#she needs therapy!! so does he!! everyone in fontaine does!!

[bernardellinewsagency]

short neuvifuri angst idea

"Oh, did you enjoy the script that she wrote? Did you like the role that you were cast as? I hope you were happy in those five hundred years, Neuvillette, because I never was!"

Furina storms off after pushing him, leaving him drenched to the bone and sitting awkwardly in the waters of the Fountain of Lucine with naught to do but contemplate his long lasting memories. Remembering the way she would smile is an easy endeavor. Furina always looked sincere when smiling; perhaps he wasn't looking hard enough, but surely even fleeting moments between just the two of them had to have brought her some amount of happiness, as small as it may be.

He thinks of one long ago night, during the third century of her reign. Actually, right on the cusp of the new milestone, he recalls the Palais had been eerily silent after wrapping up a week of festivities held in Furina's honor. The people of Fontaine were still celebrating, and would be doing so until the early hours of the morning, but all was still within the Palais. Except for them, that is. She had supposedly retired to her bedchambers, and him to his office, yet the two had bumped into each other within the kitchen.

"Let's go to the Opera," she had told him, in lieu of answering when he asked what she was doing. He supposes that the flecks of pastry crumbs on her clothes answered that, and he didn't ask other questions such as why she wanted to go to the Opera. He followed her as willingly as if she had simply asked for the time.

(Their whole relationship had been like that, hadn't it? A duty that extended beyond just an Archon and her Iudex. He once heard the Traveler mention a sea of flowers at the end of the world, and should Furina declare that she would like to see such a sight, he would tear down Celestia just to make it happen.)

Furina had packed a basket of food to bring, and two bottles of wine to go with. Then they partook perhaps more than they should've, and perhaps he should've questioned if Archons can get drunk, or if a Sovereign should be getting drunk with one. He definitely should have stopped her from going into the storerooms of the Epiclese and procuring even more for them. The memories start to get a little hazy after that, but he can vaguely recall a remark she made about the location not being the best choice, and that she wanted to get away from something. He can't recall who made the decision to go up, and have him help carry her as they climb to the roof, but suspects it was still her doing.

As clear as day, though, he can remember her smile, bathed in the light of the slowly rising sun as it crested over the waters of her dominion. Out of every beautiful sight in Fontaine, she is the one he gets to appreciate most often, but never before in a light like this. He could gaze at that moment for another hundred years and never tire of it. "Dragon of the waters," she had called him, "might you allow an Archon to call you theirs?"

Should she have asked him that at the start of her reign, should they have been in a similar situation, the answer would be clear. He might have even wondered, with the walls of the Court to block them from their peoples' sights, if an Archon so in love with her people would fall like one if he shoved her. But they were not in the past, and he already knew by then that he had come to love her, and thus his answer was "I was under the belief that I already was yours, Lady Furina, both within my capacity as your Chief Justice and without. The people of Fontaine adore you, yet it is my love for you that truly knows no bounds. Nothing would make me happier than to be yours."

"They do, don't they," she had whispered, a note he almost lost to time with how he just barely could hear her. "Promise me this, Neuvillette, if you wish to be mine- promise you will never stray from your duties to Fontaine, and you will always, always, do what is best for her people."

"I will."

"And promise that you will stay by my side forever, then, for another three centuries and beyond that, even if you grow tired of me!"

"Of course, Furina, is... is something the matter?"

It was the first time he had seen her come close to crying, droplets of tears clumping her eyelashes together yet disappearing as she blinked, "Oh, you silly dragon, only the fact that you make me ever so happy."

Leaving the warmth of the memory behind, Neuvillette returns to the cold of an overcast sky dripping with sleet, as a blue silhouette leaves him behind and disappears into the cloudy distance.