Work Text:
“Three cups of Earl Grey, ready for consumption.”
Wriothesley places the full teacups onto the coffee table in the middle of his office and slides onto the couch where Sigewinne is currently sitting. The couch is slightly too tall for her to rest her feet comfortably on the floor, so she’s swinging them back and forth in the most adorable manner.
Wriothesley and Sigewinne having tea together in his office is not a rare sight. They meet quite frequently, whether that’s to discuss official Fortress matters or just to gossip over a good cup of tea. The real oddity in this scenario is the person lounging on the seat across from them.
“Thank you, Wriothesley. This effort is greatly appreciated,” Neuvillette says, delicately picking up one of the cups using its handle. He brings it close to his mouth - then wrinkles his nose and puts it down.
Ah, Neuvillette’s strange aversion to every beverage that isn’t the purest of waters. Wriothesley had forgotten.
“Monsieur, you don’t have to force yourself to drink it if you don’t like it.”
Neuvillette glances up and shakes his head imperceptibly. “No, Wriothesley, you have gone through all the trouble of brewing this cup for my sake. You need not worry. I have no great fondness for tea, but no strong aversion either. I will drink it.”
Wriothesley isn’t buying it. “Sure, and I suppose that’s why you say no every time I ask you to stay for some tea after our meetings. Or is it just my company that’s unfavorable?”
Neuvillette blanches. “No, nothing of the sort, Your Grace. I-”
Wriothesley chuckles warmly. “I’m just teasing, Monsieur. I’m serious - don’t worry about the tea. After all, the tea lover of all time, yours truly, is here. I’ll finish it off for you.”
Sigewinne, who until this point has been happily kicking her feet in silence, speaks up suddenly. “Your Grace, you really shouldn’t be consuming this much caffeine. Consuming more than 400 milligrams a day can cause sleep problems, as well as anxiety and bone thinning.”
“I think my bones are pretty sturdy, Sige. Honestly, they could use a little thinning.”
Neuvillette clucks disapprovingly. “She is right. You should take better care of your health, Your Grace.”
Wriothesley has the distinct feeling that he is being ganged up on. “What? This isn’t fair. Two against one? Come on, give a guy a break!”
Sigewinne smirks. Cunning little schemer. She probably planned to accost him while Neuvillette was around so he’d take her side and she’d have the upper hand. He doesn’t fault her too much, though. It’s hard to have the upper hand in anything when you’re as short as she is. All Wriothesley has to do is pick her up and tickle her a little bit and she caves immediately.
He’d never dare do such a thing in front of their esteemed guest, though. If they were alone, however…
“Monsieur Neuvillette, why are you here?” Sigewinne pipes up. “I got an invitation for tea and came straight here. Is there a reason you called this meeting?”
Neuvillette’s face takes on a slight pink tinge. “Ah… I… A close friend of mine informed me that work breaks can be beneficial in that they allow for further productivity and lack of boredom once one returns to the task at hand. I am simply testing that theory.”
“So, Sedene decided that you’re overworking yourself and kicked you out of your office.”
“...Yes,” Neuvillette mumbles. Wriothesley sips his tea.
They all sit in silence for a while, consuming their Earl Grey and contemplating their life choices. Wriothesley polishes off his serving and reaches for Neuvillette’s untouched cup as well. Neuvillette doesn’t stop him.
He picks up a sugar cube with all the flourish of Furina in one of her stage plays and drops it into his tea. It lands with a resounding PLAP.
Sigewinne looks over and giggles. “You dropped that cube into your tea like Fontainians of old dropped their tea bricks into the Primordial Sea!”
“What?” Neuvillette says.
“What?” Wriothesley says.
“You know, the Fontaine Tea Party?” Sigewinne says excitedly.
“Ah,” Neuvillette says.
“The what ?” Wriothesley responds.
“The Fontaine Tea Party, Wriothesley. Surely you learned about it as part of your Teyvat History curriculum while in school?”
“Monsieur, I was fifteen when I got sentenced to Meropide. I didn’t stay in school long enough to take Teyvat History.”
Now Neuvillette realizes. “Of course. Forgive my assumption.”
“Water under the bridge, Iudex. Don’t worry too hard, now.” Wriothesley leans over and presses his thumb against Neuvillette’s forehead crease, smoothing it down.
“Back to the matter at hand,” he murmurs. “What’s this about a tea party?”
Sigewinne flashes one of those grins that either means you’re about to get hit by an overload of cuteness or you’re going to be the latest victim of her scheming. Wriothesley can never really tell which. “Monsieur, we should tell His Grace the story! If he doesn’t know it, he’s truly missing out.”
Neuvillette nods, seemingly deep in thought. “Yes. There should be no gaps in your knowledge, Wriothesley. Allow us to regale you with this tale of old.”
“Again. Tea party??? ”
Sigewinne takes a deep breath. “So basically what happened is Neuvillette charged a lot of money so a lot of people got angry and then they intercepted the S.S. Fontaine and then they threw the-”
Neuvillette interrupts just before she gets to the good part. “Sigewinne, dear, slow down somewhat. Let me explain from the start of it all so that Wriothesley does not get the… wrong idea.”
Wrong idea? Wriothesley has no idea what that means. Anything involving a tea party sounds like a blast to him. It’s not like he’s too masculine for tea parties or anything - he has them with Sigewinne (and sometimes Clorinde) all the time.
“Right. So, Your Grace, it all started two hundred and fifty-odd years ago. You were not alive yet.”
Neuvillette looks at Wriothesley expectantly. Wriothesley glances back, confused.
“Yeah, I wasn’t, chief. Thanks for letting me know.”
Neuvillette shakes his head slightly more rapidly than the last time he did it. He looks almost… nervous. “Right. Yes. Where was I? Anyhow, in that time, we used horse carriages as our primary method of transportation. However, they were terribly inefficient, and Lady Furina used to complain that it stank at all times as a result of their droppings.”
“And she was right!” Sigewinne pipes up. “It was bad.”
“It was,” Neuvillette agrees.
“Anyway, all us Melusines got together with Neuvillette for a scheming - I mean, urban planning session and decided that we would instead implement targeted water canals and boats that could be used to traverse Fontaine!”
“Ah. The Aquabus.”
“Yes, Your Grace!” Sigewinne is getting more and more excited as the story continues. The Chief Justice, on the other hand, looks just about ready to shrink into his seat and disappear completely.
Neuvillette coughs. “We ran into a… small issue while planning the construction of the canals. Just before we decided on the plans, Lady Furina had made a particularly large cake order from Inazuma. She intended it to sustain her… sweet tooth for another three or four months, if preserved properly. It was, naturally, quite expensive to order and ship.”
“So you were broke?” Wriothesley asks.
Neuvillette’s face twists into a mildly disgruntled expression. “Yes, we found ourselves in quite the predicament, as we had no mora left.”
“Broke,” Sigewinne giggles. Neuvillette shoots Wriothesley a disparaging look.
Wriothesley makes a mental note to himself to limit his usage of curse words around the nurse lest she learn them from him and go saying them around Neuvillette. The Chief Justice would really have his hide then.
“Yes, Sigewinne,” Neuvillette mumbles again. “We were broke.”
“Okay, but what does any of this have to do with a tea party?”
“Patience, Wriothesley.”
“I think I’ve been patient long enough. Look. My tea’s gone cold.”
“...Oh. My apologies. Sigewinne, let us continue with the story and minimize interruptions from now on.”
“Of course, Monsieur!” Oh, she’s definitely up to no good. Wriothesley knows it.
“This is perhaps where the problem began. I had heard of an Inazuman system - they call it taxes - where each citizen of their nation pays a preset amount of Mora and the resulting money is used to better the nation, through the building of roads, canals, and more.”
“So you decided to tax the people. So why was that such a… problem?”
“Well, it wasn’t that they were taxed, it was what the tax was on . Monsieur saw that people here in Fontaine tend to really be fans of tea so he thought that if he put a tax on that he’d be able to earn loads of money! But the problem was everyone got angry and then they took the tea and-”
“Sigewinne,” Neuvillette said in that uniquely chiding tone of his. Sigewinne shut her mouth. Neuvillette cleared his throat.
“It seems that I… underestimated how much the citizens of this nation love their tea.”
Wriothesley snorts. “Should have known me back then. You never would have even thought to underestimate it.”
Neuvillette nods. “Yes. Truly, your passion for tea is unmatched. However, at the time, I unfortunately was not acquainted with you, and thus my understanding of the tea-drinking habits of the average Fontainian was inadequate.”
“Inadequate doesn’t fully explain it, Your Grace,” Sigewinne says. “Some of these people were drinking ten to twelve cups of tea a day - FAR more caffeine than is healthy for one adult human to consume, but they did so anyway. When the prices of tea went up thanks to the tax, there was a riot .” She mumbles some words that sound vaguely like ‘britain’ and ‘france’. Wriothesley has no idea what that’s about.
“So was that the tea party?” Wriothesley asks. He’s a little disappointed, honestly. He expected there to be more mayhem.
“No,” Neuvillette responds. He’s visibly nervous now, fidgeting with his knuckles and shifting around in his seat. “A small group of them - they called themselves the Purists - traveled to Romaritime Harbor in the dead of night, exactly a fortnight after the new decree was signed into law. They were all dressed differently, but there was one similarity - they all wore a hat eerily similar to Lady Furina’s.”
Wriothesley is on the edge of his seat. “And then?”
“They intercepted a trading ship looking to dock in the harbor. It had been to all the nations and carried an assortment of tea blends from every one, even cold and distant Snezhnaya. It was some of the finest tea to be found in the nation.”
“And then what did they do?”
“They boarded the ship, picked up every single tea crate on that boat, one by one, and… tossed them into the Primordial Sea.”
Wriothesley blinks. Then he processes what Neuvillette has just said.
“WHAT?” he bellows. “YOU’RE TELLING ME THEY JUST- THREW IT INTO THE WATER? LIKE THAT? THAT WAS THE ‘FONTAINE TEA PARTY?’”
“Yes!” Sigewinne giggles. “You see, everyone in Fontaine could enjoy the tea by drinking from the waters. Oh, wait, maybe they couldn’t… they would dissolve, wouldn’t they?”
Wriothesley glares at her. “I thought, for ONCE, it would be some wholesome story. I thought everyone from Fontaine would get together and you’d apologize and they’d all share a nice drink of tea. You’re telling me they just THREW IT? Without a SINGLE CARE spared for all the good tea they were wasting??”
Neuvillette is staring into his lap, a downcast expression on his face. “I am deeply sorry, Your Grace. As I was the one to decree the increase in price, the responsibility for this infraction lies solely on me. I sincerely and deeply apologize for the loss of this thing I know you hold dear.”
On the surface, rain begins to thud against the roofs.
“I understand if you’re angry with me and would like to cast judgment down upon me. All I ask is that you give me a relatively short sentence. It’s quite difficult to work from down in Meropide.”
“I-” Wriothesley looks at Neuvillette and visibly calms down. “No, I’m sorry, Neuvillette. It’s not your fault, I’m just worked up in general.”
“So… you will not cast judgment upon me, then?”
“No, obviously not. I mean, you couldn’t have known that’s how people would respond. This is how the system works, right? You try something, the people respond, whether good or bad, and you make changes to try to make their lives better based on the feedback, right?”
“On the good days, yes,” Neuvillette responds, looking up and meeting Wriothesley’s eyes.
“Look, I’m sorry for screaming at you. I’m just… I’m honestly getting a little choked up at the thought. All that wasted tea… ready to be brewed… and now it’s sitting at the bottom of the Primordial Sea.”
“I mean, we could always take a trip to the harbor and drink some of the Primordial Water. Maybe it still tastes like the tea,” Sigewinne adds, oh so helpful as always.
Neuvillette and Wriothesley look at her.
“Oh. Oh, I guess not,” she says, a little sheepish.
Eventually, Neuvillette leaves, after they indulge in some far more agreeable topics of conversation. Sigewinne heads back to the infirmary to get back to her restocking duties, and Wriothesley takes a stab at the mounds of paperwork piled on his desk.
He just can’t stop thinking about that tea, though. Its loss really was the tragedy of the ages.