i have only just stumbled upon your neuvi fic and omg it is absolutely incredible. I won’t lie I was distraught to find it without an end but regardless I just wanted to compliment it, it was brilliant!! Dare I ask if you hope to ever return to it? I am desperate to know what happens. Wishing you all the best x
hi hi!!! i saw this in my inbox and cldnt help but reply immediately 😭😭 ugh i really want to complete this fic… i have the outline laid out and everything 💔💔 but since the last update i have started college and havent been able to find time. but bc of ur ask i will try my best to update a new chapter soon. perhaps i cld tag u in it if i could have your @?
You know your drunk art post about love and personhood from 2019? Every night at bedtime my late cat would lie on my chest, and her little heartbeat would be right on top of mine, and I'd think about that piece of art you made, and have a similar sort of image in my head. Anyway, yesterday I finally put the image to paper, and idk where this is going, just that that piece of art you created means a lot to me. Have a cool day ✌️
OHHHH MY GOD!!!!! EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LOOK AT THIS. ITS ALL BEEN WORTH IT
Yet another post that reads like four shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief
I’m sorry but the THOUGHT that has been put into this, I actually CAN’T—
The fact that nearly every line is so metrically considered- near perfect iambic pentameter witb the occasional trochee for emphasis, but usually retaining a strong sense of rhythm nonetheless. And then the king comes in at the end, so wound in his disbelief that his response is reduced to prose.
And the even better thing about this is how easy it would have been to structure the king’s line into iambic pentameter: it is effectively already said as such because of the way wizardlyghost has phrased it, yet they haven’t!! They did not break the line, rendering what, by all typically of both Shakespearean canon and other periods context should be the character with the most command and authority in the whole play. If there was ever a more effective way to convey a genuine “what the fuck??”, I know of it not.
But it gets better!! Shakespeare regularly uses meter in order to represent class divide; the nobility usually speak in iambic pentameter, save for a few particularly chosen moments (e.g. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, Othello’s realisation of Desdemona’s “betrayal”) or just lines where Shakespeare needs to suggest high emotion or when a character is lost in thought. Supernatural characters like the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Witches in Macbeth usually speak in trochaic tetrameter, an inversion of iambic pentameter. Lower class characters, particularly those used for comic relief (usually under the influence of alcohol), speak with no structure at all: their language is plain prose. Therefore, if this is a conversation between these types of characters, as the prompt from silvergirachi suggests, why the hell are the characters speaking so eloquently???
Now, this is Tumblr. It is subsequently logical to assume that this may have merely been a humorous recreation (and a very good one at that) of the Shakespearean style in a way that is widely recognisable to an audience that may or may not have read a great deal of Shakespeare, which is understandable. However, logic is boring so I’m going to probe further into this to the point where future historians will look to this as an example of overanalysing.
The inherent eloquence of the characters here suggests an unusual subversion of the roles typically assumed in Shakespearean comedy. This could be interpreted along two major avenues: firstly, that the rhetoric displayed by the speakers is fundamentally representative of how truth can be expected even from the most seemingly pointless or ludicrous discussions. Furthermore, it could suggest that it matters not how well constructed your speeches are: if you talk bullshit, it’s going to sound that way despite your attempts to hide it.
This is similar but not identical to the second avenue of interpretation: there is the implication that the noblemen in the play are in fact the comic relief characters, therefore implying that the “common people” of the play are the ones whose influence, though not expressed in such a highly spoken manner, makes a lot more sense than whatever the hell this is. If this was a real Shakespeare play, I would call it a subtle exploration into the innate corruption of the rich and powerful. Well done, op.
Now, I doubt any of this is actually grounded analysis in any way, shape or form, but if someone else can take this to the extremes of writing a Shakespearean scene, why can I not analyse it as such? And where else to do so than Tumblr?
outside it starts to pour — neuvillette | chapter thirteen
synopsis: in the limelight of fontaine, the prying eyes of its people never truly tears their gaze off the iudex and you, the présidence du conseil d'état, which makes for baseless rumours to fester and echo throughout the theatrics of opera. you and neuvillette are challenged by the reputations the both of you are expected to uphold, and the weighty decision to navigate these intricacies rests upon the discerning judgement of fontaine's archon.
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ao3 : wattpad ˚ .˚
⌗ pairing : neuvillette x fem!reader
⌗ feat : neuvillette, reader, furina
⌗ warnings : BLOOD. lots of it. inflicted trauma (both mentally and physically I fear...)
⌗ word count: 5.8K
Neuvillette watches you disappear around the bend to your residence, your stride as unmoving as ever. Were it within his power, he would’ve accompanied you to your very doorstep for no more of the lurking dangers that had come to bite your blind spot: a robber, perhaps, or perhaps your door had rendered itself faulty. Yet, in truth, despite his pitiful ignorance in denying that it was merely an excuse, every fibre of his being itched with the desire to see you — even if it meant for only a second longer.
Lady Furina once teased that without you in his presence, he resembled a lost, weeping dog without its master; and at the time, such a bold claim seemed borderline preposterous when made against The Most Impartial Man to Grace Teyvat. Yet, now, with no one but you running circles in his lawyering mind, he thinks Furina wasn’t so wrong.
What had you done that had the conservative faction onto your every bone? He dwelled upon the thought amidst the expected strain of your silence in the coach; and when you left, his chest swelled inexplicably of something he could scarcely articulate — something that evoked fear and a second thing; something the fine workings of his brain and the candid nature of his tongue are much too afraid to admit. Because he had spent the greater part of this year saying that he loved, and loved, and loved you — yet always with a measure of restraint.
Because no person in the world can fathom, let alone bear, the burden of calling the woman who hates them their lover — and yet, there Neuvillette is, with his heart laid bare on his sleeve, yet hopelessly unable to lift the cloth off it — because God forbid he breaks his word; and the Iudex never breaks his word. Not unless it’s for you.
Cut to his blood. Let it spill. And only then will they see how every cell of his body spells your name, into every corner, every crevice the reddish wine of life wishes to touch.
He never questioned why you hated him so much. Many people despise him, wish to have him burnt at the stake. But he had come to accept this bitter truth long — but that was before; before he caught the glint in your eye whenever you smiled — however fake or real. And that was when his heart caved in on itself, to make room for one extra person, despite how difficult you were, and still are.
A pit settles in his stomach, and he cannot help but wonder if whatever it is that is ailing him derives itself from himself, or from you — because if it were from you —
“Uhm, Monsieur? Where to?” The coachman has his elbow resting against his own headrest by the sheer effort of him attempting to grab Neuvillette’s attention — and that he does — just, with a little bit of difficulty involved.
Neuvillette’s blinks, slightly shaking his head to stir him back to reality.
If anything was to take his mind off things, it would be work. So, with a resolute sigh, he gathers himself and straightens his tie along with his posture.
“Ah, right. The Palais Mermonia, please.” He says this with a sort of modest dip of the head, possibly in shame, but more likely because he almost feels as if caught, subpoenaed into telling the world what he had just thought about.
He settles back against the cushioned seat, the moonlight making the blue accents of both cloth and body only fade into a natural monochrome. As the coach rumbles along, he thinks of you.
Archons save you, because whatever it is, you aren’t making a safe trip to your doorstep.
You try to disregard the echo of the footsteps mirroring your own— but from what happened earlier today, you can’t say you aren’t at least a little on your toes. A brief scrape of the wheels of the coach against the tarmac makes its final note within your vicinity before fading into the void of silence, and you mutter a prayer, however severed your belief is with the Heavens above, for someone to come save you.
Trepidation rumbles through your veins like the bass of a drum, and it rings through your already pounding head, making you a puppet to fear’s instrument. A mild shake to your head only presses the incorporeal needle deeper into your head. In an attempt to divert the discomfort, you rub your temples profusely. But, your efforts are relayed out to you in vain as you falter in your steps.
You hear a split second delay of the mimicker; and this time the step resounds a metre closer than a minute ago. Panic drives you through the streets. Reaching for the dagger up the garter wrapped around your torso, the polished sheen of the blade gleaming in the light. You hold it aloft, meeting the tight knit of your eyes in its reflection, every feature bending into every curve of the metal; but you also catch the ominous smirk of a hooded man from behind you.
Your blood runs cold. The sole of your heels rest in discomfort against the merciless cold of cement below your feet. You come to an unideal outcome: this is a do or die situation, and dignity be damned if you don’t at least leave with claw marks. You inhale sharply, the stinging tang of the winter air cool against the violent heat of your skin.
“If you’re here just ‘cause you were sent by Monsieur Moreau, I’d suggest you return to your quarters,” you start, steeling your heels into the cement of Fontainian soil. “and tell him to kill me himself.”
A rustle of cloth ripples through the wall of dull citylife, and you almost instinctively make a turn to confirm your statement — but you realise with horror that this isn’t some assassin sent by your father.
The man ruptures into hysterical, maniacal laughter. “You won’t have to do all that work, Birdie.”
His mania only ticks at your stuttered stride. You stumble to make up for the blunder, working your pace (your beauty sleep is forgotten, and you’ve long gone walked past your apartment complex). “After twenty-five years, this is how you ask for forgiveness?”
“I am not here to ask for forgiveness. I’m here to take you out myself.”
You whirl, making a move to slash at the arm blanketed by the veil of black he wears. “Couldn’t do that the first time?”
He groans, clutching at his forearm before feeling at the warmth of the liquid between his fingers. The heart encased behind your ribs threatens to break, and your fear only spikes when that look you’ve grown to know washes over his dead, dry eyes. “Still afraid to hurt me, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m far from afraid.”
He reaches for his own blade, and though you had gone years without seeing him, you cannot help but feel a pitiful tug of hurt in your chest. The chill of steel grazes that very spot, and you instinctively wrap your fingers around it to give yourself space between yourself and your possible cause of murder. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”
You respond with you slicing his side, and he hisses — the sound of it honey to your ears. A trance washes over you in your indulgence of watching the man who terrorised you suffer, and as he stumbles backwards, the blade leaves with it.
A grunt of effort sounds from him and he reaches to slice your neck. A slight tilt of the head mitigates the blow to your right cheek, blooming in a clean line of crimson. In your haze, you are blinded with bloodlust, mindlessly throwing blows before your wrist is caught in his stronger, firmer hold — and this is where your dread festers.
Your mind flashes in a frenzy of this specific scenario, where your father throws you on the ground and places a prop sword to your abdomen — but the weapon curled around his hand is not a prop sword, and you aren’t five anymore.
The only lifeline you had slips from your hold, clinking against the floor. There’s no time, and there’s certainly no room to dwell on your weapon; because you are about to get stabbed, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Rebellious hands meet malicious ones, and you are doing everything in your power to pry the blade away from meeting your stomach.
And this is where you make your mistake.
Your diversion from left to right gives your father the perfect leeway to slam down with no force upwards — and you only realise this when your grip loosens and metal digs into your skin.
A guttural scream escapes from the very depths of your throat. When you feel the meticulous handiwork of dissolved thread rip from either side, a panicked sob threatens to leave your lips before a hand slams onto your mouth, muffling your every sound.
I keep getting distracted, you think, the wound Clorinde inflicted on you spilling open in memories and sputtering crimson.
Perfectly slicing the scar he dealt you in your teen years, you’re certain he’s out for more than just blood. He’s out to annihilate you — to silence you; for what can be uttered by a corpse?
It isn’t a lethal spot to stab, but, in some way — it is. Why would he stab through the crevice of your right rib, the one that your mother sacrificed in all the superiority of man? Some part of you hoped with a childlike wonder, that your relationship as father and daughter would bring him to relent, to feel remorse for murdering your mother.
But you realise he had done the same to you as he had done to her. He was just as cruel, and just as unfeeling.
Your mind flickers to Neuvillette, your accusation of his lack of emotion a droplet of water in the ocean compared to this absolute villain of a man standing over you,
Your eyes meet your father’s, and you feel like a rabid dog: helpless, violent, and a loser all the same.
Despite it all, he smiles, the corners of his lips dripping with malice and apathy, the look you’d come to face in all your worst dreams. “You really are like your mother. Weak, a pushover, unable to stop when the possibility presents itself.”
Your eye twitches, and you wrench his hand away from his hold on your face. Blood spills from your busted lips, and it sputters at your attempts to speak. You let out a desperate grunt of effort, finally getting out what you think might be your final words. “S—sounds a lot like you’re talking about yourself.”
He flinches at your words, the leer once etched onto his face a faulty circuit. “How dare you,” he snarls, tightening his grip on the blade. Blame it on your delirium, but it is almost as it wrings the blood on the steel, causing it to seep further into the fabric of your blouse (despite how desperately the cloth of your shirt clings to your skin, it seems to drink in the pour of blood as if parched). “You ungrateful, stubborn girl — you know nothing of power.”
Bravado. One would view your father to be a composed, successful man; but you are his daughter, no matter how much it pains you to admit it — and so you can see the cracks (bravado) in his facade just as easily as you can put up yours. One would see a broken man. You just see evil brimming in flames through the cracks of his skin.
“I know… I know enough,” you manage, voice barely clawing above a whisper. “And I know power just as much as you know selfishness.”
He winces, pulling the blade back as if to strike once more, but for once, you are quicker. With a surge of adrenaline, you ball your left hand to reduce the strain on your right, and relish in the momentary satisfaction the crack of bone brings as your fist meets his chin.
Your father staggers back as if drunk, and you squint at the notice of him diverting the direction of his heels, almost admitting defeat, admitting his plan of escape. Foolish; he had never changed his ways — mostly because you never told him that his cowardice always stayed with him. Because he always left.
Your blade is but a few steps away from you, and so you wriggle your arm with a sort of hastiness you never thought you had. It almost seems to increase in distance the more you reach for it, the sheen of the curved dagger dulling in tandem with your effort. With your eyelids shut in an attempt to regain some semblance of strength, your fingers finally brush against metal, and you grasp it with a disregard for your grip around the sharp edge.
You look up, and panic. Managing another blow to his ankle, a shard of ice manifests from your hand. Aimed at his Achilles heel, you shut your left eye. The shard veers off course, slicing just shy of its mark. Shit. His scream of agony resounds like an orchestra in your ears.
Taking advantage of his disorientation, you clutch at the wound, chewing on your lip to muffle the screams that threaten to burst uncontrollably from the very depths of your throat. Pain ripples through every ounce of your being, but you force yourself to stand, weighing on your left heel.
The chill of more unforgiving ice shoots from the tips of your fingers, wrapping snuggly around the ankles of the man who shoots you an indiscernible stare. Sometimes I forget I can do that, you think, loitering around the cool glow of blue around your waist. He’s backed against a wall, legs frozen into the ground, and there’s no where he can run to.
“You underestimate me, Father,” you grit, bringing your blade to his neck, the anxious pounding of his heart made obvious by a tense vein acting as a metronome of his unadmitted fear. “I am not my mother. And I certainly am not you.I’ve worked my way up the ranks fair and square.”
The unbothered facade doesn’t hold up as well as you’d like, and a quiver leaves your lips.
His glare reflects back into your own, and instead of a witty remark, he only scoffs. “Fair and square? Watch your mouth,” he tuts, shaking his head in disbelief. “Madame Lavigne. Willingly giving up the House of Moreau for nobodies like the Lavignes. And the Neuvillette name!”
“At least my mother died a death of honour,” you mumble, seething with blinding rage, that, under the blanket of irrationality, tells you her death was not of honour. It was of humiliation.
To be cursed wealth and to raise a child birthed out of wedlock — that is a legacy of no worth.
To claw at the decadent marble floors stained by a person in which carries himself with the arrogance of man, the sinful coin of those left bloodied under the heel of his boots, is degrading in its whole entirety.
A cruel, spiteful quirk of his lip morphs the wrinkles of his skin into a wicked mocking of his age, and he shivers with rage. “And you think you will?”
The blade at his neck falters, and so does your will. Blood trickles down your face, and even more down your legs, burgundy reveries tracing their course down to the very pads of your heel. “If that’s the question you choose to ask, I don’t think you know me at all.”
He tips his head back (as if he could go any further, given the distance between his skull and the wall), letting the blood drip in the absence of a dagger. “I think I do.”
“P — prove it.” Your vision falters for a sudden, lurching moment, and you find yourself digging your feet deeper into the grooves of the city tarmac.
“Kill me then,” he commands, the authority of conman and a father blurred in the dim light of night.
“You’re making me prove I know you well enough,” Your voice lilts. “That is not what I asked.”
He persists, voice now a constant demand echoing amongst the other phantoms of the same voice, except this time, his tangible voice. “Stupid girl. Kill me.”
You should know that your father is the last person to do what you ask — but can you blame yourself? That’s all you’ve ever wished for. All you’ve ever prayed for.
(but could you call it a prayer? another, more foolish version of you sounds. it says: a prayer is whatever you say on your knees.)
With all the strength you have left, you press deeper into his skin, until you feel it give way with a pool of blood. Another push, and he’d be dead. Perhaps you’d be, too. Killing him won’t stop your own bleeding.
The teeth that anchor your tortured gasps give way to an unbidden dam of tears, each sob a betrayal of your own will. It flows — the pain — in salty rivulets, ebbing in silent streams down your bloodied cheeks. Why do you show sadness in the face of a man that just so happened to be the cause behind your own assassination? To this, you have no answer.
His expression sours into that of a grimace. “You’re weak,” is what he chokes out, gulping for air to spit out more words you think will haunt you for all the days you are blessed (cursed) to live.
“You disappoint me.”
It’s childish — how you awaited the next words with the manner of your old habit: rehearsing his lines in your head. You always find that they’re not quite what you expected.
And in that moment, your realisation comes in grim, gnawing waves. The two of you have come to an agreement; and for this you are somewhat bitterly grateful.
You would never kill your father.
This does not mean you aren’t entitled to feel rage. Rage for what he had just done to you. Rage for what he did.
Archons, you’re struggling to stand because he just drove a blade through your stomach.
And so you give him one last warning by wrenching the dagger out of your abdomen and mirroring the action to his kidney.
His scream is no longer an indulgence, but an overdose. Your mouth parts to shoot another jab, but you find you have nothing else to say. This does not stop you from searching his eyes for an answer, and within their depths, you find everything you need.
Your knees threaten to buckle, but you make yourself a promise not to show yourself weaker than you already are. Sliding with the tips of your toes, your mind springs to make a choice. You aren’t bothered enough to turn and have your father watch you return to your house. Clorinde lives too far off the city walls.
There is only one person you can think of. And with a thawing, yet stiff heart, you pick the kindest of the three evils.
It is safe to conclude that the Iudex of Fontaine has found himself mired in more distress than revelation on Lucien Moreau.
Moreau’s reputation in society is nothing short of a good, upstanding citizen — a man shooting his way up the ranks through very legitimate means. According to accounts, his dealings in business are only transacted through honest income — his wealth easily to link — traced back from esteemed family fortunes and heirlooms. The house of Moreau has always been in favour of the public.
Every document on Moreau’s particulars state the same thing: businessman; trader on occasion; wealthy by inheritance. Businessman, trader on occasion, wealthy by inheritance. All sixteen syllables of those words recur in an agonising mantra as he pores further into the records — because how can Neuvillette ever hope to protect you if there’s nothing incriminating on him?
He’s simply a man who specialises in exports.
The Iudex’s frustration can only mount as his fingers rake in a dance through his already mussed hair. Searching relentlessly for inconsistencies, he finds nothing but a man poised to perfection. But Neuvillette, the Ordainer of Justice, should know full well that no man is perfect. Not even him.
From trade logs to financial statements, connections, he finds his search fruitless.
So Neuvillette comes to a conclusion: he is not to achieve anything driven in such a state of lassitude. He draws in a sharp breath, slips the documents into a file, places it to the top of the stack of cases, and leaves.
He adjusts his hair at the foot of the office door, and realises that he is the only source of sound in the whole of the Palais. The tips of his ears suggest a sharper edge to his hearing, and though it’s somewhat true, he wonders if this is where his age comes to attack his senses. A little birdie would suggest the eerie quiet of the night is a much more unsettling endeavour than one of crickets. Although Neuvillette is not one for superstition, he still takes this thought into consideration as he tugs his glove further up his sleeve, briefly recalling your anthology of fallacy perched on one of your shelves.
A creak sounds from one of the hinges, and his eyes draw into slits, as if to hear better. How awfully peculiar, he thinks; his hands aren’t anywhere near the knob.
Another creak comes to manifest in the door’s screws, and another, and another, until it gives way under the weak weight of whatever’s on the other end. He fully expects a bull to come barreling through, but he sees… you?
What a sight. You’ve come to crawl to sit against the doorframe for support, clutching tightly around the small of your waist. The blazer you’d worn earlier today is nowhere to be found, leaving you in nothing but a soaked dress shirt clinging onto every morsel of your skin — and pants, of course. Bloodied and bruised, your lips twitch into a dazed smile.
“Hey.”
“Mon — [Name], who did this to you?” His first instinct is to pull you up and bring you to the couch, but judging from your state, it would be far more agonising than if you were to just lay where you are.
With the back of your palm, you wipe the crimson staining the corners of your mouth. “What does it matter? I would still bleed if you knew.”
Neuvillette squats down to level his gaze to yours, before his attention dips to the blood seeping from a gash from your side. Against his accord, he winces.
A breathless chuckle escapes through the gaps in your teeth. “That bad?”
“No, no, not at all. Let me help you,” he says, watching the way your head tips, almost submitting to the loss of blood. In a frenzy, he reaches out to cup your face, tapping your cheek to stir your eyes open. “Whatever you do, do not close your eyes, not now.”
Your forehead crinkles in distaste, but you force yourself awake anyway. He reaches underneath you, touch feathering lightly around your figure. “No — I’ll — I’ll stain your robes,” you deny, muttering helplessly, clenching your fingers around his arm.
Does she not recall I’ve had another robe made after I gifted her my own? he frowns, a pinch amused at the thought.
“Then let it stain my robes,” he assures, throat bobbing in boyish anticipation. Your head struggles under the effort of you nodding, and so he wastes no time in scooping you up, the warmth of your beading blood soaking through his clothes.
(He thinks he’s just been cleansed with the ichor of a goddess, but surely the impartial Judge Neuvillette mustn't say such things, lest the Archons realise where his heart truly lies. Blasphemy! he thinks they shout.)
Your lids threaten to fall under the weight of exasperation, and so, with a light poke to your temple, you are disturbed by Neuvillette’s act of keeping you awake. The groan that grows to morph into a whimper brings the Iudex to stutter in his tracks; what should he do? Should he cool you down?
He comes to a drawing conclusion that it would be best to set you down on the leather couch before choosing his next course of action. With all softness, he cups the back of your head, slowly laying you down. His soaked hands abandon their hold on you, and given your lapse in judgement, you shudder at the loss of warmth.
Neuvillette pretends to not notice it.
He turns his back to you, rummaging through his drawer, his hands coming away with a cluster of gauze. Multiple things slip from his shaking grip, and it takes an idiot to realise why: he is panicking, afraid (and for the first time in his life, a solid verdict cannot dictate how to heal his injured wife).Reaching for more, the cadence of an angel commands him to stop.
“Neuv… Neuvillette,” you sigh, eyes clenched tight in light of your bleeding. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve turned as fast as the words leaving your lips.
Orpheus had fallen victim to it with Eurydice, and Neuvillette had once doubted his integrity. In all renditions, Orpheus turns because her silence has driven him mad; he turns because he thinks they have triumphed; he turns on instinct at the sound of her stumble.
For if all it would’ve taken was for him to resist that backward glance, why did he falter?
But now he knows why. And he hates that he does.
“I know, [Name]. It will be alright.”
You let out another noise, and this time it’s an agonising scream that tears the very bases of your diaphragm.
You certainly are no Eurydice, and he certainly isn’t Orpheus.
And regardless, he turns.
He rushes, but he feels that his pace is sluggish, comically slow. Your hand is in his before you can even blink, but nothing beats the feeling of your father's blade embedded in you like some sort of morbid heirloom. This is one battle scar you wish not to put on display.
Neuvillette makes space for himself on the couch, his focus trailing down the streams of blood that begin to crack as they dry. He resorts to another solution, but for whatever reason, he thinks you wouldn’t be partial to it.
“I can meld this wound shut, but I must ask you to steel yourself of the pain. Do you believe you could endure it?” He searches your pained, constricted look for a response, and believes he finds one.
With desperate eyes, you nod. However hard you try to avoid his look, it still bores into you, almost relentlessly.
“Just — hold onto me should the pain become too much to bear.” He still has a layer of cloth to get through, and he fears you wouldn’t like it. So he asks. “May I — ahem — undo your…”
“Archons, just do whatever you have to do.” Noted. Extreme cases of duress do not appear to shut your brattish tongue.
He works gently at the buttons of your dress shirt, prying the cloth apart to reveal an absolutely gnarly sight of grime. Looking past the blooming bruise around the perimeter, he places one hand around the curve of your waist to steady his other hand, which glows, almost neon in the light.
Pinching the fingers of his right hand together, he mimics the thread of a stitch through your skin; and as he diverts his eyes, he still sees you, brimming with something more than hurt. Lady Furina once corrected him — said that hurt was not anguish.
Anguish. What a strange word for such a strange feeling.
He strains his hand that hovers over your abdomen, and you bite into your palm to muffle your cries. Neuvillette’s eyes flit to you just in time to catch your act of fruitless respite — and without his usual calculations, he offers his hand, beginning to trip over his own words as if he’s never spoken before.
“Uhm. Here, you can squeeze here.”
If things were any different, he would’ve smiled the moment you registered the lack of sophistication in his diction (well, he thinks you do; but that’s enough for him). However, things are the same, and instead, he’s drowning in the tenderness of your agony. A playfulness buried under the need for survival.
To his surprise, you reach for his wrist — causing him to almost lose his focus, and it’s already showing! The blue glow emanating from his right dims immediately ever so slightly at the little distraction: you.
Just before the skin’s fully stretched taut and the wound is melded closed, you let another grunt of pain.
“Did I do something?” Neuvillette asks, a little too frantic — even to his liking.
You squeeze harder on his wrist. “I think my fa— assailant poisoned the blade.”
“Do not worry. I may not be Sigewinne, but I know how to work my way around poison.”
Your chest rises in a short-lived sweetness of a laugh before you shrink back again, grimacing in pain. “I sure would hope you do.”
“Alright, I hereby suspend any further laughing for the foreseeable future,” he chastises, albeit a little playfully. He does not recognise the twist in his chest that begins unravelling at the sight of you loosened up under some sort of anaesthetic of induced delirium.
You are sound asleep, and as far as he knows, this is the most peaceful he has seen you; other than when you were passed out in your office. Similar circumstances, different couch. You sure do love your couches.
He hadn’t moved one bit, subjecting himself to a most unpleasant position on the leather seat. Given the limited legroom, he’d considered bringing you to one of the guest rooms, but he didn’t intend on disturbing your slumber, either.
Given the way you’re frozen stiff, he assumes you haven’t had rest like this in weeks. He takes meticulous steps in cleaning the blood from your cheek, and even more scrupulous effort at the tear of your lip, curved in a perpetual frown. He worries if he hurts you, even in slumber.
God, even leaving his office to search for antiseptic ailed him to the point where he constantly looked to see if you were fine. He worried to wake you even when the cotton pads reached to clean the blood underneath your fingernails, the dried tears that never fell from the cliff of your eyebags.
He lets the wads of cotton pile in the corner of the couch, scooting closer to get a clearer view of your face. Even dirtied, your skin glows like porcelain in the dim light — and he doesn’t even realise what he’s doing until you shift your sleep.
Neuvillette, Chief Justice of Fontaine, does not know the truth of power ballads and poems. He does not know how to reenact what mortals love to speak of. Somehow, he manages to find all his answers in you.
He just doesn’t know if you find the answers in him.
Rain stirs from the outside, pattering violent drums against the windows, before eventually reaching into the confines of Neuvillette’s heart and ripping them open. To the naked eye, he is just tending to a wound. To the trained eye, he hopes they see a man tending to a wound.
Leaning closer to wipe the fresh blood that begins to bloom once again, he moves to the slope of your nose, then to your brow, and further, and further upwards. His lips threaten to meet the temple of your face, exigent, brimming with want. Neuvillette has never learnt how to want.
Before he can draw any closer, your eyes flutter open, and he frantically acts as though he’s in the midst of cleaning your face (he briefly argues that kissing is an act of sanitisation, though he knows full well he’s conning himself).
Your glassy gaze peeks through your lashes, meeting Neuvillette’s stare in a solemn greeting.
What does one say to someone who has awoken in the early hours, just shy of midnight? Good morning? Good night? Whatever the dilemma is, it washes away at the sound of your voice breaking the wall of silence. “It’s okay. Go on, do what you were going to do.”
“I was merely tending to your injuries.”
“You know what I mean.”
Is there anything in the Fontainian Legal Codex that states anything of a divorce prompted by terrible romantic advancements? Because if there isn’t, he might be the sole inspiration for a new addition to a five-century-old book of law.
Your lips thin in drowsy impatience before bringing a hand to delicately trace his chin, guiding him to you with the touch of what one might mistake for a divine atlas. It’s soft beneath your calloused palm, almost reverent, the act of navigating the map etched in the fine lines of your skin a fervent current.
It is sweet, almost. Doing what is encouraged, but what is also prohibited — your own rules broken by a sick hand. Your sick hand. You are supposed to be strong, firm. But firm be damned if this is the only time you can indulge in regretful desires before your father kills you — properly this time.
Neuvillette’s lips against yours is a gentle war, the first touch of dawn, strings of sun prodding you awake.
He feels you lean forward for more, but he presses you down, afraid of hurting you any further. Desire is an odd, odd thing. Why the tug at heart? Some part of him tells him it’s simply guilt. But emotions aren’t simple.
You are the first to pull away, but not enough to rid yourself of him.
“I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry if I confuse you. I am confused myself.” What you really think of is the begrudging mercy of your blade, the one set to slit the throat of your own blood. But you are weak, you tell yourself, succumbing to the horror of your father’s prophecy. For you truly are frail, and that front you put up won’t hold forever.
He, however torturous, manages to make space between the two of you. However far he searches, he finds no semblance of culpability. That’s what makes it wrong. Impartial as he may be, he has just erred in judgement, but he thinks it’s okay. That it’s justifiable.
But is love justifiable in the face of court?
a/n: aaa KISS KISS KISS
ive been dying to write this chapter for a while!! I thought it would be best to write the majority of the chapter in neuvillette's pov to really build it…
I thought it'd be nice to explicitly talk about reader's impulsiveness and fluctuating moods. and I think we know where she gets it from ermmm mm m
please lmk what u think of this chapter n and feel free to write your predictions hehe
outside it starts to pour — neuvillette | chapter thirteen
synopsis: in the limelight of fontaine, the prying eyes of its people never truly tears their gaze off the iudex and you, the présidence du conseil d'état, which makes for baseless rumours to fester and echo throughout the theatrics of opera. you and neuvillette are challenged by the reputations the both of you are expected to uphold, and the weighty decision to navigate these intricacies rests upon the discerning judgement of fontaine's archon.
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ao3 : wattpad ˚ .˚
⌗ pairing : neuvillette x fem!reader
⌗ feat : neuvillette, reader, furina
⌗ warnings : BLOOD. lots of it. inflicted trauma (both mentally and physically I fear...)
⌗ word count: 5.8K
Neuvillette watches you disappear around the bend to your residence, your stride as unmoving as ever. Were it within his power, he would’ve accompanied you to your very doorstep for no more of the lurking dangers that had come to bite your blind spot: a robber, perhaps, or perhaps your door had rendered itself faulty. Yet, in truth, despite his pitiful ignorance in denying that it was merely an excuse, every fibre of his being itched with the desire to see you — even if it meant for only a second longer.
Lady Furina once teased that without you in his presence, he resembled a lost, weeping dog without its master; and at the time, such a bold claim seemed borderline preposterous when made against The Most Impartial Man to Grace Teyvat. Yet, now, with no one but you running circles in his lawyering mind, he thinks Furina wasn’t so wrong.
What had you done that had the conservative faction onto your every bone? He dwelled upon the thought amidst the expected strain of your silence in the coach; and when you left, his chest swelled inexplicably of something he could scarcely articulate — something that evoked fear and a second thing; something the fine workings of his brain and the candid nature of his tongue are much too afraid to admit. Because he had spent the greater part of this year saying that he loved, and loved, and loved you — yet always with a measure of restraint.
Because no person in the world can fathom, let alone bear, the burden of calling the woman who hates them their lover — and yet, there Neuvillette is, with his heart laid bare on his sleeve, yet hopelessly unable to lift the cloth off it — because God forbid he breaks his word; and the Iudex never breaks his word. Not unless it’s for you.
Cut to his blood. Let it spill. And only then will they see how every cell of his body spells your name, into every corner, every crevice the reddish wine of life wishes to touch.
He never questioned why you hated him so much. Many people despise him, wish to have him burnt at the stake. But he had come to accept this bitter truth long — but that was before; before he caught the glint in your eye whenever you smiled — however fake or real. And that was when his heart caved in on itself, to make room for one extra person, despite how difficult you were, and still are.
A pit settles in his stomach, and he cannot help but wonder if whatever it is that is ailing him derives itself from himself, or from you — because if it were from you —
“Uhm, Monsieur? Where to?” The coachman has his elbow resting against his own headrest by the sheer effort of him attempting to grab Neuvillette’s attention — and that he does — just, with a little bit of difficulty involved.
Neuvillette’s blinks, slightly shaking his head to stir him back to reality.
If anything was to take his mind off things, it would be work. So, with a resolute sigh, he gathers himself and straightens his tie along with his posture.
“Ah, right. The Palais Mermonia, please.” He says this with a sort of modest dip of the head, possibly in shame, but more likely because he almost feels as if caught, subpoenaed into telling the world what he had just thought about.
He settles back against the cushioned seat, the moonlight making the blue accents of both cloth and body only fade into a natural monochrome. As the coach rumbles along, he thinks of you.
Archons save you, because whatever it is, you aren’t making a safe trip to your doorstep.
You try to disregard the echo of the footsteps mirroring your own— but from what happened earlier today, you can’t say you aren’t at least a little on your toes. A brief scrape of the wheels of the coach against the tarmac makes its final note within your vicinity before fading into the void of silence, and you mutter a prayer, however severed your belief is with the Heavens above, for someone to come save you.
Trepidation rumbles through your veins like the bass of a drum, and it rings through your already pounding head, making you a puppet to fear’s instrument. A mild shake to your head only presses the incorporeal needle deeper into your head. In an attempt to divert the discomfort, you rub your temples profusely. But, your efforts are relayed out to you in vain as you falter in your steps.
You hear a split second delay of the mimicker; and this time the step resounds a metre closer than a minute ago. Panic drives you through the streets. Reaching for the dagger up the garter wrapped around your torso, the polished sheen of the blade gleaming in the light. You hold it aloft, meeting the tight knit of your eyes in its reflection, every feature bending into every curve of the metal; but you also catch the ominous smirk of a hooded man from behind you.
Your blood runs cold. The sole of your heels rest in discomfort against the merciless cold of cement below your feet. You come to an unideal outcome: this is a do or die situation, and dignity be damned if you don’t at least leave with claw marks. You inhale sharply, the stinging tang of the winter air cool against the violent heat of your skin.
“If you’re here just ‘cause you were sent by Monsieur Moreau, I’d suggest you return to your quarters,” you start, steeling your heels into the cement of Fontainian soil. “and tell him to kill me himself.”
A rustle of cloth ripples through the wall of dull citylife, and you almost instinctively make a turn to confirm your statement — but you realise with horror that this isn’t some assassin sent by your father.
The man ruptures into hysterical, maniacal laughter. “You won’t have to do all that work, Birdie.”
His mania only ticks at your stuttered stride. You stumble to make up for the blunder, working your pace (your beauty sleep is forgotten, and you’ve long gone walked past your apartment complex). “After twenty-five years, this is how you ask for forgiveness?”
“I am not here to ask for forgiveness. I’m here to take you out myself.”
You whirl, making a move to slash at the arm blanketed by the veil of black he wears. “Couldn’t do that the first time?”
He groans, clutching at his forearm before feeling at the warmth of the liquid between his fingers. The heart encased behind your ribs threatens to break, and your fear only spikes when that look you’ve grown to know washes over his dead, dry eyes. “Still afraid to hurt me, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m far from afraid.”
He reaches for his own blade, and though you had gone years without seeing him, you cannot help but feel a pitiful tug of hurt in your chest. The chill of steel grazes that very spot, and you instinctively wrap your fingers around it to give yourself space between yourself and your possible cause of murder. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”
You respond with you slicing his side, and he hisses — the sound of it honey to your ears. A trance washes over you in your indulgence of watching the man who terrorised you suffer, and as he stumbles backwards, the blade leaves with it.
A grunt of effort sounds from him and he reaches to slice your neck. A slight tilt of the head mitigates the blow to your right cheek, blooming in a clean line of crimson. In your haze, you are blinded with bloodlust, mindlessly throwing blows before your wrist is caught in his stronger, firmer hold — and this is where your dread festers.
Your mind flashes in a frenzy of this specific scenario, where your father throws you on the ground and places a prop sword to your abdomen — but the weapon curled around his hand is not a prop sword, and you aren’t five anymore.
The only lifeline you had slips from your hold, clinking against the floor. There’s no time, and there’s certainly no room to dwell on your weapon; because you are about to get stabbed, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Rebellious hands meet malicious ones, and you are doing everything in your power to pry the blade away from meeting your stomach.
And this is where you make your mistake.
Your diversion from left to right gives your father the perfect leeway to slam down with no force upwards — and you only realise this when your grip loosens and metal digs into your skin.
A guttural scream escapes from the very depths of your throat. When you feel the meticulous handiwork of dissolved thread rip from either side, a panicked sob threatens to leave your lips before a hand slams onto your mouth, muffling your every sound.
I keep getting distracted, you think, the wound Clorinde inflicted on you spilling open in memories and sputtering crimson.
Perfectly slicing the scar he dealt you in your teen years, you’re certain he’s out for more than just blood. He’s out to annihilate you — to silence you; for what can be uttered by a corpse?
It isn’t a lethal spot to stab, but, in some way — it is. Why would he stab through the crevice of your right rib, the one that your mother sacrificed in all the superiority of man? Some part of you hoped with a childlike wonder, that your relationship as father and daughter would bring him to relent, to feel remorse for murdering your mother.
But you realise he had done the same to you as he had done to her. He was just as cruel, and just as unfeeling.
Your mind flickers to Neuvillette, your accusation of his lack of emotion a droplet of water in the ocean compared to this absolute villain of a man standing over you,
Your eyes meet your father’s, and you feel like a rabid dog: helpless, violent, and a loser all the same.
Despite it all, he smiles, the corners of his lips dripping with malice and apathy, the look you’d come to face in all your worst dreams. “You really are like your mother. Weak, a pushover, unable to stop when the possibility presents itself.”
Your eye twitches, and you wrench his hand away from his hold on your face. Blood spills from your busted lips, and it sputters at your attempts to speak. You let out a desperate grunt of effort, finally getting out what you think might be your final words. “S—sounds a lot like you’re talking about yourself.”
He flinches at your words, the leer once etched onto his face a faulty circuit. “How dare you,” he snarls, tightening his grip on the blade. Blame it on your delirium, but it is almost as it wrings the blood on the steel, causing it to seep further into the fabric of your blouse (despite how desperately the cloth of your shirt clings to your skin, it seems to drink in the pour of blood as if parched). “You ungrateful, stubborn girl — you know nothing of power.”
Bravado. One would view your father to be a composed, successful man; but you are his daughter, no matter how much it pains you to admit it — and so you can see the cracks (bravado) in his facade just as easily as you can put up yours. One would see a broken man. You just see evil brimming in flames through the cracks of his skin.
“I know… I know enough,” you manage, voice barely clawing above a whisper. “And I know power just as much as you know selfishness.”
He winces, pulling the blade back as if to strike once more, but for once, you are quicker. With a surge of adrenaline, you ball your left hand to reduce the strain on your right, and relish in the momentary satisfaction the crack of bone brings as your fist meets his chin.
Your father staggers back as if drunk, and you squint at the notice of him diverting the direction of his heels, almost admitting defeat, admitting his plan of escape. Foolish; he had never changed his ways — mostly because you never told him that his cowardice always stayed with him. Because he always left.
Your blade is but a few steps away from you, and so you wriggle your arm with a sort of hastiness you never thought you had. It almost seems to increase in distance the more you reach for it, the sheen of the curved dagger dulling in tandem with your effort. With your eyelids shut in an attempt to regain some semblance of strength, your fingers finally brush against metal, and you grasp it with a disregard for your grip around the sharp edge.
You look up, and panic. Managing another blow to his ankle, a shard of ice manifests from your hand. Aimed at his Achilles heel, you shut your left eye. The shard veers off course, slicing just shy of its mark. Shit. His scream of agony resounds like an orchestra in your ears.
Taking advantage of his disorientation, you clutch at the wound, chewing on your lip to muffle the screams that threaten to burst uncontrollably from the very depths of your throat. Pain ripples through every ounce of your being, but you force yourself to stand, weighing on your left heel.
The chill of more unforgiving ice shoots from the tips of your fingers, wrapping snuggly around the ankles of the man who shoots you an indiscernible stare. Sometimes I forget I can do that, you think, loitering around the cool glow of blue around your waist. He’s backed against a wall, legs frozen into the ground, and there’s no where he can run to.
“You underestimate me, Father,” you grit, bringing your blade to his neck, the anxious pounding of his heart made obvious by a tense vein acting as a metronome of his unadmitted fear. “I am not my mother. And I certainly am not you.I’ve worked my way up the ranks fair and square.”
The unbothered facade doesn’t hold up as well as you’d like, and a quiver leaves your lips.
His glare reflects back into your own, and instead of a witty remark, he only scoffs. “Fair and square? Watch your mouth,” he tuts, shaking his head in disbelief. “Madame Lavigne. Willingly giving up the House of Moreau for nobodies like the Lavignes. And the Neuvillette name!”
“At least my mother died a death of honour,” you mumble, seething with blinding rage, that, under the blanket of irrationality, tells you her death was not of honour. It was of humiliation.
To be cursed wealth and to raise a child birthed out of wedlock — that is a legacy of no worth.
To claw at the decadent marble floors stained by a person in which carries himself with the arrogance of man, the sinful coin of those left bloodied under the heel of his boots, is degrading in its whole entirety.
A cruel, spiteful quirk of his lip morphs the wrinkles of his skin into a wicked mocking of his age, and he shivers with rage. “And you think you will?”
The blade at his neck falters, and so does your will. Blood trickles down your face, and even more down your legs, burgundy reveries tracing their course down to the very pads of your heel. “If that’s the question you choose to ask, I don’t think you know me at all.”
He tips his head back (as if he could go any further, given the distance between his skull and the wall), letting the blood drip in the absence of a dagger. “I think I do.”
“P — prove it.” Your vision falters for a sudden, lurching moment, and you find yourself digging your feet deeper into the grooves of the city tarmac.
“Kill me then,” he commands, the authority of conman and a father blurred in the dim light of night.
“You’re making me prove I know you well enough,” Your voice lilts. “That is not what I asked.”
He persists, voice now a constant demand echoing amongst the other phantoms of the same voice, except this time, his tangible voice. “Stupid girl. Kill me.”
You should know that your father is the last person to do what you ask — but can you blame yourself? That’s all you’ve ever wished for. All you’ve ever prayed for.
(but could you call it a prayer? another, more foolish version of you sounds. it says: a prayer is whatever you say on your knees.)
With all the strength you have left, you press deeper into his skin, until you feel it give way with a pool of blood. Another push, and he’d be dead. Perhaps you’d be, too. Killing him won’t stop your own bleeding.
The teeth that anchor your tortured gasps give way to an unbidden dam of tears, each sob a betrayal of your own will. It flows — the pain — in salty rivulets, ebbing in silent streams down your bloodied cheeks. Why do you show sadness in the face of a man that just so happened to be the cause behind your own assassination? To this, you have no answer.
His expression sours into that of a grimace. “You’re weak,” is what he chokes out, gulping for air to spit out more words you think will haunt you for all the days you are blessed (cursed) to live.
“You disappoint me.”
It’s childish — how you awaited the next words with the manner of your old habit: rehearsing his lines in your head. You always find that they’re not quite what you expected.
And in that moment, your realisation comes in grim, gnawing waves. The two of you have come to an agreement; and for this you are somewhat bitterly grateful.
You would never kill your father.
This does not mean you aren’t entitled to feel rage. Rage for what he had just done to you. Rage for what he did.
Archons, you’re struggling to stand because he just drove a blade through your stomach.
And so you give him one last warning by wrenching the dagger out of your abdomen and mirroring the action to his kidney.
His scream is no longer an indulgence, but an overdose. Your mouth parts to shoot another jab, but you find you have nothing else to say. This does not stop you from searching his eyes for an answer, and within their depths, you find everything you need.
Your knees threaten to buckle, but you make yourself a promise not to show yourself weaker than you already are. Sliding with the tips of your toes, your mind springs to make a choice. You aren’t bothered enough to turn and have your father watch you return to your house. Clorinde lives too far off the city walls.
There is only one person you can think of. And with a thawing, yet stiff heart, you pick the kindest of the three evils.
It is safe to conclude that the Iudex of Fontaine has found himself mired in more distress than revelation on Lucien Moreau.
Moreau’s reputation in society is nothing short of a good, upstanding citizen — a man shooting his way up the ranks through very legitimate means. According to accounts, his dealings in business are only transacted through honest income — his wealth easily to link — traced back from esteemed family fortunes and heirlooms. The house of Moreau has always been in favour of the public.
Every document on Moreau’s particulars state the same thing: businessman; trader on occasion; wealthy by inheritance. Businessman, trader on occasion, wealthy by inheritance. All sixteen syllables of those words recur in an agonising mantra as he pores further into the records — because how can Neuvillette ever hope to protect you if there’s nothing incriminating on him?
He’s simply a man who specialises in exports.
The Iudex’s frustration can only mount as his fingers rake in a dance through his already mussed hair. Searching relentlessly for inconsistencies, he finds nothing but a man poised to perfection. But Neuvillette, the Ordainer of Justice, should know full well that no man is perfect. Not even him.
From trade logs to financial statements, connections, he finds his search fruitless.
So Neuvillette comes to a conclusion: he is not to achieve anything driven in such a state of lassitude. He draws in a sharp breath, slips the documents into a file, places it to the top of the stack of cases, and leaves.
He adjusts his hair at the foot of the office door, and realises that he is the only source of sound in the whole of the Palais. The tips of his ears suggest a sharper edge to his hearing, and though it’s somewhat true, he wonders if this is where his age comes to attack his senses. A little birdie would suggest the eerie quiet of the night is a much more unsettling endeavour than one of crickets. Although Neuvillette is not one for superstition, he still takes this thought into consideration as he tugs his glove further up his sleeve, briefly recalling your anthology of fallacy perched on one of your shelves.
A creak sounds from one of the hinges, and his eyes draw into slits, as if to hear better. How awfully peculiar, he thinks; his hands aren’t anywhere near the knob.
Another creak comes to manifest in the door’s screws, and another, and another, until it gives way under the weak weight of whatever’s on the other end. He fully expects a bull to come barreling through, but he sees… you?
What a sight. You’ve come to crawl to sit against the doorframe for support, clutching tightly around the small of your waist. The blazer you’d worn earlier today is nowhere to be found, leaving you in nothing but a soaked dress shirt clinging onto every morsel of your skin — and pants, of course. Bloodied and bruised, your lips twitch into a dazed smile.
“Hey.”
“Mon — [Name], who did this to you?” His first instinct is to pull you up and bring you to the couch, but judging from your state, it would be far more agonising than if you were to just lay where you are.
With the back of your palm, you wipe the crimson staining the corners of your mouth. “What does it matter? I would still bleed if you knew.”
Neuvillette squats down to level his gaze to yours, before his attention dips to the blood seeping from a gash from your side. Against his accord, he winces.
A breathless chuckle escapes through the gaps in your teeth. “That bad?”
“No, no, not at all. Let me help you,” he says, watching the way your head tips, almost submitting to the loss of blood. In a frenzy, he reaches out to cup your face, tapping your cheek to stir your eyes open. “Whatever you do, do not close your eyes, not now.”
Your forehead crinkles in distaste, but you force yourself awake anyway. He reaches underneath you, touch feathering lightly around your figure. “No — I’ll — I’ll stain your robes,” you deny, muttering helplessly, clenching your fingers around his arm.
Does she not recall I’ve had another robe made after I gifted her my own? he frowns, a pinch amused at the thought.
“Then let it stain my robes,” he assures, throat bobbing in boyish anticipation. Your head struggles under the effort of you nodding, and so he wastes no time in scooping you up, the warmth of your beading blood soaking through his clothes.
(He thinks he’s just been cleansed with the ichor of a goddess, but surely the impartial Judge Neuvillette mustn't say such things, lest the Archons realise where his heart truly lies. Blasphemy! he thinks they shout.)
Your lids threaten to fall under the weight of exasperation, and so, with a light poke to your temple, you are disturbed by Neuvillette’s act of keeping you awake. The groan that grows to morph into a whimper brings the Iudex to stutter in his tracks; what should he do? Should he cool you down?
He comes to a drawing conclusion that it would be best to set you down on the leather couch before choosing his next course of action. With all softness, he cups the back of your head, slowly laying you down. His soaked hands abandon their hold on you, and given your lapse in judgement, you shudder at the loss of warmth.
Neuvillette pretends to not notice it.
He turns his back to you, rummaging through his drawer, his hands coming away with a cluster of gauze. Multiple things slip from his shaking grip, and it takes an idiot to realise why: he is panicking, afraid (and for the first time in his life, a solid verdict cannot dictate how to heal his injured wife).Reaching for more, the cadence of an angel commands him to stop.
“Neuv… Neuvillette,” you sigh, eyes clenched tight in light of your bleeding. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve turned as fast as the words leaving your lips.
Orpheus had fallen victim to it with Eurydice, and Neuvillette had once doubted his integrity. In all renditions, Orpheus turns because her silence has driven him mad; he turns because he thinks they have triumphed; he turns on instinct at the sound of her stumble.
For if all it would’ve taken was for him to resist that backward glance, why did he falter?
But now he knows why. And he hates that he does.
“I know, [Name]. It will be alright.”
You let out another noise, and this time it’s an agonising scream that tears the very bases of your diaphragm.
You certainly are no Eurydice, and he certainly isn’t Orpheus.
And regardless, he turns.
He rushes, but he feels that his pace is sluggish, comically slow. Your hand is in his before you can even blink, but nothing beats the feeling of your father's blade embedded in you like some sort of morbid heirloom. This is one battle scar you wish not to put on display.
Neuvillette makes space for himself on the couch, his focus trailing down the streams of blood that begin to crack as they dry. He resorts to another solution, but for whatever reason, he thinks you wouldn’t be partial to it.
“I can meld this wound shut, but I must ask you to steel yourself of the pain. Do you believe you could endure it?” He searches your pained, constricted look for a response, and believes he finds one.
With desperate eyes, you nod. However hard you try to avoid his look, it still bores into you, almost relentlessly.
“Just — hold onto me should the pain become too much to bear.” He still has a layer of cloth to get through, and he fears you wouldn’t like it. So he asks. “May I — ahem — undo your…”
“Archons, just do whatever you have to do.” Noted. Extreme cases of duress do not appear to shut your brattish tongue.
He works gently at the buttons of your dress shirt, prying the cloth apart to reveal an absolutely gnarly sight of grime. Looking past the blooming bruise around the perimeter, he places one hand around the curve of your waist to steady his other hand, which glows, almost neon in the light.
Pinching the fingers of his right hand together, he mimics the thread of a stitch through your skin; and as he diverts his eyes, he still sees you, brimming with something more than hurt. Lady Furina once corrected him — said that hurt was not anguish.
Anguish. What a strange word for such a strange feeling.
He strains his hand that hovers over your abdomen, and you bite into your palm to muffle your cries. Neuvillette’s eyes flit to you just in time to catch your act of fruitless respite — and without his usual calculations, he offers his hand, beginning to trip over his own words as if he’s never spoken before.
“Uhm. Here, you can squeeze here.”
If things were any different, he would’ve smiled the moment you registered the lack of sophistication in his diction (well, he thinks you do; but that’s enough for him). However, things are the same, and instead, he’s drowning in the tenderness of your agony. A playfulness buried under the need for survival.
To his surprise, you reach for his wrist — causing him to almost lose his focus, and it’s already showing! The blue glow emanating from his right dims immediately ever so slightly at the little distraction: you.
Just before the skin’s fully stretched taut and the wound is melded closed, you let another grunt of pain.
“Did I do something?” Neuvillette asks, a little too frantic — even to his liking.
You squeeze harder on his wrist. “I think my fa— assailant poisoned the blade.”
“Do not worry. I may not be Sigewinne, but I know how to work my way around poison.”
Your chest rises in a short-lived sweetness of a laugh before you shrink back again, grimacing in pain. “I sure would hope you do.”
“Alright, I hereby suspend any further laughing for the foreseeable future,” he chastises, albeit a little playfully. He does not recognise the twist in his chest that begins unravelling at the sight of you loosened up under some sort of anaesthetic of induced delirium.
You are sound asleep, and as far as he knows, this is the most peaceful he has seen you; other than when you were passed out in your office. Similar circumstances, different couch. You sure do love your couches.
He hadn’t moved one bit, subjecting himself to a most unpleasant position on the leather seat. Given the limited legroom, he’d considered bringing you to one of the guest rooms, but he didn’t intend on disturbing your slumber, either.
Given the way you’re frozen stiff, he assumes you haven’t had rest like this in weeks. He takes meticulous steps in cleaning the blood from your cheek, and even more scrupulous effort at the tear of your lip, curved in a perpetual frown. He worries if he hurts you, even in slumber.
God, even leaving his office to search for antiseptic ailed him to the point where he constantly looked to see if you were fine. He worried to wake you even when the cotton pads reached to clean the blood underneath your fingernails, the dried tears that never fell from the cliff of your eyebags.
He lets the wads of cotton pile in the corner of the couch, scooting closer to get a clearer view of your face. Even dirtied, your skin glows like porcelain in the dim light — and he doesn’t even realise what he’s doing until you shift your sleep.
Neuvillette, Chief Justice of Fontaine, does not know the truth of power ballads and poems. He does not know how to reenact what mortals love to speak of. Somehow, he manages to find all his answers in you.
He just doesn’t know if you find the answers in him.
Rain stirs from the outside, pattering violent drums against the windows, before eventually reaching into the confines of Neuvillette’s heart and ripping them open. To the naked eye, he is just tending to a wound. To the trained eye, he hopes they see a man tending to a wound.
Leaning closer to wipe the fresh blood that begins to bloom once again, he moves to the slope of your nose, then to your brow, and further, and further upwards. His lips threaten to meet the temple of your face, exigent, brimming with want. Neuvillette has never learnt how to want.
Before he can draw any closer, your eyes flutter open, and he frantically acts as though he’s in the midst of cleaning your face (he briefly argues that kissing is an act of sanitisation, though he knows full well he’s conning himself).
Your glassy gaze peeks through your lashes, meeting Neuvillette’s stare in a solemn greeting.
What does one say to someone who has awoken in the early hours, just shy of midnight? Good morning? Good night? Whatever the dilemma is, it washes away at the sound of your voice breaking the wall of silence. “It’s okay. Go on, do what you were going to do.”
“I was merely tending to your injuries.”
“You know what I mean.”
Is there anything in the Fontainian Legal Codex that states anything of a divorce prompted by terrible romantic advancements? Because if there isn’t, he might be the sole inspiration for a new addition to a five-century-old book of law.
Your lips thin in drowsy impatience before bringing a hand to delicately trace his chin, guiding him to you with the touch of what one might mistake for a divine atlas. It’s soft beneath your calloused palm, almost reverent, the act of navigating the map etched in the fine lines of your skin a fervent current.
It is sweet, almost. Doing what is encouraged, but what is also prohibited — your own rules broken by a sick hand. Your sick hand. You are supposed to be strong, firm. But firm be damned if this is the only time you can indulge in regretful desires before your father kills you — properly this time.
Neuvillette’s lips against yours is a gentle war, the first touch of dawn, strings of sun prodding you awake.
He feels you lean forward for more, but he presses you down, afraid of hurting you any further. Desire is an odd, odd thing. Why the tug at heart? Some part of him tells him it’s simply guilt. But emotions aren’t simple.
You are the first to pull away, but not enough to rid yourself of him.
“I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry if I confuse you. I am confused myself.” What you really think of is the begrudging mercy of your blade, the one set to slit the throat of your own blood. But you are weak, you tell yourself, succumbing to the horror of your father’s prophecy. For you truly are frail, and that front you put up won’t hold forever.
He, however torturous, manages to make space between the two of you. However far he searches, he finds no semblance of culpability. That’s what makes it wrong. Impartial as he may be, he has just erred in judgement, but he thinks it’s okay. That it’s justifiable.
But is love justifiable in the face of court?
a/n: aaa KISS KISS KISS
ive been dying to write this chapter for a while!! I thought it would be best to write the majority of the chapter in neuvillette's pov to really build it…
I thought it'd be nice to explicitly talk about reader's impulsiveness and fluctuating moods. and I think we know where she gets it from ermmm mm m
please lmk what u think of this chapter n and feel free to write your predictions hehe
outside it starts to pour — neuvillette | chapter twelve
synopsis: in the limelight of fontaine, the prying eyes of its people never truly tears their gaze off the iudex and you, the présidence du conseil d'état, which makes for baseless rumours to fester and echo throughout the theatrics of opera. you and neuvillette are challenged by the reputations the both of you are expected to uphold, and the weighty decision to navigate these intricacies rests upon the discerning judgement of fontaine's archon.
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ao3 : wattpad ˚ .˚
⌗ pairing : neuvillette x fem!reader
⌗ feat : neuvillette, reader, furina
⌗ warnings : mention of prostitution, horrendously inaccurate depiction of poisoning, assassination attempt??
⌗ word count: 4.0K
You cannot help but feel as if you’re walking into a deposition.
The halls stretch out, and your slim fit suit now constricts like a cobra against your pounding ribcage. In manifestation of your argument is a file, threatening to slip from your grasp, sweat clamming your composure and fogging a rational train of thought you spent half of this morning to keep under wraps; and it comes shattering as the routine click click click of your heels no longer serves as a comfort or distraction to what you, in actuality, are terrified of.
Any ordinary individual would find comfort that the most impartial judge is by their side — but you cannot help but regard him as more of a liability than a lifeline.
“Does something ail you, Madame?” He questions, eyes trained on the door at the end of the hallway.
Fixing your collar, your lips twist in displeasure. “Nothing at all, Chief Justice. Just that I have this feeling I’m about to be interrogated. Terribly.”
His steady stride stutters, inclining you to spin around to look him in the eye. After just a second of taking in the subtle lines of his face, you convince yourself with great difficulty that he looks somewhat worried. But just what good does that bring to your own anxiety, exactly? Nothing. Because not only is he blatantly telling you that you should be afraid, any pretentious diplomat could stroll over to him at this moment and tell him off for breaking his pledge of impartiality. But you shake the idea away after coming to terms with how far-fetched the latter sounds.
“There is no reason to worry,” he assures, his once reprimanding gaze a morbid comfort you find yourself confiding in — and it is no secret you must always take it upon your habits to tell yourself that this is wrong, that you shouldn't find yourself believing in a ruse set up by the woman you have so come to despise, but you just cannot help it, and it eats at you from the inside like an apple with a rotting core.
(You conveniently ignore the twist in your gut that tells you this is, as much as you despise it, real.)
His gaze flickers, and for some reason your idea of him being of the inability to understand human emotion strikes him again, another one of those expressions betraying his attempts to keep them at bay. And this time, he’s mulling over something.
His Adam’s apple bobs, and while your eyes naturally settle over the veins trailing along his neck, he finds it in himself to intertwine his fingers with yours — and you find it in yourself to not pull away, against your better judgement. And amongst the pragmatic reasoning pushed to the back of your psyche, you can almost make out their shouts: an unwavering you are going to regret this echoing into a cacophony of a thousand songs. And yet —
And yet.
The last time he held you like this had been that one night where you explicitly told him that any dealings of this nature were prohibited by your own edict. You cannot help but shudder at the bitter irony: the irony being that that very command has now crumbled under your own faltering complacency.
You cannot hear anything, save for the shrill strain of a violin that too, dwindles under the softness of his hold. “Monsieur Neuvillette, what are you —”
“Sorry,” he mutters, the apology slipping out of his lips the second he catches sight of your faltering attention that does everything in its power to deflect his imploring stare.
You draw in a shuddering breath, eyes shut before whispering: “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” You slip your hand from his grip, fingers slipping between the gap of your collar to spare a little room for air.
His glovedi“From what I know, there is nothing they can use against you.”
“Right.”
“Is there something you’re hiding from me? Because if so I am entitled to know. To pro— defend you.”
“No. Nothing at all.”
“Alright then.”
If this were five years ago, you might have considered the scant number of diplomats as a blessing from the Archons above. But you certainly aren’t the girl you were five years ago, and you certainly aren’t going to let it slip you for even one second that the very matter you celebrated half a decade is now cause for concern. Yet, you are no longer the girl of half a decade past, and you find yourself acutely aware that this sparse assembly is, indeed, a matter of grave concern.
You reach for Neuvillette’s shoulder as leverage to whisper into his ear: a meek, faltering warning — a manifestation of your anxieties, if you will. “We’ve got trouble.”
Neuvillette’s attention, previously trained on you, shifts to mirror your own nervous, studying stare directed at the group of the representatives. “We might, but I don’t think a couple of personal jabs your way will have you crumble, ma femme.” You ignore the flutter in your chest and completely disregard the way he indirectly just complimented you — but it could just be a statement for all you care.
Pfft, like you care.
A nicely dressed man sits opposite to your place on the table, spotting the quiver of your eye like an archer to a target. This causes you to shift uncomfortably in your seat — and amidst the bustling small talk amongst the other diplomats in this chamber, he seems to zero in on your tell.
The diplomats help themselves with the teapots laid uniformly along the table, but oddly enough, do not take the effort to actually take part in the consumption of it. However peculiar, you go out of your way to take a light sip of the tea, immediately wincing at the aftertaste of chamomile tea that shouldn’t even exist in its palate; because instead of something sweet, the flavour leaves your tongue bitter, mildly prickly in nature.
“Does your tea taste peculiar to you?” you ask, our turning excruciatingly slow, as if unable to admit that you’ve got something on you no one else should be aware of. Neuvillette’s keen eye does not miss your faltering hold of the teacup, the subtle cant of his head all the more reason to divert what you started to the men who, judging by the accentuation of their wrinkles, are beginning to grow even more restless by the minute.
“No, I do not think so.”
“Nevermind that, then.”
Your lips are pressed into tight, worried lines, the bitter taste still lingering, clinging to your every sense. A sonorous disquiet blooms in your stomach — not from the effect of the poison, but from your insidious conclusion you draw yourself upon — that someone had gone to such lengths to harm you. You are not one to trust your gut from its first warning, but this time, you tug at your intuition like a lifeline when it tells you that someone in this room is complicit in your attempted murder. And your money’s on the man seated opposite of you.
Your mulling over every one of the possibilities is thrown under the clinking of someone’s cup, a resounding strain that draws onlookers to the source and its maker: the man from earlier.
“Ladies —” the man takes an effort to regard both you and Lady Furina — the only women in the room, before ghosting over the others. “— and gentlemen. The meeting shall commence.”
You take no malice in his regards, but instead choose to narrow in on his sharp tongue: a manner of speech you find yourself almost drawn to in terms of his manner of a pointed timbre, a dialect you cannot pinpoint — because, to put it simply, it does not exist. It comes off to be some sort of curious amalgamation – like the accents you hear from traders recounting their journeys across the blue expanse of Teyvat. But you know a trader when you see one: and this man is no trader.
“Lady Furina, as the representative of the Fontainian Parliament, we hereby declare that your action as Archon against the prophecy has been nothing short of deficient and nowhere near as efficient enough to have us back on our feet.” The parliamentarian’s booming baritone echoes against the brick walls of the chamber, eyes a steely blue.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur…?”
“Blanchard. Corbin Blanchard.”
“Monsieur Blanchard, if you are so intent on pulling at my reins, wouldn’t it be politically irresponsible on your end, considering all you’ve been doing is maintaining the tea exports?”
A cocky smile pulls at your lips, drinking in the bitter taste of her own proud look that says I do my research sometimes.
Monsieur Blanchard lets out a stunned, cocky scoff of disbelief. “I think you’re losing sight of the main reason we’re all gathered today. We aren’t here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you. And this —” he almost grunts before slamming a thick folder of documents, and you wince at the sound it makes when it comes into contact with the table.
Lady Furina shoots from her seat, the screech against tile a most unpleasant sound to be greeted with at this time of day. A flicker of panic flashes across the brush of her brow before she straightens, rolling back her shoulders against the padding of her blazer before fabricating a confident — if by all means arrogant — tilt of the chin. “I rebuke that claim! I have done nothing but salvage the lives of the people — uhm, uh — ask a citizen. They’ll tell you, heh…” The poised posture of her shoulders drop into a curve, her haughty guise hesitating when the assembly shows no sign of support.
“Tough crowd,” she grits, a quip of desperation slipping like a whistle through the gaps in her teeth.
“What she means to say,” Neuvillette interjects, rising from his seat (what the Chief Justice had in grace and stead, the Archon lacked). “is that action will be taken immediately to improve our manpower.” A reassuring hand makes its way to cup around Lady Furina’s shoulder, the shudder of her fear moulding into the palm of his hand.
The man, like any textbook diplomat, is unamused by this way of reasoning — and his eyes dip into slits, a silent dismissal of Neuvillette’s defence. “I do not need your word Monsieur Neuvillette. I need hers. And what I am calling from her word is a bluff; here — look at this file.” He slams a folder onto the table, pages spilling out. “It is a record of lives that were lost not too long ago, and everytime an incident of this nature occurs the death toll is still the same along with frequency. So what exactly do you have to say to this?”
Lady Furina’s eyes dart to the damning evidence before her. “I — I!”
Forget what you said about her keeping things together; this was everything but! You must say, her response is nothing short of embarrassing that you almost feel for her.
“Forgive me if I am wrong, but amidst this whole phenomenon, the Présidence du Conseil d'État and Iudex of Fontaine have decided that if they were to get married, it would be in the midst of decline! Which — let’s be honest — is pure drivel. “
Neuvillette moves to rebuke this claim, but in fulfilment to the arrogance of men, Monsieur Blanchard holds up a hand to silence him. And Neuvillette complies.
You shoot him a scolding look. You’re really letting this man step on you?
“Oh, do not give me those looks, all of us know what arrangement you both signed. ”
By this point, your sight is nothing but a swirl of colour, a distortion of what you wouldn’t call nausea and neither would you call it enlightenment, so you come to the brusque conclusion that you’re caught in the limbo between nirvana and a possible assassination. The gnawing ache in your head gradually subsides after a series of contractions, and you pray it’s your mithridatism playing its part.
Another man, shorter in comparison to his superior, stands, a smug, taut smirk, shooting daggers at both of you. “Lady Furina — if you are one to play tricks like this, I’d strongly advise you to run a background check on your cast!”
Lady Furina casts a wandering eye to your side, but your sight is impaired by the gavel hammering in agonising successions against your temple. You find no effort in taking heed to an accusation you know full well is right, despite your own defensiveness. “I hired a private investigator to look into your background, Madame. And what I found was shocking.” Your eyes tiredly drag to his mannerisms, and you spot nothing but pure malice and foul play threatening to pull you under.
Neuvillette lets out a defensive groan. “Monsieur, you should know that unauthorised acts of following are prohibited and are inadmissible in court.”
“Oh I know the law. Which is why I’m going to ask your pretty wife,” he plasters a feigned amiable smirk your way, and you muster all of your pettiness to return the gesture (though you think your own leer is far more practised, lacking a quiver like his does). “Why is it that I have no trace of your surname Lavigne, and that there is absolutely no lineage traced back to it?
You lean forward, hands splayed on the white cloth of the long table to stabilise your teetering balance.“I — I don’t know what you're talking about. Surely, this is a mistake.”
“Except it isn’t. See — I’ve had someone check you. Why is it that the only person with such a surname is a woman with no inheritance to her name, a prostitute and a maid—”
Everything around you spins like a toy around its axis, your only anchor being the sound that spills in defence: your own, rugged voice. “Enough. This information is clearly false and I implore you to stop this.”
Neuvillette’s eyes round in worry as he moves closer, inspecting every crinkle in the dip of your eye, to the strength at which you’re gripping the corner of the table. “Monsieur, without any feasible evidence, this is classified as slander.”
“Do not lawyer me. This is not the court, and this is clearly not the Opera Epiclese. So until then, you have no authority over me.” If you were sound in health, this ‘diplomat’ would be out the window, but you’re not, and for the first time in your life, Neuvillette is not tolerant of this gesture of contempt.
His jaw ticks, and he cranes his neck intimidatingly downward to see eye to eye (though, in a million universes, this would not ring true in any metaphorical sense) with him. “What did you just say to me? Do you really believe that these walls grant you immunity? We are here to deliberate, not to conduct an inquisition upon my wife—”
Neuvillette’s words fray into the backdrop, and you’re suddenly struck with a split-second decision. If someone possessed the audacity to poison you, it stands to reason that they are able to have accomplices in their arsenal both outside and within these walls. Should Monsieur Blanchard prove of no use, you could outwit an oblivious conspirator and feign a damsel in distress. You take no hesitance in second guessing this decision — and you tell yourself that if there is any time to critique your method of action, it would have to wait; this, at this point, seems to be your only recourse of procedure.
A hand comes to rest atop the apex of his knuckles.“It’s alright, mon coeur. If you’ll excuse me, I need to leave for the restroom.”
“Wait —”
You find generosity in you to flash him a reassuring wink. “Don’t worry.”
Time to put your act on.
Neuvillette watches as you stumble down the hall and slam the door shut (almost), clutching your stomach like a vice. He finds himself nearly ready to abandon the crucial proceeding at hand for a mere sight of you, a simple assurance that you were alright.
Neuvillette watches as you stumble down the hall, steps faltering before slamming the door shut (well – that’s what you think; the door didn’t come anywhere close to the latch). You clutch your stomach as though in a vice, face contorted in faux agony. This almost inclines him to wipe the smirk off Monsieur Blanchard’s face, because whatever you’re up to, the cards are in your favour.
He follows your figure through the slit of the door you couldn’t muster enough strength to close, his body tensing in dawning realisation: you weren’t headed to any washroom at all. It was a dead end, and only he knew it from his frequent visits for meetings. You, on the other hand, are unaware of the possible prospects headed your way.
“Not so impartial of you now, huh, Chief Justice? Now, tell me — can we expect you to manage court proceedings now that you’ve got someone to lose?” This stirs chuckles from a minority in the room, but the Chief Justice’s steeling gaze is enough to have them shrivelling up in their seats.
It did not take no detective — let alone the most revered judge in the world — to realise this specific faction are cruel, unfeeling politicians spilling blood to claw to the very top. With no evidence, Neuvillette made it his priority to have them crumble, to prevent their abuse of power.
To prevent anything happening to you.
He turns a blind eye to his jab, already irritated at everything else spilled in bad faith. “Gentlemen. I believe our business here has been fulfilled. Please, see yourselves out.”
Corbin Blanchard makes his ridicule creep through the defeated scoff that brings his shoulders to stutter in the action.
Lady Furina lets out a sigh of relief, before being silenced by Neuvillettes cutting gaze and him being light on his feet. He paces out of the room, stalking down the hall before realising you’re nowhere to be found. This leads him to another, horrifying conclusion. You had made a turn into either one of the split junctions that branch into far more narrowing corridors.
Archons, how long ‘till the guy comes along? You’ve been making all sorts of turns to lure him further into a dead end, but you scold yourself for digging yourself a hole you are now unsure of whether you are able to get out clean. Did I make a left or a right turn? I took the right. No — it was the left — oh God. What have I just gotten myself into?
“Miss Moreau.”
Took him long enough.
The voice doesn’t harbour the same cadence as Monsieur Blanchard’s — but the use of your… old surname brings more questions than answers. Your father was no pussy. So why, in all the world, would he send people for you?
Even if it is instinct to respond otherwise, you push yourself to continue walking. But in your current state, you hitch in your tracks for a second too long. The hallway, now dimly lit, stretches ominously before you, and the echo of his voice sends a shiver down your spine.
“What is it that you want?” you seethe, moving only the slightest inch of your head to catch a glimpse of the man behind you. Sweat beads on your forehead when you realise that there is not one distinguishable quirk to his features you can describe — the only notable thing being a smirk that curls wickedly at the edges, almost branded into his skin.
“Nothing. Except that I want us to be partners — because, well, frauds know frauds.” His eyes gleam with a predatory glint, advancing closer with each word — the echo of his footsteps reverberating off the walls. The poison in your blood runs cold as well as every sensible bone in your body ( you resist the urge to slump against a wall and succumb to it all).
You swallow hard, pulse spiking. “You’re threatening me. Tell Monsieur Moreau if he wishes to contact me, he should do so in person and not through some measly informant.” Your voice is steady, but your hands tremble as you tighten your grip on the hem of your dress.
He chuckles darkly, his eyes never leaving yours. “So be it, Madame. I’ll tell him exactly what you said.” His words hang in the air like a venomous promise.
A voice resounds from the other end of the foreboding expanse of the corridor — and this time, it’s warm, honey like — a lifeline amongst unforgiving shadows.
You pause, your heartbeat thrumming in your ears, and glance back toward the source. A familiar face is what greets you, and you have never been so glad to see him, out of all the people in the world.
“My apologies, but I don’t think you’re authorised to be allowed in this section of the building. Shall I escort you out?”
A cruel, harsh smile rips the perpetual frown off the man’s face. “Oh, that shouldn't be a problem. Remember: clock’s ticking.”
As he turns to leave, you subconsciously mimic his action, balancing on the balls of your feet, a subtle strain settling into your muscles. A distressed wrinkle etches into the temples of your brows, a flickering look of satisfaction and fear for both the same reason, both emotions prompted by the same, uneasy conclusion: your father is coming after you, whether you like it or not. The thought of it has your blood running cold, leaving you teetering on the precipice of dread — and you find yourself uncertain whether the clarity of knowledge or the comfort of ignorance would prove the lesser burden.
Your name spills from his lips like a prayer — except it’s lower, gravelly, if you will. “Mind telling me what that was about?”
“Well. Someone’s on my tail.”
“I beg your pardon?” You almost lose your want in telling him because of the amount of times he’s said I beg your pardon? Over the period you’ve grown to know him. Or, rather, forced to know him.
‘It’s nothing, really.”
His face twists into a confusion of wanting to pry and worry of overstepping the boundary. Forgive me, but I do not believe it is merely nothing, he sighs, words ending in a whisper, his approach slow, but not enough so it would shake you to cave.
“I said it was nothing!” Your voice escapes you in despairing exclamations. Neuvillette lets another one of his emotions paint themselves, a clear canvas, on the fine lines of his face.
As much as your body yearns for a soft, fluffy mattress, it shifts its priority to some sobby man that makes it his life’s mission to be by your side at all times! Well — maybe not all the time — you wouldn’t want him peering over the curtain of your shower, would you? (For some reason the idea doesn’t bring you much repulsion as it would to the you a few months ago). “Sorry,” you mutter, and this time, despite your shattered conviction, you mean it.
Neuvillette doesn’t have it in him to regard the tug in his jugular, the rapid pounding of it beneath the strong expanse of bone.
It strikes you as you open your mouth to explain yourself: he hadn’t even requested for one! And you’re out here, giving out unwarranted information to the man you never muttered words of unnecessary drabble. “If it is of any merit, I am a hundred percent certain I was just poisoned.”
His shoulders sag as if relieved, before blinking twice and taking a stunned step forward. “E─excuse me?”
You pat him on the shoulder. “I was just poisoned. But don’t worry — I am fine.” The last of those words leave your lips shakily, an unstable promise laced with a nature that abandons its pillars once a sliver of wind catches in its marble grooves.
“How can this be? Surely you —” he takes in the playful glint in your eye, and stops mid syllable. “You’ve been taking preventive measures, haven’t you?”
“What do you think?” You are generous enough to give him a second of self reflection before bumping your elbow against his. “Let’s leave, this place is a bad omen personified.”
“I must escort you home.” Well. He does not seem to be taking your joke as intended.
“Don’t you worry about that, I can take care of myself.”
“At least around your residence.”
You shift your weight to your right foot before exhaling a defeated sigh. “...Fine.”
a/n: the next few chapters are the ones ive been DYING to write pls. also I tried to develop their relationship a little bit more here. I mean let's be real ─ we're twelve chapters in. there MUST be something to show for it 😭
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