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Pantalone groaned exasperatedly, slamming his fist down on the table in front of him, sending papers flying off his desk from the wind. With lasting intensity he raised a shaking hand to his face and took off his glasses, resting them on the table with a heavy sigh. This was by no means an ideal situation for him. Dottore—his business partner, fellow harbinger, and to his current dismay, husband—was once again harassing him with letters, demanding funding for his newest little experiment. Normally, he would simply decline, but apparently, this experiment was in the word of the Tsaritsa, so he was now forcefully inclined to approve of the large sum Dottore was asking for. Pantalone stood up from his desk, pacing back and forth across the office, his fuchsia eyes wildly darting across the intricate tiles of the floor, mumbling about the specifics of this request to nobody but himself, all before he heard the doors to his office open. The banker’s gaze almost immediately snapped over to the doors, expecting to see one of his assistants, or perhaps one of Dottore’s clones, so his surprise was eminent when he saw his daughter standing in the doorway, her own eyes open as his were, the both of them equally as uncaring about hiding themselves right then. Pantalone was not only confused as to why his daughter was here, but also how on Teyvat her eight year old self had managed to open the heavy wooden doors to his office. She sighed before walking in more and letting the door slam shut behind her, seeming just as tired as Pantalone was.
“Persephone,” He greeted with an odd sense of calm, more confused as to why his daughter seemed so annoyed rather than angry as he was before.
“Father.” She nodded her head as she responded, for some reason still wanting to be polite to him despite her obvious lack of patience. She walked over and climbed on to one of the two pristine sofas on either side of Pantalone’s office, taking a moment to situate herself before pulling her knees to her chest and putting a pillow to her head before she quite literally just screamed. The sound was muffled, by the pillow, thankfully, but still audible. After a moment she dropped the pillow back on the couch, staring at nothing while her eye twitched.
Pantalone, visibly concerned and confused at Persephone’s state, walked over to the sofa himself and sat down next to her.
“Persephone, dear, are you feeling quite alright?” The banker knew the answer to that question, and knew that he shouldn’t have asked, but he did anyway.
Persephone responded by staring up at her father with a look in her eyes that felt like she was asking him if he were some type of idiot, though she very quickly responded, her gaze shifting slightly closer to her normal, stoic expression. “Calypso was begging me for mora again. Said it was something unrelated to Dottore, though. Something about not wanting her father to know about it. Rather odd, but it’s painfully annoying regardless.”
Pantalone rolled his eyes at that. The stepsister’s bond mirrored that of his and his husband’s to an almost uncanny level, but at the same time, made all too much sense. His daughter was like him in every way, save the fact that her temper was much worse than his own, and Dottore and Calypso… They were just… interesting.
“Calypso wants mora from you to work on an experiment hidden from her father?” He almost laughed at the absurdity. “She can’t hide anything from Dottore.”
“I know.” Persephone sighed. “Oh, and, by the way, that one assistant of yours—Mr. Penzik? He’s… An interesting man. Definitely finds himself infatuated with children, myself included, if you understand.”
The banker stood up on his desk chair, where he had migrated back to during his brief conversation with his daughter.. “I beg your pardon?”
“Yes. Tried to corner me in my walk here. He is not an immediate threat to anyone at the moment, though.”
Pantalone stopped, his gaze shifting to the side hem of his daughter’s dress, where she usually kept one of her many whips that she collected, for whatever odd reason, was missing said weapon.
“Persephone.”
“Yes father?”
“Your whip. What have you done with it?”
“It had gotten dirtied. I sent it off with one of your assistants to be cleaned.”
Pantalone sighed. Heavily. How was he supposed to respond? Some pedophilic freak had tried to put hands on his daughter, yes— but his daughter had responded by whipping the man to a point that her whip had gotten so dirty that she had refused to carry it with her. He wasn’t sure whether he should be mad at this assistant of his, who was presumably bleeding out of the floor somewhere. If he wasn’t dead already, he would be soon—either at his own hand or due to blood loss. On another note, he wasn’t sure if he should be proud of Persephone for using her more than adequate skill to protect herself, or be terrified on her behalf that it even happened.
“Persephone..”
She hesitated this time, now becoming more annoyed with her father’s questions, her polite facade fading more than she intended it to. “...yes, father?”
More papers flew off of his desk as Pantalone quickly walked over to where his daughter sat on the sofa across the room again, his shoes clicking across the polished floor as he went. Standing over Persephone, he cocked his head to the side, trying to maintain his own composure.
“Oh, Persephone, dear…. I see that you have…eh, taken care of this problematic man, but, would you happen to remember where you had…encountered him?” Unknown to him, the banker had subconsciously been clenching his fists, unwillingly breaking his calm illusion.
Persephone, who had noticed her father’s unrest, stood up and walked toward the door. “Come on then. And get your glasses, I don’t want you running into any walls.”
After quickly and rather awkwardly scurrying to his desk and grabbing his glasses, Pantalone walked out into the hallway, following his daughter out into the hallways of the Zapolyarny Palace, the iron-like smell of blood becoming more overwhelming as they went. That only heightened the banker’s fear—or, well, disgust, over this whole situation. What on Teyvat was he supposed to do with a bloody corpse lying in his district? All of his assistants and workers had cleared the hallways by now, all presumably having got word of the situation. So you would understand Pantalone’s surprise when a small flash of blue flew across his vision, landing in front of him. Looking down, he saw nothing but fluffy, light blue hair, before the figure looked up at him, bright red eyes glistening with mischief as she grinned. Ah, Calypso. Now where was—
“Calypso, don’t go running off like that. You know it’s not polite to leave your dear old father walking alone, no?”
Dottore. Pantalone watched as Calypso looked back and scurried back towards Dottore, walking back towards himself and his daughter again. The two looked nigh identical, save for their size and expression, though the small differences seemed to be blown over simply by how Calypso acted. She was more than hyperactive—she seemed like she had pure, unfiltered energy running through her body instead of blood, which only worked in his favor when he needed something delivered or fetched throughout the palace. It made some sense, given her…uncanny origins, however, that did not in any way affect her unnatural aura.
“Ah, Pantalone, my dear!”
The banker sighed.
“...Yes, hello Dottore.” Pantalone rolled his eyes, and between his annoyed glares, he saw his daughter staring back at him as if he had done something wrong. “I am saving you the speech of why you are here, because at this point I don’t care, but me and my daughter have some matters to attend to-” He was very promptly leaving out the fact that Persephone was, due to his and Dottore’s marriage, also his daughter, as he didn’t feel like giving him more reasons to delay the two.
“Oh, but yes! I’ve been dying to see our darling Persephone for just so long….”
Persephone stepped back, visibly perturbed by her stepfather’s spiel, looking between him and Calypso with varying levels of confusion, as if she was looking down upon animals in containment.
“You have, and have had the power to come and visit her. Clearly, it doesn’t matter to you all that much.” Pantalone, who had grabbed his daughter’s hand and was walking away, was very obviously fed up with just about everything.
“Ooooh, and where are you two scurrying off to?” Dottore tried to salvage whatever remains of attention the other had, interested in whatever Pantalone was hiding.
Pantalone turned on his heels, throwing Persephone off balance and nearly hurling her into a wall, leaving her with a disgusted, offended look on her face, scoffing at her father who had turned to Dottore.
“Such nerve—”
Calypso ran over to her stepsister, as she had been the only one to notice her distress, and began to say something before Pantalone unknowingly interrupted her, his fuschia eyes piercing the doctor standing in front of him.
“You, Doctor—are so, so incredibly entitled. First your need for funding, and now this demand to know my business? There is nothing you could possibly need that is—”
“I simply just wish to know what you both are so rushed to—”
“PERSEPHONE KILLED A MAN.”
Dottore simply shrugged as if this was nothing out of the ordinary, which, knowing their background, it really wasn’t. He really didn’t see the problem with this.
A wicked grin spread across Calypso’s face as she turned to face Persephone again, her eyes sparkling.
“Did you? Did you really??” She inquired desperately, as if this was some great achievement.
Persephone scowled and looked away, her own gaze judging and cruel. “Yes, I suppose…But not directly.”
Calypso practically jumped for joy at her stepsister’s declaration, grabbing her shoulders and shaking them as she rambled on—somthing about how she had never truly killed anyone outside of controlled experiments that her father had allowed, which was still very few occasions. Dottore and Pantalone both shifted their gaze over to Calypso, still stammering about her wants. The two watched as Persephone stood up, wiped off her dress and closed her eyes again with a polite smile as she walked back over to her father, grabbing his hand and continuing to walk. Dottore and Calypso now followed, and the other two lacked the energy to speak against it. Now being forced to silently comply, the walk was much more peaceful, save for the iron-like smell spreading through the air as Persephone led them on.
At one point they turned a corner and the smell became so pungent that both Persephone and Pantalone had to hold handkerchiefs to their faces—which was odd seeing as Calypso and Dottore seemed fine. It made the banker slightly concerned—what could Persephone have done that spilled this much blood?
Out of seemingly nowhere, Calypso ran ahead of the group as if something had intrigued her. The other three continued walking as if nothing had happened, until Calypso shrieked in what was presumably happiness, giggling loud enough that the others could hear her down the hallway. Suddenly Dottore seemed rather concerned because of his daughter’s excitement. He hurried down the hallway, to which Pantalone and his daughter followed suit, finding no use in waiting to go and find the body themselves. By the time the two had caught up to the others, Calypso was standing over what was presumably the corpse of Mr. Penzik, though he was virtually unrecognizable. She was moving so rapidly to a point in which she almost seemed animated—prodding and poking at the man’s corpse like he was some sort of museum exhibit that she was free to observe. Persephone took a step back, gaze flickering around as Calypso moved, obviously just as disturbed as her father was. Dottore, however, stood in front of the body, talking faster than the banker or his daughter could understand. Calypso seemed unbothered by her father’s lecture, more, plea, as she continued to examine the body as if it owed her something. Dottore, eventually giving up on talking to her, grabbed her shoulders and held her in front of him.
“Calypso. I don’t care what you do with that body, but if you want it, you have to be the one to bring it back to the lab.”
Calypso practically jumped out of her father’s arms, grabbing the primarily mutilated body by its arms and beginning to drag it down the hallway. There was, of course, a trail of blood left behind it. Before either of the two adults in the hall had anything to say about it, Persephone burst into one of the nearby assistant’s offices, a particularly quiet young woman named Yazhu, barking something at her about calling the cleaning staff, before slamming the door once again and turning back to her fathers, both equally as stunned about what they had just witnessed. Pantalone just sighed, opting to simply try and ignore all that had just happened. He stepped forward, grabbing his daughter’s hand and beginning to walk not back to his office, but to their personal quarters, deciding that he had enough of working today. Before Dottore could interject, Pantalone answered the question he knew the other would ask.
“I’ll get you your funding tomorrow. Be patient.”
Dottore was seemingly content with this answer, as he briskly bid the two farewell before striding back towards his district of the palace, following the bloody trail his daughter had made. After a rather short walk that felt elongated by the quiet tension between Pantalone and Persephone, they arrived at their quarters.
Persephone took no more time than necessary to begin walking to her room, before her father stopped her.
“Persephone. I know today has been chaotic, but you need to learn how to keep your temper in check. It is a very, very important skill, especially in a position such as ours. The people need to think of us positively.”
“They need to fear us, that is what—”
“No. They fear us naturally. We have a position of power. If we let them see our truth, they will use it against us.”
Persephone sighed. She knew this. She has always known this. And somehow still, it passed her by almost every time. Eyes are the window to the soul, they said. She can’t let them— can’t let anyone know what she is truly thinking.
Vulnerability is weakness.
Weakness gets you nowhere.