Chapter Text
Once upon a time, a young boy had discovered a horrible truth about his foster family. Since then, he cursed the horrible world and its horrible injustice once the web of facts had sunk in. Wherever he’d gazed, there was nothing but hopelessness, and yet the children around him were rife with hope that they’d be adopted into real, whole families. Children who were abandoned looked forward to being wanted, children with deceased parents hoped to be taken care of like other kids.
Being burdened with a truth so terrible had corroded his sanity and tugged him away from the siblings he’d once loved. And perhaps, until now, he loved them, but distance and time tended to divorce this feeling from his soul.
He ran away from ‘home’ just as autumn began, escaping under the cover of heavy rain at night. When he curled up under a discarded crate once he made it so far away from home that he couldn’t recognize the roads, he soothed himself to sleep with whispers of ‘Hydro Dragon, don’t cry’. Over the next few years he hardened his heart while plotting the deaths of his parents, and then he retraced his steps back to that hellish place, armed with new skills and tempered with cold fury as he’d fought against two also-armed adults.
After that, he laid in his hospital bed for weeks, idly playing with the chains on his wrists and wondering how in the actual hell did he survive that night. How Dad had missed the vital parts of his neck and how Mom had managed to avoid piercing his heart. Both of them had been ready to take his life while he'd worked so hard to take theirs, and yet, even with their adult strength, they had still succumbed to their wounds.
How did he survive? Had they not wanted to kill him? Had there been an ounce of mercy in their black hearts for his sake? Or had they simply been too inept, that they couldn’t even match the murderous intent fuelling him despite his deep and supposedly-fatal wounds? Had they only been taken by surprise? He’d never know, for they’d already perished. Dead men tell no tales, so he chalked it up to simple fate.
In the end, what had mattered and still mattered was that they were dead, and hopefully he could leave the rest to the Maison Gardiennage and his surviving siblings. Mom and Dad dying was all that mattered. He had already stopped mattering the moment he’d entertained the idea of killing them.
Then came the trial, his guilty verdict, and the Iudex's summons.
His entire trip to the Palais Mermonia was gruelling. Torture for his mind. His guard escorts were now treating him with delicate gestures and giving him quieter orders, as if they’d been calmed by the realization that no, this street punk wasn’t a fucking unhinged psychopath but instead a helpless soul that had no other choice. They attempted to help him and make the rest of his stay on the surface as pleasant as possible, yet he sneered and shunned attempts at kindness.
Eventually they decided to leave him alone, but the creases of pity in their eyes still made him seethe.
On the ferry from Marcotte Station to the Court of Fontaine, he looked over the starboard side at the sea and a fantastic thought flashed in his mind: the waters below should be cold enough to choke the heat out of his body and end his miserable life. If he was able to make a dash for it, he could find salvation at the bottom of the sea, at a place much freer than the Fortress of Méropide. Should he attempt to escape, to jump into the water, never to resurface? He already had the handcuffs to help with that and if he was able to make it past the guards, no one would follow him no matter how kind they could be.
There had been no other way for him but down, down, and further down to the Abyss when he’d crept back home with his makeshift gauntlets, intending to kill. There was just nothing left for him. To kill was also to be killed, and now there was no soul left for this boy of a barely-adult age.
But he refrained. No one just gets called to the Palais by the Iudex, he reasoned, so I might as well take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
And thus, despite his intense wish for death, he gracefully sat down on a plush couch that not even his parents could afford, and stared at the slice of cake prepared for him. Somehow, that slice of cake had been the most offensive thing in the world. On what grounds did he deserve this? Was the universe playing a sick joke, that at the end of his life, it deigned to give him such an ornate final meal?
The Chief Justice entered the room a little while later, and they proceeded to have the strangest conversation about his motivations for pleading guilty from the very beginning.
Years later when he was grown, Wriothesley wouldn’t even remember what he said in that office in the Palais, only that he kept quiet about wanting to die and be forgotten in the annals of the Court’s endless case logs. Then somehow, when he saw the raindrops trickle down the stained glass, he promptly plunged much deeper into depression as the self-loathing welled up so alarmingly abruptly without reason. He started crying about stupid things on top of everything in his shitty life thus far, like being abandoned by the Hydro Archon and even the Hydro Dragon.
And in an even stranger twist, the Chief Justice proceeded to give him the most genuine and warmest hug he’d ever had in his life. The clearly-inhuman Iudex Neuvillette, who’d glared at him coldly from his lofty throne up in the Opéra Épiclèse, embraced him with his own arms, smoothed down his hair, and rubbed his back.
“I’m sorry that this Hydro Dragon can’t save you when you called out to him for help,” the Chief Justice said quietly in a whisper so quiet, that had Wriothesley never gotten used to listening for quiet sounds he would’ve never heard it. The deep rumble of his voice and the calm beating of his heart filled his ears. He even held him close, cradled his head, and allowed him to bask in his warmth. “Please let him comfort you.”
Back then and until now, Wriothesley remembered almost nothing about unconditional love and the safety it should bring younger children. Broken trust did that kind of damage. Yet he felt the absolute safest nestled in the embrace of the Iudex, of the Hydro Dragon, the Hydro Dragon actually exists, this is the Hydro Dragon. Chief Justice Neuvillette is the Hydro Dragon. The Hydro Dragon is hugging me. He’s taking care of me.
Admiration had surged from within Wriothesley’s heart the moment he realized this, despite the tears freely running down his cheek. At that moment, he was finally able to mourn the hellish turn of his life. How he’d been abandoned as a little baby near a hilichurl camp of all places, how he’d been picked up by an evil couple, how he’d lived to never trust anyone purporting to be kind. What could his life have been if only he’d told the nice Mélusine (what was her name? Kiara?) who’d given him hot soup that he’d run away from a home which sold children to all kinds of terrible people? The Marechausée Phantom could have investigated Mom and Dad. Mélusines had special sight, he’d read, and they could see things that anyone else couldn’t. Would he have turned to murder if only he’d trusted her and other Mélusines more? What was her name?
Regardless, he was already condemned. He’d already made his choice and he’d faced justice for it, but all that he did was savor how true safety felt like. It might not have been the love of a parent, but it was enough. It was like hiding in seedy streets and dark crevices, except a small lit matchstick followed him in the form of the Chief Justice.
In that moment, there was only himself and the Hydro Dragon in this bubble of reality, and in this bubble the almighty Hydro Dragon shall banish all the terrors of the world, for otherwise he would crush it under his heel.
At that same moment, there was a chill in his pocket, but it was fleeting and unfelt, only to be noticed later when he was about to be tucked away in the underworld.
Then, after he said his utmost gratitude to the Hydro Dragon, he was sent to the Fortress of Méropide. A dog-eat-dog society, the underworld was. Credit coupons ruled the dank and dark, and credit coupons were ruled by the Administrator. Before he’d had his talk with the Iudex, he’d thought about maybe just being a passive inmate befitting a lanky child like him, but after that, there was a new fire in his heart and a Cryo Vision in his pocket. He came, he saw, and he conquered his past terrors; he was going to live and face his justice and, perhaps, see the Chief Justice again at the end of his sentence and show him that his efforts to comfort him had not been for naught.
With this resolve in his heart, he slowly but surely grew from a skin-and-bones boy to a strong and sharp-witted man. He punched his way up, made alliances, and gathered his wealth, setting the first dominoes of his ascension to Administrator.
How funny was it that after his conviction, he wished for salvation by death at the bottom of the sea, only to go there and find salvation by justice?
Yet his journey and eventual seizure of power through hard work was not without a sinister side, when his thoughts became darker than the deepest parts of the Fortress itself—just as dark as the first ones on the ferry to the Court of Fontaine. Even during his incarceration, he’d curled up into himself, this time on his nigh-uncomfortable bed and not under heavy rain, and wondered about the weather up at the overworld. He still whispered the rhyme about the Hydro Dragon under his breath, even though he had no idea what the weather was, even though he’d been the one in need of comfort.
‘Hydro Dragon, are you crying?’