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He finds Furina sitting by a café.
It’s been nearly a month since he last saw her. She’d been packing her things at the Palais when Neuvillette had slammed open the twin doors of her bedroom with an uncharacteristic amount of force. He regrets it now, but… he doesn’t think he’d be able to act as composed as she had. So much had happened: the trial, Focalor’s death, the All-Devouring Narwhal, and then that strange woman who had handled both the beast and the Tsaritsa’s 11th with a shocking lack of warmth. But Neuvillette hadn’t forgotten that Furina was still sitting there on her throne, and when he’d returned from helping the Traveler defeat the Narwhal to see that she had somehow vanished… he’d been in a hurry to find her, is all.
Now, Furina glances up at him. She’s not crying; he almost wishes she was, because the expression on her face is dull and lacking any real spark. Those eyes—one dark like the bottom of the ocean, the other like the placid surface of a lake—stare right through him. Neuvillette swallows.
“Lady Furina,” he says finally.
Furina inclines her head in acknowledgement. Her hair has been cut to the base of her neck, blunt like she cut it with a guillotine. Neuvillette hides his wince by curling his hands into fists behind his back. It’s so unlike her to be so blasé with her looks—but then again, did he ever really know her well enough to make such a judgement? Her outfit looks slightly off from what he remembers. He can’t quite figure out what it is. Maybe she’s just off as a whole.
“It’s a nice day out, isn’t it?” he asks. It’s going to rain soon anyways; he should remark on it now before the statement sounds too odd. Rain is inevitable whenever Neuvillette’s thoughts wander back to Furina. It had been worse in the beginning, but now Clorinde and the Traveler and even the twins of all people write to him to let him know they’ve seen her and she’s doing well.
Furina quirks an eyebrow. He’s always been amazed at how delicate she looks. Like a lily. Her skin is pale and soft-looking, and each of her features has been drawn onto her with the finest precision. A face that no one could deny belonged to a god. But it fits her now, even though she’s painfully human. Neuvillette stares at the dainty arch of her brow for a second too long. “It seems like it. Fontaine has been getting so much rain recently.”
He hears the question in it: have you been sad? Perhaps he knows her better than he thought if he can pick through her words and find the ones that have meaning. “I have been… habitualizing myself with my new duties.”
“Don’t tell me they’re that hard,” she says with one of those twinkly laughs. “After all, I’d been doing them for five hundred years before you started.”
Neuvillette takes a step closer. Then another one. He stops right in front of her knees—is it just him, or are they looking a bit beat up? Furina follows his gaze. “I’ve been training with Clorinde,” she explains.
He has the oddest urge to sink to his knees in front of her, to take her hands in his. He’s never done that before; despite all her pomp and circumstance, Furina only invoked her administrative power as an Archon whenever she got annoyed at him. She’d never have asked him to prostrate before her. At least, only as a joke.
Furina is looking up at him at this angle. Even with how tired she looks, her eyes still swim with that telltale mischief. Maybe it was her, deep down, after all, through all those years. Maybe it was just her layered over herself until she was someone almost entirely different. But Furina nonetheless.
“Don’t make that face,” Furina murmurs. Flicks a strand of his hair back from where it hangs limply between them. “It’ll rain. I just did my hair.”
And suddenly Neuvillette can’t stomach it anymore. “Furina,” he chokes out, her name fractured and drawn tight. Thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance.
“Oh, dear,” she says. For all her perceived lack of sympathy, Furina hasn’t moved for a minute now. He can see her tears hugging her eyelashes.
Neuvillette gets down on his knees.
“We are in public,” she hisses, but there’s not really anyone around, and Neuvillette has lived with her—orbited her, loved her, even—for five hundred years now. He knows she could care less about propriety. He tips his head forwards into her lap. Presses his nose into the taut skin of her knee, breathes in her scent. She still smells like honeydew.
Above him, a sniffle echoes through the empty air around them. The entire world seems frozen, waiting for the inexorable first drop of rain. Her hand settles over his head. “You make such a big fuss about everything, monsieur.”
Not everything, he thinks, but she’s almost right. Everything to do with her. And for the past few centuries, everything did because he was always beside her. Her nails, bitten down to stubs, scrape unevenly over his scalp. The first patter of rainfall splashes onto the paved walkways of the Court of Fontaine.
“You suck,” whispers Furina.
Neuvillette allows himself another moment basking in her stilted affection before he peels himself off of her and looks up into her eyes. She’s crying—he thought that he’d prefer her crying over that flat look she’d been wearing, but he’s quickly realizing he doesn’t like seeing her anything but happy. Or at least whatever pantomime of joy she’d been performing as his Archon.
“I apologize,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean…”
Furina smiles and all his thoughts melt into nothingness. A tear slides down her cheek. “I’ll get sick if you leave me out here.”
He turns on his heels so that his back is facing her. Her scrutiny seems to burn through his jacket, his shirt, all the way down to his bare skin. They haven’t done this in a long time. They never did this very often in the first place; Neuvillette had always taken to carrying Furina in front of him whenever she fell asleep in an inconvenient place or she started getting irritable enough that removing her from the scene was the best course of action. But Furina hated that, and so…
She sighs. Her fingers brush up his shoulders, then her elbows, and finally her hands lock above the hollow of his throat. Neuvillette holds his hands out expectantly. Furina sighs again, then sticks her legs through the loops of his arms on either side of his body before plastering herself to his back. “I could have walked,” she complains belatedly.
“Mmm.” He lets her clamber into a better position before standing and starting down the stairs towards her townhome. Something wet drips down his neck. Is it the rain, or is she crying again? Neuvillette marvels at how quietly she expresses her emotions now. A part of him will always miss the louder than life actress he knew but… he likes this Furina too. The real one.
“Stop,” she bites out, and Neuvillette decides that the wetness on his neck is both the rain and her tears. Her voice warbles as she says, “It’s not your fault.”
Neuvillette nods absently. Of course it isn’t. It can’t be—logically, rationally, pragmatically. Focalors had done what she had to in order to be sure that his power would be returned to him. But Neuvillette still feels rotten about it.
“I wish…” murmurs Furina, “I wish you weren’t so nice. You make me think you care about me. Still.”
“I do care about you.” He steps down the last staircase and turns left, heading towards the quiet residential quarter Furina now lives in.
“I’m not your Archon anymore. I never was.”
“You never needed to be,” Neuvillette says and stuns them both with his honesty. “You just needed to be you. Furina.”
Furina’s legs tighten on either side of his torso. “Say it again.”
It’s a testament to how well they work in tandem that Neuvillette already has her name on the tip of his tongue. “Furina,” he says again.
“Again.”
“Furina.”
They stop before her door. He can feel her moving, unlatching something from her waistband, and then her keys are placed onto his open palm by a small, shaking hand. “I’m cold,” she whispers. He pretends his shiver is from the chill and not from her mouth pressed so close to his skin.
Inside Furina’s house is messy. It’s a nice townhome, almost right across from the forge. He knows Furina sleeps better when she can hear the world outside. Now he understands that it was because it drowned out her thoughts.
Her bedroom is in one of the corner rooms, and thus one of the square edges of it is actually rounded out. Furina has put her bed in the furthest corner from the window. Neuvillette sits down on it and lets Furina unattach herself from him in her own time. His heart is beating so loudly he’s almost certain she can hear it too. But if she does, she’s uncharacteristically generous in her feigned ignorance.
It takes him a moment too long to notice that she’s trying to peel his jacket off with herself. Fondness bubbles up his throat as he slips his arms out of it and lets her bundle it to her chest. He stares at her over his shoulder. Her thick mascara has clumped at the base of her long lashes. White hair spills over her pillow like a fresh coating of snow. Furina blinks up at him.
“For what it’s worth,” she croaks out, “I always did like you, Neuvillette. I was never pretending about that.”
Neuvillette brushes his hand over her forehead and her eyes flutter shut. “I can only hope the sentiment remains true,” he admits.
Furina’s mouth twitches. “I’m trying to rest.”
He hears: of course it does, you old dragon. For several minutes, Neuvillette tries to think of something to say, but nothing comes to him. The soft thrum of Furina’s breathing evens out. It figures, he thinks. He’s always been one step behind her.
Neuvillette leans down, his long hair settling over her neck as he kisses her forehead. The skin under his mouth is as soft as a petal. Then he stands up from her cramped mattress and heads for the kitchen to brew some tea for when she wakes up.
As twilight settles over Fontaine, the Spina’s heels clack against the pavement as she pauses before a small Fontainian café. “Huh,” she says, looking up at the clear navy sky above.
“Might be the first night we’ve got in weeks without rain,” says the waitress behind the till.
“Seems like they’ve worked it out, then.” Navia hides a smile behind one of her blonde curls.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, nothing. Could I please order…”