shipwrecked || furina & neuvillette

🫧 18 🫧

Furina had never thought it could get worse than when she was sitting on that throne that day. She'd always had some sense of reassurance that as awful as it was... she'd never have to relive it again. Although the memories have come back to haunt her every moment since, she's always known that they were simply fragments of her mind.

But this? Now...

This was traumatic in all the ways that she thought she'd never experience again.

She's not in that room with Dottore anymore.

She's not strapped to the chair, there aren't four walls around her.

She's back on the throne, she's sitting with her head low as the waters rise up. Cold, dark water. Not the colour of water in Fontaine, not Neuvillette's favourite blue... instead, it's an obsidian, starless void.

But unlike before - when she was crying on the throne... this time, she has the wherewithal to notice what is unfolding around her. And that makes it even harder. Even more soul crushing.

The Opera Epiclese is filled with people - every single person from Fontaine is piled into the space. Furina's feet are wet. She looks out at the crowd, the people's faces distorted with fear and worry.
"Furina?" Someone calls her name, terrified. "Furina, help! What do we do?" They're begging her for answers, for help. But she had no clue what to do. The water is below her knees, it's rising so quickly that she knows that there is not enough time for her to act. Her people need her but she has no voice, she has no sense of what to do.

Frantically trying to think of how she might be able to help them, she stands up. But the moment she does, her legs feel frozen. She can't move - the water holds her. Watery tendrils curl their way around her ankles and refuse to let her take another step. She screams, trying desperately to move. Her people are suffering, they're screaming her name. They need her, and she is failing them - again.

Navia is crying, Clorinde consoling her. She can't see Neuvillette. Furina has no choice but to watch from her balcony as those around her begin to drown. The water is up to her neck, her feet are still stuck on the ground. She struggles, trying to make it stop. Trying to get her feet unstuck, trying to swim upwards. The sound of everyone struggling around her makes her begin to sob, and the water begins to get into her mouth.

She's never experienced drowning before.

"Give me the vision." A sharp voice pulls her from that nightmare. As quickly as she arrived in that throne of nightmares, she is back in that room. Dottore standing to her left, his arms folded across his chest. Furina is hyperventilating - her lungs burning. It wasn't real, and she knows that. Logically, she was sitting in this chair the entire time, the flood, the suffering - all of it was just in her mind. If she could, she'd be clawing at her throat - she can still feel it. Even though she's here and she's breathing and she's okay, it feels like she's back there.
"Give me the vision and you won't ever have to experience it ever again." The words are cruel, and Furina knows that they're probably a lie.
Slowly, she turns her head to face him, shaking her head.
"No. I will never give it to you willingly." She pauses, her voice quiet but powerful. "You'll have to try a lot harder than that to get it from me."
"Alright then."

And so it starts again. And again. And again.

Each time, each nightmare worst than the last.

But still, Furina doesn't agree. Each time he pulls her from the headspace and asks her if she's had enough, she refuses. No matter how sore her head is, or how her throat burns, or how her hands are clammy from sweat... she refuses to give up.
But mentally, she's exhausted. Living through nightmare after nightmare, watching Fontaine - her friends - drown over and over again is exhausting to her. But she refuses to hand over the power of her Vision. Loop after loop, for what seems like an eternity, Furina finds herself mentally drained in a way she's never experienced before. But she's all too familiar with  acting as if she is stronger than she feels on the inside. She's good at pretending that she's okay, that she's fine - she did so for five hundred years and she will continue doing so for as long as it takes.