"Kunikuzushi"

Notice

Those very words were always the ones which passed through your ears at the worst of times. They were supposed to be promising, hopeful, encouraging and yet you despised them to your core. Those very words spilled a sour taste on your tongue, plaguing your thirst for comfort whenever the same person issued them.

They were so untrustworthy that they riled you from the state of euthymia with a flash and shock. There were tears flooding your face as you lifted yourself from presumably Scaramouche's lap. Your vision was hazy and unstable, possibly from the horridly lit atmosphere you came from with the addition of your tears foaming at the corners of your eyes.

Though you weren't paying too much attention to your surroundings anymore, the environment was quiet and private. You assumed the two of you had returned safely back to Dottore's temporary living quarters.

The two harbingers stared at you; the doctor who was originally flapping a piece of paper in front of his face paused to stare at the abrupt commotion you made, while Scaramouche stared at you from the couch with an extreme amount of concern written all over his face. Without a flying care for the situation you interrupted, you fled back to your room with a face, mind, body and soul full of embarrassment.

Scaramouche's immediate reaction was for him to shoot up from his seat and chase after you, but Dottore raised a hand preventing the idea of it. "Let them have their moment of solitude first."

"I'm the reason they're-"

Dottore shook his head no and Scaramouche averted his gaze to the floor, disappointed he couldn't be of much help yet again.

"What exactly did you say you created for them to see?" The doctor used the document in his hand as a fan to hide the remainder of his face, excluding the eyes in order to glance over to his colleague.
"A vision of how they interrupted who I was before I joined the fatui."
"Of the name you left behind?"
"Mhmm."

Dottore dropped onto the couch behind him and slouched, lifting his legs to cross over the table between them. A grand sigh parted him as the paper in his hand fell to cover his face entirely.

"I don't suppose you intend on keeping the information I just told you a secret, hm?"
Scaramouche closed his eyes, trying his best to believe and promise on the words yet to leave his mouth. "No more lies. I want the best for them."

Although the answer was sincere, Dottore couldn't help but giggle as a fellow bystander of the situation. "So, you're telling them that you're a fugitive? From the fatui, Snezhnaya and Inazuma?"

"They deserve to know."
"Does this count as your notice? Are you following up with an early retirement?" Dottore's jokes were well received but poorly responded to. He sighed when his childish antics went ignored. "Your concise answers bore me."
"This isn't supposed to be entertaining."

"Very well." The doctor responded with a shrug, jumping up to adjust his posture and slipping the paper from his face and slamming it on table. "Neither was this little trip of yours, yet suddenly I'm being pulled from the outskirts and right into your mess." His outburst earned a disapproving side eye from Scaramouche yet he continued, nonetheless. "If I were you, I'd hurry up and make a decision on what you plan to do. I'm not keeping a fugitive under my care when he's the sole suspect of a colleague's death and the failure of not one but two missions personally catered to him." Dottore stood up in an unprompted rage and walked off in a different direction. "You're a disgrace."

Scaramouche waited till his former colleague had left the room. He simply sat there in a daze with his head lowered in disappointment for himself. He ran his fingers through his hair and scrunched the strands in a rage, balling his fists and squeezing them so tight that he was almost threatening to rip the useless things off his head.