Those Who Dream of Freedom (Scaramouche x fem!reader)

Chapter 4 ☆ A fight to remember

☆ y/n

I got the Anemo vision when I was ten, something I never thought would happen as a child. Not that I expected to get a vision when I grew up either. Teenagers and adults get visions, but only if they stand out with something, if they come to have some level of understanding of the world or some important ambition, so I shouldn't have gotten one. Usually people who get visions have been through all sorts of things in their lives: either they've lost someone close to them, or they've had a hard life, or they've been through something traumatic, but not me. Not to that point. Nothing had happened that mattered that much before then. A lot of people think that Inazuma is a poor country and that's the main reason people here get visions, but you couldn't be more wrong. There are many things in this country, as in all the others, but everyone looks down on us because we're isolated and on top of that, because of the Vision Hunt Decree. Or as people in the country call it, the Persecution.

But I didn't get the vision because of the hard life I was supposed to have been leading, but because of what happened that day and the loss I suffered.

In my ten-year-old mind, it never even occurred to me that this could happen. My parents were my parents and I thought they would always be there for me. I dreamed back then, like every little girl, that my dad would walk me down the aisle on my big day and that my husband would be as nice a person as he was. However, they remained just a little girl's dreams in the end, which never materialized.

The weather hadn't been very friendly to us lately, there were lots of thunderstorms and the skies were usually cloudy. However, living in Inazuma, we were used to storms and didn't worry about them. But one day, when I was coming back from school, I noticed that there was a lot of commotion in the village where we lived. Since I was little I didn't think much about what might happen, and all I could think about was that I would get home and play with my mum and dad like every day. It just became clearer and clearer as I got closer to our house that the commotion was coming from that direction. It wasn't anyone's birthday, at least not yet, so all those people had no business being at our house. I got scared. Except I didn't freak out because of the commotion at home. I got scared when I saw each person carrying one or two buckets of water. I realized that something bad had happened. It was only then that I saw the fire when I reached the gate.

Many years later I found out that it was actually an electrical fault, but at the time, people there told me that my folks had made a campfire as a surprise for me. It didn't make much sense, but I would have believed anything at the time.

Then, of course, I asked about my mother and father, but nobody told me anything.

They were probably hoping that things would end there, that they would somehow be able to protect me, but in my mind the idea was already starting to take hold, and after a few hours someone finally told me the truth.

In short, within hours, I was an orphan. Their surprise turned into tragedy. Now I know they died in their sleep, and in a way I'm glad, because they may not have felt anything, or at least that's what I prefer to think.

The vision came to me a few days later during the funeral. I was left in the care of some neighbours, because no relatives wanted to take care of me. My neighbours probably felt pressured when they agreed to take me in. My presence in their house bothered them to no end, and when they thought I didn't hear them they talked about me: they said no one wanted me, that I was just a nuisance, that they were stuck with me. At the time I thought they didn't like children and talked like that to get it off their chests, but now I know better. They never liked my parents and taking care of me was like a cruel punishment for them.