Chapter Text
ACT 1 - Scene 1769
Furina wasn’t sure when the curtain call would come, but for the moment, everything was fine.
Everything was fine, she told herself.
Fontaine seemed to be tidying itself up. As well as could be expected, really. The people were growing more accustomed to her as Archon, despite their initial reaction. The doubts raised during her first appearance had since been quashed; there was little rumour spreading around that she was a fraud, and everyone was settling into their roles perfectly. Everything was fine.
Except, of course, for the death threats.
There were very little of those in comparison to the fan letters of adoration and reverence, but their presence was still… unsettling, to say the least. Furina hadn’t been quite sure what her ‘role’ was going to entail during that first meeting with her ‘mirror-self’, but she hadn’t considered the possibility of death threats. Honestly, she was terrified, even if the threats held no merit - terrified not for her own life, but for Fontaine's preservation holistically.
Some claimed she had wrongfully taken Egeria’s place, and deserved to die for usurping the crown - technically true, honestly, that made it so much worse - some claimed that she had little of Fontaine’s true interests at heart and should be killed before she drove them to their doom - Furina got a little angry that they thought she didn’t have Fontaine’s best interests in mind, but the final phrase quietened that anger with doubt - and some simply expressed a desire to parade her corpse around.
How morbid.
In any case, Furina doubted the credibility of these threats. Almost. She most certainly was not ridden with paranoia that a simple weapon tossed through the air would bring her entire act tumbling down. If what her mirror-self had implied was true, Furina expected she would be on the ‘stage’ for a long time to come. Act after act after act. Archons were immortal - they lived for centuries, millennia. Was she expected to wear this mask for a century? Longer, even?
Well, it simply wouldn’t do for Furina to fail so early on in her task. That was exactly why she had lobbied to have a personal guard - a Champion fit to defend their Archon. It would make her look weak, yes, but she could barely lift a sword, let alone use it to defend herself. She’d have to practise in secret - for anything her skill cannot do, her bravado can make up for.
'A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity', yes, though Furina's reputation itself was her lie - 'Don't lie, but don't tell the whole truth' was a slightly more appropriate saying, however Furina acknowledged she would likely have do more than white lie in order to execute acting as a god.
She would have to endure much, that she knew. That, she had been forewarned of.
What she had not been warned of was the utter freeze of one's body when one realises they're going to die.
-
It was quite a bother to have to be paraded around Fontaine, but such is the life of a celebrity.
Really, Furina hadn’t intended for her ‘act’ to become so unserious, and to be given such little respect, but it seemed to be the easiest route to the least amount of action and the most amount of faith. This, unfortunately, included strutting around the streets of Fontaine and parading her divinity like it was a fancy new suit to show off.
Actually, she was showing off a new suit. As the Archon, she of course had to be far ahead of the fashion trends, so she was trying out a style that her stylist assured her would be the outfit of the century. Did she overly care? No, but the act did. The act cared. The act needed to parade and be paraded; to show off and be shown off; to worship an absent reflection in the darkness of its room by night and to be worshipped by those it did not deserve trust from by day.
“Would you like to try our newest dish, my lady? We call it bourguignon.”
Ah, why not. It looked like a nice restaurant, and if she liked the dish then the whole of Fontaine would follow and the store would prosper. And she gets a free meal.
Smiling at the waiter and quickly sitting down as they pulled the dish out of nowhere - were they so prepared to offer her a meal? - Furina had just taken the first few delicious bites when a shadow descended on her and screams echoed around.
It was in a tangle of dark cloth and limbs that Furina shoved the mysterious assailant off of her, assuming never the worst of her subjects and refraining from fighting until a sharp prick had her yelp, flinch, and grab a knife from a table to brandish in front of her. The hazy cloud of fear and shock and desperation faded from her vision as she pushed herself up from where she was strewn on the floor from the rolling fight, and she was greeted with the sight of a man dressed in black rolling around in pain from the fork she'd shoved into his stomach.
Somewhere deep down, she found herself worried for him and not for her.
She shoved that feeling even further down, and summoned to the front of her mind the audacity and outrage that would be felt by her pretentious act: That- that man had just jumped on her, from the roof! What kind of- this was ridiculous! She was just trying to eat a nice free meal!
Guardes quickly rushed forward and restrained the man, and Furina was about to begin a long scolding tirade on how they failed to complete their job's purpose properly until she realised that the whole moment had taken place in a second or less. Though, surely a man hiding on a restaurant roof in the street can't be that conspicuous, she corrected herself in a more 'my day has been disrupted' tone.
She wasn't quite sure what to do - nor what the act would say first - until two of the guardes grabbed her by her arms, guiding her to the floor with worry as they called for aid, begging her to respond and to ensure she was okay, and Furina failed to understand until-
“What are you talking about? I- oh, I’m stabbed."
Was it really so unnoticeable? All the novels Furina had read depicted it as searing pain that- oh, she had been numb, here was the pain. Ah, she thought she had missed out for a moment.
Letting the guardes fulfill their role as she portrayed a languid rest on the ground (her agony and instinct to writhe and cry buried somehow even further deep than her earlier concern), Furina looked down and saw a rather ominous looking knife sticking out of her chest, right between her two rasping lungs. It looked pathetic, to have such a massive wound and have stabbed the other man with a tiny knife and fork. Or perhaps it made her look more godlike, barely reacting to a stab wound beyond gracefully resting on the floor whilst a man cried in pain about a fork. The whole situation was utterly ridiculous, except for the pool of blood appearing beneath Furina. Save for that, and the pain, she might have shared the affluent perspective of the act.
It was getting more and more difficult to ignore the pain, but Furina endeavoured to maintain her image and not allow the small pang of concern to slip through her cracked maks. Whilst Furina wanted to scream and cry and curl into a ball, the act barely flinched at a mortal weapon being brandished against her. The act found the whole situation beneath her, and therefore Furina must do the same.
But no matter how hard she tried, Furina wasn’t the act. Furina was bleeding out and couldn’t properly warn her guardes what was really happening lest she expose her entire performance. So she simply laid down, and let her subconscious take over as opulent words tumbled out of her mouth to signify her wellbeing, and her hand trailed down to hesitate for an imperceivable moment and slip the knife out with the same unperturbed motions as the way one might extract a bobby pin from hair. The act was not afraid of blood loss. Furina let her eyes drift closed, allowing the tiredness to wash over her and the darkness behind her eyelids capture her attention rather than the warning bells sounding mutely from her heart.
Maybe this was what it felt like to die. Or maybe this was what it felt like to be freed. Either way, if she ignored the pain in her abdomen, it wasn’t a bad feeling. It was simply calm. Quiet. Peaceful. Undisturbed. Her own.
And then there was light. And then there was pain. And then she opened her eyes to stunned guardes under the roof of a restaurant; Furina jolted up (rather, began to and then slowed her movements to a recreational stretch) to stare down at her wound expecting the worst, only to see barely a scratch left where she had been impaled, the skin knitting together before her own eyes, faster than even those with healing affinity could achieve. She could see the guardes watching in wonder. Good. Let them spread the word of... of...
This was her plan all along. It did not matter that she knew nothing of the circumstances, because the act would. The act would know. The act wouldn’t be surprised (would she?) so Furina simply stretched and brushed off her clothes.
The mask was put back on.
(was it ever taken off?)