Work Text:
In Sumeru, when one finally qualifies to wear the pristine robes of a physician, an oath is taken. It is a sacrosanct performance, delivered under the shade of ancient boughs, swearing that the health and well-being of the patient will remain the absolute, inviolable priority; that professional secrecy will be maintained at all costs; that no consideration of religion, nationality, race, gender, or social position will ever corrupt the duty to care for the sick; and that medical knowledge will never be weaponized to violate human rights.
It is a beautiful oath, woven from the finest threads of utopian naivety, and a frightening one, for it is expected that any human being should follow its dictates naturally, without the clumsy need to swear them aloud. But since prevention is famously deemed better than cure — or perhaps, in the twisted calculus of a true physician, is the cure always better than the prevention? — they are dictates that must be sworn regardless, forced down the throats of the young and impressionable.
To the Amurta hypocrites, these boundaries were holy walls built to safeguard humanity from its own darkness. To Zandik, they were nothing more than a crude iron cage, deliberately designed to stunt the growth of true evolution. He understood what the sages could not: to codify morality was to admit its inherent fragility. It was a pathetic, desperate attempt by the weak to bind the exceptional to their own mediocre standards of survival.
Real progress had never been achieved by those who willingly shackled their minds to the stagnant conscience of the masses. It was an irony that the Akademiya's finest intellects spent entire lifetimes debating, trapped in a seamless loop of their own cowardice.
And so, every time the sterile words of that oath echoed in his mind, carrying with them the suffocatingly humid air of those grand lecture halls, Zandik merely smiled. He remembered, with a condescending sort of satisfaction, that he had never actually qualified as a physician in Sumeru.
Or rather, that he had never qualified as anything, anywhere.
He uncrossed his legs, the sudden shift breaking the silence of the room as he rose from his chair and walked toward the iron gurney. The leather of his heavy winter boots clicked rhythmically against the stone floor, the sharp snap of his heels commanding absolute, unyielding attention.
The deliberate sound of his movement caused a pair of eyes to open on the table. Dark, analytical, and heavily hooded, they tracked his approach with a quiet focus.
"The health and well-being of the patient must have some priority, of course, but never more than the experiment itself." His tone held no malice, nor any trace of sadistic pleasure. It possessed only the flat, unfeeling clinical detachment of an accountant tallying up trivial figures in a dry ledger. "Unless the analyzed variable is precisely the transition into rigor mortis, the death of the guinea pig means nothing more than an amateur waste of resources."
Resources that, unfortunately, were not always made readily available. Securing the rare materials for his grand designs required navigating an exhausting labyrinth of political favors, hidden black-market transactions, and endless, soul-crushing bureaucratic negotiations.
The Regrator controlled the flowing lifeblood of the entire nation's wealth, yet he guarded the Northland Bank's coffers with the ferocity of a starved dragon counting its very last piece of gold. For the astronomical amount of taxes that Snezhnograd alone accumulated, Pantalone was a very stingy man. Miserly, even. Every custom glass beaker, every ounce of volatile rare catalyst, and every discreet shipment of fresh test subjects had to be justified through a meticulous, exhausting display of eventual financial returns...
Dottore realized he was being watched, breaking his internal critique to return the gaze. It did not take long for the sharp eyes following him to close again, slipping back into a defensive mimicry of nonchalance.
He adjusted the lapels of his heavy coat, the fabric rustling slightly as he peered down at the prone figure. "Professional secrecy must be maintained, yes, at all costs. Secrets are made to be kept. If an experiment leaks out to the uneducated public, it ceases to be a sanctuary of science and becomes instead a mere workshop," he continued his monologue, entirely indifferent to whether his audience was fully conscious or merely pretending to be. "In a capitalist world, supply and demand balance each other out; knowledge is only valuable because it is scarce."
To share the ultimate truths of the universe with the common masses was to dilute its purity, transforming divine revelation into a cheap commodity for vulgar minds.
A soft, raspy laugh suddenly echoed from the metal gurney, dry as autumn leaves. "And don't I know it…"
Pantalone, too, was only valuable because he was scarce; there was, after all, only one of him. The unique, terrifying configuration of the Regrator's mind, his monomaniacal obsession with redefining the world's value, made him an indispensable asset. Dottore had realized this truth very shortly after the man was first trafficked, broken and ambitious, into the cold confines of his laboratory.
…Perhaps, by that exact same logic, with each detached segment he produced of himself, Zandik lost more of his own intrinsic value.
The scientist dismissed the philosophical tangent with a sharp, irritated twitch of his jaw, refocusing his intellect on the vulnerable flesh before him. "No consideration of religion, nationality, race, gender, or social position will interfere with the duty to care for the sick…" He reached his gloved hands down to the pale eyelids of the man on his gurney, forcing them open mechanically with a pinching motion of his index fingers and thumbs. "That much is obvious. Again: a guinea pig means nothing more than a resource, and the loss of one is a waste of capital." His voice remained perfectly level, projecting only the immutable truth of a mathematical theorem.
The dark eyes returned to staring at him — he was the only thing worth looking at in the room, anyway. The laboratory offered no comforting distractions; its stone walls were entirely bare, illuminated only by the harsh, flickering luminescence of alchemical lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling.
"In fact, statistically speaking, social minorities tend to appear far more frequently than majorities in my laboratories," Dottore mused aloud, noting the demographic data point with the casual curiosity of a botanist classifying common weeds in a graveyard.
"That is because they tend to be trafficked more," the man on the table murmured, his voice laced with a lifetime of systemic cynicism.
Beneath his mask, a faint, mocking smile touched the corners of the Doctor's lips. "Evidently. But it does not change the structural fact that no consideration of religion, nationality, race, gender, or social position interferes with my duty, does it?"
Until proven otherwise, all humans were perfectly equal in their ultimate, baseline uselessness.
Dottore relaxed his fingers, pulling his hands back, as he noted the heavy tears accumulating at the corners of those dark eyes, which had been forced to stare without blinking for far too many seconds. The sudden release allowed the irritated eyelids to twitch violently, its natural defenses attempting to overcompensate for the coerced exposure.
"Well... I suppose not," came the strained response, accompanied by another empty, breathless laugh as the small tears rolled down his temples regardless. "But that medical knowledge should not be used to violate human rights… I believe that is one particular oath you cannot logically debunk."
"It is, of all of them, the one I appreciate the least." Dottore sat heavily beside the gurney, finally turning his undivided attention to the freshly closed scar stretching across the exposed thorax of the patient. His task now was to remove its structural stitches — an irrelevant annoyance amidst flesh that had already fused together through unnatural means. "I, too, was once shackled to a human form. My rights to exercise my knowledge are no less than anyone else's rights to exist."
If the mindless masses claimed the right to live in comfortable, blissful ignorance, then he claimed the absolute right to dissect that ignorance down to its very core.
The skin around the thoracic scar was jagged and angry, a deep purple line that ran ruthlessly from collarbone to sternum. A grotesque zipper sealing away the alchemical miracles the scientist had just performed beneath the ribs.
The silver tools caught the harsh lamp light, gleaming coldly as Dottore began to work with a terrifying precision born of centuries of continuous practice. With a small pair of curved suture scissors, he went about snipping each of the remaining threads before taking a pair of fine tweezers to pluck the small, bloody pieces from the flesh. The rhythmic snip-clink of metal filled the quiet room.
The patient's dark eyes followed each movement, watching the systematic removal of the threads with an entirely detached fascination. The local anesthetic had successfully dulled the agonizing edge of the pain, leaving behind only a bizarre, deeply unsettling pressure that vibrated directly against his breastbone.
Suddenly, a violent spasm racked his chest cavity, thorax jumping uncontrollably — a rattling, wet cough born from lungs that were still desperately adjusting to the invasive alterations forced into his respiratory system.
The abrupt movement instantly shattered Dottore's perfect concentration, provoking an immediate spike of irritation. He dropped the tweezers onto the tray with a harsh clang and stood up, pacing the perimeter of the room — a rigid ritual he followed to the letter every time his work was interrupted. If someone was going to waste his precious time, he would certainly not let the psychological loss be unilateral.
It was a tantrum that, of course, did not go unnoticed. Despite the physical weakness racking his frame, the sharp intelligence in the subject's eyes had not entirely dulled; he had observed the Doctor long enough over the years to recognize the predictable patterns of his temperament.
"If you had simply given me general anesthesia instead of local," the patient wheezed, a faint smirk playing on his pale lips, "we both would have already returned to our respective work."
A long, genuinely amused laugh escaped Dottore. It echoed sharply off the cold stone walls, filling the sterile void of the laboratory. He allowed the tension to leave his shoulders, as if playing a well-rehearsed role for a select audience of one. Sitting back down in the same chair he had occupied minutes before, he took a deep breath, a dramatically tired sigh, and crossed his legs once more. The heavy leather creaked beneath his weight, a familiar sound in the quiet space.
He flipped open a heavy folder resting on the adjacent table, grabbing the medical file stamped with the patient's name in stark black ink, reading its contents for what felt like the thousandth time:
"Feofan Sergeyevich Veksel…" Dottore murmured, looking up from the pages. The heavy shadow of his mask completely concealed his eyes, but the underlying, lethal promise in his voice was crystal clear: "You should feel immensely grateful that I bothered to anesthetize you in the first place."
The invasive procedure had been nothing short of a masterpiece of biological engineering, a terrifying orchestration of cold surgical steel, synthetic tissue, and artificial vital currents. It had taken weeks of meticulous preparation in the sterile isolation units just to purge the damaged, ash-choked organs from the banker's chest and replace them with something infinitely more resilient to the habits of the unforgiving northern climate.
And a mere six months after transplanting those pristine lungs, Dottore caught Pantalone smoking for the first time. A mocking act of vandalism against a flawless clinical canvas.
Segment 8 had gone to meet the man with his little notebook in hand, determined to showcase his most recent biochemical propositions, when he spotted him with a cigarette pinched between his lips. The youngest iteration of the Doctor, burning with the raw, volatile arrogance of his youthful ambition, had stopped dead in his tracks. The crisp pages of his notes rustled slightly in the sudden stillness of the private parlor.
The heavy aroma that emanated from Pantalone as the boy approached proved beyond a doubt that this was not his first cigarette — and the tender, maddening smile that adorned that serene face in response to the younger segment's rising indignation proved it would certainly not be his last, either. It was an opulent scent: expensive Liyuean tobacco cut with the sharp, bitter undertone of Snezhnayan winter herbs, a fragrance that already clung to the newly lined trachea like a stubborn ghost.
Pantalone looked up through a lazy, swirling haze of blue-gray smoke, his violet eyes crinkling at the corners with a patronizing warmth that only served to fuel the child's simmering rage.
The next time they met, a few days later, the confrontation took a far more physical turn. Unlike Segment 8, 35 did not bother to keep his disapproval confined to intellectual petulance. This version of the Doctor possessed a heavier frame, a more grounded cruelty, and a profound weariness for the self-destructive whims of mere mortals.
"After all the trouble I went through to replace them for you…" Dottore whispered, his voice a low, vibrating purr as he firmly trapped Pantalone's cheeks within the palm of one hand.
His grip was vice-like. The leather-clad fingers dug deep into the soft flesh of the banker's jaw, ruthlessly forcing his head back against the plush upholstery of the seat. For a fleeting second, a visceral urge rippled through the scientist — a desire to shove his other hand straight down that throat until he could wrap his fingers around the newly grafted lungs, tearing through the tailored silk collar to violently reclaim his stolen property. But he knew that would only force him to waste time repairing the other vital organs damaged along the way; the fragile esophagus, the delicate, pulsing network of major thoracic arteries, would all become collateral damage to a momentary impulse of anatomical frustration.
When the heavy hand finally let go of his face, leaving the banker's cheeks flushed crimson from the brutal pressure of its digits, an amused, unbothered smile took its place. Pantalone did not flinch, nor did he offer the slightest display of fear. He merely adjusted his jaw with an aristocratic grace, his pale skin bearing the distinct, blooming marks of the Doctor's fingers like a brand of exclusive ownership.
"My daily case used to hold twenty cigarettes…" Pantalone murmured, drawing the sleek metal case from his breast pocket and clicking it open, revealing the ten neatly divided slots. The polished silver surface caught the flickering firelight, its face engraved with the intricate crest of the Northland Bank. "Now, it only holds half."
His tone resembled the detached air of a merchant offering a generous discount to a highly difficult client.
"So next time, I will only bother to replace half of your lungs. How about that?"
A low, genuinely tender laugh escaped Pantalone's lips.
Dottore sat at his grand piano bench, while the banker occupied the heavy armchair directly opposite him. They stared at one another in a silent standoff for a few seconds, until the Regrator reached across the space for the contract laid out on the Alder table between them. He scanned its contents casually, as if, at this point, he hadn't already completely memorized the boilerplate text that Dottore routinely copy-pasted from one proposal to another. The terminology was aggressively dry, filled with standard clauses of absolute legal immunity, astronomical funding allocations, and mutual non-disclosure — a bureaucratic ritual they performed simply to give their monstrous symbiosis the comforting illusion of civilized commerce.
The scientist was already reaching for his silver-tipped quill and the crystal inkwell, fully prepared to grace the parchment with his signature, when Pantalone suddenly dropped the papers back onto the table. His eyes narrowed in a micro-expression that was noticeably less relaxed than usual. The dark fluid inside the pot sloshed slightly against the glass as the papers hit the wood with a dull thud. The sudden friction in the room became palpable, a freezing shift in the economic tides that typically governed their interactions.
"It won't be possible," Pantalone announced briefly. The declaration was flat, entirely stripped of his standard playful ornamentation, carrying the unyielding weight of a financial veto.
The quill remained suspended in mid-air, a single, heavy drop of black ink gathering at the nib like a dark tear. "What, exactly, do you mean by 'it won't be possible'?"
Pantalone leaned back into the cushions, his shoulders dropping just a fraction as he finally allowed the flawless professional façade to slip, revealing the exhausting weight of managing a nation's hidden wealth amidst global political chaos. "Exactly that." He sighed, idly playing with the heavy rings on his fingers before interlacing them and cracking his knuckles.
Ten popping sounds, ten distinct pressure drops, as the dissolved gases inside his synovial fluid formed and collapsed into tiny bubbles. It was a rhythmic staccato that filled the sudden vacuum of the room, each click a miniature testament to the mechanical imperfection of the human frame.
Dottore counted every single sound, observing the precise movement of the joints, before raising his gaze. Red eyes and purple eyes met across the dim space. The silence that followed was a beautifully complex negotiation conducted entirely through the cold geometry of their conflicting stares.
"…It will be possible." The Doctor's voice softened, acquiring that dangerously melodic cadence that usually preceded a lethal vivisection in his subterranean theater. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Because the older wings of the Zapolyarny Palace are falling to pieces, to the point where the draft is threatening to melt Her Majesty's icy heart," Pantalone explained dryly. "Pulcinella has officially placed the Harbingers on a strict budget restriction until the architectural renovations are completed."
The structural integrity of the Fatui's grand headquarters was, apparently, a higher national priority than the evolution of the human species — a reality that the Regrator found deeply tedious, yet legally binding. He slipped one of his heavy gold rings off his finger, rolling it continuously over his knuckles. Dexterity and flawless coordination were, on many levels, his finest attributes. The metal band danced across his slender fingers with a mesmerizing, uninterrupted speed, a testament to a lifetime spent manipulating both coin and men.
"Half of the last executive meeting was dedicated entirely to the logistics of stone and mortar," he continued. "The other half consisted of Sandrone having a spectacular meltdown because her automated workshops are freezing over. Weren't you paying attention?"
The vivid memory of the Marionette's high-pitched fury over her ruined automatons and frozen oil vats was enough to make the banker's temples throb with an oncoming headache.
"Of course I was," Dottore scoffed, letting out an affronted laugh. The mere suggestion that he would lose himself in the mundane, petty bickering of the lower Harbingers was an insult to his intellect. "Precisely because I was, I know it has nothing to do with me."
He stood up abruptly, snatching the papers from the table and thrusting them straight back into the banker's hands. Moving with a predatory smoothness, he positioned himself directly behind the armchair, looming over Pantalone's shoulder to read the documents with him. His presence was massive, his shadow swallowing the back of the armchair entirely, blocking out the flickering warmth of the nearby fireplace.
Pantalone tilted his head to the side, looking up at the scientist. Although his entire respiratory system reeked of rich Liyuean tobacco, Dottore did not pull back. The suffocating proximity was a deliberate psychological exercise in intimidation — one that the banker met with an unblinking, entirely steady gaze.
"I will ask you one more time, give you a solitary chance to answer me correctly…" Dottore placed his hands on the banker's shoulders, one on each side. His gloved fingers squeezed slightly, almost gently, deliberately finding the precise pressure points near the base of the neck — a subtle reminder of how easily those newly operational lungs could be deprived of their oxygen supply. "Why wouldn't it be possible?"
Pantalone casually adjusted his glasses with his free hand, then straightened the papers, now reading them with some attention. He did not lean away from the touch; instead, he used the threatening physical boundary as an anchor to steady his focus against the absurd figures demanded by the scientist.
They did not exchange a single word in the minutes that followed.
Eventually, Pantalone took off his silver-rimmed glasses, letting them rest between his fingers as his arm stretched lazily along the armrest. The rhythmic scratching of his steady breathing was the only sound left in the room — a perfect, undeniable proof of the Doctor's surgical triumph.
His violet eyes met Dottore's once more. The scientist hadn't moved an inch during the harrowing wait, frozen in his raptorial stance, an immutable force waiting for the inevitable surrender of the treasury.
"…How much, exactly, do you need?" Pantalone finally asked, mimicking the Doctor's earlier sternness. The question carried the begrudging, quiet defeat of a man who knew he was about to break his own strictest financial rules for the sake of an obsession.
"Everything you could possibly invest here," Dottore replied, his voice an insatiable murmur. A bottomless pit of ambition, a hunger that no amount of Mora could ever truly satisfy. He finally disengaged himself, pulling his hands away, and reclaimed the papers, stepping slowly back toward the piano bench. "I'll suck you dry if you choose to fund this experiment."
It was Pantalone's turn to let out a low, amused laugh. "My bank account, or my vitality?"
"Why would you ever assume it has to be one or the other?"
To a man who viewed the human body as nothing more than a highly complex biochemical system of resource inputs and energetic outputs, the distinction was entirely irrelevant.
Dottore reached for the inkwell once more, drawing his signature in the designated space with an uncharacteristic delicacy. It was hard to tell, by the sheer elegance of the script, whether what mattered to him was the beauty of his own handwriting or the specific man the paper would be returned to. The sweeping curves of the ink were a poetic contrast to the brutal nature of the experiments they authorized.
"Interpret it however you wish, so long as the check clears..." Sliding the heavy parchment across the polished surface of the table with an effortless flick of his wrist, he left the document open to the page of interest, waiting for the Regrator to sign his portion. "But, my dear friend, you know perfectly well I meant neither."
"My, Doctor… I'm not sure I can afford it," Pantalone murmured. His long fingers traced the sharp edge of the paper as his smile returned — full of that dangerous luxury that made him the perfect counterpart to the world's most terrifying mind.
Dottore's Elixir of Immortality tasted terribly, unforgivingly bitter. Trial Version 2, the first to successfully arrest cellular decay, had been even more caustic than Trial Version 5, the first to truly grasp the sublime concept of eternal life. This implied that, although the evolutionary improvements between the versions were mathematically evident, the alchemical result was still, at least on this excruciatingly superficial level, imperfect.
The human tongue, acting as the body's premier line of defense, a primordial biological gatekeeper, screamed in violent protest every single time the metallic, corrosive substance washed over it. It left behind a lingering numbness that tasted distinctly of crushed Ley Line sediment, stagnant abyssal water, and boiled arsenic. It was a systematic, calculated assault on the human senses — an unholy marriage of advanced Khaenri'ahn biomechanics and forbidden Sumeru botanical extractions that flatly defied the very concept of natural rot.
Everything about the elixir was bitter, in Pantalone's silent opinion. Its greatest, most stinging bitterness stemmed, perhaps, from the irony of its execution: the formula only worked when that dirty old geezer Zandik no longer needed it to — in fact, it only worked because his human heart no longer did.
The supreme, mocking irony of the heavens dictated that the architect of this eternal existence was himself a fragmented ghost, a shifting collection of manufactured echoes who had bypassed the necessity of a pulse altogether. His original shell rotting away into oblivion, he left behind a council of artificial freaks who dealt in a longevity they experienced purely as a design specification, a blueprint drafted in cold ink.
The only non-bitter fragment of the entire endeavor, if one could even be found, was the rare, collective decision of the segments to, if not perfect the substance for the sake of abstract science, perfect it for Feofan. The individual, volatile iterations of the Doctor rarely found themselves in agreement on matters of aesthetics or mercy; yet, on this one specific transaction, their consciousness was entirely synchronized.
The Regrator's body was their shared canvas. He was the premium, high-purity vessel through which their grandest, most heretical hypothesis could be tested, refined, and perpetually sustained — conveniently fueled by an endless, bottomless supply of golden funding.
Pantalone sat back, staring intensely at the glass test tube Dottore had handed him. The liquid within was a frighteningly vibrant, pulsing fluorescent blue, making him wonder yet again how a fluid so visibly toxic could guide his human cells toward whatever was the opposite of apoptosis. It did not resemble life, but a chemically induced violation of every known natural law. The harsh neon glow cast unnatural, sickly shadows across his sharp features, illuminating the stark contrast between his pale skin and the dark leather of the heavy armchair in which he rested.
He had forgotten to take his prescribed weekly dose — an administrative oversight that Dottore had somehow deduced simply by looking into the banker's violet eyes, even before a single word had been formally exchanged between them. His observational skills were sharp to the point of psychological terror. Without a word of reprimand, the scientist had uncoupled the emergency dose attached to his own intricate earring, the metallic compartment clicking open with a clinical snap, and handed over the concentrated vial he always kept directly against his own flesh.
And it was that very vial that Pantalone now stared at, desperately gathering the necessary courage to swallow it.
The physical reality of his routine execution of mortality hung heavily in the suffocating quiet of the private quarters. Letting out a long, defeated sigh, Pantalone unscrewed the metal cap of the tube. He took a shy, cautious sip, his throat rising and falling in a tight swallow as the poison disguised as medicine breached his lips.
"Ngh… this doesn't feel good…" he muttered, his voice tightening. The liquid burned like liquid frost as it slid down his esophagus, a violent wave of nausea threatening to shatter his meticulously composed exterior.
Dottore paused his vigorous study, his masked face slowly tilting upward. "Hm?" The single syllable was muffled, heavy, his gloved hands coming to anchor firmly on the armrests of the chair, pinning the banker in place as he monitored the immediate physiological response.
Pantalone shook his head tightly, a soft, strained laugh forced onto his lips. "I meant the taste, Doctor." He returned his gaze to the test tube, which remained almost entirely filled to the brim. His dark eyebrows knitted together in sheer exasperation. "You can continue your… inspection. I'll manage here."
He adjusted his posture slightly, leaning his spine deeper into the plush velvet cushions while trying to master the internal rebellion of his stomach — a bizarre, icy fire currently spreading like venom through his digestive tract.
"Hm…" came the low, vibrating response. And so, Dottore continued his inspection, seemingly unconcerned with what the economist did or did not do.
It was a transactional reciprocity — at times perceived as a twisted form of freedom, at others as absolute clinical indifference. They existed in a dark, symbiotic space where professional detachment and intimate violation blurred into a seamless routine.
…This damned test tube. Pantalone detested it, if he were being entirely honest — something he rarely, if ever, chose to be. Even the discreet, crystalline clink of the glass vessels tapping lightly against one another whenever Dottore handed him his monthly allotment box irritated his nerves. The sound had become a grim trigger for physical discomfort; a clear ring that signaled another month of bought time, another month of relying entirely on a monster's fractured genius to keep the waiting grave at bay.
It was a despicable sound for an equally despicable taste, manufactured by a despicable man for his equally despicable counterpart. They were two apex predators locked in an eternal, unbreakable contract, one trading the lifeblood of the global economy for the other's stolen divine secrets.
Pantalone rancorously wished the substance were formulated for parenteral administration rather than oral ingestion. It would be infinitely less disgusting to have his entire body covered in bruised pinpricks week after week than to face this suffocating bitterness for the overwhelming number of years he had already endured it. The thought of regular intravenous injections, of cold metal needles sliding endlessly into his veins, seemed like a luxury compared to the agonizing chore of swallowing that foul alchemical grease.
Segment 65 had explained to him on numerous occasions that the Elixir's oral form of absorption was designed such because it was the only pathway capable of guaranteeing the correct, systemic cellular response, respecting the strict energy conservation that the ancient technology demanded. That clinical, overly analytical iteration had spent hours detailing the precise metabolism required to stabilize the artificial elements within his bloodstream.
Just as many times, Segment 18 had flatly called Pantalone petty for even caring about such trivial sensory complaints in the face of the grand miracle that was immortality. To that younger, far more arrogant version of the Doctor, the banker's complaints were nothing more than the pathetic, ungrateful whines of a mortal who utterly failed to appreciate the terrifying gravity of the blessings he was being granted.
That was the one thing all the segments agreed upon; they all used that exact same, heavy word: miracle. If gods were defined as gods simply because they performed miracles, Dottore understood that he could very well be one himself. The systematic eradication of natural death was an absolute sovereignty that belonged strictly to the heavens — a boundary that the Akademiya had deemed sacred and untouchable. By tearing that golden boundary down with his own blood-stained hands, he had effectively crowned himself in the dark.
…But his alleged godhood does absolutely nothing to soothe the chemical burn lingering in the back of my mouth, Pantalone concluded dryly.
He took another small, torturous sip, a guttural grunt escaping his throat as the fluid scorched it. "I hate it when you execute the administration like this..."
The scientist paused his voracious study again, the heavy shadow of his beak-like mask shifting sharply. "Mm?"
"And I'm entirely certain you only do it like this because you know I hate it," Pantalone wheezed.
It was a cruel choreography of discomfort. Dottore intentionally used the intense, overwhelming friction of his inspection to distract the banker from the dreadful taste.
The masked face tilted back further into the dim light, exposing the sharp curl of his mouth, wicked and stretched wide from ear to ear. "Mm-hm," he confirmed, nodding slowly. The boyish, unadulterated malice in that grin was a fundamental trait shared across every single version of the man, a permanent fixture of his fragmented self.
Pantalone threw his head back against the velvet, a breathless, defeated sound escaping him. "Ugh…"
He reached blindly for his glasses resting on the adjacent side table, navigating through chaotic piles of alchemical notes. The ink was still fresh in some places, covering the pages in gross equations that seemed to shift and writhe like worms if looked at for too long. He didn't dare try to comprehend those formulas — he didn't even dare skim them, always suspecting the distinct possibility of the Doctor working with the Forbidden without informing Her Majesty or his comrades. To glance too deeply into those notes was to risk a profound corruption that even his artificial lungs and reinforced cells might not be able to withstand; some secrets were heavy enough to crush a human mind, no matter how immortal the body containing it had become.
The intense heat emanating from his own flushing body instantly fogged up the lenses of his glasses the moment they were slid onto his nose, so Pantalone removed them again with a click of his tongue, quickly remembering why they were discarded in the first place. The sweat on his brow and the suffocating warmth of their combined proximity turned the spectacles into a useless, milky barrier.
"S-say, Dottore…" he called out, his voice trembling slightly as he held his glasses with one hand and the glowing test tube with the other. "What if you were to gift me new eyes, non-astigmatic ones, next time? One of your countless lab rats must surely possess decent vision."
It was a casual request for a horrific theft, delivered with the exact same nonchalance one might use to ask an associate for a new pair of shoes.
The response from below was immediate, accompanied by a deliberate friction as the Doctor drew his head back. His lips finally released the wet, swollen length of the banker's manhood with a sharp, echoing pop. "They won't once I'm done with them," he growled, his voice considerably hoarser than normal. His vocal cords were thick with the heat of the ongoing act, his tone dripping with an absolute disregard for the physical integrity of his test subjects.
He could have also argued, from a purely medical standpoint, that Pantalone's violet irises were far too biologically rare and heavily modified to be replaced by common stock, but that would be admitting more possessive fascination than was strategically necessary. The specific genetic markers required to match the Regrator's altered biology were few and far between — a logistical reality the Doctor preferred to keep entirely to himself, to maintain his uncontested authority over the banker's body.
Pantalone looked down, his eyes dark. "Oh, finally decided to speak?"
The smug satisfaction of drawing a verbal response was incredibly short-lived. Dottore gripped his hips tightly and took his member back into his mouth with an aggressive, predacious hunger. The economist let out a choked grunt. The invasion was significantly deeper this time, far more dominant — a silent punishment for his arrogant demands.
Every time the Doctor clamped down on him like that, his teeth, noticeably sharper than is humanly common, scraped ruthlessly along his sensitive length. Another terrifying element that Pantalone utterly hated, and which he was absolutely certain the scientist executed solely because of that hatred. The pointy edges of those teeth were a lethal reminder of the beast hiding beneath the scholar's pristine white coat — a razor-thin line between intense lust and a gory castration that Dottore manipulated with masterful control.
The phosphorescent test tube stole Pantalone's attention once more. He had the distinct impression that Dottore took a perverse pleasure in sharing his attention with the vial, sucking him with a deeper, more vicious fervor whenever that blue fluorescence distracted the banker from looking down at him. The glowing fluid was practically a third participant in their sinful liaison, a radiant beacon of their shared, lascivious damnation.
Determined to end that torture, Pantalone brought the glass closer to his lips, taking a large, definitive gulp this time. From below, eyes as red as fresh blood tracked through the dim light all the mechanisms involved in the movement — the muscles of his tongue forcing the liquid to the back of his throat, the muscles of his throat driving the liquid down to his esophagus.
It caused Dottore a bizarre flash of jealousy. "Hmph."
Yet, he registered the entire process of consumption with the pure, unadulterated ecstasy of a creator watching his prized creation function precisely as intended. His unblinking stare remained locked onto the flawless anatomy of the banker's straining neck.
"Hngh… My cock vibrates e-every time you hum down there," Pantalone gasped, resting his head heavily against the back of the armchair, eyes rolling up to stare blindly at the ceiling. The plaster above was dark, illuminated only by the sickly pulsing of the neon fluid remaining in his trembling hand. The closer he drew to his inevitable orgasm, the more a desperate, primal urge wanted to reach down and tangle his fingers into Dottore's thick hair. But he knew, with absolute certainty, that the scientist would instantly cease everything and walk out of the room if he dared to do so. Pantalone had tested that boundary exactly once in the past, and it turned out the Doctor's strict no-touch rules were entirely absolute. "It's a weird… mmph! I-It feels entirely too weird!"
"Mmhn…" Dottore purred against him, deep in his throat.
"C-come on, Zandik… stop doing that…"
The breathless request was met with immediate insubordination. Dottore let out a low rumbling laugh against his groin, and that cursed laugh provoked an utterly unbearable vibration. The resonant sound within the Doctor's chest cavity sent a frantic, electrifying shudder straight through Pantalone's overstimulated nerves, violently pushing him to the absolute precipice of his release.
The banker stared agonizingly at the test tube, and the test tube stared mockingly back at him. The substance was almost entirely gone now; only a few milliliters remained at the very bottom of the container, more residual moisture than an actual dose — he was forced to drink it regardless, because it was another unbreakable, strict rule of Dottore's that every single micro-gram of the alchemical solution be consumed. Otherwise, it was categorized as waste, loss, and disrespect. Every drop was an astronomical investment of time, Mora, and rare resources that could not be cheapened by mere human weakness or a sensitive palate.
Dottore absolutely could not stand to be disrespected.
However, there was a beautifully transactional, cruel symmetry to his sadism: in return for absolute compliance, he also did not disrespect Pantalone's desires. The exact moment the banker swallowed the final, bitter dregs of the Elixir, leaving the glass vial completely clean, Dottore shoved himself upward, swallowing the length of his member wholly until the base pressed hard against his lips. A twisted, final reward.
The sudden, suffocating depth of that throat plunged the banker into a panting state of primal survival — his new synthetic lungs being entirely at fault… well, semi-new ones, by this point in time. The delicate artificial tissue strained violently against the sudden lack of oxygen, his chest heaving in a desperate, locked rhythm against the back of the chair.
The intense physical friction below and the chemical rush of the freshly swallowed elixir combined into a blinding, deafening vortex of pure sensation. Under that brutal pressure, it did not take many more deep suctions for Pantalone to pathetically fall apart. He came hard, filling Dottore's mouth with another thick, bitter taste — a fluid that the Doctor did not seem to detest anywhere near the same level as he detested the elixir, if the feral way the scientist ached for that hot liquid communicated anything to the conscious mind.
Dottore swallowed the release with a predatory, unholy thirst, his throat working with terrifying efficiency to claim every last drop of the heavy dividend his long-term investment had just produced.