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Whether by cruelty of the gods or coincidence that seemed almost too comedic to be real, Neuvillette had not spoken to Furina even once since he left her house that day he took care of her.
And though Neuvillette despised the idea of gods having any semblance of control over his life, insisting that his lack of contact with her was not the will of fate but of his own meant that he first had to admit he chose not to speak to her on purpose.
Which, in a sense, was true.
Furina had bounced back from her temporary sickness rather splendidly; she was finally going out more and could often be seen at the center of an adoring crowd whenever she was out in public, going to and from rehearsal.
Her much-awaited performance was approaching and soon became the sole focus of the Court’s excitement; people were already in a festive mood due to the recently completed renovation of their homes that got destroyed by the flood of the Primordial Sea.
Neuvillette found it beyond ironic that what he had been working towards for the past few weeks was finally coming into fruition–both his efforts to restore Fontaine and his hopes that Furina would no longer stay sulking alone at home–but he had yet to experience any feelings of fulfillment.
In fact, it was taking a tremendous amount of effort for him to not rain on everyone’s parade. Literally.
The notion of Furina’s mortality had been at the front of his mind after everything they had gone through with the prophecy’s fulfillment; he truly was happy for her now that she could live out a normal human life. But it wasn’t until she fell sick that he realized a very simple truth: a human life was a short life. And this remained true even for Furina.
Though, after spending 500 years by her side, it didn’t make sense to Neuvillette at all, and he found himself wanting to take every opportunity to be with her.
And there were countless opportunities now with her public appearances, yet Neuvillette was actively avoiding any places she frequented, not that it was very difficult to do with his own busy schedule. Hence, he ended up exceedingly preoccupied with work instead.
Days had passed by like this. And Sedene, much to Neuvillette’s chagrin, had to remind him multiple times that working hours were long over and that he should rest.
“You certainly wouldn’t want to fall ill yourself, Monsieur Neuvillette, and miss Lady Furina’s performance altogether?”
That was the only thing that finally pulled Neuvillette away from his desk and up to his quarters at the Palais. On most days, at least. Sedene was right. He needed to show Furina that Fontaine was doing well in his hands, that she could finally take it easy and live the way she wanted to.
Still, there were evenings like this when Neuvillette couldn’t help but remain at work to stay busy, mentally replaying what felt like a fever dream of events that took place since the prophecy was fulfilled according to the Hydro Archon’s plan.
All of this had kept him sleepless for days now.
He couldn’t help but think of how he had been acting towards Furina. First, doubting her and forcing her into a trial. Then, after the whole ordeal, suggesting that she return to the stage despite her hesitancy. Then, as if it wasn’t enough, showing up at her doorstep uninvited. Twice. Not to mention all he did, all he said, while he was there.
Logically, Neuvillette could reason that Furina did end up going back to the stage anyway, and it’s not like she kicked him out on either time he visited. Her attitude towards him was even much warmer than he initially expected, or quite frankly, deserved.
“Monsieur Nuevillette.”
He idly wondered if it was alright to be constantly in her space despite the distance Furina seemed to deliberately put between them.
“Monsieur Neuvillette!”
The Sovereign blinked away his reverie as he looked down at Trow, the Marechaussee Phantom guard stationed at the Opera Epiclese. It’s been hours since Sedene ushered him out of his own office. But Neuvillette felt restless and ended up wandering, for some reason, back here.
“Monsieur, the Opera is about to close for the day.”
He looked around. The sun had already set, and the Opera was deserted. Half an hour ago, he had come in and told Trow that he just needed to check something. And he let out a sigh of both relief and disappointment when he saw that Furina’s rehearsals had ended long before he arrived.
“Very well. Thank you, Trow. I will take care of things here. You may go home.”
The Melusine regarded him curiously for a moment before thinking better of it and bidding him a good night.
He watched her small figure skip towards the Fountain of Lucine and let out a tired exhale. What did he think he was doing? Really, it was unlike Neuvillette to be acting so irrationally.
He gathered the doors of the Opera Epiclese and resolved to retire for the evening when he heard a sound from inside the theater. Trow had done a round of the entire place just before he arrived, but he knew his hearing did not deceive him.
Neuvillette proceeded to close the doors, but kept them unlocked and headed towards the sound. The closer he got, the more he could make it out to be a voice, a very familiar voice–the last one he had expected to hear again so soon.
“Put not another sin upon my head by urging me to fury,” Furina recited as she walked towards the center of the stage, then dramatically thrust her hand out in anger.
“Be gone!”
Neuvillette flinched in surprise, then saw that her back was turned to him. He hid behind the door of the theater to conceal himself. As for why, he couldn’t really tell. Perhaps it just felt like the sort of thing one shouldn’t be walking in on, regardless of the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be here after hours in the first place.
“No… that's not quite right,” Furina mumbled to herself and wrote over the script she was holding, then repeated the line with greater purpose as if talking to someone else on the stage.
“Be gone!” She took two deliberate strides towards her invisible companion, then abruptly turned away, as if to further emphasize her words, “By heaven, I love thee better than myself.”
Neuvillette held his breath as he watched, afraid even the slightest sound or movement would alert her to his presence.
He wanted to leave, he knew he should. Clorinde had mentioned in passing that Furina requested no one uninvolved with the production would witness their rehearsals until they performed the show itself.
He wanted to leave but his feet remained firmly in place, his eyes fixed on Furina as she delivered a succession of lines, each perfectly enacted. Even when she paused, he could imagine she was having a conversation with the supposed other actor in the scene. The theater was huge, but her voice carried all the way to where he was standing on the other side of the room without her having to shout.
“In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face…”
The way she carried out the scene was so captivating that it felt like she was nearer than she actually was. Every breath, every hand movement, each word she uttered and her delivery of them… all of them were perfect. Furina moved and spoke as if she blended into her role completely.
Neuvillette could even tell, with a little start of surprise, that she was supposed to be playing the role of a man.
He was unfamiliar with the play except for its title, ‘Romeo and Juliet’. All he knew was that she would be acting as its lead (after some much needed convincing from the disbanded theatre troupe she previously worked with). And he fully intended to watch the performance itself, though it still felt wrong to be eavesdropping on this secret rehearsal. He contemplated going home. However, he did tell Trow that he would take care of locking up the Opera, and there was no way to not lock Furina in without letting her know he saw her.
“I shall bury thee in a triumphant grave…”
Either way, it was difficult to arrive at the best course of action with her running through her lines so flawlessly in front of him and stealing his attention.
“For here lies Juliet...”
No matter how much he wanted to let her be, to give her privacy, he felt compelled to watch, completely drawn in by her stage presence.
It was impossible to look away.
“My love… my wife…”
Neuvillette closed his eyes, willing himself to move.
“Ah, dear Neuvillette, why art thou yet so fair?”
His heart caught in his throat, any hopes of a last minute escape thrown away at the mention of his name. After a moment’s hesitation, he braced himself to face her.
“Come out, my dear judge. I know you’re there,” she said softly, in her normal voice, removing her mask of Romeo.
Neuvillette stepped forward to the center of the room, just barely enough for her to see him. They stared at each other for a few moments–her on the stage, him in the darkness. He felt the distance between them weighed with things left unsaid.
“I apologize. I did not mean to watch you rehearse. I came here to discuss with Trow the necessary preparations of the Opera for your performance,” he explained, slightly tripping over his words, something that rarely ever happened.
“Hmm… you’re right. I should charge you for spoiling the story for yourself with a free early showing. Though, I could say that that’s already a charge in itself.”
To his surprise, she sat down at the edge of the stage–one leg propped up, cheek on her hand–and smiled at him. “Well? Do you agree to pay for your transgression by helping me?”
“Helping you?”
“Why, of course! A Romeo cannot hope to recite all his lines flawlessly without his Juliet to hear them.”
“I’m afraid I don’t-”
“Oh, hush. Hurry on and come up here.”
She walked over to him and took his hand, drawing him onto the stage and into the light. Neuvillette was used to his high seat as Iudex, even being on the stage during some trials, but there was something about being alone here with Furina at this late hour that had him feeling more vulnerable than ever.
It was a peculiar feeling, but not entirely unwelcome; an intimacy unfamiliar yet comforting.
“Shall we?” She asked, loosening her grip but not letting go. A memory came unbidden to Neuvillette’s mind–one from so long ago, when he first read the letter of invitation for him to come to Fontaine.
He answered by tightening his grip on her hand, which he noticed was bare of its usual glove.
“What role will I play this time?” Neuvillette’s voice thankfully sounded more even now, though the softness in his tone and gaze betrayed his affection.
Furina looked up at him and smiled once more–pleased, impish, and infectious–a smile that Neuvillette had rarely seen but undoubtedly knew was genuine.
He wondered how he was able to tell that it was, or when he had become able to tell at all.
“You’ll be my Juliet, of course.”
Furina handed him the script and herded him to where he guessed Juliet was supposed to be in this scene. “Sit down and follow my lead, okay?”
He sat down rather uncomfortably then turned to her in expectation, but Furina already moved away and sat a short distance from him, muttering to herself as she reviewed the script.
“Let’s see… Balthasar… Lawrence… oh, we can probably skip that.”
“Furina-”
She cleared her throat and announced, “The lady stirs!” in what sounded like a different character altogether.
When he didn't answer, Furina cleared her throat again and skipped a few more lines, ignoring Neuvillette’s confused expression as if they were seriously performing in front of an audience.
“Come, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay,” she said, then laid down and closed her eyes, trading the script in her hand for a cup, which Neuvillette realized she had also been holding earlier while playing as Romeo.
Furina, eyes still closed, impatiently cleared her throat again. Neuvillette looked hastily at the script, beginning to get the sense that this had probably been a terrible, terrible idea.
[Juliet crawls over to Romeo]
[Juliet takes the cup from Romeo’s hand]
JULIET: What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?
[Juliet cradles Romeo in her lap]
“W-what’s here?” He read out loud, following the script as the tips of his ears began to redden, “A cup, closed in my… true love’s hand?”
It may have just been Neuvillette’s imagination, but he could’ve sworn he heard Furina barely suppress a snort. Refusing to be deterred, and forced to play along, he continued reading Juliet’s lines.
“Poison, I see. And that he drank it all, leaving none for me to follow him?” He focused his attention on the script, pretending to be unaffected as he refused to give her the satisfaction of having successfully set him up. He managed to do this surprisingly well until he read the next line.
JULIET: I will kiss thy lips and follow you in death.
[Juliet kisses Romeo]
Neuvillette stopped breathing.
He looked down at Furina, half-expecting her to burst out in laughter, but she remained motionless in his lap as if she really were the dead Romeo, any traces of humor and mischievousness gone from her face.
Neuvillette gulped and bit the inside of his cheek, his words coming out as a faint but decisive whisper, “I… I will kiss thy lips and follow you in death.”
He lowered his face slowly, closing his eyes mid-way in hopes that it would somehow calm the incessant pounding of his heart. He had gotten close enough just in time to feel the ghost of her smirk. Her hand had made its way to his cheek and lightly rested there, stopping him from coming any closer.
“Juuust kidding,” she whispered back, and Neuvillette opened his eyes to see Furina’s face mere inches from his. From this close, he noticed how strikingly different the colors of her eyes were from one another, even more than they were from afar. He noticed how they had remained bright even with the stage lights being covered by his shadow.
He noticed, despite her teasing words, that she had slipped back into her role of Romeo just as swiftly as she had slipped out of it a moment ago.
“Fret not, my Juliet. For I live.”
Neuvillette remembered the script in his hand, but Furina plucked it out of his grasp and tossed it aside before he could see Juliet’s next line.
“Now, now… Is it not inappropriate for a lady of your prestige to be mourning? And over someone still alive?”
The Sovereign gasped in surprise. Several seconds passed before his expression transformed from confusion to pain. And though Furina’s face remained impassive, Neuvillette saw in it a trace of divinity that spoke of wisdom and age. It was an expression he had only ever seen in someone who lived so long.
His first instinct was to apologize, but really, he had been getting tired of that. Instead, he leaned his face into the warmth of her hand, exhaled, and nodded.
“I see... Then, Romeo, shall we catch the last aquabus together?”
Finally, Furina broke character and laughed.
And so, after a few hurried minutes of putting away the props backstage and locking up the Opera Epiclese as Neuvillette had originally intended to do, the two of them walked together to Marcotte Station and rode the aquabus in silence.
It was not a silence that Neuvillette chose, but he kept it after sensing that Furina had a lot on her mind. It broke only when he offered to walk her home, which she couldn’t really decline because it was so close to the Palais anyway.
Neuvillette returned to Furina’s doorstep for the third time now. And just as he was about to reluctantly say good night, she paused with her hand on the doorknob and spoke without turning to face him.
“You know, if it were me, I would have never wanted Juliet to follow me in death. I would have wanted Juliet to live. I think a long and happy life would suit her quite well.”
“...You think so?”
“I do. Good night, Neuvillette.”
He knew then and there that he wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight either.
On the day of the performance, Neuvillette anxiously took his seat at the front of the crowd. Luckily, his presence wasn’t questioned so much as the event was attended by almost everyone in Fontaine.
He flipped through the pamphlet placed in his seat and saw a poster photograph of Furina next to the actress of Juliet. Romeo’s costume made Furina look almost prince-like, and Juliet’s makeup accentuated the already beautiful features of her actress.
Neuvillette’s hands shook slightly as he looked at it, and the knot in his stomach remained for the one-and-a-half hour duration of the play. It only unraveled at the very last scene, when his suspicions were finally put to rest.
It was only, in fact, a kiss on the cheek.