Chapter Text
“I miss you, Neuvillette.”
They aren’t really sure how or even what happened, but it’s been a while since Wriothesley stopped caring that much about it and decided to focus on the most important things, not needing to add to the torture his mind already went through since he needed to focus on the things that really needed him.
Like tending to Neuvillette.
Fontaine had been at peace for a long time after the whole thing with the prophecy was put to rest. People adapted to the way the court now worked, to seeing Furina moving around as a normal citizen rather than their archon and to see in Neuvillette the complete figure of authority even if there was never an official statement that said he was taking over everything.
Normal citizens where happy.
Tourists were happy.
Wriothesley was happy.
Something, of course, needed to come to break it.
It all started with monsters attacking places they didn’t even get close to before, large numbers moving violently to attack everyone who crossed their paths. At first, the meks patrolling around were more than enough to do something, the few civilians who were around could get safe by rushing towards them and waiting for them to take care of everything, but the danger was there and Neuvillette’s worry increased at the thought of having them eventually going for more populated areas.
Wriothesley happened to be there when he had to order the previously peaceful army to scatter around to make sure no innocent people were at risk or harmed.
“It is abnormal,” Neuvillette had said. “They have never been rational and this feels as if there’s someone behind, too coordinated.”
And he was right, but no one imagined the full extent of it until a sea of monsters and corrupted meks were seen approaching and surrounding Fontaine.
People were quickly evacuated and taken from the outskirts of the city to The Court, filling the hotels and inns to their full capacity and eventually needing to be accommodated in improvised places on the streets. It seemed to break Neuvillette’s heart to see kids and elderly people sleeping on the street, but Wriothesley tried to make him see that everyone was doing their part. Visions users stepped forward to offer their help to fight, shops offered their products to the ones living in the streets, Fontaine as a whole was coming out together to defend their nation and it felt right but Neuvillette… was still worried.
“There are too many, Wriothesley,” he whispered while both looked out at the window, at the packed street. “I can’t risk so many people.”
He already had a plan, he knew it, and that’s why he spent the rest of the day and night trying to convince him not to make any kind of harsh decision, that it was alright to rely on others, that no one was being forced and that while it was true Neuvillette was now the ruling figure, he wasn’t supposed to do everything on his own.
In the back of his mind, a voice whispered that it was useless, but he still hoped.
Neuvillette did allow them to fight, defeat a large number of monsters by taking advantage of the fact they were rational creatures who could make a strategy and weren’t just moving by pure killing instinct. He kept a close eye on how everything was going, making sure to keep people from suffering fatal wounds or getting into much danger…
But they were too many.
For every monster they defeated three more seemed to appear and despite having people willing to continue, they were still humans, humans who had a limit and Wriothesley saw the moment Neuvillette understood that.
“Order everyone to retreat,” he said after healing a nasty bruise on his side. “I want everyone safe, away from al the main entrances.”
“Neuvillette—”
“Just do it, please, we can talk after it.”
They didn’t talk after that, Wriothesley didn’t get to hear his voice again.
Once everyone was away, there had been a wave of Hydro that came from the palace seconds before a roar made the entire city tremble. In a magnificent column of blue, a large serpent-like creature flew into the sky, getting lost in the clouds before descending with a bone-chilling noise that indicated something worse was coming.
The pulse of hydro seemed to pulverise the monsters without even giving them the chance to sense something was coming. Neuvillette moved with a grace worth admiring even while ending the hundreds of monsters, people around Wriothesley were admiring it, expressing just how beautiful it looked and how powerful he was.
Wriothesley allowed himself to admire it as well for a long time, seeing the threat vanishing as they were incapable of keeping up with the wrath of an angered sovereign. He allowed his mind to think just how damn beautiful his partner is… but then reality hit him and felt as if he had been slammed into a wall.
Neuvillette wasn’t supposed to have a dragon form.
He was born human, with nothing that said he was allowed to take the form of this imposing creature, so how could he change? How could he go from being a human with few dragon traits to a full dragon with nothing human? The worst kind of sensation settled in his chest as he started moving forward, ignoring the flooded parts in hopes of reaching the stop where he would be descending.
If something bad happened, if something came to ruin what was supposed to be better...
Of course it did.
Neuvillette plunged into the sea and didn’t come back out.
“The healer from Liyue should be arriving soon,” he says, cleaning the remnants of food from his lips. “Sigewinne heard they know a bit more about dragons given their archon used to be one.”
The healer from Sumeru managed to keep his body from shivering, the one from Mondstadt could somehow trigger the movement needed to eat and they hoped the one from Liyue could do something even bigger… even if fit was just wishful thinking.
No one really knew how to help, what to do to bring him back to what he was instead of staying in this weird mix between human and dragon that was entirely catatonic and unresponsive.
Wriothesley can still see the Neuvillette that said yes, let’s try it that rainy evening after he confessed his feelings, but at times he can’t keep himself from feeling his heart aching as he sees those lilac eyes fixed in nothing in particular and holds those hands that are still mostly deformed, stuck between human hands and talons proper of a powerful dragon, the scaly feeling making his hands itch
When he brushes his long hair he can’t keep himself from remembering how Neuvillette twitched and huffed whenever he touched his feelers because they are sensitive, my dearest. They now look more majestic, long and glowing with that blue that makes them look translucent at the tips, but Neuvillette doesn’t react when he accidentally touches them, he stays in the same position.
It took Clorinde, Navia, Furina, Sigewinne and various Melusines to find Neuvillette in the mass of water and for what felt like hours they feared he had disappeared. They couldn’t find an explanation for why they were incapable of finding a huge dragon, but once they found him they understood why.
Neuvillette was in that half-human half-dragon form, floating near a mass of algae that had Wriothesley’s stomach-turning because he truly looked like a corpse.
Wriothesley hoped it would be alright when they pulled him out of water, but Neuvillette only opened his eyes and remained limp until they managed to have him standing. He seemed to walk in automatic, slow and short steps that reminded him of a machine that is programmed to do so rather than actual steps with thought behind them. Everyone was talking to him, trying to get why he looked like that or what happened, but he didn’t respond to any of it.
When having Neuvillette on his bed changed nothing, they decided to blame on exhaustion. No one had an idea of how much energy surely consumed to transform into a dragon and unleash enough power to destroy the monster but, at the same time, control it so he doesn’t destroy the entire city.
People were anxious about the lack of appearance of their Iudex, but the Court decided it was better to avoid saying his real condition and merely said he was recovering after what he did.
Days, however, kept moving and nothing changed. When they reached a week without anything, they started looking for different doctors around Fontaine, when that didn’t work they moved on to other nations and having him eating and not trembling was the biggest success after months of trying.
“Maybe he gave up his human consciousness to transform,” he heard Navia say one day to Clorinde. “Maybe he made a type of contract and this is the payment.”
And he hated every single part of that idea but he hated more that he couldn’t discard it. Neuvillette had told him he was incapable of transforming, that he didn’t even have a dragon form. Doing some kind of exchange to have it seemed to be the only reasonable explanation, but how could he accept it?
How could he even think about accepting something that takes the one he loves away from him forever?
Not that accepting it would change something, in reality. Every day he saw those eyes that used to be vibrant and full of life staring blankly ahead, with no spark of recognition or life, he held those deformed hands and washed the body he used to know so well but that now has so many things he can’t recognise.
“Do you think we lost him?” Furina asks him that afternoon, her eyes staring at the Opera in the distance. “Do you think he will ever come back?”
He wants to say no, that he’s not lost and they will find a way to make everything right again, but Wriothesley isn’t someone who lives in a fantasy world filled with illusions, he has seen the cruelty of the world and knows not everything needs to end well, not everything has a solution and there are times where accepting that is the only option.
“I can’t say yes or no, no one can,” he says. “The only thing we can be sure of is that we will do everything in our power.”
Maybe it’s not what Furina wants to hear, he’s not sure, his relationship with her isn’t as close as the one she and Neuvillette had, but he can’t bring himself to lie, not even when his own heart feels like breaking at the idea of losing him.
“Yeah… maybe, maybe he needs more time,” she whispers after a moment. “He never liked to be rushed.”
“Yes, he never did.”
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A long time ago, Neuvillette was key part in making Wriothesley move forward.
It was a complete experience to have one of the most important figures in Fontaine happy about his accomplishments and looking forward to what was coming. He was just an orphan who happened to murder his adoptive parents after discovering they were the worst kind of criminals, he never thought he would have the Iudex’s attention.
When he and Neuvillette became something, the feeling just increased.
Even with his properness and apparent disconnection towards humanity, he did his utmost to make things work, he sought Wriothesley’s comfort and happiness while struggling to express his own desires without feeling guilty and that pushed the administrator to be better. He didn’t want to disappoint him, didn’t want to fail him, he wanted to be the type of person Neuvillette would be proud of and that made him happy.
So happy.
“I still love you,” he whispers that morning while massaging his deformed hands. “You could be a completely irrational monster and I would still do it.”
Neuvillette just blinks, in a way that feels more like an automatic movement made by the body because the eyes are too dry instead of being a conscious movement.
“I should know better, but please try your best for Liyue’s healer, yeah?”
It’s not up to him, Neuvillette would never be one to purposely worry the ones who care for him, he would do anything in his hands to present himself as fine, but he prefers to think he’s too weak to fight against it and is struggling to break through than thinking he truly is gone and is just talking to an empty husk.
He holds himself up when the doctor arrives and starts to check on Neuvillette with herbs and things he has seen before. At his side, Sigewinne seems close to asking what each thing is in hopes of understanding and maybe having a better understanding of what is going on.
When the man stands back with a sigh, they think the worst.
“From my understanding, he’s not an illuminated beast,” he says, they nod. “I’m, by no means, an expert when it comes to treating them, but I have read and studied some of the afflictions typical of them and it reminds me of what karmic debt or erosion does to them.”
None of those things tell Wriothesley something and by the looks of it, they don’t say anything to Sigewinne either. “Is that what he has, then?”
“We can’t be sure,” the snake resting on the man’s shoulder says. “Some symptoms match, others don’t.”
“Karmic debt is, to put it in simple terms, as if the body is corrupted by the remnants of a dark matter, you said monsters and meks appeared to be corrupted when they attacked, it is possible it affected him,” he offers, it’s more than what they have thought about it. “What we knew as Yakshas were corrupted by what was left of slain gods, they lost their mind and perished because of it.”
The worst kind of feeling runs down Wriothesley’s spine, his eyes moving to Neuvillette who is still there but not there.
“Did they start like this?” Sigewinne asks, fear more than evident in her voice.
“No, they turned violent in some cases, in others, forgetful. He appears to be completely unresponsive.”
“Is there a cure for it?” Wriothesley asks. “A way to revert it?”
“Not that we know,” he says, adding the next thing before they can feel even worse. “There are things that help them soothe the pains and suffering caused by it.”
“We can find anything that those remedies need,” Clorinde says from where she’s still standing, keeping herself at a safe distance from Neuvillette’s unresponsive form. “Even if they are hard to find.”
The man with red eyes then extracts a small bottle from his bag, the strong herbal scent even reaching Furina, who decided to be further away from everyone, making her scrunch her nose. “Mix a small quantity of it with his water every morning, it’s a mix of the most common and potent medicinal plants we have in Liyue, it has proven to be good to half-illuminated beasts as well.”
Sigewinne is who takes it, as set on doing everything to help him as she was the first day. “Is there something else we can do?”
“The use of your visions could help as well,” he says. “I’m unsure about his nature, but they seem to have a deeper connection with elements and can respond to pulses of it.”
Wriothesley feels a new spark moving down his body because he has never been good when it comes to being delicate and it is somewhat worse when it comes to the use of his vision. He infuses his gauntlets with cryo, unleashes a freezing gust capable of throwing his enemies away, in what world will that allow him to be delicate about it?
What if he hurts him more?
It soon becomes obvious he isn’t the only one worried about it, a quick glance around allows him to see only Sigewinne seems to be already getting an idea in what to do. Furina looks anxious, Clorinde is tapping her fingers against her arm and Navia’s muscles seem close to snapping for how tense she looks.
The doctor from Liyue explains more things he barely listens to, he even checks on Neuvillette one last time before saying again he will keep an eye on new information that could help them. Sigewinne and everyone leave to guide him out and surely thank him profusely for shining a bit more light on what could be going on.
It’s not a cure, they don’t even have the certainty that Celestia, because it had to be them, Wriothesley is sure, is the one who corrupted his body or if it was Neuvillette’s own decision that ended with him like this. But they have something. After so long of not knowing anything, they now have a possible reason and a possible solution and they throw themselves to it.
Sigewinne surrounds Neuvillette’s body with those small pearls that are so similar to the ones the Iudex produced when he attacked, his Melusines bring lakelight lilies, romaritime flowers and even small vials with spring of the first dewdrop, they spend hours talking to him, brushing his hair and braiding it like they used to do while Neuvillette’s day consisted on being in his office instead of moving around with trials.
Furina, still unsure about properly using her vision, seemed to struggle in what to do or even say whenever she was the only one around Neuvillette, she didn’t dare to do something too extreme, but she still came up with the plan of being with him while having her three hydro formations moving around, close to Neuvillette, sometimes even leaning on him.
Clorinde and Navia don’t feel confident enough to do things separately, so one focuses on sending short pulses of geo while the other isn’t as confident in using her vision given the painful results that come when having hydro and electro reacting.
That’s something Wriothesley relates to entirely.
Neuvillette never really said anything about their contradicting elements, he even seemed to relax against Wriothesley’s colder hands every now and then. It’s not that Wriothesley ever used his cryo against him or even tried to cause a reaction between their elements, but their understanding and connection extended to that and Wriothesley never really thought about using his cryo in any other way.
Until now.
He’s unsure of what to do, even when his hands have always been his weapon, they were more than capable of holding Neuvillette close and without injuring him, Neuvillette had gotten used to physical contact with him thanks to them, but now he feels as if he will injure him the moment he touches him.
“You surely just need hydro,” he mutters, he’s sitting in front of him, rubbing his hands as if he wants to warm them when it’s the opposite of what his vision is doing. “Cryo could damage you, just like electro.”
He tries to make it look as if he’s just being reasonable as if the only reason he has for this is his worry about Neuvillette’s safety instead of the raw fear of doing something wrong.
But how can he do nothing when everyone else has tried to do something? How can he be a coward when Neuvillette is the one he loves?
The answer is simple: he can’t.
There’s just a thin layer of frost coating his hands as he extends them towards him, stopping short of reaching his hair as a new wave of worry seems to hit him at full speed. He can even see his hands trembling, a million voices telling him to pull back before he causes real damage.
“You know I would never hurt you,” he whispers. “I just need you here, with me.”
He still needs to breathe deeply, count to ten and back and repeat to himself that he won’t kill or fatally injure the love of his life with a single touch before managing to rest his hands on his head. Neuvillette is still warm, like a living body, and Wriothesley tries to find comfort in that as he runs his hands down his hair, making sure to make contact with his scalp before moving to his shoulders, massaging the tense body.
He ignores the deformities around his elbows, ignores the scales in his hands and focuses on his fingers, trying to imagine the long fingers that moved so gracefully over the letters and documents he worked so diligently on. When he moves to his face and caresses his cheeks, he tries to remember how he leaned into the touch, the rosy colour of his cheeks and the way his eyes sparkled with adoration.
“I will scold you for this, but I promise it won’t be too bad,” he whispers, pressing lightly on the scales deforming his cheekbones. “On second thoughts, you can scold me for, anything you want, that’s all I need to feel alive again.”
He has never been bad when it comes to talking with Neuvillette, there are a lot of things to talk about with his partner, but he has to admit not having Neuvillette say anything back makes everything much complicated. He even reaches a point where he simply runs out of ideas and just continues rubbing soothing circles on different parts of his body. Only when they have gained a rosy tone due to the temperature, he stops, hoping he did right.
It’s not a magical solution, of course.
Neuvillette remains the same despite having everyone pouring their souls into trying to make him connect with the real world and Wriothesley, despite not wanting to, goes from feeling frustrated to feeling angry.
He’s angry at the world for taking away this piece of happiness that was truly his, angry at Celestia even when they gave him his vision and even gets angry at the doctor from Liyue who said this could work even when he knows he never said it was the cure. Neuvillette would scold him for this, would gently remind him how life is, but that’s the damn problem.
Neuvillette isn’t there to do it, his body is right in front of him but he’s not fucking there.
“I have run out of things to do or think,” he whispers, a frown that shouldn’t be there pulling his brows down while he massages Neuvillette’s claws, fingers, whatever they are. “I’m so mad, you would hate me for it, you should, but I have reached a point where I just— I no longer know how to function in a world without you.”
He’s not neglecting his work, he hasn’t turned into an aggressive and horrible person who takes his frustration on someone else, he isn’t being bad to their friends or any other innocent civilian, but he feels so miserable while doing all of it. It is hard to enjoy anything while knowing Neuvillette is trapped or gone, hard to think about something that isn’t those unchanging eyes.
He just wants to—
His entire body jumps when there seems to be a spark similar to the ones caused during a fight, proper of a reaction that would happen during a fight. His eyes are wide as he frantically looks at Neuvillette, heart falling when he finds the small burn left on the side of his hand product of his own cryo.
“Shit,” he curses, rubbing his hands against his legs in hopes of warming it up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to— Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
The only thing he wanted to avoid, the one he was terrified of ended up being the one he did and now Neuvillette is hurt. He has no way of knowing if he feels it, or if he even is aware of who hurt him, but he feels like the biggest piece of garbage that has set foot in Fontaine.
Just imagining what the others will say makes his head pulse but he can’t even think about hiding from it or complaining about it, he even hopes they have no consideration towards him because the least Neuvillette needs is this nonsense and—
A quiet gasp seems to stop the world.
It’s so quiet he almost misses it, he’s right in front of the other and he almost missed it, but he’s sure he heard it and his wide eyes leave the burn mark to look at Neuvillette.
“Neuvillette?” he asks, between worried and hopeful. “Did you want to say something?”
His treacherous heart tricks itself into thinking that anything he does is different and worth noting, that there’s something new in the love of his life… but time continues moving with such speed he starts to believe he hallucinated the whole thing and it was just something he imagined to feel better after hurting him.
That’s when there’s a long intake of breath.
He hesitates, but the frost returns to his hands as he reaches to cup his cheeks, gently angling his face so he’s looking back at him, he’s almost breathing in symphony with him.
When Neuvillette blinks, Wriothesley almost loses it.