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It's not every day in Fontaine that a thirteen year old is sentenced to ten years in the Fortress of Meropide for two counts of murder in the first degree.
There's the unsaid, initial consideration, that he's thirteen. But honestly, Wriothesley is most surprised by just how short his sentence is, for what he did. He's seen others go in for longer for less. He'd been expecting worse. Not that he's not grateful, and everything just… surprised.
Shocked, maybe.
The Iudex should have just chucked him in there to rot, as far as Wriothesley is considered. He doesn't worry himself about how long he's gonna live, his quality of life. Any of it. After his parents were dead, that wasn't his concern. He'd hoped, after the injuries, that he might have died and left a perfect happy ending, neat and tidy. But apparently the Fontaine justice system needs its pound of his flesh, like some of his liver hadn't already been sold off?
It's grown back, but still. Rude. His parents deserved it and he's not sorry. But he doesn't deserve for them to drag him back to life just to shove him where the sun doesn't shine for ten years. They could have just let him choke to death on his own blood.
Wriothesley sits and waits outside the Iudex's office for what seems like hours. Surely it doesn't take this long for transport to Meropide. He pays little attention to anything while he sits, other than the cold metal of the handcuffs and what the ratio to pity and self-interest muggings will be about him in the Fortress. He'd put a hundred mora on a thirty-seventy split.
People walk past him, Melusines in their uniforms, clerks of all kinds, carrying paperwork, but most interestingly of them is a man who is dressed strangely. He carries himself well. The clothes are… Liyuen if he had to guess, but a guess it would be. The last dinner party he'd been to, his stomach had hurt.
Largely due to the organ harvesting that had made the dinner possible in the first place. The fuck who sat and drank on his new liver would have been next, if Wriothesley had gone for more after his parents.
After what had to have been several hours, actually, Wriothesley is finally called into Monsieur Neuvillette's office.
“Monsieur Wriothesley. Good to see you.” Neuvillette greets, and Wriothesley snorts but otherwise doesn't respond. Good to see him? He's a tween murderer, not a house guest he hasn't seen in a while. The Iudex raises an eyebrow but continues, unphased. “This is… a friend.”
The words seem tense, so Wriothesley examines this… friend. He's the man in the long, Liyuen coat, with sharp features and incredibly creepy amber eyes that watch him beyond what is normal. Any friend of Monsieur Neuvillette's has to be powerful, so he doesn't doubt the quiet, steadfast strength he feels emanating from the man is a genuine impression and not just a facade.
“This is Rex Lapis, you may know him as Morax. Or-”
“The Geo Archon?” Wriothesley asks, incredulous, and then snaps his mouth shut when Rex Lapis’ eyes meet his with a knowing look. Knowing of what, Wriothesley doesn't know. Doesn't want to know.
What the hell could he have been summoned for? He's one of the most powerful Archons of their time, of those alive- only remaining winner of the Archon war, leader of the Adepti. It was a good life, he decides, watching Morax with trepidation. He's lived enough. If Neuvillette is having Rex Lapis kill him, it's a good way to go out.
At the very least, being killed by an archon is cool. Cooler than ten years in Meropide, probably cut short from the flu or something.
“It's good to meet you, Mr. Wriothesley.” Rex Lapis says, smiling at him. Wriothesley shivers at it, the peek of fangs and the glowing of amber in his eyes. “Monsieur Neuvillette has asked that I take you with me to Liyue, so that you don't have to fulfill your sentence in Meropide. Or rather, that you live out your exile outside of Fontaine rather than in the Fortress.”
Wriothesley stares between the two of them. Surely, it's a prank. The Iudex himself can't be attempting to circumvent his sentence in Meropide. But neither of them seem to be in the least amused by the situation.
Well, Morax may be amused by him. He's watching Wriothesley with a strange look in his eyes that he can't recognise. It's incredibly disconcerting.
“I- but I'm supposed to go to the Fortress.”
He doesn't want to say ‘please don't make me go with a complete stranger, who happens to be a literal Archon', but Neuvillette is avoiding his desperate attempts to make eye contact and say just that. Well, without saying it.
Wriothesley refuses to look like a child clinging to his parents coat-tails. He hasn't been like that since he was four, and even then it was quickly smacked out of him. His hands tremble and he curls them into fiats so it isn't so noticeable, even though the two immortal figures in front of him have probably noticed.
“Well, I'm not completely sure why Monsieur Neuvillette has decided to send you with me. But he has, and so it shall be done.” Rex Lapis smiles at him, thin lipped, and Wriothesley can see just a hint of fang peeking out. “I don't believe you've any belongings to pack, nor anyone to say goodbye to, so we ought to get going.”
He withholds the flinch at that. He doesn't have anyone left in Fontaine, that's true. But Wriothesley was hoping for a second chance in the Fortress of Meropide, not to be sent away with Morax and probably murdered. Or kept as a slave or something. Was Neuvillette working with his parents when they were alive? The thought is abjectly terrifying but it flashes at the forefront of his mind and refuses to leave.
He's being sold. He killed his parents so he wouldn't be but it happened anyway. Behind Morax, there's a signed contract. Nothing so formal between his parents and others, but this is the God of Contracts and the Iudex. It's different.
“I- I don't-”
“Come, Wriothesley.” Morax says simply, striding past him to the door, and despite the abject terror filling him, he follows. His legs feel numb, his head is buzzing, but he follows. Morax’s coat flickers behind him, and Wriothesley is reminded that his wrists are still cuffed. He's still a prisoner.
Dressed in ruffled court clothes, ill-fitting where they were dragged from some lost and found, bandages still around his throat and gauze taped to his cheek. The little Melusine at the desk, Sedene he thinks, waves at him with her mitten-like hand as he leaves. He waved back, sniffling with his lower lip trembling.
He's not a baby. He's not going to cry. But he's scared, and he thought Fontaine was supposed to be the nation of justice. Wriothesley just wanted to go curl up on some shitty bunk bed and sleep away a few days while he recovered from killing his parents.
Instead, he follows Morax to his almost certain death, Melusine officers staring at him with pity and concern as he blinks against tears. They fall anyway, obviously. It hurts the bruising on his eye to cry, but he can't help it. Before they leave the Palais, Morax turns around, and his expression doesn't change even as he takes in the tears on Wriothesely's face.
Well, he's better than his parents at least. Maybe some weird creepy child molester, or a slave trader, but at least he doesn't care if some random thirteen year old cries. Or maybe he'll beat him for it later.
(It's strange to think about that when it's an Archon. That he could fall to the same evils as man.)
Wriothesley stops and stares at Morax as he unlocks his cuffs, and tucks them into a pocket of his jacket. There's a stern hand around his wrist still, and those amber eyes that terrify him meet his own. They seem to search for something, and then his head tilts.
“If you run, Mr. Wriothesley, I will find you. It will not be difficult, but it will be frustrating, and Monsieur Neuvillette will be quite angry at me. Behave, yes?” Morax says sternly, and when Wriothesley just stares, he squeezes his fingers around his wrist. Wriothesley is reminded of the tales in the story books, where Rex Lapis shaped mountains with his hands, his spear strikes shaping mountain ranges. Playing catch with Barbatos using mountains.
“Understood?”
“Yes sir.” Wriothesley says quietly, looking away. It's just like his parents, he tells himself. Behave and it'll be easy.
Something in Morax's expression seems to twitch, but he turns and continues his easy stride forward. He's easily six foot tall, and Wriothesley hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, so he struggles following after him. If it were his parents, and he were just a little younger, he might have held the man's coat tails. Or his hand.
As it was, he followed with a stride that was half walking, half running, and kept his hands close together at his front. He wasn't running away. No matter how much his body urged him to. No matter how every fibre of his being screamed at him that he wasn't just a toy, wasn't just something to be sold. This wasn't just people, he had to keep reminding himself.
It was Gods. The Archons themselves. Who's to the say that it wasn't the will of Celestia, the will of something higher? He wanted to run more than anything, but would he be smited? Would Morax strike him down?
They stood quietly side by side in the lift down to the aquabus station. Wriothesley resisted the urge to look up at Morax, to examine his features. To get a read of him. He wasn't psychic, nor an Adepti or a spirit or hell, even a Melusine. Just a human, a kid at that. He wouldn't be able to read him, he'd just give himself up.
Wriothesley's best hope was to keep his head down. To pretend his throat wasn't sore from the effort of keeping down sobs and that his eyes were dry. To pretend he didn't have to keep lifting one hand to wipe at his eyes with a fist curled in the too long sleeves of his shirt.
A surprisingly gentle hand at his back led him from the lift to the aquabus. Wriothesley had almost expected to be dragged along. But maybe that would be too suspicious. A crying kid being literally pulled away from Fontaine was too much even for a Fontainian to ignore with a stiff upper lip.
“Come now, Wriothesley, sit down.” He settled himself on one of the benches at Morax’s insistence.
“Thank you, uhm.” Wriothesley realised he didn't know what to call him.
Lord Morax? Rex Lapis? *Lord* Rex Lapis? He didn't know the Liyuen custom. They called Lady Furina, Lady Furina. But no one spoke to her face to face, really. She was separate from them, up in her box. Watching them so distantly.
(He wondered if she'd left his trial out of boredom, or if she'd known that Neuvillette had plans to get rid of him. Wriothesley wasn't sure which was a nicer thought. He imagined that if she had known, she would have disagreed. Fought the Iudex on it. Or maybe she didn't know, and he'd simply bored her.)
“Thank you, Lord Morax.” He tried, looking up at him briefly. There was a tiny twitch at his lips and that was all he could take before he looked away out of fear that it would be a frown.
“Call me Zhongli.” Morax- Zhongli- said quietly. Insistently. Zhongli placed a hand on top of Wriothesley's head, and he tensed like he was made of stone. “It's easier. It will blend in more in the harbour too, as it is what humans know me as these days. I am not so open about my appearance now as I might have been a hundred years ago.”
Wasn't that a reminder. That he was hundreds, thousands of years old.
“Yes sir.” Wriothesley muttered in reply, ducking his head further to avoid the hand touching him.
Zhongli seemed to get the memo and sat down opposite him. Wriothesley hunched his shoulders as close to his ears as they could get. The sound of the water parting around the aquabus was lulling, almost, and he might have fallen asleep immediately if not for how terrifying it was to sit across from the man who now owned him.
Not man.
God.
Maybe he should have just let his damned parents live, Wriothesley mused. Maybe some Fontainian creep would own him, but he could escape them.
There was no escaping Rex Lapis.