Neuvillette wondered – not for the first time, since he's used to being subjected to Furina's whims – if Sovereigns could develop migraines.
Though in all fairness, Furina wasn't actually at fault for today's debacles. She hadn't even been the one to lay (allegedly false) charges upon Mr. Tartaglia, and had even tried to get him to understand the seriousness of what he was being accused of.
That failed attempt at communication had probably been when Neuvillette first started to feel a headache build up. It was especially frustrating since even he could tell the fault for this miscommunication lay not with himself, but with Mr. Tartaglia who'd been pointedly uninterested in anything besides fighting.
It was one thing for him to want a serious fight against Chlorinde, but it was the first time in his centuries of being Fontaine's Iudex that Neuvillette saw someone trying to challenge Furina to a one-on-one battle. He's pretty sure that the only reason the harbinger didn't try to pick a fight with him too was because he simply wasn't aware that Neuvillette was even capable of fighting.
The headache had been getting so bad, Neuvillette felt relieved rather than annoyed when Navia had interrupted the court proceedings in flagrant disregard of court protocol. He'd almost been glad when her accusation gave good cause for him to dismiss Mr. Tartaglia from the defendant's seat and into the audience, where he thankfully kept quiet.
It'd even been easing up during the trial itself, despite someone once again barging in at the last possible moment with key evidence to turn things around. After all, besides that things had been mostly progressing in accordance with protocol, and both parties made reasonable arguments (and didn't try to sneak away from the room before the proceedings had ended when the tide turn against them). Furina even helped smooth the trial along, which was a pleasant turn of events.
That, through the course of the trial, it turned out that an innocent man had once fought and died in the duelists' ring was… far less pleasant. But at the very least the truth had been outed, and they could start making amends to those who had been wronged.
Of course, then Mr. Tartaglia had tried to fast-talk his way out of the courtroom. Perhaps he'd have even tried to sneak away, had he not been seated in the front row, right before the judge's seat. Neuvillette briefly imagined what it would've been like if he'd let him make a quick getaway. It would've caused a slight stir perhaps, but by that point the man's verdict of 'not guilty' should have been practically a formality, and not even the tabloids would've made much of a fuss about it.
But Neuvillette didn't let him do that, and even now, knowing where it'd lead things, he wouldn't have allowed him to disregard the laws of Fontaine. And at the time he'd even been a tad relieved that Mr. Tartaglia went along with it without making a fuss or trying to twist this into another chance to enter the Duelists' Ring.
Which led right to the resurgence of his headache when, for the first time, the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale delivered a different verdict than he had.
He personally couldn't blame Mr. Tartaglia for fighting off the gardes. He made a good attempt too, practically swatting aside gardemeks despite only wearing something Neuvillette recognized from intelligence documents as a 'Delusion'. And that was before he attempted a transformation into something Neuvillette quickly recognized as too problematic for the gardes to handle.
Once things had settled down he would, however, have to professionally blame him in another trial that was likely to follow, concerning his armed resistance to his arrest.
But that was beside the point and unrelated to the current, biggest cause for his renewed-and-worse-than-ever headache: the fact that the culprit behind the serial disappearances case, the man he'd personally said he'd be keeping an eye on so he wouldn't escape, had just gone stiff, tipped over, fallen face-first into the Fountain of Lucine, and appeared to have instantly drowned in roughly 5 inches of water.
The Traveler incidentally did exactly the same, minus the drowning.
Neuvillette immediately moved to pull the both of them out of the water – the Traveler first, in accordance with the tearful pleas of their worried companion who was failing to drag them out due to her small size – and by the time he got to Vacher, he could only conclude the man was dead. He'd passed away with the most terrified expression on his face.
He supposed that, in the end, he could only blame himself for it. He'd been the one who'd agreed to Marcel's request to visit the Fountain of Lucine. He'd even asked the man if this request was worth more to him than his life, which turned out to be very fitting.
Though given the expression on Marcel's face when he died, Neuvillette can only assume that if given the choice again, he wouldn't have given up his life again only to be faced with the fury of his many victims. The Iudex may have been conscious the entire time, but he would be a poor excuse for the Hydro Sovereign if he hadn't been able to at least hear the entire conversation they'd had. It was rather unfortunate the Traveler had gotten caught up in the vision.
When the gardes started to converge, having been attracted by the confused cries of the crowd who'd just witnessed two people collapse, he quickly gave them a run-down of the situation (minus the details only a Sovereign or similar creature would have been aware of), and ordered for Marcel to be brought to a coroner as soon as possible.
He also asked for a medical professional to take a look at the Traveler, even though fainting spell seemed to have ended as they were rousing. Perhaps the at first seemingly ineffectual shouting and face-slapping Paimon had been directing towards them had actually had their desired effect?
And so here Neuvillette was, nursing a headache and taking in all of the day's events while one physician did a preliminary examination of Marcel's corpse before he would be dragged off to the morgue, and another was giving the Traveler a once-over. The crowd gathered just outside the area sectioned off by the gardes loudly discussed and theorized, some who'd been attending the trial earlier being especially loud and excited.
The first drops of rain started falling as Neuvillette came to the realization that since he'd personally proclaimed he'd ensure the culprit wouldn't escape – which he technically had done in death – he'd have to write at least a dozen of reports on the situation, not to mention what would happen if the tabloids got their hands on that information (which, let's face it, they would. They were the tabloids, after all).
The droplets of rain speedily changing into a proper downpour mercifully covered the sound of the deep sigh the Iudex let out as he concluded that, together with his personal investigation into Mr. Tartaglia's guilty verdict-that-should-not-have-been, he wouldn't be getting much sleep anytime soon. Perhaps not even enough time to properly enjoy his collection of imported waters…
Just a short attempt at me being slightly humorous, which turned out to be more serious than I expected. At this point it's more a study in how snarky I can make Neuvillette's internal monologue while still keeping him polite and a stickler for rules.
Once the archon quests in Fontaine have been fully completed, and we finally know what exactly has been going in that nation, I might add another chapter to this. Something along the lines of Neuvillette grumbling about how he never liked that Oratrice in the first place, if it fits with the events of the canon story. But that's still very much up in the air, let alone whether I'll be inspired enough to write about it. So until then, this fic is marked as complete.