no escape from reality (scaramouche fanfic)

Chapter 2: The Vagrant Vagrants onto a New Day

Lately, Scaramouche was, although embarrased to admit it, afraid of being caught, let it be the Raiden Shogun's whatever goverment, or the Fatui's whatever random person. And so, he wondered and wondered, until realizing that the best way of solving his fear for now was reducing the only time he became sensible and “attackable”; his sleep.

Unfortunately, and even as a puppet, this lack of sleep made him grumpy, even more than usual. But who could he be annoying to if he was completely alone? Scaramouche was resting on his temporal house for today: a sneakily placed cave that was cold but hey, at least he could sleep a bit more peacefully.

Even after all of this, he still had the same clothes. He hadn't even thought about changing. There was something weirdly special to Scaramouche about his clothes and hat.

The Balladeer woke up and tried to not hit his head while slowly creeping out of the weird hole in the cave he slept on. If it sounded uncomfortable, it's because it was. He grabbed his hat from another weird cranny on the wall, grabbed his improvised backpack-sack-pillow and made sure that the cave was as he left it when he fell asleep.

If he was still the Balladeer he would just go to a random Inazuman peasant and order one of his underlings to kill them and give him their clothes (although it would be much more likely for him to order new custom-made clothing) but he didn't have his underlings now so he had to do it himself.

Scaramouche still frowned at the thought of having to do such futile things himself.

The “retired” Balladeer got fully out of the cave, being presented with the Inazuma he was so used to. The nighttime was close to ending, as indicated by the sun, that slowly starting becoming visible as it seemed to move upwards.

Scaramouche's only goal for today was to get new clothes.

To his luck, there was a small house nearby. Since it didn't look dangerous, Scaramouche walked towards it, hoping that there would be people outside who's clothes he could snatch.

But as he got closer to the door, it opened by itself, and a man came out of it.

“Oh, are you okay? You look lost and sick. Even if the sun's about to go out, being alone at night can be dangerous. Do you want to stay on my house until it's safer?”, the words were spoken with concern by the assumed owner of the house.

The man looked old, lame and sad, like the type of person he'd be feared by, but he was being... kindly welcomed to a house? The house was probably lame and sad too, but caves are even worse.

“Thank you so much, sir.”, replied Scaramouche.

“Oh, don't worry at all! It's just basic respect. Come in!”, said the man.

Scaramouche walked to the house. Even if it was lame and sad compared to his standards, it still felt so magical and cozy.