Work Text:
When I feel safe, I can love.
Louise Glück, "Mutable Earth"
Clorinde is nearly out of breath by the time she crests the rise outside of Poisson, but the sight that greets her would have stolen the air from her lungs regardless. The lower reaches are flooded, the clusters of residents look shell-shocked.
She doesn’t see Navia.
What she does see has her fingers curling around the hilt of her rapier–a grounding exercise she never grew out of. Fatui masks swarm the upper levels, offering blankets and crates of supplies. There are masks settled at various locations measuring the water level with care and precision.
An ugly thing unfurls in her chest and weaves its tendrils around her heart and ribs, seeping into the marrow. Her teeth begin to ache from how tightly she’s clenched her jaw and her hand has gone numb from how tightly she’s squeezing her sword.
The sound of voices coming nearer snaps her out of her haze. She recognizes them both; the normally soothing cadence of the one now scrapes her nerves raw–a blade catching on bone.
Navia and the Knave. There’s a teasing lilt to Navia’s tone and it’s that which spurs Clorinde into movement. Swift and silent even as she feels clumsy as a wounded hart crashing through the underbrush and away from that which struck her.
That the Fatui had been a more preferable source of assistance and comfort…
The final, gossamer-thin thread breaks with all the fanfare of a whisper.
Clorinde’s gaze flickers around the room, uncertain of where would be safe to look. Her hands, at least, are occupied delicately holding the macaron that was forced into them upon arrival. It’s pale lavender, the soft floral aroma tickles her senses pleasantly.
She settles, eventually, on watching the fine spider-web crack in the shell of the pastry grow from the pressure of her index finger. No matter how gentle she tries to be, everything she touches will be destroyed, it seems.
“I’m not the same Clorinde you knew,” she offers into the silence that has begun to feel suffocating. It’s contrary to her desire, as always: she is desperate for Navia’s attention, her presence, but she does not deserve it. Navia deserves better than to be tainted by association any further.
“And I’m not the same Navia you did. Why can’t we meet again as we are now?”
The longing in Clorinde’s gaze is swiftly snuffed out by the omnipresent shadow of her self-loathing. I despise the ugliness in me, it whispers, and I couldn’t bear it were you to see it and feel the same.
“As the name implies, you would have to become a shadow.”
“I am quite practiced at being a ghost, Monsieur.” Even with her tone carefully bland and professional, she knows that he knows. She’s proven correct when a furrow makes its home on Neuvillette’s brow, as close as he would–or could–come to an outright frown in his official capacity as Iudex. He hesitates for a split second, longer than perhaps he would have allowed before the intervention of the Traveler set the country on its head.
“Very well. I will speak to the Melusines."
She doesn’t quite smile. There is no weight lifted off her shoulders; she does not feel lighter.
Clorinde is a weapon in the hands of the cause of justice again. Or perhaps for the first time all along. It is not the purview of a weapon to decide one way or the other.
“I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
That the demand was an impossibility with who they were as individuals was not the point; the vicious downpour of salt into the wound was. If Navia hurt every time she so much as saw that particular shade of blue or smelled the slightest touch of Lumidouce Bells, then Clorinde would feel the same tenfold.
“I heard there was an incident. I was only trying to—”
“Save it! I would be safer with those brigands than I would ever be with you.”
Clorinde wilts, pain lancing through her heart sure and swift as her own blade. It’s a physical ache, but one she’s growing used to–she resists the instinct to raise her hand to her chest. She drops her gaze in polite deference, but mostly to hide the burn of tears.
“My apologies, demoiselle.” The words try to strangle her as she forces them into the dead air of the Fountain of Lucine. Navia’s lips curl into a cruel sneer. The great Champion Duelist reduced to a sniveling coward.
Later, when she’s in the privacy of her room in Poisson, self-loathing will replace the bitterness and her own tears will return again.
She had meant for this to be a quick visit—give Wriothesley the tea blend she’d purchased from a Liyuen merchant during the last mission, then make her escape to prepare for the next.
Really, Clorinde should have known he wouldn’t allow her the mercy of feigning ignorance.
Instead, as soon as she hands the tin over, he’s cracking the seal and taking two cups from his cupboard. He narrates the entire process as she awkwardly stands before his desk like one of his inmates, unable to get a word in edgewise. Likely his entire strategy, damn him.
And she knows Wriothesley is taking his time, knows he has every step of brewing tea, no matter the variety, down to an art he could do in his sleep. And yet he is slow and methodical in a way that is to demonstrate his intent so much as it is to occupy both of their time.
His concern is touching, it warms her in the same fashion as a hot drink in the cold. But she cannot allow herself to bask in it, absorb it. She cannot hide from him, not really. The moment they met Wriothesley could see right through her, let alone after their years of friendship.
“Wriothesley, I don’t—”
One of the delicate porcelain cups is placed firmly before her, curls of steam rising from the dark, placid surface of impeccably brewed tea. If she squints, Clorinde believes she sees the slope of a painted kitten ear. It’s a set she doesn’t recognize, but she can hazard a guess to its origin.
“Sit down and drink your damn tea.”
The before you drop dead in my office is left gratefully, pointedly unspoken.
(She feels ambushed when Clorinde enters and she’s in the middle of being fitted for a gown. It’s taking the last meager funds left from Spina’s last contract, but the one she had–with reluctance, she wants on record, the man is a cad–now demands an addition to her wardrobe.
The silk slip may as well not exist for how her system reacts to the sudden proximity of the Champion Duelist.
“Listen to me. The man you’ve contracted is under suspicion of a multitude of…unsavory business practices.” Clorinde is mindful as ever of their location, and yet her voice threatens to rise sharply in pitch and volume, eyes stormy. Navia scoffs, baring her teeth and marching closer despite her relative undress, her lack of shoes to even their height. But Clorinde continues to speak. “Navia, listen to me. This is beneath you. Callas would never allow–”
What happens next they both will recall as if it were in slow motion and from somewhere above like ghoulish spectators instead of the actors themselves:
Clorinde’s head moves with the force, the sound echoing in the confines of Chiori’s shop. Navia’s palm stings. Like peering through murky water, she watches red bloom across Clorinde’s cheek in the shape of her hand.
By now, Clorinde is so used to the vitriol thrown her way her face remains impassive–except for the barest tremble to her lips, throat moving with a heavy swallow.)
Navia stares at her hands for a long moment, then leans forward to retch into the sink, disgusted with herself.
Her treatment of the woman she loves despite herself, despite everything, makes her no better than all she despises about Fontaine.
“I would kill for you.” (A mental translation, built carefully over a lifetime: I would die for you.)
Would you take a break for me? Would you sit down and rest? Would you let others take care of your needs for me? Would you let yourself be held for me? By me?
“What if I said I wanted you to live for me?”
The little furrow between Clorinde’s brows tells Navia everything before she even receives an answer. When she does, her voice is small, lost–they are children again and Clorinde is afraid of the dark, before her mentor had trained it out of her. Sometimes, Navia wishes she could meet Petronilla again as an adult and give her a piece of her mind.
“I don’t think I know how.”
Navia clicks her tongue in mild rebuke, dipping the cloth back into the basin to squeeze the blood out before running it over Clorinde’s face again. An excuse to touch her. There isn’t a trace of red left there. Skittish, Clorinde leans into the touch, lashes fluttering before she catches herself and course corrects, spine stiffening despite the way it makes her wince.
“Stop that,” Navia snaps, real ire bleeding into her voice this time, sharp like a lash. Clorinde flinches, opens her mouth to apologize, then thinks better of it, slumping back into the cushions. When she lifts her hand from her side, it’s damp with blood; she’s bled clean through the makeshift field dressing.
“I’m here because I want to be. You deserve to be cared for, Clorinde, no matter what you believe about yourself.”
Wisely, Clorinde merely makes a noncommittal noise but otherwise doesn’t argue. Navia, in her fury, is as terrifying as she is beautiful, moreso when it’s in response to injustice or on behalf of someone she–no, Clorinde can’t allow herself to go that far. This is in the spirit of their childhood bond and nothing more.
It can’t be anything more.
“The Iudex…” Her mouth shuts with an audible click of her teeth at the glare Navia levels her with. “...can wait.”
“That’s what I thought you were going to say,” she hums, pleasant and warm as the sunshine after a summer shower. Clorinde is starved for it, as always, reaching for it like a flower unfurls at dawn. If only the people of Fontaine knew that the real champion amongst them was a woman who had endured unimaginable hardship and still come out the other side full of radiant warmth, not the shade lingering in her shadow.
“You know, sometimes I wish Clorinde would be as cruel as you,” Wriothesley snarls, face set in a deep scowl.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, demoiselle.”
His hands are on his desk, allowing him to lean forward, looming like a hound testing its lead. She matches him, nearly nose to nose, her pride igniting righteous indignation despite that she knows he’s right.
She is cruel. She has long stopped denying it. She is cruel and cutting and callous, vicious in her pursuit of inflicting the maximum amount of pain on the woman who took her father away.
But did she? Was it Clorinde? Or was it Fontaine. Was it Neuvillette and Furina and the Oratrice that turned justice into a freak show?
Navia cannot be vicious to the Archon nor to the Chief Justice. But she can to the woman who will not leave her be. The woman whose title represents every rotten horror about their nation.
The weight of that sin settles heavy on her shoulders again like a shroud and she drops her gaze, steps away from Wriothesley’s desk. Privately, she is grateful Clorinde has someone to defend her, who sees her as a person instead of a symbol, a tool.
Equally, she is envious and spiteful, which makes her feel worse. How can she call Clorinde a monster, when she behaves like this? What sort of monster does this to the person they love?
And what sort of monster loves a murderer?
(When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.)
“Demoiselle Caspar—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it.”
Navia slams her hands down on Neuvillette’s desk, leaning over it to get in his face. At least as much as she could with the massive piece of furniture between them. Sitting down in his oversized chair, he’s of a height to her, and it emboldens her enough to forget the differences between them.
(Later, privately, she will be envious of his poise and self-control.)
“She has nearly killed herself for this nation enough times already.” She has killed for this nation enough. “Stop sending her on these ridiculous missions.”
There is a long pause before he speaks again, and the carefully–painfully–sympathetic look on his face makes Navia aware before he even opens his mouth that she will hate it.
“Navia,” the use of her given name makes it worse, his over familiarity rankling her. “Clorinde has volunteered for every mission she has undertaken. She volunteered for the position in the first place.”
The silence in his office is deafening. She had known, of course, deep down that this hadn’t been Neuvillette’s fault. But it is so much easier to shout and hurl accusations at the carved marble effigy before her than it is to confront that simple truth.
When she feels her lower lip start to tremble (Rage? Grief? She will never be able to pinpoint the exact emotion), Navia turns sharply on her heel and storms out of the office of the Chief Justice and the Palais Mermonia. She will send a basket of macarons to the melusines in apology for her lapse in propriety.
The fountain in the court seems to taunt her. She had almost joined the scores of women reduced to the merry water delighting a pair of children as they toss coins into the bed. Her nails dig into her palms until she’s sure she’ll bleed the same crystal clear of the tears on her cheeks.
There’s a lovely dusting of pink across Clorinde’s cheekbones, the bridge of her nose. Navia had linked their arms as soon as they’d exited Hotel Debord and Clorinde, ever the gentleman, had risen to the occasion even if her blush grew darker by the second.
Their walk is impeded by debris and materials from nearby construction and Clorinde breaks away to step in front, calculating the route that would be safest. As if she’s still protecting Navia from the shadows–it’s an instinct that will never turn off, no matter how much Navia insists she is perfectly capable of helping herself. It’s still such a fragile thing between them that Navia simply allows Clorinde without comment this time, though not without her gaze softening, butterfly wings erupting in a pleasant buzz.
She is capable, yes, but there is still a certain thrill to be taken care of, to be treated with such sweetness. It no longer rankles as it once did; or well, more like Navia now allows herself a moment to enjoy it when it isn’t directly putting Clorinde in harm’s way.
Clorinde’s hand rests gently on the small of Navia’s back when she returns to her side, gesturing with her chin to indicate the direction to make her first step.
“Mademoiselle—”
The second the word leaves Clorinde she freezes and the color drains from her face, the warmth at Navia’s back disappearing. Any delight Navia would have felt at the slip is snuffed before even the barest hint of warmth registers.
“I…my apologies.” The familiarity has evaporated, rolling back months of painstaking progress with a return to stiff formality. Except underneath, Navia can see Clorinde is afraid.
She feels sick, the acrid taste of bile rising. This is her doing. Three years of misplaced, stubborn hatred has wounded Clorinde so deeply she looks moments from fleeing.
Clorinde flinches almost imperceptibly when Navia reaches a hand towards her.
She has never hated anyone more than she hates herself. What a fine pair they make.
“Clorinde!”
At the sound of her voice, Clorinde’s head shoots up, the grateful look in her eyes at the interruption of whatever interview Charlotte is hounding her for this time abruptly dying when she takes in Navia’s expression. The instant sobriety only makes the fury burn hotter, uglier.
“Oh, Navia! I was just asking Clorinde about the latest arrest made by the Gardes.”
The arrest that came at the cost of Clorinde nearly bleeding out on her divan.
A brittle, plastic smile adheres to Navia’s expression and Charlotte, as seasoned a reporter as she is, seems to be none the wiser that it isn’t genuine. Clorinde shrinks and eyes the space around them as if she may slink away in the ensuing distraction.
“I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.” Navia keeps her gaze rooted on Clorinde who shifts guiltily in her seat. Her cup of coffee has long since cooled; Charlotte must have pounced the moment she sat down.
“My sources say it was a fraught, daring pursuit! Clorinde was vital to the case!” Charlotte is, as always when the subject is Clorinde, it seems, starstruck. Her chattering continues, heedless of the rising tension, the way Clorinde favors one side. It makes her want to scream.
Look at what you’ve done to her. She gives everything for this nation and gets nothing in return but death and violence. She’s a boogeyman. She’s a hero. But never is she afforded the courtesy of personhood. Never allowed desires of her own.
The thought stops her cold.
For three years, Navia did all she could to shove Clorinde away, to make her feel every iota of guilt and shame and grief regardless of if she deserved it. And now, she plays hot and cold with her. She wants Clorinde close, and punishes her for deviating from what she wants even if that was never her intention.
But is she any different than the rest of Fontaine, foisting their own wants and needs onto Clorinde’s shoulders?
Ensconced in Clorinde’s apartment, Navia pretends not to notice how bare it is. How it seems unlived in. She particularly pretends not to notice the framed photograph of them, taken before Navia’s bal blanc nor the way Clorinde looked at her even back then.
Like she was the sun.
Instead, Navia busies herself with retrieving medical supplies from the bathroom while Clorinde removes her shirt. So too does she ignore the faint tremble in her hands. When she patched her up initially, adrenaline had dampened any other reaction she may have had to pale, scarred skin. This was not the time nor the place for them either. Would it ever be?
Clorinde is perched stiffly in a chair by the bare vanity, hands folded neatly on her lap, gloves removed. Her hands are calloused and just as scarred as the rest of her–Navia does not think about how many of them are new as she kneels down to peel the bandage from Clorinde’s side.
The wound is still an angry, ragged thing and Navia sighs; it will never heal if Clorinde continues to refuse to rest. Convincing her of that is perhaps equal to convincing the sun to rise in the west.
Clorinde hisses when Navia gently brushes the tips of her fingers along the edge of a stitch–if pressed, she will claim it’s to check the integrity of them; her best work is not done when terrified and infuriated in equal measure. In truth, the touch is to remind herself that Clorinde is here. That Navia didn’t imagine her survival. That she has not disappeared to the other end of Teyvat.
A rough swallow, and Navia finds herself speaking without conscious thought.
“I’ve treated you terribly.”
“It’s nothing more than I deserve.”
Clorinde’s reply is automatic. The present tense isn’t lost on Navia, but pushing further will only make things worse. Her own guilt is not what matters.
It feels like this moment is an endless repetition. The push-pull of their feelings. She cannot make Clorinde confess to her nor would she want to. And in turn, Navia has been unable to make herself. They’ve trapped themselves in an infinitely repeating cycle, suffering at their own hands.
Navia chews at her lip and places her hand over Clorinde’s whose eyes open–when had they closed? Her heart grows wings, the beats threatening to drive it right out of her chest and into Clorinde’s lap. Would it be so bad? To speak her feelings into existence. Clorinde has her heart, mangled as it is.
(When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it.)
In her mind, it happens as quick as a viper’s strike. In reality, it’s slow, the path she takes to hold Clorinde’s face in her palms. Clorinde sucks in a breath, quick and sharp, and makes a sound that might have become her name if Navia hadn’t risen higher on her knees to brush their mouths together. It becomes a whimper, that sound. A punched out thing of confused longing.
“You deserve the world.”