Chapter Text
It didn’t come naturally to him.
Most things didn’t, although the humans of this time would scarce believe that. Most things he had to spend lifetimes understanding, memorizing until they very well made home in his blood, oozing out with every drop of sweat he perspired in his struggle. Talking, reading, eating—he was like an infant having just been brought into this world, and in a sense, it was true. And after all that came more complicated things, like Fontainian Law, the reason he’d been brought here at all.
Fake it ‘til you make it, Furina used to say. Not to him, no; she’d said it to herself. An utterance of honesty if he’d ever heard one and he chose to hang onto it like a lifeline. The fact that the one he looked up to had her own struggles made him feel more human, even though he knew neither of them was.
He wondered how the Archons did it, before remembering that the Archons were humans once. Even if they gradually lost their humanity as time eroded their skin, their bones, their souls—that in itself was humane, but Neuvillette?
Neuvillette didn’t know how to express himself. He thought it would be a problem solved by time, he thought that it would rectify itself as he continued mingling in human society, but who was he kidding? He never knew how he should shape his mouth, how he should move his head, or where he should place his hands. It wasn’t about etiquette—that was something that differed among cultures, something that even humans had to learn. It was about intuition, or his lack thereof. It was about how he didn’t know how to smile. Like how all dogs knew to wag their tails when they were happy without being taught to do so.
Sometimes, he even forgot to breathe.
He looked and understood what the expressions meant when he saw them—hard not to when he felt his heartstrings pulled something fierce when he saw a kid cry, and it made him wish he knew how to show he cared, but that was the thing. He didn’t, so he approached and the little girl ran away, and he wondered if this was how the Melusines felt when they were being shunned away. But of course that must be worse, because his smile was something he could change.
Neuvillette stood in front of the mirror once, tried moving around his face muscles the way he’d learned how to control his Hydro powers, but even that had been more intuitive than this. Tried smiling and it looked like someone forcibly stretching open their mouth; tried lifting up the ends and he swore he looked deranged. He had no idea where to start to make it look even just a bit appealing.
As always, when he had these problems, he went back to the one person who brought him here to begin with—Furina. When asked about it at one of her little afternoon tea parties, she didn’t realize this at the time but she looked a little sad. Still smiling, but sad, and he realized his smile never portrayed what he wanted it to portray, like hers did right now. She asked him, “Who told you your smile looked unappealing?”
Neuvillette didn’t know why she looked sad. What he noticed was that her teacup was empty, and she didn’t seem to realize it. Made no move to refill it; her gaze trained on his face and they both were trying to learn each other to no avail. He always thought that those teacups were too small, but then again, he wasn’t a big fan of tea. It was a good thing dining etiquette dictated the water goblets to be the biggest one.
“No one did. I just think it looks weird.”
After a pause, she told him, “Well. I can teach you, but for what it’s worth, I love your smile. It’s up to you, but I think it looks beautiful.”
He tilted his head, still not understanding why she looked troubled. For all that she was expressive, he found himself understanding her even less, but it was enough for him to know that she wasn’t happy with the prospect of him learning how to smile properly. “You want me to not change it?” he tried to clarify.
“I don’t want you to do or not do it, Neuvillette, it’s your choice,” she replied, a bit defensive.
He wasn’t getting the point, he realized. “But just now, it seemed like—”
Her face took on a redder hue, and when she spoke again, her pitch was higher than before. “I’m just saying I like your smile! Would you take the compliment?”
A blush, he realized. He wondered what spurred it on; what would spur it again. It was so beautiful on her face, and he thought if he could smile, now was the perfect time to do it. If only he could.
“Thank you, Lady Furina,” said Neuvillette.
What he didn’t know was: the ends of his lips had already raised in a subtle smile. Only lifted by a mere millimeter yet a smile all the same.
. 𓂃 ଓ ․ 𓈒
It had been more than two hundred years since, yet he remembered it like it was yesterday.
Now that he lived alone in the Palais Mermonia, his mind often sifted through his memories with Furina, trying to guess in which was she being her real self.
It was funny how she was the one who’d brought him here to work for her, gave him a life and taught him everything he knew only to leave him behind. He knew it was mostly his fault—to this day he regretted bringing her to Court and the horror of her dipping her hand into the Primordial Seawater was forever etched in his mind and his dreams as a reminder of his mistake—but she had taught him everything he knew, so was it completely his fault for falling for his teacher’s own scheme? For fulfilling his role in the fate that her godself had been orchestrating for much longer than he’d been the Iudex?
If there was one thing that had taken a long time for him to adapt to, it was his own immortality. He used to shield his heart, refusing to get close to humans personally because he knew it would hurt when they passed away. But Furina—she talked to them face-to-face, their ancestors and their to-be descendants, and allowed them to find comfort in her. She never put up walls, never shielded herself from their love and never stopped herself from loving them. Despite knowing the prophecy that all of them would die, she loved like she couldn’t help it.
He knew now that Furina had a bigger heart than any Archon, for she allowed each human’s death to mark her like a bruise, wearing them like a reminder of her failures and a motivation to keep going. No one could ever be as strong and no one else was as deserving of the title ‘Archon’. If push had come to shove during that prophesied flood, if she had been the last one standing, Furina would’ve never left their nation, singing tales for eternity to come about her people. She would never turn away from her responsibilities, what she thought was the consequences of her actions even if none of it would’ve been her fault.
But Neuvillette couldn’t do eternity. Gradually, he had learnt to be okay with it, but he knew he was only deluding himself because his only consolation all this time had been it’s okay as long as Furina and the Melusines are here, but now?
Maybe he was just bitter that she had made him so humane only to forsake him in this Palais, and he knew it was unfair of him to think so because he could leave anytime he wanted and she should have the freedom to do anything she wanted after having suffered for five hundred years and more, but what should he do? What could he do?
He was trying to save himself, save what was left of his heart by telling himself that the Furina he’d known all along wasn’t the real her. She wasn’t the same person he’d grown besides. However, he’d combed through all his memories of her—of them —and wasn’t it strange that they were so clear despite the many years it’d been. Yet somehow, somehow, he’d shot himself in the foot because with each memory that played in his mind, he found that she was true. She had always been.
There were theatrics, smiles made to hide the truth within, and although Furina was a good actress, she wasn’t a very good liar. Not to him. She put up a strong front to hide her worries and her nescience because her people would think her ungodly, but to him, all that amounted to was to show how real her love had always been. How despite everything, she had loved his smile; how she hadn’t wanted him to change it because she loved it as is.
So he’d dug himself a deeper grave, knowing that the room beside his had been empty for months now.
. 𓂃 ଓ ․ 𓈒
Matters of the human heart—there was only one person he could go to when such things arose. However, Neuvillette only realized he hadn’t properly thought it through after he’d already knocked on the door of her apartment. There wasn’t enough time for him to walk away and pretend he didn’t know anything—much less the fact that it was a crime—before Furina opened the door.
“Neuvillette!” she said upon seeing him, greeting him with a smile. She was dressed in her nightgown still, her shoulders covered by a coat that she seemed to have worn in a hurry. Neuvillette was belatedly made aware of how early the day was, how the roads were eerily quiet. “What brings you here? Has everyone been well?”
I don’t know, he thought, lips suddenly dry. He didn’t expect there to be a kaleidoscope of butterflies that’d made his stomach their home upon seeing her, flying around and creating chaos that left him tongue-tied, staring at her like the idiot he was. “I need your help with something,” he finally said.
The urgency in his tone led her to furrow her eyebrows in worry. Always so expressive. “What’s wrong?”
“Remember your offer to teach me how to smile?” he asked, as if they’d talked about it yesterday and not two centuries ago. Her face fell, and he felt a little guilty for feeling relieved that he wasn't the only one who remembered.