I'll break you (Dottore X Fem Reader)

~ 19 ~

2 months later

"Updates?"

The Agent flinched. "N-no news, ma'am."

I clenched the pen in my hand tighter.

"Get out of my sight," I sighed.

The agent raced out of the office which I'd been occupying for the past two months. It was a royal mess. Maps, reports and paperwork littered the desk and the floor nearby.

He was nowhere to be found. An entire two month of sending out spies, hiring mercenaries and bounty hunters, and all came back with the same result. Dottore couldn't be located. He'd basically dropped off the face of the earth.

One month in, and a funeral was held. A funeral I didn't attend because I refused to believe it. His white ceremonial robes were gifted to me after the funeral yet I felt nothing. I remembered the first time we'd gone to visit the Tsaritsa so that he would enroll me in as Fatui; he wore this robe. I pushed the memory away.

Throughout the past weeks, people began to pity me. They would say that I was going through a 'depressive episode' and this was my way of coping with the grief of losing him. The palace residents couldn't seem to understand my attachment to the Fatui Harbinger but they were irrelevant to me. Mere disposable pawns in a bigger game. They couldn't even begin to reach the height of my achievements. Useless, every single one of them.

I left the office and started towards the training room that had become my second home. My fists clenched and unclenched tightly as I forced myself to keep my breathing in check. I was seething with rage almost all the time and it was blatantly obvious with the way passers by scrambled to move out of my way. It had been like this ever since I got back.

My whole being had changed entirely since returning. Once upon a time, I was the quiet assistant of a Harbinger who had picked up a few victories here and there but now... Well, I could hardly be recognised.

My reputation had soured to that of a rotten apple. Everyone I talked to received short tempered and stern treatment. The blood on my hands and the corpses under my name had reached a mortifying height. Throughout the month, any and every person that had seen or even heard of Dottore in Sumeru was taken in for questioning by me. They never came out of the interrogation room.

My underlings were growing tired of cleaning up the bodies and soon I'd slowly became the 4th Fatui Harbinger's replacement. It was almost as if he'd never left after I'd taken over his office.

The Tsaritsa had never called for me again and I was never asked to fulfill any duties in the lab after returning from Sumeru.

Nobody seemed to oppose my stepping up to the position. On more than one occasion, I was ordered to join the Harbingers for their meetings. It was terribly dull and I certainly had better things to do but I couldn't exactly skip it. I kept all of Dottore's affairs and appointments in check and the two months dragged by with no progress.

Night after night, I checked the orb on my ring for any change, any shift from the cloudy grey view. It was to no avail. Dottore was either dead or no longer in possession of the matching piece of the jewellery.

I spent tireless hours in the training room and the arena practicing my fighting abilities. It took me back to the days when I was a spy, where I honed my talents at sneaking around and strengthening my combat.

I was skilled with the bow thanks to help from Tartaglia who would agree to spar with me every so often. My eye for aiming was among the best within the Fatui sniper ranks and so I made use of it by making myself familiar with all the guns in our arsenal. Along the way, I'd picked up many new scars from the spars with the 11th Harbinger but they were meaningless to me. Everything was.