Work Text:
Grief is an undying, maddening little thing.
His existence is lonely — so lonely, as the skies weep a deep grey, and faced with the reflection of his innermost feelings with his blank, expressionless face—
Neuvillette breathes, draws air into his lungs, a shuddering breath.
Focalors is gone.
There had been no time to grieve her death, not when the prophecy had been in full swing, ripping through his nation, the tide, the wrath of the gods they had never meant to incur on the base of their existence alone.
Although they had never met before that moment, before that instance — Neuvillette had known her. Known her, the stranger that she was, working beside him as the Oratrice — the one who had gotten him to the position of Iudex, the one who had placed such trust in him who did not even know himself, to save a nation, her nation, from the crisis that had been set on her shoulders from the moment she had finally some form of freedom from the endless waters.
Archons; they needed to be judged. Had to be judged, for their sins, their crimes, their theft of powers from the Sovereigns of Teyvat.
But there was no place in his heart for hatred or even the judgement of the one who had been the Hydro Archon.
Power ripples through his form, his skin, and he feels it, the destroyed throne of the Hydro Archon, the return of his dragon divinity, the tremors of his power that had once been a mere echo of what was lost to him.
His heart laments what could have been, the genius of Focalors, her expression as she’d stared up at the very thing meant to take her life, as she looked upon him who was to take her powers, and guilt belies him then — if he had not been the Sovereign, would she still be alive now?
(“Faced with death,” she had murmured with a smile, the cold light of her sentence lighting her performance, her show on the stage she’d spent five hundred years setting, “I find myself a little afraid.”)
Furina has dropped out of contact, avoiding him at every turn, and belatedly, he realises has no idea how to reconnect with her, either.
The Archon that had once flaunted and weaved stories from thin air, her superficiality grating on his nerves and causing his breath to rattle his teeth for hundreds and hundreds of years — is also gone.
There is nothing, no one left for Neuvillette to look forward to.
(“Perhaps this is one thing both gods and humans have in common.”)
He takes up every trial and sees Clorinde, Wriothesley. Handles paperwork, greets his Melusines. He has a nation to run, a nation that needs him in the aftermath of losing their archon and only stable.
He meets Focalors in dreams, her fingers shifting through his hair, her quiet, omnipotent smile devastating his heart beyond what should have been possible.
“My dear Chief Justice,” she would whisper, the smile on her face serene, albeit a little bit sad.
“Why,” he would ask, again and again, whether they were standing on both ends of a neverending stretch of water, or in the sea, as an Oceanid and a dragon, or with his head in her lap, his tears soaking her moist skin.
Her fingers would catch at his tears, rubbing under his eyes, but she would say nothing, merely lowering her face to leave him with a kiss, and it would start all over again, every night.
Nothing changed. Neuvillette wakes up every day with tears on his cheeks and the skies pouring. Furina, and the Hydro Archon Divinity Focalors, are still gone.
Tentatively, he opens a window and reaches a hand into the pouring waters.
Hydro dragon, hydro dragon.
Don’t cry.