasing."
For a stretch, the three of them existed in something adjacent to peace. 18 swung his legs against the cabinet. 35 stood at the blackboard with chalk in one hand and coffee in the other, periodically writing a fragment of an equation and then crossing it out with sharp, decisive strokes. Pantalone drank his tea and read through a page of the ledger, the scratch of his own pen.
It was 18 who broke first.
"So," he said as if he was waiting for the right moment to cause trouble. "What were you two talking about while I was gone?"
35's chalk didn't pause on the board. "Fiscal projections."
"Right," 18 said flatly. "Fiscal projections. In the dark. Alone. With the man who changed his cologne."
Pantalone turned a page of his ledger. "I wasn't aware you were monitoring the room's lighting conditions."
"I wasn't. But you—" he pointed at 35 with his mug, "—are standing three feet closer to his chair than you were when I left. And you—" the mug swung to Pantalone, "—have your legs crossed the other way, which you only do when you're trying not to look comfortable."
The room went silent.
"He's observant," Pantalone murmured.
"He's a pest," 35 corrected.
"I'm you," 18 said. "Which means you noticed too. You just won't say it out loud because you've built your entire personality around acting like nothing affects you, which is honestly the most transparent thing about you and always has been—"
"Eighteen."
"—and Pantalone does the same thing except with money and glasses-adjusting, so really you're both just standing in a room performing for each other and pretending you're not—"
"Eighteen."
The younger segment stopped. Took a sip of his coffee loudly.
"I'm just making observations. Very scientific."
35 set the chalk down on the board's ledge with a soft click. He turned and faced 18 with the kind of composure that could only be maintained by someone who was choosing, very carefully, not to throw something.
"Your observational skills are noted and irrelevant. If you'd like to contribute something useful to the evening, I'd suggest finishing your coffee and going to let 8 out of the archive room before he reorganizes the mineralogy section so thoroughly that it takes 25 a week to find anything."
"Why don't you do it yourself?"
"Because I have work to do."
"What work? You haven't finished a single equation on that board. You've written and erased the same line four times."
Pantalone made a sound. A suppressed laugh. He covered it by adjusting his glasses.
Both segments looked at him.
"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "Please, continue. This is more entertaining than anything I've seen at the Zapolyarny Palace in decades."
35 regarded him. A flicker of irritation chased by something else, something that had no business being on the face of the Second Harbinger of the Fatui. Then it settled.
"Glad to be of service, Regrator. Consider it a return on your investment."
"At forty-three percent over budget, I'd expect at least a matinee performance."
"For you? I'd consider an encore."
18 set his mug down with a clack.
"I'm leaving," he announced. "Not because anyone asked, but because if I stay in this room for one more minute, I'm going to need to file a report on whatever this is, and frankly the paperwork isn't worth it."
He slid off the counter, stretched with both arms over his head and headed for the door.
He stopped as he passed Pantalone.
"Your lungs," he said, not looking at him. "How are they?"
"Functional."
"That wasn't the question."
"They're fine, 18. The transplant held."
The young segment stood there for a moment.
"Good," he said. "Stop smoking."
He left before Pantalone could respond.
They’re alone again. That same shift again.
35 didn't look at the door this time. He looked at Pantalone.
Directly.
Pantalone met it.
"He worries," Pantalone said.
"He calculates variables and communicates findings. There's no sentiment in it."
"There's honey in my tea, Dottore."
35 said nothing. He walked forward and stopped in front of Pantalone's chair.
From this distance, the cedar cologne was unmistakable. So was the antiseptic that clung to 35's clothes.
"You didn't answer my question earlier," 35 said. "About the cologne."
"You didn't ask a question. You made a deduction."
"Then let me ask one now." He reached out slowly and adjusted Pantalone's glasses. They hadn't been crooked. His gloved fingertips lingered at Pantalone's temple for a second.
"Why cedar?"
Pantalone looked up at him. This close, the lower half of 35's face was full of details. The line of an unrelaxed jaw, the mouth that withheld smiles, the tension in the muscle beneath his left ear.
"Because," Pantalone said, his voice even and quiet, "someone once told me that bergamot dissipates too quickly in cold climates. That I should choose something that holds closer."
"Someone."
"A researcher. Terrible with paperwork. Worse with boundaries."
"Mm." The sound was low. "And did this researcher specify what it should hold closer to?"
Pantalone's expression didn't change. But his hand resting on his knee shifted toward the edge of the chair. Toward where 35 was standing.
"He didn't need to."
35 didn't pull back.
That was the thing about this particular version of Dottore. He didn't retreat from moments like these. He consumed them.
His hand was still at Pantalone's temple.
"Cedar suits you," he said. "You should keep it."
Then he withdrew. One step back and his fingers found the pen on the workbench behind him without looking. Muscle memory. The laboratory was like an extension of his body.
Pantalone exhaled through his nose.
"Was that your professional recommendation, Doctor? Or a personal one?"
"I don't distinguish between the two. You know that."
"I do. I've simply never decided whether that's admirable or deeply concerning."
"Both." The pen turned. "And you wouldn't have me any other way."
Pantalone stood. Smoothed the front of his coat with one hand. A habitual gesture, something he did when he needed to ground himself. He picked up the ledger.
He moved to the blackboard. Stood beside it, studying the half finished equations. The same line written and erased four times, now written a fifth with no sign of erasure.
"This notation is wrong," he said.
35 turned sharply.
"Excuse me?"
"Third variable. You've transposed the coefficient." Pantalone tapped the board with one finger.
Silence. Then 35 crossed the room in four strides. Stood directly beside Pantalone, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched and stared at the board.
"...That's a typographical error."
"It's a mathematical one."
"It's chalk on a board. It doesn't count."
"Mathematics always counts, Dottore. That's rather the point of it."
It was awfully silent.
Then — and this was the thing about Segment 35, the thing that made him dangerous rather than merely arrogant — he picked up the eraser, wiped the coefficient clean, and rewrote it correctly. Without comment or acknowledging that Pantalone had been right, because acknowledgment would imply that being corrected was something that happened to him, and Segment 35 does not like being corrected.
He set the chalk down.
"You could have been a researcher," he said, not looking at Pantalone. "Wasted potential."
"I am a researcher. My subject matter is simply more liquid than yours."
"Money isn't a science."
"Everything is a science when you apply the right framework. You taught me that, incidentally."
35's mouth did something. He turned his head. Both of them side by side, facing the blackboard. The lower half of his face was fully visible to Pantalone.
"I taught you a great many things," he said. "The question is which ones you chose to keep."
"All of them." Pantalone adjusted his glasses. "I'm a thorough student."
"You were never my student, Pantalone."
"No. I was your specimen. Then your subordinate. Then your colleague. And now?"
35's fingers found the edge of the blackboard and rested there.
"Now," he said, "you're my banker. And my most stubborn patient. And the only person in this organization whose death would cost me more than it would save."
"How romantic."
"Romance is an inefficient allocation of neurochemical resources. What I'm describing is a cost-benefit analysis."
"Of course it is."
"Don't patronize me, Regrator."
"I wouldn't dream of it. I'm simply noting that your cost-benefit analysis includes the word 'cost' which implies you've assigned value to something beyond the transactional. That's unusual for you."
35 said nothing for a long moment. Then he reached past Pantalone filling the narrow space and picked up a piece of chalk from the ledge on Pantalone's other side. He could have reached it without leaning.
"Don't read into it," he murmured. "I'm simply protecting my investment."
"In what?"
"You."
He stepped back. Wrote another line on the board. This one was correct.
Pantalone watched him work for a moment.
He opened his mouth to respond.
The intercom crackled.
Both of them went still.
"35."
25's voice. Clipped and irritated.
"I'm occupied," 35 said, without moving toward the intercom.
"So was I. Until 18 decided to come banging on my door asking where the honey is."
Pantalone went very still.
"The honey," 35 repeated.
"Apparently, we don't have any. He wanted to know if I'd confiscated it. I haven't. I also don't care. But now he won't leave, and he's touching my equipment."
A crash in the background. Distant but unmistakable.
"That was a beaker. I'm going to kill him."
"You can't kill him. He's us."
"Watch me."
Another crash.
"35. Handle this."
The intercom went dead.
35 stood at the blackboard with chalk in one hand and an expression that could only be described as the specific flavor of exhaustion that comes from being six people and disliking every single one of them.
Pantalone pressed his lips together hard. He was physically preventing himself from laughing, because three centuries of diplomatic composure could only withstand so much.
"So," Pantalone said. "18 brought honey. From somewhere that isn't here. For tea that he claims he made by coincidence."
35 set the chalk down hard.
"Don't."
Pantalone looked at him. Held the gaze for exactly long enough then picked up his ledger from the desk. Tucked it against his chest.
"End of week, Dottore. The expense reports."
"End of week."
He moved toward the door. His footsteps were unhurried.
At the threshold, he paused. One hand on the frame, the same way he'd arrived.
"Good night."
35 didn't turn from the blackboard. His chalk was already moving again.
"Good night, Pantalone."
The door closed. The intercom crackled again. 25's voice, clipped and furious, something about a second beaker again, and beneath it, 18's muffled laughter, bright and defiant and utterly unrepentant.