SO SO BEAUTIFULLLL - Blog Posts

A Linnet on a Bough [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Title: A Linnet on a Bough [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Synopsis: Isolation takes its toll, and you begin to sleepwalk out of the gilded manor Scaramouche has procured for you. Commissioned piece.

Word count: 3300ish

notes: yandere, married reader, sleepwalking, isolation, unhealthy/controlling behavior 

Being the spouse of a Harbringer is no simple matter, and you are no simple spouse. 

If you had married someone from  your village, your life would be simple. You would do what your parents had done, and their parents had done, and their parents had done. Cooking and mending and minding the children, and living out your days without ever venturing very far, except on rare occasions that would be something you would treasure forever.

You would grow old within the confines of the village and die surrounded by your children, who would bury you near your own parents and go on to live out their lives much as you had done.

But you didn’t marry someone from your village, and your life is not so simple. Instead, you were wed to Scaramouche. Sometimes it doesn’t seem real, even now, and you pinch yourself to make sure you’re not nursing some long standing fever-dream. 

Who would have thought? Certainly not you. Sometimes you wonder if even he expected to ever make such a match. But he told you that he intended to marry you, and let the words hang in the air, to be caught or cut down with your decision.

You said yes. Really, you couldn’t say no… but part of you wanted it. Yes, you can admit that much. It was flattering, and isn’t it nice to be flattered? Especially when you were nobody. Just someone who trudged to the town well to fetch water for your elderly parents, someone who helped a stranger (Scaramouche, it turns out, was not the helpless waif you’d assumed) and got a husband for their troubles. 

So, no, life is not simple. Both in the figurative and literal meaning of the word. 

And now, wife of a Harbringer as you are, you have grown acquainted with--and acquainted is the only term for it, for you could never say you were accustomed to any of it--certain luxuries. Food, to your liking, whenever you would like it. Sometimes it is even brought to you out of season, the greatest luxury of all. Clothing made with rich materials; ribbons, jewels, the softest of slippers to adorn your feet. Servants and pampering the likes of which you had only heard about in your old life. 

But there is one luxury that you are routinely denied, no matter how much you pout your lips, no matter how prettily you ask, no matter how many tears blur your vision and wet your eyelashes: the outside world.

You’re not meant to go outside, Scaramouche had told you, the first time it became clear that you were not going to waltz out of the stately manor he’d brought you to for the wedding in order to take in the scenery. 

And so… you don’t go outside anymore. Not in the traditional sense. You rest in covered litters with the windows tacked shut and he’s not above smacking your hand if you try to lift up the corners to catch a glimpse of whatever (or whoever) waits outside. Of course, when he’s not accompanying you, your pitiful looks sometimes convince one of the guards to let you keep one flap untouched so that you can take a peek.

But seeing flashes of the world you used to live in are not the same as truly being within it. The ghost of a breeze against your half-hidden face is not the same as basking in the sunshine. Hearing the sounds of life from a village as you’re carried through it is not the same as stopping at a market stall to buy a treat, asking someone how their day is going, and absorbing the hustle and bustle of everyone around you.

There is no substitute for living out in the world. 

You just don’t know how to convince Scaramouche of that fact.

--

There is a fine line between gratitude and ingratitude, between obedience and surliness, and Scaramouche finds that you walk it all too well. 

It doesn’t matter how much he takes away; how much he removes the temptation by tacking up screens or keeping you within interior apartments, free from all the noise and sights and smells of the outside. You still want to go outside. Something about it calls to you, pulling on your sleeves, no matter what he does.

He loves to hear your voice, nightingale that you are, but sometimes he is so gravely tempted to press a finger to your lips and tell you to hush. 

No matter how much he tries to occupy your mind with something different. Better. Himself, most often (for you should be grateful for that) but things that no one else could say he gave them. Gifts. Trinkets. Things that suited your interests, which he knew very well, because he hangs onto every word that comes from your mouth.

Even the ones that drive him mad. 

At least until you learn to stop saying things that grate his ears and the space where his heart should be. 

The pleadings that come so softly and sweetly--but if that was all, he could manage. It’s the way that you weave your thoughts into every conversation like a pattern in a tapestry--remarking on the weather conditions in regions that the two of you might be traveling in, asking if the retinue had encountered certain flora or animals during the journey. You want to know about the world; you want to be in the world. 

Little things, little threads, connecting you to a world that isn’t exclusively him… why has nothing successfully cut them from your grasping fingers? 

--

“They only blossom under certain conditions, you know.” Your voice is soft and lilting, carrying on the one-sided conversation over a shared table of delicate foods. You take bites in between your verbal fascination with the local flora, a subject you’re all too keen to share with him. “The flowers are said to be so lovely that people have wept at the sight of them. And the fragrance…” You sigh a little, and pick a piece of fruit to nibble on. “There’s nothing like it. Or so I’m told.” 

A pause. You glance at him, eyelashes practically fluttering, then look back at your dishes. 

“And… I’ve never seen one in person,” you add as you reach for another helping of fruit. “I wonder what they’re like.” 

Do you think he doesn’t know what you’re trying to do? Looking at him so sweetly, asking how he finds the food, interspersing dinner with notions of flowers blooming right outside the borrowed manor the two of you have been living in for this current assignment.

But he won’t give in. He won’t be manipulated, not even by you. 

Still… that doesn’t mean he can’t try to fulfill this hunger of yours. Much like filling a better, a taste should be enough to keep you from grumbling. 

Within the week, he has some unlucky Fatui tasked with the mission of cutting a fresh bouquet of the very flowers that you were waxing on about so prettily. And you wake up one morning to find them on the nightstand next to your bed, set in a clear vase.

He thinks that you’ll smile, and thank him, and if all goes well, he won’t have to hear any more not-so-subtle hints about your desire to go outside.

But you don’t smile and fling yourself at his feet, thanking him for such a thoughtful, fine gift. You don’t tell him that this is all you need--the flowers he gifts you, the clothes he has painstakingly crafted to suit our form and above all, him. 

Instead your hand goes to your mouth, covering the smallest of gasps. 

And, well, he thinks--you’re surprised. That’s all. That’s to be expected., if anything. You did often complain about the monotony of your days, so a little surprise was bound to get a reaction from you. 

But instead of breaking into a grin and thanking him, your hand reaches out to touch the delicate blossoms. Like they’re going to break. More than that--like there’s something wrong. 

“How much prettier they would be in nature…” Your lips curve downward, a soft frown that feels aimed right at him. “I’m sorry that you cut them…”

“What is it?” And if there is a snap in his voice,  you surely couldn’t blame him.  You are so difficult to please, and hiding the fact that he wants to please you at all is a tiring chore all on its own. You exhaust him as much as you fill him.

Sometimes, you make him want to scream.

He’ll take out his pent-up irritation on someone else. Irritation that is not at you, but with you. Yet not with you as well. It’s all a jumbled mess that he doesn’t want to untangle, and he won’t. He’ll shove it down deep into some cavernous hole, perhaps the one that exists inside of him no matter how hard he tries, and move on with his day.

If only you would stop looking at those flowers like they were broken glass.

--

You’re gone. The space that you occupy (the left half of the shared bed, all wrapped in blankets and often clutching a pillow instead of him, a trait he does not find endearing but does not wish to push on) is empty, bereft of anything but cool rumpled sheets.

There’s fear, at first. Fear that something has happened. Someone has taken you. Perhaps it was Her… perhaps She, of all the unholy things, has slithered past his defenses and snatched you up just to snap another piece from his broken patchwork body. 

It doesn’t have to be Her, though. He has many enemies. And enemies will target your weakest point, and you, you, you. You are exactly that to him. 

So there is fear, yes, that you have been snatched away and perhaps you are already dead, and they took you not for blackmail but for some kind of revenge. To see him wither. 

But then he retrieves the lantern from the dresser and lights it, the warm glow illuminating the silent, heavy room. He can feel his breath quickening, his chest tightening, and he doesn’t know why or what to do with any of it.

It only gets worse when he realizes that there is no sign of forced entry. No broken door-locks, no sprinkles of glass on the rugs, no drops of blood on the windowsill to mark where you might have been dragged through.

The fear ebbs away, replaced by a sour, sickly feeling of betrayal. 

You’ve left him. After all he’s given you. All he’s done for you. 

Yes, he’s taken away your freedom, but you didn’t have the capacity to understand why that was not something to begrudge him for. Freedom was not for delicate things that needed to be kept alive, protected, harbored from the rest of the world. 

He clutches the lantern in one hand and storms out of the room, still wearing his night-clothes. The hallways are dim, barely light by small windows that let in a trickle of moonlight. He listens. 

You couldn’t have gone far, and you’d better hope he catches you himself before morning, because if he has to engage a search party on  your behalf, no one (least of all the Fatui stationed with him) will be enjoying it.

He dismisses one of the guards who spots him. He doesn’t want them involved, not yet. He pushes out one of the side doors and begins to walk the perimeter of the grounds. You might have gone off into the forest, or perhaps you went down the paved path, hoping to find a traveler who might help you.

He is about to decide which option to take when he hears something from behind him, near a half-broken brick enclosure that had seen better days. Were you hiding in there? Trying to trick him? He couldn’t put it past you. 

He braces himself, feeling something thrum through him that made him want to turn away and rush forward all at once, and walks through the open gate of the enclosure. 

And… you’re there.

Sitting in the midst of a garden, some untended thing that was left here by the previous tenants, before it was abandoned and absorbed into the network of buildings useful to the Fatui. And to him, for keeping you in one secure location for months on end.

It was wild and overgrown, and some of the rocks creating the garden path were moss-covered. It’s a wonder you didn’t slip on them, he thinks, and there’s a flash of fear mingled with his irritation. How could you do something as stupid as sneak outside at night, in the dark, and walk into some unknown, overgrown eyesore? 

You haven’t heard his footsteps, evidently, because you go on standing. You’re swaying a little, and your hands brush the flowers. He can hear you talking to yourself, something low and sweet. He can’t see your face but it’s easy enough to imagine that you’re smiling. 

“What are you doing?” There was an attempt, in his mind, to keep his voice level. But it quakes anyway, with fury and irritation and that still-sour worry that you betrayed him in the night.

He waits. You don’t turn around. He thought that, when you heard his voice, you were going to jump like a scared little animal and apologize and try to smooth things over with your teary lashes and pouting lips.

But you don’t turn around. And when you answer him, it’s not a word, really. It’s mumbling. Low. Almost a groan.

He’s had enough. He walks forward until he can grip your upper arm, and moves to turn you around. But you don’t pout or jerk away or tell him that you just wanted to go outside. You’re looking straight at him but he can tell right away that you don’t truly see him at all.

You’re… asleep. 

Standing up, eyes blinking rapidly as if in the throes of some waking dream, in the middle of a garden.

But asleep, all the same. 

He presses his lips together. You were a nuisance. Truly. He should leave you here, let you wake up in the morning cold and shivering and covered in slick green moss.

Instead, he lifts you up. You flail a little, arms jerking this way and that, but it’s easy enough to grip you close and carry you bridal-style back down the hallway (the Fatui stationed in the hall is wise enough to say absolutely nothing as he sees him returning) and continues until he can lay you gently down onto your side of the bed.

You gasp, then, perhaps half-waking. But it’s eased enough when your hands instinctively grab your pillow and curl up with it. 

Before heading back into bed, he grabs a fire poker and slides it through the handles of your bedroom doorway. You wouldn’t be getting out, not in your sleep, anyway.

His dreams that night are fitful.

--

The first thing you realize upon awakening is that you’d really rather go back to sleep, because your dream was lovely. You were in a garden, fragrant and lovely. There was cool fresh air on your face and grass under your toes and sounds, real sounds. Birds and insects buzzing and everything that is forever kept on the other side of walls and windows now.

Over breakfast, you smile, and serve your husband his dishes before you tuck into your own. And is it wrong that you want to tell him about your dream? Is it wrong that you hope it will make him finally let you go outside, even just for a little while?

“I had a lovely dream last night,” you say, smiling with what you hope is sweetness and not desperation. “I was in a garden…”

You don’t see the goosebumps that run up his arms at your words.

--

You sleepwalk the next night. And the next. And the next. He doesn’t know how you manage to get the bar off the door every time, how you evade the guards, how you don’t wake him up… but you do. 

Always going to the same place, the damned garden, with its stubborn flowers and broken paths.

Well. If one vase of flowers is not enough to keep you satisfied (and more importantly, inside) perhaps he needs to take it a few steps further. 

He gifts you more flowers. Bundles of them, baskets of them, stuffed into vases and pots and cracked pans his underlings found in the kitchen storage room. 

And while the rooms of the manor are soon a garden, filled with cloying blossoms and greenery that brings its fair share of insects lurking about, it doesn’t make you stop talking about the world that you’re supposedly “missing” out there. 

Not just the flowers, but the animals. The people. The markets. 

The life, teeming with every little thing, good and bad, that makes up this world. 

Most disturbingly of all: The sleepwalking continues.

What more can he give you without giving you the freedom that would break him apart?

--

It’s not that the sound of a bird in the morning is unusual. It’s just that they are normally muffled, as there are no trees near the window of the bedroom.

But the chirping that you hear now is so close that it might as well be in your ear. Groggy, rubbing away the dust of sleep in your eyes, you sit up…

And find that there is a silver bird cage sitting on top of your dresser, next to a wilting vase of flowers from a few days before. 

It’s a pretty thing. Small and  yellow. A pretty thing in a pretty cage. Another gift from your husband, after the mountains of flowers, the wreaths of blooming vines, the meals, the clothes, the comfort…

--

He can never get used to waking up without you beside him. No matter how many times he easily finds you and brings you back, mumbling and bleary, there is always those terrible, agonizing moments of panic when he thinks: you’ve left him.

But you’re not alone in the garden. 

You’re holding the cage, clutching it to your chest. He wonders what will happen if your sleeping muscles dream of something else; will you drop the cage and let it clatter to the ground? Will the delicate bird inside be jostled so terribly that it dies? And what would he do, then, to ensure that this doesn’t make you even less satisfied with your isolated life?

But you don’t drop it. One thing he has learned from watching you sleepwalk is that you are surprisingly nimble about it. 

He watches, lips pressed into a frown, as you slowly lower the cage to one of the formerly ornate pedestal tables in the garden. It must have been pretty once. Now, it’s mossy and gray and damp. 

It doesn’t surprise him, what you do next. Your fingers, shaking but surprisingly deft, undo the latch on the door and swing it open. The bird inside hops around for a few moments, tilting its head to and fro, before it launches itself into the air and flies away.

You mumble something, sweet and slurry. A farewell, perhaps. Who knows what really goes on in your pretty head when you sleep? 

And it’s his cue to take you back inside. You still fight, just a little, when he picks you up. Flail your arms and legs, until he’s held you tight enough that your muscles seem to accept the hold and relax.

He looks down at your bleary, half-awake face. Your eyes tend to close when he carries you. Perhaps your body knows that it’s okay to let them rest, now that someone else is carrying you. Holding you. Protecting you.

A pity that your mind couldn’t understand that fact. 

Sometimes he considers chaining you up at night. It would be the most practical solution. It might even ease his fears every time he wakes to find you gone, and he’s forced to track you down to this nighttime garden that no one else would bother entering.

But there’s something in him, hard and sick, that wonders. If he chains you up, he might just free you in his sleep, like you’ve freed the bird in the cage. 

It’s easier to pretend you aren’t his prisoner when your chains are invisible, after all. 

---