☆ de fontaine
{☆} characters furina
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort
{☆} word count 1.4k
This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!
She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.
She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.
Furina is tired.
But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?
So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.
Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.
Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.
An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.
She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.
She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.
She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.
And Furina has always been good at lying.
It's the believing that's the hard part.
There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?
Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.
She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?
She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.
Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?
Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.
Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?
They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?
"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"
Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.
Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.
Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.
Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.
"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.
But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.
They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.
She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.
If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..
Furina will make sure they do.
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@intertexts okay before i answer the second trigger question i NEED to talk about the trickster/clarence/mal backstory. fuck . okay. you know the drill. nhw essay under the cut:
ok first off this is the required listening for reading this post bc ive imagined all of this in the form of an animatic (trickster pov). there was like a 4-hour span of time at work one day last week where i just had this song on repeat and zoned out thinking abt this while i did absent cleaning tasks. so thats how u KNOW im insane
ok so i still havent thought of a name for the city. but ive been thinking about this city as a parallel equivalent to the spirit world. ironically, its a city that doesnt have a huge parahuman population, so its relatively quiet. the cape presence is pretty small. the lead hero in the city is Whisperer (aka clarence albert), a striker/mover/stranger. he can fly, turn invisible (NOT intangible!!!!!!!!), and if he can get a hand on someone he can calm their emotions just by touching them. it's effectively like a tranquilizer, except theyre not asleep theyre just not feeling whatever strong emotions led them to causing trouble in the first place. (thinking abt this like a touch-based version of the calm emotions spell in dnd, its concentration so the effect is limited to when hes actually touching someone. when he lets go, theres a small window of time before they reorient themselves and are back to whatever they were feeling before) (this is to parallel the idea that the whisperer can pull chaos spirits out of possessed people like william did to atlas).
anyway. distracted. Whisperer's partner was originally a rogue named Ghoul, a huge hulking Brute cape who didnt really cause many serious problems but was a huge disturbance to the local people just beacuse of his monstrous appearance. Clarence confronted him and Ghoul dropped his changer form to reveal mallard conway, a man who had only recently triggered and was essentially.. lost. directionless. he didnt know what to do with his powers, since they were so... different. hes a master/changer/brute, with the ability to create strong illusions and influence people in his regular form, but can change forms to be a hulking monster with brute strength. essentially both brains and brawn in one guy. clarence asks him something along the lines of "well if you have nowhere else to go, why not come wiht me?" and basically. takes him under his wing? i guess? its not like he trains him, but just by being around clarence, mal learns what its like to be.. good. not selfish and heartless. clarence isnt much involved with capes from other cities since their own is pretty quiet, so his main focus is to just kind of keep the peace. keep the balance.
this goes on for... a long time. clarence and mal (whisperer and purgatory << mal's new hero name) are basically inseparable. call it love, call it brotherhood, call it a one-sided hero worship crush on mal's end. who knows. theyre secretive, not in the public eye much unless they need to be. UNTIL. some new villain triggers and is an IMMEDIATE s-class. now i have a couple different ideas for how and why exactly the trickster triggers and where he comes from but honestly im okay with leaving it a mystery for now. one day he shows up like a natural disaster. it becomes a situation VERY similar to nilbog- the prt forces get called in, they try to take him down with non-capes first since hes a high leveled master and they dont want him to immediately gain super powerful puppets to control. this,, does not work and basically just feeds him fodder to make his numbers grow VERY quickly. Whisperer and Purgatory (mostly whisperer) can't sit back and watch this Trickster guy just keep absorbing innocents into his masses and use them to do his dirty work anymore, so Whisperer wants to confront him. I think Purgatory tries to hold him back at first (mainly due to the fear of losing him, but he words it as "we're not supposed to, if either of us get caught it would be so much worse for everyone involved"). Whisperer does not listen to him and goes anyway; hes convinced that with his power, all he needs to do is touch Trickster and everything will be so much easier to handle once hes out of commission. the fight DOES NOT GO THIS WAY. clar and mal actually are able to fight their way up to the trickster, clarence gets a hand on him.. but his power doesnt work. theres this moment where the trickster freezes like maybe something did happen, but then clarence realizes like... he cant feel anything. i think usually he can tell what sort of emotion he's repressing when he uses his power; sort of innately understands what sort of effect hes having on a person, but with the trickster it jsut feels like. nothing. theres nothing there. and then he starts laughing and breaks the silence and turns around to grab clarence and hurt him in some way. mal is preoccupied; hes fighting off puppets as theyre sort of swarming the area, allowing clarence a moment to use his power... and then he sees whats happening.
i dont think trickster is particularly strong on his own. but. i mean. his name is trickster. i think he probably keeps some sort of secret weapon on him. knives in his coat to make the "ive got a trick up my sleeve" joke. he slashes clarences throat, doesnt even bother trying to control him. what would he want with a power like that anyway? clarence is basically his antithesis- calming instead of chaos. that sort of power is almost like an insult to him. so he kills him. clarence is laying there bleeding out, trickster is laughing over him, mal drops everything and runs over to clarences side, trying desperately to talk to him or stop the bleeding or ANYTHING. he dies in mals arms. mal fucking. fully snaps. instant brute form, he wants to tear the trickster limb from limb, kill anything that moves around him etc etc etc. in his rage, hes not really fighting very well, hes leaving himself vulnerable, theres a lot of openings etc etc. trickster fucks up his face pretty bad (this is how he gets those big scars like he has in canon).
however, MALS powers are more fun so he doesnt outright kill him. its harder to take control of him both because of his current rage state and also the fact that hes also a master and part of mals power kind of cancels out some of the tricksters control. so instead of puppeteering him right away, trickster forces him out of the city. he of course tries to keep going back in, but at that point the PRT has made the decision to put the city under quarantine and just let him take it. they keep mal from going back in. (clarence's body is still in there. he doesnt even get a burial.) . you know how mannequins main thing is that he was originally a hero that was driven crazy by the simurgh attack that killed his wife and daughter? yeah thats what happened to mal. he was just totally unreachable after this. clarence basically saved his life, was his best and only friend, was his mentor, was the person who taught him how to be good... and now hes gone. what else does mal have left. he goes back to being called Ghoul. he joins the s9. his rage and grief eventually settle into a manipulative calm, and he starts using his master powers more than his brute powers, to get what he wants from people.
aaaand then . years later. he sees the new wards team on tv, and theres a hero with a cape that looks achingly familiar. surely it cant be him, clarence is dead, has been dead for years... but there he is. theres his costume. this new hero is even ghost-themed. as smart and manipulative and greasy as mal is i think theres a fundamental piece of him thats just. really irreparably unhinged. seeing something that reminds him of clarence again drives all common sense out of his mind and he defaults to "thats him" even though he would logically know that its not. and thats why hes so obsessed with wibby. he knows this new cape calls himself Wraith, but like. capes change their names all the time! mal even did it himself once! maybe if he calls him Whisperer enough times, he'll remember who he is.
theres some more to this plotwise that mostly just deals with. the plot. but i feel like this is a good setup for mals whole thing :]
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