Chapter Text
Collei sometimes still feels afraid when she’s alone.
She tries not to think about any of it—her time with the Fatui, the memories she wishes she could keep buried deep. It becomes too much for her far too quickly; once she starts, it’s hard to stop, so it’s just really, really preferable that she doesn’t think about it at all.
With the increase in Fatui operations in Sumeru, she no longer has the luxury of avoidance.
Resentment was once an emotion that came easily to her. Dottore had instilled it into her early, and thereafter whenever she witnessed death, pain, or the cruelty of fate, the feeling only took deeper root.
When she’d first escaped Il Dottore’s lab, it was all she felt: resentment for humanity, for life, for everything—and that, of course, included Scaramouche. For the longest time, she tried to tell herself that he had no choice—that he was just like her, and that he too felt afraid—but even after all of the excuses she’d made for him, all the hope he’d given her, he’d left her there alone. He might not have subjected her to the abuse in the way Il Dottore had, but he knew what was happening and he did nothing to stop it. Collei had never felt more hurt—more lost—than she had after he left.
If she should believe that he truly cared, should it matter to her that he might have felt fear of consequences, fear of Il Dottore?
So resentment is the emotion that swells within her heart whenever he appears in one of her flashbacks. It is what has her curling in on herself at night, pressing a shaking hand to her damp eyes, unable to escape images of sterile medical equipment and the distant memory of how her own blood looked when it was taken from her body. Sometimes she wakes up with the phantom smell of antiseptic in her lungs, a flash of cold blue eyes, a callous tone, and a back carelessly turned away.
Yes. Resentment is what she should feel for Scaramouche.
When she first arrived in Mondstadt, young and scared and angry, her hands were already soaked in blood and she said many things that she still regrets even now; she hurt the people she later came to care about, and she channeled her anger and sorrow into harsh thoughts and even harsher words.
Still, they accepted her. They accepted her, and they forgave her, and they allowed her space to heal. Amber taught her how to hope without fear—to care for others even through adversity, and to trust kindness even when it terrified her. Kaeya and Lisa, as well, showed her the importance of being patient with herself, to trust the protection and guidance of others.
Even now, the people of Mondstadt send her letters—letters which Master Tighnari reads when she’s too overcome with emotion to comprehend the difficult words on the page—and support her from afar.
Collei knows that they will always be her family.
When she was first taken under Master Tighnari’s wing, Collei finally began to feel safe again. Cyno protected her, guarded her, and sealed the power Il Dottore had corrupted her with. Master Tighnari then guided her, teaching her everything she thought she’d never be able to learn—and she didn’t feel quite so terrified anymore.
The people of Sumeru, through their patience and kindness and wisdom, will always be her family, too.
So she wonders—if she had never escaped, would she have become like Scaramouche, trapped in a neverending cycle of fear and anger?
And when that thought settles within her chest, the resentment falters.
Pity is what she finds herself feeling for Scaramouche.
But when Collei hears that The Balladeer is in Sumeru and that he’s working with The Doctor, the pity and the resentment resurface together, swirling into something that oddly feels like grief.
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When Collei hears about the mysterious wanderer that appeared quite abruptly in Sumeru, she thinks nothing of him. Yet, when she sees him for the first time, ranting in irritation to some Akademiya professor he clearly disagreed with, she feels—somehow, inexplicably—that he seems strangely familiar.