#Also wriothesley is there cause im being so normal about him

[crovoroh]

the justice system is rough in wet france

[eepyuii]

frostbite — pt. 15

pairing ; childe x gender neutral!reader

content ; childhood friends to “rivals” to lovers, slow burn

cw ; none, dottore is mentioned but none of his hideous acts

notes ; WHATS UP SMART FELLAS AND FART SMELLAS ⁉️

I PROMISE IM NOT DEAD,,,, see the thing is that since i published the last chapter of this, i’ve done some crazy things like finishing and graduating highschool and studying and doing national exams and preparing to apply to colleges and yknow….. really normal, totally not time consuming stuff LMAO i can’t promise that i’ll be consistent again as i am still pretty busy with all that bizz but i’m very happy to have finally gotten a new chapter out

ANYWAY ITS MEROPIDE TIME BABEY ‼️ finally get to write my pookie wookie shmookie wriothesley, can u tell that i think he’s neat :3 can u tell that i am brewing up something with him :3 can u :3

also i HAVE OTHER WRITING PROJECTS COMING OUT SOONER OR LATER MORE LATER I PROMISE,,,,, currently cooking up something for whatever dungeon meshi-heads out there that r willing to enjoy it!!!!!

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this line could not be moving slower.

you’ve been standing here for so long— any progress forward is merely two steps further but your legs have long since turned to lead, making each movement arduous and achy. mind hazy and limbs sluggish as you drag your feet through the rusted metal flooring. the most likely cause for your sudden stagnation is the overwhelming pressure from being… however many feet underwater you are, as you haven’t had much time to adapt to that yet.

ironically, it almost makes you regret your decision and you hadn’t even truly gotten inside the fortress of meropide. perhaps this was some sort of intentional psychological warfare towards the new prisoners, some sort of initiation for the upcoming torments of their sentences. even so, you look back on the moment and think it was the best course of action.

you remember the way your heart dropped upon hearing the word ‘guilty’, the way it fell all the way down to your feet and picked its pace back up again, beating a hundred miles per hour. you remember the way you weren’t even given time to say goodbye, to reach out to childe as he rebelled against the guards and was immediately detained by the iudex.

the iudex… you become conflicted at the thought of him. part of your brain tells you that you should be angry and despise him for only letting you visit childe after he was reported to be missing from the fortress, under the guise of inviting you to investigate his disappearance. though… he was so kind about it. you must’ve visited his office nearly everyday to ask for permission to visit the prison, every time being met by the same answer of ‘it’s beyond my capabilities’, but each of them he remained utterly patient and civilized— something that you ashamedly can’t say that you did in return. and even so, he graciously offered to grant you a fake sentence so you could find the harbinger yourself, with the help of the traveler and paimon of course.

there was a certain air to monsieur neuvillette, one of silent melancholy and deep thoughtfulness. your first impression of the iudex had you recalling zhongli as a comparison, but now you’ve grown more certain that they have far more in common. neuvillette is most definitely not human, you’ve long since assessed that, but every time you get a look at his eyes while visiting his office, you notice an almost draconic appearance to them. perhaps that’s why you can’t fully bring yourself to dislike him— he reminds you far too much of you the fond friendship you’ve found within the consultant of wansheng funeral parlor.

there’s a shove to your shoulder that snaps you back into reality and you realize it’s your turn to have your mugshot taken. mugshot… what would your mother think of you now? both her own child and their childhood best friend having criminal records in another country— you can practically feel the pinching of your ear, even if the false charge was something as ridiculous as stealing lady furina’s cake. despite the flash of the kamera making your eyes sting, you do your best to maintain a neutral expression and wonder if the traveler and paimon had already gotten their turn and have long since installed themselves in the fortress. you especially wonder so when you’re left to venture the fortress of meropide alone, with only a room number and no knowledge of the prison’s system to your name.

“hey! you there!”

oh dear heavens, it’s already started— you’ve not stepped foot into prison for one whole minute and you’re already about to become a bullying victim. you swallow thickly and turn around meekly like a cornered rabbit. a particularly grumpy-looking guard is the one who calls you over, expression hard and stoic. you nearly consider begging him to not be mean to you like a cowardly little kid, but he speaks before you even get to open your mouth and spew anything embarrassing.

“you’re y/n, the new inmate, right? the duke wants to see you in his office.”

oh it’s so over for you.

perhaps you haven’t become a punching bag just yet but you’ve sure, somehow, irked the warden enough to be immediately sent to his office. oh gods… is it because you’re fatui? you heard there were quite a few fatui operatives already residing in the fortress of meropide— perhaps the duke has a particular distaste for your kind. the guard half-heartedly shows you the way to the duke’s office, the singular, imposing tower at the center of the fortress.

the silence inside the tower is deafening, the only sound heard is the clang of your steps against the metal stairs, almost as if you’re the only living being inside. the second floor introduces itself through the incredibly faint, almost innate herbal scent that wafts around you more and more the higher steps you climb. finally, it reveals an atmospheric office with bookshelves rounding the walls, a comfortable-looking sofa with a coffee table littered with teacups before it and in the grand center of the room, a wide desk— the last thing you register is the man sitting at it expectantly.

he looks nothing like you expected him to.

by the title of duke, you were picturing an older, posher man adorning expensive fabrics and a distasteful, condescending expression towards the ‘lower lifeforms’ of his prisoners. instead, he’s much younger and rugged, littered with scars, dark tones and sharp edges to his outfit— he almost looks like an inmate himself. despite not appearing necessarily condescending, the duke of meropide is still plentiful imposing, as his icy blue eyes and platform boots send a shiver through your spine when he stands up to greet you. he sticks out a hand and you instinctively flinch away, although the hand only hangs in the air passively awaiting a handshake.

“y/n l/n, prisoner 7458, it’s a pleasure to meet you. welcome to the fortress of meropide.”

oh… his tone is so casual and friendly, it completely takes you aback— like you’re meeting a friend on the street instead of the highest authority of an enormous prison as one of his very own prisoners. you scramble to shake his hand and awkwardly fall into some sort of bowing motion in the midst of you’re panic.

“a-ah yes! thank po you very m-much, your grace.”

with this proximity, you have no choice but to look at the duke’s face up close. he wears an easy smile on his otherwise seemingly hardened face, one that you can’t help but subconsciously think of as handsome. another juxtaposition to your expectations toward the duke is that, despite his rugged and troublesome appearance, he is quite well kept— as seen by his neat peach fuzz. he confuses you entirely.

the duke chuckles amusedly at your entirely perplexed demeanor.

“no need to be so nervous, this is a casual talk that i personally wanted to have with you, rather than a… part of the fortress’ welcoming ceremony. so please, have a seat, make yourself comfortable— i’ll prepare us some tea. oh! and call me wriothesley.”

you do as… wriothesley says and sit on the surprisingly cushy chair in front of his desk as he himself steps off to the side to make the tea. your mind is still running at miles per hour with everything that’s happened and with what might happen next, with what to say or not to say to the duke, with where childe, the traveler and paimon might be right now. not to mention the sickeningly sweet smell that fills your brain even further… this must be some strong tea. wriothesley sets a teacup in front of you and sits at his grand, tall chair behind the desk. he faces you with a bright smile that you force yourself to return, yet you still can’t help but keep the thought of this ‘casual talk’ having other intentions gnaw at the back of your mind.

“so, i won’t dilly-dally with what i’d like to talk about— as you may have noticed, the fortress harbors quite a few inmates from the fatui.” bingo. who knew that your blinded anxieties were actually right.

“all of them arrive here with similar ranks, under similar sentences for similar crimes. standard stuff, really… but this is the very first time we’ve gotten ourselves a sergeant.”

although the duke keeps up an easy-going and lighthearted demeanor, you can’t help but remain on edge. you feel once again like prey cornered by a calculating hound. the smell of the tea still plagues your mind with its unavoidable presence— what’s even worse is that the scent isn’t entirely unfamiliar to you, the memory is just out of your grasp, frustrating you even more.

“and even further, this is our very first time we’ve gotten ourselves a fatui sergeant whose crime was… to steal a cake from lady furina?” wriothesley briefly looks down toward a document on his desk to make sure he’s actually recalling your crime correctly. you barely listen to what he’s saying, still laser focused on recognizing this irking fragrance.

“adding onto that, it seems as though we’re receiving two new inmates today who are arriving on the exact same sentence for the exact same crime as yourself. seems a bit curious, doesn’t it?”

your attention is caught by the mention of the traveler and paimon and you shoot up in your seat.

“oh yes, those are my friends! a-are they okay? have they arrived yet?”

wriothesley is seemingly surprised by your sudden enthusiasm, as he chuckles with certain shock and amusement. he looks at his file once again, eyes trailing over to the two other prisoner registry’s below your own with a certain analytical hint to his gaze.

“i’m certain they’ll be arriving at the fortress shortly. in the meantime, why don’t you tell me how exactly the three of you managed to commit such a heinous crime?” he asks humorously.

wait!

you’ve finally recognized the scent… a lesser known tea leaf from liyue, with no real definitive name for itself— only truly studied within the medical field for being one of the few tea leafs to contain sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that slows the speed of the communication between the spinal cord and the brain, making high-functioning tasks such as lying harder to perform. a truth serum.

wriothesley has served you a truth serum.

so much for a ‘casual talk’. you’ve known the man for not even a full day, yet you still feel a sting of betrayal fermenting in your chest. but truly, what can be done when you’ll always have a big fat target on your back that labels you as nothing more than a fatuus? you’ve chosen this wretched bed, now you must lie in it.

and lie you will.

with a forced laugh, you feign a reminiscent smile. “a-ah, it’s actually quite silly— i believe it goes without mention that my friends and i are foreigners and still wildly foreign to fontainian customs. we were invited to a meeting with lady furina and monsieur neuvillette in the spirit of diplomacy but, ahah… i guess we were unfamiliar with lady furina’s predilection for sweets and just took one for ourselves!”

wriothesley laughs in turn, but you’re unable to discern how genuine it is. you watch his periwinkle eyes flicker briefly toward your untouched teacup and suddenly, the atmosphere turns into one akin to a game of chess— innately hostile and strategic, where both of you must be hyper aware of the other’s next move lest you make a mistake and lose your carefully constructed composure.

“i must say it is an unlikely set of circumstances…”

you subconsciously look toward wriothesley’s own teacup, seeing that his remains as unsipped as yours. with a chilling feeling, you look back up to see that the duke’s gaze was already fixated on you, which means he saw you checking his teacup. which means he knows that you know.

“though, i’ve got to ask… what exactly entails your position in the fatui? this is purely out of my own curiosity, as most of our inmates all come from the house of the hearth.”

you swallow hard.

“well… i’m head of the infirmary, that’s all my position is, really. the sergeant title is just a half-assed justification for how high my ranking is.”

the calculating hint to wriothesley’s gaze softens in the slightest amount possible and he lightly looks off to the side, as if reminded of something, or someone he knows by your answer.

“i work directly under the second fatui harbinger, il dottore. i’m somewhat his… assistant.” the word assistant leaves your mouth with a tinge of disdainfulness as your body almost instinctively tenses at the mention of… him. the duke picks up on it.

“the doctor, huh— haven’t heard much about him myself, but what i have heard seems like more than enough for me.” you can’t help but snort at that.

“do you like it? working for him, that is.”

you’re staggered into silence and a shocked expression— the suddenness of the question completely taking you by surprise. the speechlessness you feel is painfully reminiscent of when kunikuzushi asked you if you’d like to kill dottore. despite the answer being obvious to you, there’s a subconscious fear gnawing at your side that dottore might be out here listening, disguised as someone else or as one of his segments, living a false life. but you can’t allow yourself to live in fear of him anymore— his segments are gone and he’s pathetically stuck in zapolyarny palace by himself while you’ve been out and traveling miles and miles away from snezhnaya. kunikuzushi doesn’t fear him, so why should you?

you’ve always been terrible at bluffing, so fuck it— you might as well not bluff at all.

instead of answering wriothesley immediately, you lunge for the teacup and gulp down the entire thing, much to his surprise. the duke is stunned in return as he merely watches attentively for your reaction to the serum. the silence between the two of you is prolonged as you give the serum time to take effect. the taste itself is a delightful, slight earthy flavor— making it even more enticing to drink normally for one unaware of the leaf’s properties. you don’t feel any different after a few seconds, if not ever so slightly woozier. you breathe in and out deeply, letting the first answer that comes to your mind be the one that comes out.

“i take my job very seriously, your grace— i am a medic, my ambition is to save lives. and there isn’t a soul in teyvat that i would ever want to kill more than i want to kill him.”

the answer feels foreign and unexpected even to yourself. the first time you were asked such a question, before one who was once the balladeer and dottore’s experimental god, your answer was no. it felt easier to say no— to tell him you’d rather he be the one to end the doctor’s reign of terror, because for the most part it was true. but then kunikuzushi found closure, he found new life and prosperity in places outside of godhood or tormenting others or spiting his ‘mother’ or going after dottore.

and you, you stayed the same. you’re still suffocating within the grimy, clawed grasp of the second fatui harbinger. you’ve been through so much, visited four different nations within the span of the last year, fought an abyssal creature and an artificial, nearly god-like being yet you still feel as stuck as you did while you were still stationed in snezhnaya. you’re still stuck having reasons to want to kill dottore, kunikuzushi moved past his.

the duke still can’t find an immediate response, as he merely scoffs incredulously at what he’s just watched. you see a faint glaze take over his gaze when he looks aimlessly down at his desk, as if truly involving himself in memories of the past— his eyebrows furrow briefly, as though the memories he recalls aren’t good ones. something grips at your throat, an anxious feeling, as you regret being so impulsive as to reveal something so damning about yourself. to a prison warden, no less. you feel as though you’ve sobered up and feel the need to make up for what you said and excuse yourself, but before you can even open your mouth wriothesley is already standing from his chair.

“well i respect your honesty, sergeant. i’m afraid we’ll have to leave our talk here, as i have to welcome more of the new prisoners into the fortress, maybe even your friends will be amongst them— i’ll make sure to give them the word that you’re here.”

you nod briskly and scurry to leave the office while the duke insists on seeing you out himself. your head pounds with nervousness, and perhaps slightly with the truth serum tea you just downed all at once— so much so that you almost don’t notice wriothesley’s hand sticking out once again in a polite handshake. much less do you notice the fascinated studying scan of his eyes across your face as your hand meets his.

“and again— welcome to the fortress of meropide, y/n.”

you don’t sleep well on your first night at the fortress.

perhaps it’s due to not being used to the overwhelming pressure of the water, perhaps due to the lack of warmth that your metal surroundings bring, perhaps a side effect of the tea.

or perhaps… it’s because you dream of ajax.

at first, the dream is sweet— drowning in cheesy, tooth-rooting romance tropes dug from the most delusional corners of your brain, ones that you desperately tried to suppress after you got over your phase of reading romance novels as a child. you’re reliving the tension-filled moment inside your hotel bathroom from the other morning, where some mystical force had pulled you and ajax so close together you shared the same breath, getting painstakingly closer still. only this time, instead of getting interrupted by those guards, the scene keeps going… and going… until you truly, finally meet each other in the middle.

within the misty midsts of your slumber, it almost feels real— there’s a shock of electricity when your lips touch, your heart beats faster from even outside the dream, you can nearly feel the warm sigh of satisfaction that ajax lets out from his nose and onto your face. but it still isn’t enough, the tightness in ajax’s desperate grip onto the back of your head and on the small of your back aren’t present enough. the juxtaposition of his fiery warm skin against your own cold one isn’t contrasting enough, your skin doesn’t burn as fiercely as it does when you touch him in the waking world.

and soon enough, the dream shifts… shifts into scenes of ajax inside the fortress. you’re not lucid enough to find the images strange, as you’ve never seen him inside the fortress yet— so you remain stuck, watching as he sneaks past a plethora of guards to reach a decrepit tunnel, overridden with plant-life as it connects out into the fontainian sea. your vision starts to blend incomprehensibly like watercolors on wet paper, until all the remains is a blinding, blue mess and a faint whisper in ajax’s voice:

“something’s… calling me… i… i have to go…”

taglist ; @kentply @osaemu @rain-and-a-nice-nap @koichirana

and don’t forget to boycott this shitty game!!

[chococustard]

Your Genshin kids are adorable! I love the Priscilla/Yuying/Claire friendship you alluded to in the last art dump (poor Diluc… your daughter just has an instinct for divine beings)

But on the topic of poor Diluc, how do their parents react to the friendship? Diluc and Wriothesley seem like they would be good friends since they have a lot in common but everyone else basically represents every faction in the game.

You got Neuvillette, a dragon sovereign seeking to judge the archons for their crimes; Zhongli, an archon who presumably destroyed Khaenri'ah 500 years ago; Kaeya, a Khaenri'ah spy who is a descendant of the man who founded the abyss order; and Childe, a fatui harbinger who fell into the abyss.

Would they try and keep it together for the sake of their kids? (I love the idea that the three girls are there going :3 while their parents are glaring daggers at each other) Would they find some sort of common ground? Would they recognize each other immediately but think the others don’t know so they come up with increasingly ridiculous ways to hide it? How did Wriothesley and Neuvillette react to the incident with Claire and Yuying? (Can you tell I like the angst?)

hi hi!! thank you so much im glad you like them!!! bc we have limited knowledge atm there's a lot of questions posed that cannot be answered and considering how new fontaine is idk anything for sure //shakes hoyo

they try to keep cordial for the kids tm or at least not to be bad influences in front of them. extra notes under the cut:)

diluc met nv first when he brought claire to fontaine for a business trip and she just, drags in a half dragon to him yelling "i made a new friend!:D" then he met nv and he knew. just knew, these people ain't human. found out they're dragons. "great," he sighed once more.

kae plays his quartermaster persona to a t. when he first meets wriolette he puts on the charm. nv only knows him for via the knights and wrio rarely goes above ground. so like, they're cool with him. mostly. they both do questionable shit that nv can't personally approve of but hey. they ain't his problem. (on that note i like to think he'd be good friends with jean:)) (does nv know about kaeya's khaenrian blood? does he know about khaenri'ah in general? i dont have him)

kaeya and wrio has this, kind of friendship that's like, there's a tension there. they're both people with reputations, but also, like that tm. they're cordial and they get along but there's. SOMETHING.

meanwhile diluc meeting wrio? he's ELATED. man has good taste in tea. they spar sometimes. FINALLY, SOMEONE NORMAL.

wrio is happy in general his baby is making friends meanwhile nv is: to claire: good child:) to yuying, the daughter of one of the usurpers: hmmmm :| (he knows the child did nothing wrong and she's a good kid in general) contrast to diluc he actually LIKES childe. for one he helped with the narwhal thing, and the fatui helped during the crisis and childe himself never did anything bad personally so they're chill. he will sometimes humor his requests to fight if he's free. then decks him. the adeptus power up juice doesn't help much rip. the girls like to play with his hair.

zhongli knows kaeya's khaenrian. kaeya at some point finds out zhongli is rex lapis. they. they have to keep it together. one of them is under nda. outside of that, there's a reason kaeya is liked by the old timers of mond.

zhongli and nv:

nv finds out eventually. and for the sake of his daughter, dont worry about it. they'd bond over old people things probably. nv should meet yanfei and they should be friends if anything cause zl is a menace and they'd be passive aggressive w each other. (i need info but it would be so funny for their kids to go my dads stronger! and make them fight each)

via claire, AGAIN, she invites her bestie yy and the new friend from fontaine to her bday party cause SURE WHY THE FUCK NOT. and those 2 non humans meet and GASP, you're just like me!

post accident tm, what do you even say to that. how do you even react to that

early on in yuying and claire's friendship, on a windy summer day, diluc slowly gets used to having to be cordial with a harbinger. a harbinger who who married a god. someone who will live longer than him. he spoke to childe, as they watch their daughters laugh and run through the grapevines, "one day, when i'm no longer around, please look after my daughter."