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It is one day, decades later, that the final curtain falls. Seasons have come and gone, heard stories past from the traveller, Celestia falls, and there is still Furina, and all she has ever been. She packs her bags, moves into a humble home not far. She dwells for a bit, acclimating to her human body and all the needs that come with it, struggles with finding her name after 500 years of belief that runs her dry. Clorinde visits, and she cooks for her, drags her to tea parties with Wriothesley. Furina never grows tired of her macaroni. Neuvillette sees her in passing, occasionally, but no conversation ever arises - over the years, the anger ebbs, and there is nothing else but hollow discomfort of things left unsaid. Neither necessarily don't want to speak, but it is just the way it turned out. Furina is fine with that. It is still a long while until Furina learns who she is without the stage. She travels, says a brief goodbye to Clorinde and her friends she meets at the local theatre, sailing to Sumeru first, then Liyue, Monstadt and Inazuma where few and fewer people know her name. She grows comfortable with foreign soil underneath her feet, is fine with being unrooted and drifting, meeting new people, tasting cuisine. It is only until she is 36 that she stands in the mirror one morning, and sees a single gray hair in her head. That day, she cries and cries, and celebrates with cake in a foreign city. It is only until she is 60 that she finds a small riverside cottage near Sumeru. It is close to a village, convenient enough but in relative solitude. She lives out her days writing fantastical plays, becomes the creative director of a new troupe, rewrites herself again and again. It is only until she is 82 that she figures she should visit Fontaine once again.
She sits on the edge of the wobbly stone path on a bench, underneath the blue skies she has always dreamed about. She wonders up at the clouds, the birds that slowly drift above. She has her cane in one hand, a note in the other. Vaguely, she registers the sound of shoes clicking on cobble behind her, and the shifting of clothes.
"Hello, Neuvillette." Furina says, as if nothing had changed at all. She turns, and he is there, and suddenly it is decades past, when she was packing her bags in the Palais still and she didn't know if she would be able to live through the enormity of it all.
"Furina." He breathes.
There is a hint of sorrow in his eyes, regret of a far off day. Both of them have changed. Neuvillette looks exactly the same, face carved into stone immovable, but his expressions carry an air of softness now. Perhaps now, the words they wanted to originally say that day have slowly decayed, withered into nothingness. The bitterness has faded, and there is nothing but a soft smile and a crinkle at the eyes. His eyes linger for a second at the wrinkles on her face, the gray hairs decorating her. After so so long, the age looks beautiful on her. He is glad. He takes a seat, putting his cane off to the side and simply stares at the sky with her.
"How have you been?" He asks simply, and Furina chuckles.
She is more gently spoken now, her mannerisms more mellow. Still, she carries a gleam of wit in her eye.
"It's been good."
Neuvillette asks her to tell her him more, and she slowly recounts the past decades to him starting from when she had left. She tells him everything important, and everything mundane. Like how she made her first jams in Sumeru, missed the look of rainbow roses and planted her own there. She tells him her regrets, her wishes, her closest friends. How she still doesn't know quite yet who she is fully, and some part of her act will always stay with her. How she is scared for what happens after she dies, how she does't know what to expect from the uncertainty of it all. How she will be sad at how her friends will mourn her. How she has prepared notes and gifts for all of them, and hands Neuvillette his. He tries not to let the sky cloud when he takes the package in hand. As the sun dips down slowly, and the day spins into evening, her tales and fantastical journey slowly come to a close. There is so much left unspoken, yet both of them don't seem to mind. There is not enough time - there is never enough time. Neuvillette is attentive, holding her hand at some points, nodding when needed. He tells her his own tales, what he's been up to. But in the span of a life immortal, 80 something years is nearly nothing. He does not tell her how he stays up for weeks on end after hearing she travels to Sumeru hoping she is alright, hoping she has found what she is looking for. He does not tell her how he so desperately wants to sail there, hold her, and tell her apologies ten thousand times over, how he misses her every single moment. How he does not come over because he wants her to live her life free from the past, because he does not deserve her. He does not say any of those things, simply sits there and memorizes every detail of this scene - the wind shifting her hair against her sunken cheeks, the certainty she sits there as her voice slowly dwindles, weakens as the day passes. The swaying of the the leaves above them, the calling of the seagulls near the sea. He tries his hardest to keep the sun out, knowing she deserves this at the very least.
"Will you miss me, when I'm gone?" Furina finally asks. Neuvillette turns to her, a sharp inhale and an answer ready at the tongue in furious indignation - of course, he wants to say, of course of course of course ten thousand times other, I will miss you like the cold polar apogee of the void, as the moon misses the sun, as the tides yearn for the shore. I will come back to you over and over, ruin this world for everything you are. Yet he says none of this.
"I will." He simply responds, turning away. But Furina knows - 500 years are enough to learn the mannerisms of another, how the hands betray more than they say, how he shifts slightly to his left when he wants to say something else. She smiles. That is all she ever needs. So much left unsaid, but they both understood.
"I'm glad. I'll miss this world too." she leans against him, slowly. Head resting on his shoulder like they used to do when she became too tired after every court hearing, and him stilling all motion to make sure she is as comfortable as possible.
"Can you sing me a song?" She asks tentatively.
"Furina - you and I both know you are the actress here. I cannot sing." He replies, laughing slightly.
"Just this once?" And Neuvillette cannot say no.
He tries to remember a song he knows, one from the ancients, in a foreign language long lost to this world. He doesn't remember where it was from, or how he knew it. Furina doesn't bother asking it either. His singing is atrocious, he knows, crackly and uncertain, off kilter and off tune, he has no rhythm. But he sings with everything in it, a slow love for everything she is and everything she has done for this world and him, sings as the sun dips below the horizon and washes everything in gold. For the first time in nearly a century, he cries. Doesn't cry from the sky - no, a singular tear drips from his draconic eye and he allows himself this. Furina doesn't notice. Her head is growing heavier, eyes slowly closing as his song draws to a close. Her hands unclench, the furrow in her grow eases, and her breathing slows, growing more languid. Her heartbeat slows, and he feels something indescribable rise up in him as he hears it do so. Sorrow, he realizes vaguely. When he sings the final verse, he does not look down. He closes his eyes, bathed in the sun of his final day with her, when he does not have to move on along with the unstoppable torrent of time, when he does not want to acknowledge she will never laugh with him again, pester him to take a break, bring him lemon cake from the local bakery. There is nothing else but him, the silence, and the sound of the waves.
"Goodnight, Furina." he says, softly, and the curtain finally draws to a close.