[ It's not so much of a fall as it is a loss, a slow descent into a realm that feels both warm and oppressive. Heavy with its expectations, heavy with his title, the grandness that is the chosen King of Kings. A destiny most grand, deigned to mortal words by the distant rumble of an Astral. The thunder to the knowledge that fills him as he drifts, eyes open. (Eyes closed.) Mind, wandering.
His destiny is providence. Ordained, foretold. Foreseen as the blood price has been foreseen, inked into history alongside the tales of the Accursed. The Usurper. The one that had caused the death of so many, the one responsible for the depthless grief and anguish and anger that bleeds out from between his fingers even as they curl tightly into the collars of a coat that he'd wanted to twist around an immortal's neck, to test just how many times that he could sin before his three better halves came to his rescue.
Even as the Astral releases him into the light with the screech of metal on metal, as the Crystal shrieks with its revulsion.
As Noct falls through the many revisions of colour and his fingers scrape for walls that won't exist, for the purchase of steadier ground as he falls. Falls like one would fall through the crumbling foundations of a tower built on quicksand, falls like no metaphor could ever describe, because what Noct does next isn't to land.
He opens his eyes. Stirs against a mouthful of grass and sun. Stirs against the light that feels like fingers pressed against the skin of his back, seeping through the black of his clothes, a touch that feels foreign for how nostalgic it is, with how much he'd been unaware of having missed it until after having crawled through a fortress of metal and daemons and a train ride through the waning hours of the day.
He rolls onto his back and blinks blearily up at a canopy of trees, familiar and green like how Lucis had been before they'd set sail to Altissia. (Altissia. How long ago had that been, exactly? How many days that felt closer to years than a handful of hours?) He rolls his head to his right and blinks at a figure that he'd somehow twisted his knuckles into, to damn them both to fall onto wherever they were now.
Which. Great. Of course. (And the anger, the need to rend and ruin, burns at the back of his throat like acid. Present and unavoidable for as much as it can be contained. He could ignore it, if for the moment. If for the need to gather his thoughts, the new bibles of knowledge that tries to shake that anger apart.)
Noct sits up with a wince. The ache of his bones hint at weeks of disuse, weak and thready despite the way that he'd clawed his way through to the Crystal that brought him nowhere near the answers that he'd thought he'd sought. Nothing made sense. Everything made too much sense, and Noct wasn't-- he wasn't going to think about it. Not until they were both awake and moving. And to that effect, he kicks out. Hits a shin with the sole of his boots. ]
... Hey. Chancellor Useless. [ An old nickname from what felt like an even older time. ] Feel free to stop playing dead. Anytime now.
[ Just because he was The Chosen to Ardyn's Accursed did not denote a need to be more mature. Well, not yet. The taste of his losses was still too bitter at the back of his tongue, made his fingers itch for the aether of his armiger. But that would accomplish nothing, and so: the kick. A second kick. Incoming. ]
[Everything, absolutely everything had felt... wrong.
It had been the grip around his coat that had brought him in, brought him close, that wretched grasp belonging to the soon-to-be Chosen King; the most pivotal piece of the game, the very focal point of his years upon years of planning — the same man who had unravelled these plans with an impulsive reach, a staggering pull inwards, and suddenly Ardyn’s very being felt like it was on fire.
The Crystal’s light raked against him, and every atom that made up his physical form, every not-atom that made up his soul writhed against the brightness. Cried foul against the warmth, and the endless fall. The swirling colors, both unmoving and vacillating, the kind of spectrum that played bright behind his eyelids, even as he kept them shut. Even as he’s sure that he had cried out in something beyond anger, leagues above bitterness, no sound is made. There’s only the feeling of eternity, and the eyes of an Astral upon him, transient. Tangible.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The thought reverberates in the vastness of the Crystal, and it carries loudly and carries nowhere. The darkness within him swirled more fervently than before, he could feel it churning in the pit of his chest, heavy and suffocating, wanting to flee the Light, but with nowhere to escape to. He shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t allowed here. And Noctis, he who had disassembled all of his careful planning with one simple action, he… he—
Eventually, Ardyn stops fighting against the fall. He lets it take him, lets himself tumble, and float, and dream — empty dreams, visions of a star entrenched in the black of night, bursting with light at its edges and cracking with color. A promise of sleep, finally, after all this time, a rest.
He hears the sway of trees above. Grass tickling his skin, a breeze playing at his hair. He hears a familiar voice, tinged with impatience and anger. A sharp bitterness, he knows that feeling, he lives it in spades all the time. Ardyn Lucis Caelum then feels… a kick. A dull pain throbbing on his shin. He opens his eyes and sits up, expression sharp with a frown, having no time to conceal it with patronization and condescension.
A hand reaches out to stop the boot, clutching at it tightly. Slowly but surely, anger seeps back into him, unbidden and unwound by confusion. For the first time in what must be centuries, Ardyn is utterly lost.]
Noct… [He hates that feeling, he needs a purpose to drive him, his needs it to keep him going, it had been his fuel for so long — running on spite, knowing that there would be an end to him and his family line. The promise of release and in turn, a revenge. Now what? A not-life lost in a Crystal with the family he hates so much? Watched over by a god that had a hand in his eternal pain?
No.
Ardyn’s not letting go, even as he turns his gaze upon the boy, losing all pretense.]
[ Providence. This, too, must surely be Providence, with how naked the other appears, stripped of his layers of darkness and spite. His words, unweighed by the farce of good humour. And how funny is it that it's this, this unguarded sight of Ardyn's reactions, is what brings everything around, makes it real? That it's not the sun, the light, the trees, the truth behind the history of over two thousand years digesting in his gut, that had been enough to push for his acceptance. Not until Ardyn had awoken to make them real, as real as Insomnia's fall and Luna's murder.
Acceptance feels sour on his tongue. Distantly sour, still tinged with the sweetness of his ignorance, his previous manifestation of having known nothing of a tragedy that he'd beeb expected to somehow make right.
Noct curls his fingers into the grass beneath his hands, simmering with anger of his own. With bitter loss that he will carry into whatever destiny that he will be expected to fulfill. With exhaustion, with the lingering ache and echo of the Crystal's rejection, burned into his ears, into the very fabric of his being, into somewhere deep and permanent. A damning mark for this failure, as punishment for not letting go when he should have. Punishment for daring not to fall alone.
Punishment for grappling with the small, small need to somehow set a few things right by taking advantage of the Crystal's favour of him, however unwittingly. ]
Something that didn't take me two thousand years to get done. [ Something that had needed doing for all of its initial claims to impossibility. Something that, even now, even in the aftermath of Bahamut's voice and his whispered truths, that he can't quite grasp or understand. Can't quite appreciate the ruin that he had ushered in stead of the dawn.
There's enough strength left in his boots that Noct can only feel the peripheries of that grip, the slow and fatal bleed of an anger that he can't hope to defuse, but will damn will try to match. He kicks out, attempt the third, with the same foot, caught boot. Chin tipped up, eyes ablaze. The line of his lips pressed tight into something that denotes nothing but challenge. ]
[Something that didn't take me two thousand years to get done. A spike of nothing short of hate, poignant and razor-sharp in how it pierces through his entire being, rises upon hearing those words. At hearing what he interprets as a patronization, as if Noctis knew what the weight of two thousand years felt like, what it does to a man’s humanity, to a man’s mind. The way it smothers a soul, and coupled with nothing but spite as a companion, the way it twists the heart into something monstrous. This boy of twenty, True King or otherwise, talking down to him about two thousand years? After having the audacity to rend his plans into nothing more than a shattered mess at his feet?
Ardyn practically snarls, his thin veneer of good-humor so far gone that one might wonder if it’ll ever be seen again. So yes, he lets go, timed just perfectly to swipe away the third kick with the back of his hand.
And then, in a surprisingly fluid motion for a man of his build and stature, Ardyn stands, his boots bending blades of grass under his weight. A hand reaches out — much like a hand had reached out for him moments ago (an eternity ago?) — and scoops up Noctis by the front of his shirt, forcing him to his feet. His fingers are bundled in the material, his grip is so tight, and whereas Noct’s eyes are ablaze with anger, Ardyn’s reflects it equally with his own.]
Didn’t you want to save your precious Eos? Let the Light consume you, so that you can finally fulfill this wretched Prophecy of ours?
[Not of his. Ours. The burden was shared equally, opposite ends of the spectrum playing their respective parts on the grand stage of Providence. Of destiny, a twisted, unfair thing. Ardyn’s words come without thinking — a true rarity for him — and the only thing he can settle on, in such a state, is venom. A desire to hurt, the same way that he hurts.]
Or did your father and Lady Lunafreya sacrifice themselves for nothing? What a shame that would be.
He can't know the consequences of a story that he'd done nothing but been born into, born into a life with the sole purpose of relinquishing it to right the wrong of two thousand years. For the man that stands before him. That all but holds him up with rage that Noct can only attempt to match, snarling back as he twists his own fingers into the fabric of anything that he can reach -- coat, scarf, skin, all. It brings their faces closer, allows them an easier avenue in which they can snap out hurt for hurt. As nothing more than mere (im)mortals that must dance to the tune set and decided by the divine.
And yet, Noct finds that he doesn't care. Can't bring himself to, not when Ardyn invokes the essence of those that he'd stolen, those that he'd sacrificed in the name of this Six-damned Prophecy, this Prophecy that is as wretched as Arydn speaks of it to be. This vile and disgusting thing that still rests as a place where they can offer their necks to be broken under the weight of it.
So he grips back, almost on his toes. With shaking fingers, with shaken confidence and clarity. ]
Don't you dare say her name, you piece of shit. You have no right-- [ He can't decide whether he wants to press closer with the burn of his anger or shove away. Can't decide whether this is anger or pity that he feels, if it's pity for Ardyn or for himself. (For how could he hope to ever fight back against a destiny that the Gods had set up, a destiny so oppressive that even the greatest victim of its story was made an accomplice?) ]
They shouldn't have-- they wouldn't have died at all if you weren't so willing to roll over and take it.
[Noctis' grasp clutches around the front of his coat, fingers also catching in his scarf, pulling him forward. Ardyn doesn't care, he barely even notices — he’s struck that nerve, exactly what he was going for. But the sadistic pleasure he was so used to indulging himself in doesn’t rise in his chest this time; that anger remains, looking down at Noctis with a snarl so acute that it shows a flash of white teeth. There’s no humor in him, now. Ensnaring each other in their own frustrations, in their own desperations and anger with neither willing to concede, is just the equivalent of heaping coal onto the fire.
And when the prince tries to turn the blame around on him in retaliation, Ardyn’s grip on the would-be-King’s shirt becomes deathly tight. His knuckles are almost white with tension, and he makes the decision to push, but not let go. Pushing him until Noctis’ back slams into a nearby tree, its leaves shaking suddenly with the impact.]
Do you think I had a choice? [He doesn’t raise his voice, he hardly ever does, even now. But his words are both acrid and cold, flitting on the edge of dangerous. His free hand twitches with the temptuous pulse of an armiger just brimming under the surface, and it’s by some strange miracle that Ardyn doesn’t call upon it. Shadows cast through the sprawling branches above snake their way across his face at odd angles.]
Do you think that this is what I wanted? [“Roll over and take it.” Like he was fine with being burdened with the dark, like he didn’t feel something akin to sorrow (an emotion now so far away) when everything had been stripped from him, for merely using the blessing he had been given. The gift that had been bestowed upon him, only for the Astrals to deem it his curse.] This was the hand that I was dealt, and I’ve had to bear it for millennia, waiting for you to come along. And you don’t even have the resolve to do what’s required, Noctis. You’re a sorry disappointment.
[ And he gasps with it, losing his breath in a startled whoosh at the impact, struck quiet by the pace with which their mirrored anger is beginning to spiral into chaos than out of any measure of pain. Startled into a moment of silence against his will. What doesn't loosen throughout it all is his own grip, white-knuckled and ultimately self-defeating, made even tighter with how his other hand joins in on the hold, twisting into the coat and scarf as he trembles. Quivering with the whole of his grief and loss and fury and blame and guilt--
It's overwhelming. It's too much. He needs to let go, can't let go, he needs to breathe, can't. Suffocated by the way that those words sears him, through him, burning him with sentiments that he'd been harbouring like poison inside his chest. Sentiments that Gladio had all but said with his frustration, sentiments that may as very well have been the reason that Ignis had been made blind, why Noct had been unable to grab a hold of Prompto when he'd been fallen away from the roof of the train.
He doesn't bare his teeth like the wounded thing he is, but it's a near miss of an attempt. ]
Yeah, to you and everyone else. [ And if his voice cracks, splintering under the cumulative effect of self-deprecation and his failure to shoulder the burden of expectations, then he lets it. He lets it break, lets it go a pitch higher as he twists his hands into his grip a little tighter before trying to shove Ardyn away. Throwing out with limited momentum, but also with the strength that came fueled by the infection of his hurts. ]
But what's that say about-- about you, huh? Did you even try? At least I did something, while all you'd done was to ruin everybody's lives for-- for what? To do exactly what those who screwed you over want.
[ Pathetic, he doesn't have to say. The air shakes with how his voice begins to rise in volume, a hoarse shout that all but flails about without aim. No longer sure and certain of whom to turn the acid of his anger (because who was truly at blame here, the Gods? The Crystal, Ardyn, himself?) and what could one do but oscillate when there is no longer a direction, no more faith in what's right? Break a little, that's what. ]
[Noctis doesn’t have to say it for it to be heard, ringing in his ears. Pathetic. His entire existence, wrought with desperation and with anger and with the ghost of sorrow at a life he had lost — at a family that he loved turning against him, Six be damned for the thought even flitting across his mind — was nothing short of pathetic.
Ardyn can’t tell if the surge of anger that breaks the surface is due to a self-loathing, or a defiance. A figurative baring of his fangs at Noctis’ own assault, so beyond anything resembling sympathy to linger on the way the boy’s voice cracks, the way the guilt spills from him without Ardyn having to try any harder.
He allows himself to be pushed back, releasing his hold on Noctis, but his heels dig into the ground defiantly. The hand that had been tempted to call upon a sword, an axe, a spear, anything that would hurt is no longer merely tempted; it’s convinced now, blinded with disgust at the unfairness of Noctis’ words. In a spark of shattered light, an ancient blade flashes into existence in his hand, and his fingers grasp at its hilt. Its edges gleam bright in the light.]
I know what I am! [So, perhaps it isn’t true. Perhaps Ardyn can raise his voice, when he’s running on pure, furious impulse. Here comes the swing of the sword, aiming straight for the boy, a vertical slice that’ll get caught in the trunk of the tree if Noct dodges or otherwise phases out of the way.
No matter the result, he’ll continue regardless:] What would you have me do? Linger in the dark for an eternity? Until Eos itself collapses into dust? You don’t know what this burden is like — how could you? Have you even accepted your own? [Because that’s what this Prophecy is, a burden and nothing more. He’s carried it long enough to make what he believes is his peace with it. Noctis, perhaps, doesn’t have that advantage.]
[ No, all he has is that defiance, that strange, shared flavour of self-loathing. It'd only been minutes since he'd learned of his destined role, more expectations layered onto those that had come before it, those that had been already heavy enough to almost buckle his knees. There's no peace to be found in that. There's nothing at all to be found in that.
He doesn't see the blade, not at first. Feels only the shiver with which the air seems to shake, a shimmer of light that had once belonged to him (to his father, to his bloodline) alone, the manifestation of the Crystal's blessing and favour. He doesn't see it, but he hears it, and instinct does what instinct wills, grabbing him by the throat to make him phase, weaving his body away from the arc of that slice.
It sends him a few desperate steps away to his right, bouncing on the soles of his feet as his eyes grow brighter, larger, with realization. With true understanding of the name that he'd been told in passing, as he'd fallen through the long passages of history and exposition. Through the light that he's meant to champion even as that very light, that very same magic, creates matter out of nothing in Ardyn's hands.
Lucis Caelum. Yet another piece of this goddamn story. He's starting to get sick of it. ]
Accept it? Accept it and give up like you? [ Mere minutes to Ardyn's millennia.
Noct hisses out a breath and lets the weapons of his inheritance dance around him, a burst of magic and aggression. It feels right, somehow, that his father's blade is what finds itself in his hands, powerful and ever-heavy with the loss that it symbolizes. It feels right that it would come down to this.
It'd feel good to have something solid to meet and clash and destroy, to unleash this restless, helpless energy that he can't seem to shoulder aside. ]
No. No, screw that! You might've spent the last thousand years doing nothing but messing things up, but I won't. [ Mere minutes to try and understand the words, the meaning. Mere minutes to come to the decision to go head-to-head with the futility of fighting fate, young and foolish and desperate. ] I won't roll over. Not like you, who won't even try.
[Stubborn, heedless, ignorant, endlessly frustrating — all these are words that Ardyn would eagerly apply to Noctis right now, and for once, it feels like his patience has completely fled him. Ardyn grits his teeth as he pulls his sword out from the trunk of the tree, bark splintering at acute angles as he does so with no dearth of forcefulness.]
Try. [He echoes the word back, sword now settled perfectly in his iron grip once more. The word is practically spat out as he faces Noctis properly, shifting his weight in order to do so. When the prince’s own blade — King Regis' sword — settles into his hand, he doesn’t even care that it all seems very appropriate. The son and the symbol of his father come to clash with the Usurper. Present versus the past, tearing into one another until they both fall.
Except Noct would be the one to fall, not him. He wasn’t powerful enough to defy fate even he wanted to; it’s because he hopes to defy it that he’ll remain weak, and it’s this singular thought alone that allows a twisted sort of grin to seep back into Ardyn’s features. He feels no real humor, only an unrivaled severity in his patronization, but some habits die hard.]
What is there to try and fight against, when the wrongs have already been placed upon me? When there’s no turning back? Destiny has written me in as a villain, fate has twisted me into something inhuman. So, why not give Eos, the Astrals, and my family line exactly what they wanted?
[An acceptance born of resigned hate. Of a betrayal that ran too deep, enough to scar the very soul.]
Exactly what they made me out to be! [-is his final cry, crescendoing into something disturbing in its resoluteness, as Ardyn warps away and reappears above (leaving a trail of red to Noctis’ blue), and letting gravity guide his blade and body to come crashing down towards the boy's head.]
[ Just once before, he'd seen Ardyn with a blade. With one of Noct's own, awkwardly placed, wielded with a strange and off-beat sort of finesse that had filled him with nothing but a sense of distrust (with unease and nausea, like watching a clock work backwards). He'd written it off, shouldered it aside, for why wouldn't it be weird, awkward? What business would a Chancellor have with a blade, with the simplicity of battle, when he'd already known that those of Ardyn's ilk made weapons out of silken tongues and poisonous words?
Seeing him now, Noct thinks: ah. It hadn't been an issue with Ardyn but an issue with the weapon, an issue of incompatibilities borne of unfamiliarity. Because with that blade, a weapon that may well as be thousands of years old, Ardyn finally looked right. At home. Stripped down to the basics of what he'd used to be.
Noct flinches at the reminder of their shared blood as Ardyn disappears, eyes swinging up at the urging of a voice that sounds suspiciously like Gladio, ringing in his ears to dodge, to phase, to get the hell away. He sets his jaws and does none of the above, grits his teeth as he pushes himself into a warp of his own, blue to Ardyn's red, meeting blow for blow mid-air-- ]
Yeah? Well, congratulations!
[ It's all the he manages before gravity grabs hold and yanks him down, brings them both down as Noct plummets from the force of Ardyn's strength. He jerks the whole of himself to the side just as Ardyn, too, must land, narrowly avoiding the fate of being skewered with but a minor cut to show for it. A cut that he dismisses with no more than a wince, rolling away and rolling back onto his feet as allowed.
He breathes, deep and grappling, in and out. Two cycles before he holds out his father's blade, leveled and ready, focused by a defiance that he refuses to lose grip on. The only thing holding his head above water in a world that threatens to drown them both, that had drowned one of them already. ]
Does that make you happy? Proud? To be their plaything, to do what they want-- To drag other people into it-- [ People like Luna. His friends. Everyone else that did not suffer under the weight of their name. ] Why--
[ His turn. To disappear into the grip of blue, blue magic, to let momentum and all things unsaid carry him forward into a point-blank warp that aims to clash his blade against Ardyn's yet again. ]
[The force of the Sword of the Father crossing with his own weapon is enough to shake his bones to the very marrow, and as metal strains against metal, time itself seems to still -- Ardyn's gaze is focused and unwavering, seemingly contradictory against the way his lips have curled upwards in a twisted, severe grin. A moment that hangs in the air, as seemingly precarious as the both of them, until gravity takes them both, and they fall, as if their strings have been cut.
Ardyn is cognizant enough of the pain of landing on sharp blades that he releases his weapon, letting it disappear into shattered light mid-air. The man grunts as he hits the ground, shoulder-first, but it's immediately through grit teeth that he's forcing himself to his feet.
He hasn't even brought his gaze back to Noctis before he hears that telltale sound of a warp, feels the subtle pressure of magic emanating once more. It's by instinct alone that he calls forth another weapon from his arsenal of phantom blades, and appearing in his hands with just enough time to block the attack. A greatsword, as ancient-looking as his previous choice, its weight wielded and manipulated with an unnatural ease.
The force pushes him back nearly an entire yard, but Ardyn stands his ground.]
There's nothing to change, Noct. [The nickname is used with no lack of condescension.] Everything that has been done cannot be undone, and we're so close to the end. [The end of the Starscourge, the end of the Prophecy, the end of his accursed existence on Eos. The end of a dynasty, the Lucis Caelum line finally put to rest.
There's something increasingly unsettling about his expression, belied in the way that the ground around him begins to seep with dark, wisps of something abyssal rising up from the ground itself. The way the air around them seems to recoil, the way the light itself feels like it would revile it, if it were a living thing.] And why would I want to change anything, when this way causes you the most pain?
[(There it is, then, that admission of wanting revenge, eating away at his core, and yet pushing, pushing him forward throughout the millennia. Where would he be, without it? A hollow husk of a man, lost to sorrow. This way, at least, he has motivation. He has purpose.)
The darkness swirls at their feet in a perfect circle; Ardyn doesn't feel the way it suffocates (Noctis might), he's far too used to the sensation. He wonders how stubborn the prince is, if he'll have the sense to move, or if his anger will keep him planted to the ground in defiance against him. The latter would be quite the unfortunate decision for him, he thinks, in a few moments' time.]
[ It's not the darkness that snaps at his ankles that Noct flinches from, not the stifling taste of spite and rancor that fills his mouth. His knees threaten to buckle as the world itself begins to shriek against the tar of that blackness much like the Crystal had shrieked. He flinches at the words of old, uttered in the tongue of a lost language, goes echoing through him, imploring him to do right by the Prophecy. It comes to him through the conduit that is the ring that sits around his finger, the very same that which burns and burns and burns as it pulls at every corner of his being even when he warps a few distances away from the epicenter of the Scourge.
His knees do buckle then, and he can hardly feel the ache and tingle of a nerve pinched wrong as he grips the handle of his father's sword, the tip of it stabbed into the ground as his support. And on his finger, the ring continues to burn. Around them, the world continues to scream its rejections, shaking with its threats of collapse. To crumble them both into the abyss of the Crystal's magic for daring to bring something so accursed into a place where only the blessed light should breathe.
The very same magic that urges him at him now, to rise and face a darkness too vast for him to purge by himself, as he is. ]
You really-- don't get it. It's not just me that you're hurting, it's--!
[ What was he missing? How could they see the same snapshots of history and come to such different conclusions? Ardyn, blessed by the Gods. Ardyn, the Accursed for daring to do their bidding. Ardyn, the reason that the Prophecy had been constructed at all, the very reason for Noctis' own birth, his allowances to power.
He comes back to his feet with much effort and labour, jaws clenched so tightly that his teeth feel fused together. ]
... You wanna dance to their tune? Fine. [ It's just bravado now, all of it. But with his father's sword in hand and the ring burning something fierce on his finger (flickering with the Crystal's magic, shredding his insides to pull at the years of his life), with nothing more than no, not like this echoing in his ears as his last bastion of free will, it's all he can do.
He breathes out. Tips up his chin in challenge even as the light attempts to writhe against the darkness as it's meant to, the Crystal against the Scourge. ]
But you're going to be waiting a lot longer than forever if you expect me to join in.
[The way the world shakes when darkness lances up, just barely missing Noctis as he warps away in a flash of blue, is almost enough to make even Ardyn wince. But it's by defiance alone, a sadistic sort of satisfaction he takes in making the Crystal absolutely writhe in revulsion, that keeps him from doing so. Instead, he's spurred on -- yes, that's right, he wasn't supposed to be here. He would make sure this eternal place, brimming with light, was more than aware of his accursed presence. Let it know that Noctis was the one who pulled him in, in a strange defiance against fate, and let it rend at his very being. Even now, the boy careens against the idea, tossing bravado Ardyn's way, and he's not in the least impressed by it.
The pool of darkness at his feet seems to dissolve, but instead snakes up and around his greatsword, pulsating with the daemonic power, twisting and heaving with the Scourge itself. The air around it appears to recoil and burn, with the same intensity that must burn around Noctis' finger; opposites, and yet the same in potency.
He hears Noctis' exclamation about hurt, but Ardyn isn't listening. He's more than aware of the spread of pain he's caused, and of how much further he plans on taking it, to allow an endless dark to blanket Eos. But right now that doesn't matter. He hurts, so much more than anyone could imagine, years upon years of pain stacked all the way up to the sky itself, weighing on his shoulders. He's tired, so very tired, and now Noctis' defiance has thrown anger and an unending sense of self-loathing into the mix.
His grip on his weapon becomes tighter as he speaks. His power swirls around the blade, dances around it.]
But you've already joined in, whether you like it or not, Noct. The Crystal will lend you its power regardless of your stubbornness, or your stupidity; it wants what I want just as much. [His death.
And in a sudden, arcing motion, Ardyn tosses the dark-infused blade towards the would-be Chosen King -- an action heralding a warpstrike. The blade flies at the boy with frightening momentum behind its massive weight, with its suffocating corruption eagerly intensifying as it disappears then reappears, directly in front of Noctis. Ardyn does the same, warping in, and suddenly his hand is around its hilt once more as the weapon is mere inches from slamming into him.]
[ And for the moment, he gets it. He understands, even agrees, to a point, as to why the Prophecy must have been scripted. Why all the powers of Eos would want it fulfilled. To close the chapter on the darkness that Ardyn wields could surely be nothing short of an act of kindness and grace, benevolence granted to a soul that continues to suffer and twist within the depths of that abyss. A necessary act of murder coupled with the purest form of martyrdom, no one could begrudge him to do as the Gods had asked. No one would resent his lack of choice and will.
When the world trembles, when the blackness poisons a blade that mirrors one of his own, Noct thinks: I get it.
He side-steps without thought, a slight slide to the left in wild approximation of the trajectory of that greatsword's flight. Objectively, he knows what will follow, what does follow in the form of Ardyn, overwhelmingly at his ease with their shared and inherited ability. It's the last thing that he comprehends for a moment (or more), even when instinct and desperation jerks up his father's blade, flat-side up to absorb the weight of the swing.
It's the last thing that he sees between the bursts of painful colour that explodes behind his eyelids as he's thrown back, landing on his side to roll a good distance away with a punched gasp of pain. There's no blade in his hand when he twists onto his stomach, his father's sword disappearing in pieces of glass and magic around him, leaving him defenseless save for the ring that only continues to burn. Collecting magic and the Crystal's blessing as Ardyn had proclaimed, ready to come to his aid if (when) Noct was willing to reach for it.
It's all enough to make him hiss, to make his eyes burn in frustration as he pulls himself back onto his feet, calling for the Sword of the Tall than the power that sits on his finger. ]
Well, that's-- that's just too bad, isn't it? [ They're more gasps than spoken words, more posturing against a tide of events that he'd no chance at herding. And yet. Even still-- ]
You picked the wrong guy to be your Chosen if that's what you want!
[ (Even if he wants nothing more than Ardyn's death himself. Even him, Six damn him, even now, knowing what he does. Knowledge hadn't stripped him of his hate, only blunted it; he wants Ardyn to die as much as the rest of them. And yet. Even still. He'd seek to bare his teeth at it. The way that the Prophecy and its Gods try to lay them out as victim and sacrifice for their own mistakes. The way that they try to blanket his thoughts into thinking, this is how it must be.)
Something in his shoulder creaks with pain. The whole right side of him burns with the onset of an early bruise. His magic feels dry and shallow as he throws himself into a warp of his own, appearing in a streak of blue that releases the greatsword as a battering ram of a projectile against Ardyn's own, seeking to disarm him even when being physically disarmed meant nothing to them at all, trying to create windows of opportunity while drowning in quicksand and fate. ]
[The impact is nothing short of satisfying, and when Noctis goes careening away due the force of his greatsword’s blow, Ardyn’s boots find their footing again, heels digging into the soil beneath him. He lowers his weapon, enough to touch the ground, and the grass recoils and withers. The entirety of the Crystal seems to scream and vibrate with each pulse of darkness that he lets eke from his very being — both a freeing and suffocating feeling, but one he had long grown accustomed to, years and years past. Let Noctis see it, in all its twisted corruption, so that he might know the monster he’s become. So that he may wish to do away with him, permanently, finally, after all of these long centuries.
When Noctis flies towards him, warping in a flicker of blue (he can feel the boy’s weariness already, so easily drained from him, he was too weak to fight him now), he raises his blade again. The force of impact is nothing short of head-on, and while it shakes his grip on the blade’s hilt, Ardyn keeps hold of his weapon. Fingers taught, knuckles white. Eyes cruel, words meant to shear at his heart, to push him to acceptance via anger if obligation did not affect him.
And so instead, they find themselves with their blades crossed, having been slid back a few feet from the force, but little else. His grin is a sneer, showing teeth.]
Don’t put up such a facade, Noct! I know you want to kill me; I can see it in your eyes. That burning hate.
[And he pushes harder, clearly attempting to overpower the young prince.]
How does it feel? It hurts, doesn’t it? I know it does. You’d kill me right now if you could. [He breaths out a laugh, hollow and misleading.] That should be motivation itself, never mind whatever the Prophecy demands from you.
Or should I recount to you the look on your betrothed’s face, when I sunk my blade into her flesh? Or how much of a fool your father was, a weakened, tired old man, hoping to bring peace to Lucis only to invite war to its doorstep?
SHUT UP! [ The roar that tears through him, past the choked entry of his throat, is a strangled thing, a wound breaking open despite his extensive attempts at cautery. Bursting past the clumsy patchwork of gauze and bandaids. A spill of all the hurt that Noct can't help but carry at the edge of his sleeves, easy targets for the knives of Ardyn's words to cut through, slice open. So it's not surprising how easily he falters. Tripping back into that blistering hate. (Because there hadn't been any chances to breathe, for anything to properly heal. No time before the next crisis had come knocking, crashing.)
There's enough anger in him to stabilize his knees even as he grits his teeth against Ardyn's strength. A few seconds of meeting hate for hate, evenly matched, before he finally buckles (it was no contest, not really, not when his was a fresh wound and Ardyn's was a deep, festering lesion), hands trembling with the effort of keeping his balance against the push-back. Trembling with the effort of just keeping his blade corporeal, of keeping the whole of himself together as he grinds his hate between his teeth, spitting it out between his words. ]
Of course I hate you [ of course it hurts-- ], how-- how could I not after all you've put me through?!
[ He adjusts his foot, pushes. Adjusts again and throws himself into one last warp, point-blank, blade to blade, burning with the need to silence the mockeries of all that he's lost. The hurt that edges ever closer to becoming an infection, burrowing into the very marrows of who he is (the King of Kings, to stand right where he is now, to do exactly as Ardyn wished--), even when he fights to breathe. Fights to remember, grappling for the only advantage that he had-- ]
But I won't kill you, I won't give you the satisfaction to just die after what you've done, I won't--
[ He slides back a step. Swings. ]
I won't let you toss me around like a puppet, your Prophecy be damned!
[Even now, Noctis defies him. Even after taking his pain, dissecting it, tearing it from his soul and squeezing as hard as he can, the Chosen King cries foul against his fate. Refusing to play his part just to spite him, seemingly uncaring if Eos rots because of it. Seemingly willing to let the Starscourge spread, turning men and women into daemons, letting night exist eternal.
(Ardyn remembers a time from millennia ago, being granted a power to heal, to stop the onset of corruption spreading across the land. His goal, his motivation, driven by something long lost — sympathy. Empathy. A man who hated to see others suffer for nothing.
Now, he’s been twisted into a mirror image of his past self. Hatred, darkness, spite, burdened with a self-loathing that festers forever within him, scarred over and over but never healed. Even then, in all this irony, perhaps there’s the smallest amount of comfort he’ll take in more than just his own demise. Maybe, just maybe, his selfless ambitions from thousands of years ago will still come to fruition. The circle will complete itself, and the Starscourge will finally end with his death. With the compliance of the Chosen King.)
A compliance that he will pry from Noctis’ hands, whether it be from words or physical pain itself. If he won’t understand, if he won’t be instigated, he’ll just have to be convinced through suffering. Ardyn has all the time in the bloody world for it.]
You’re pathetic. [He spits venom at Noctis, only to grit his teeth against the jarring clash of a point-blank warp against his blade, his wrist straining.] What will you do then? Let the world linger in the dark, only because you can’t be bothered to finish what I started?!
[His greatsword disappears in shattered magic, dissipating away as Ardyn phases through the attack, stepping to the side and in, closer to Noct. Close enough to avoid the swing of the blade completely, close enough to knee him in the gut with unfortunate fervor, then grasping at his sword arm, fingers clenched tightly around his wrist to stop him from swinging further. Force enough to cause bruising, pain, enough to make ligaments and bone scream.]
Just like this family, so eager to leave me to my fate. Nothing’s changed.
[He wants to kill him. Right now, his rage flares so hot that it’s nothing short of a miracle that he shows even a modicum of self-restraint.]
[ Pathetic as the ones that had come before him, he wants to spit back. Pathetic as the smear of a legacy that they'd all been forced to carry, dancing to a one-note tune without a thought to do otherwise. Doing nothing but bringing about a cycle of hate and darkness in its wake, blinded by spite that calls only to more spite. Too preoccupied with the task of prostrating themselves before their Gods, a Prophecy, that would sooner see their family suffer and end for as much as it may end the plague that eats at the very air of Eos, the gift of daylight.
Pathetic, he had(n't) called Ardyn, only moments before. Pathetic. For not daring to thrash against the only solution that the man must have been able to grasp after two thousand years, for not having the foolish (pathetic) notion of change that Noct entertains with every defiance. The hopes of accomplishing his duty, to take his throne without further sacrifice, much less his own for a man that he can't find within him to forgive. (Not yet. Not for a very long time.)
But in the place of such words is no more than a wheeze, stripped into silence by pain that blinds him with a moment of white unconsciousness for how overwhelming it is, a moment of blissful oblivion from which he's yanked by the scream of his wrist, in resistance to that grip. How he has to swing his other hand up and over to grapple at the arm that holds him prisoner, fingers spasming into the fabric of Ardyn's coat as his own greatsword disintegrates into flecks of light and dust as it's released.
He manages to stay to stay upright only by the pain of Ardyn's grip alone, the bite of his glare clipped by how his expression twists into a wince. ]
You got some nerve, talking about change without changing anything yourself. [ His head. His head, it feels light. Pain and magic, warring for space, the weight of the ring doubling into something hot and searing, imprinting the patterns of its presence into his skin. ]
Accomplishing nothing for all the pain that you've caused, doing nothing but waiting for the day that'll have you dying like a dog. [ Without even the slightest bit of of a chance at finding peace for that hurt. To find justice for it. Dying with nothing but spite (spite that had beckoned to spite), dying as the villain that his ancestors had thought to create in their narrow-minded jealousy. A plague that the Gods so desperately wanted to purge at any consequence. ]
... I'll end it. Everything. [ Everything, including you, including this damn Prophecy that still spins between them. ] But we're doing it my way, so you can just deal!
[ Tightening his grip on Ardyn's arm, gritting his teeth through the way that the world feels to explode into pieces of glass, leaving only the brilliance of the ring to focus on, Noct pushes. Pushes forward all the light that had been curling at the base of his spine, forces it through the conduit of his ring. And it comes to him, readily and easily, that old, pure magic that must have once blessed Ardyn with its favour once upon a time, the very same that now seeks to bite into the darkness that Ardyn carries in him. Biting into it, tearing out pieces of it for Noct to shoulder and share.
(And it feels like he's touching the abyss of something terribly sad and horrifyingly maddening at once, the nucleus that the Scourge had curled itself around. Stifling. Smothering. Suffocating.) But if there were reasons to pull back, Noct can't remember them. He feels like he's drowning, gasping for air as the magic tears at the darkness that it meets, tears at it, tearing it out, letting it implode and stop his heart for the moment that a piece of that darkness chips out and goes screaming through Noct. ]
[And then it feels like something is being torn from his very soul.
It isn’t Noctis’ grasp around his arm that makes him grit his teeth, fighting back nothing short of an actual, horrendous sort of scream. It’s that light, that blasted light, reaching out to him, through him, at the Chosen King’s beck and call. A knife, cutting swift, cutting cleanly, shearing at the suffocating, inky black that thrived around his very core. Pulling, tearing, rending — it hurts, having this part of him stolen. Because it was a part of him, wasn’t it? A part that he hated, that he cursed, but a part that time had made him grown accustomed to. A festering acceptance of a wound that would never heal, and quietly embraced to be a piece of him forever, until finally vanquished.
Vanquished. Snuffed-out in a final, decisive blow. Wiped clean, totally and utterly, the dark and his soul and his consciousness all at once. Not this. This… brightness lancing through him, chipping away at the weight of obsidian sickness, a Scourge, that made its home within him.
Maybe he does scream. With the world shattering around them like fractured glass, beautiful yet terrifying, it’s difficult to be cognizant of any of his senses, other than the invasion tearing through him.
You’ll not end anything this way, no, not like this, Ardyn says. Or he thinks it, he can’t be sure, yet he’s sure that Noctis can hear him. He must, he was so close to him now — not only physically, but closer than that, borrowing a piece of himself, he dared to be so bold, so ambitious to think that he could handle even the slightest drop of what was his pain, an old sorrow that had hardened into spite and bitterness. He’d do nothing more than poison himself, and surely the Light would only reject him then, just like it had rejected him, surely—
Their surroundings dissolve into blinding white, and it’s time for another awakening.
There’s still grass, and trees, and the sun shining brightly above. The wind still pushes the clouds idly across the light, casting the occasional lazy shadow that cruises over a figure lying on the ground.
When Noctis awakens, the sight he’s afforded with will be both familiar, yet completely alien. He lies just beyond the far outskirts of Insomnia, his home. It must be, for the landscape itself hasn’t changed — the topography, if one pays attention, is the same, the familiar incline and curves of the land. (For nature itself only concedes inches at a time throughout the ages.)
It’s the city itself that is obscenely different. It’s modernity is anything but, tall structures made of ancient architecture no longer seen in present day, casting a strange silhouette as it reaches towards the great maw of the sky. From such a distance, technically in the wilderness proper, seeing this in its completeness may be jarring, as if time itself has rewound, thousands of years.
Ardyn, the Accursed, is nowhere to be found. Not yet.]
[ And Noctis, he falls. Floats. Loses himself once more to the oblivion that sits between pain and bliss, between his conscious mind and what surely must be death. He breathes without purpose, a ragged pattern that betrays the arrhythmia that struggles back into place. Restarted, reset, for it wasn't yet his time to pass, not when there was still so much darkness to purge.
(For it'd been no more than a scrap that he'd torn out. No more than a sliver despite how overwhelming it'd been as it'd coursed through him, filtered through the sieve that was the Crystal's magic, tearing it asunder. The greatest gift laid upon Eos deigned to the role of a scavenger, ripping apart mere pieces of a greater, fouler whole. Trying to mend a great chasm of sickness and sorrow with bandaids applied two thousand years too late.)
There's no sense of time in the plane on which he floats, cradled and put back together as a precious piece to redemption despite his hoarse protests, his defiance against the unfairness of his (their) fate. A sickness of his own that (re)builds alongside the rest of his body until he's re-equipped with all of his cuts and bruises, his trophies and losses. Recreating him as he'd been only moments before he'd found himself here, lost within the depths of light and magic to return him to a state where he'd been lost in desperation instead. (Desperation for something, anything, for any semblance of a chance at steering the Prophecy awry.)
It's a slow process. An instanteous one.
One that leaves Noctis to gasp into yet another mouthful of grass, gasping and groaning into the aches that leaves him shuddering for purchase as he's ejected from the anaesthesia of that nothingness. He blinks awake to starbursts of pain that forces him to crumble just as soon as he dares to press any amount of weight onto his (broken? shattered?) wrist. ]
--Shit. [ Right, so he won't be using that hand anytime soon. Still, the pain isn't entirely unwelcomed. It forces him to grit his teeth and focus, grit his teeth and remember--
Remember absolutely nothing since his hand had met Ardyn's arm. Since the Crystal had come at his beckoning, to his aid.
A quick glance around finds him alone, and that's-- more worrying than he cares to admit. Not so much for the wellbeing of the man (because he was immortal, wasn't he, because nothing could be more vicious than the darkness that he carries) but because of an ingrained discomfort at the prospect of being alone. At having to wander past this strangely familiar wilderness for however long that the Crystal (the Gods) wished that fate upon him, which he's not thinking about as he pulls himself onto his feet. As he stumbles a few steps forward, a few distances, a few miles (he couldn't tell, he'd no idea) until he stumbles into a small clearing.
A small camp, set for one person whose back is turned to him and a-- chocobo? A. Black. Chocobo, which was-- really? Cute? Wow. ]
Hey, uh. Cool bird. [ Wait, that's not-- ] No, sorry, I meant. You mind if I ask a few questions?
[It isn’t the sort of camp that Noctis may be used to — all in all, it’s rather simple affair. The man that sits at the small fire (with a plain, straightforward cooking set positioned over it, dangling above the flickering flames) is, ironically, not much for the outdoors, but he’s garnered something of an… acceptance for them. A quiet tolerance, if you will, instigated by the fact that he’s found himself traveling so often that it would be ludicrous to not try to adapt. In a general sense, he’d like to think he’s done well enough, and being alone with nature herself allowed time for reflection, for a precious sort of calm. He really shouldn’t complain.
His chocobo sits next to him, curled up as they often do when they sleep. It’s only when the bird raises its head at the new individual, black feathers ruffling only a little with the movement, that Ardyn shifts his weight, twisting around to face the voice that emanates from behind him.
He’s surprised, honestly, to see someone wandering all the way out here in the wilderness that isn’t him. But he had a purpose, an almost-pilgrimage that forced him to travel miles, to make far-too-many camps, to follow both roads and beaten paths to his destination. And then, to another destination, a cycle that repeated itself, and one that he was more than glad to oblige.
It’s obvious in the lift of his brow how he finds this surprise a very odd one; a boy, it appeared, dressed quite strangely. (All black, however. Curious.) Still, he offers a lopsided sort of smile to the stranger. One look at him told Ardyn far too much — he was tired, confused. (“Cool bird,” he had said, after all.) Injured, he wondered? Recognition as to who Ardyn was obviously wasn’t present, but that wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, this far out from the capital.]
You may. You’ll find that I welcome all manner of questions, especially from strangers wandering this far out from civilization.
[The question is clearly implied, but it lacks the sharpness of patronization that Noctis might be all too familiar with.]
Sit if you like. My chocobo companion makes for something good to lean on, if you’re tired.
[ Oh, a lack of recognition is far from the problem, not when Ardyn turns around. Not when surprise(relief)annoyance(hate, hurt)shock grips him by the collar and yanks him back in, almost buckling his knees against the fury of questions that threaten to spill forth. His brows furrow, his lips twist downward. Stiff shoulders, fingers curling into fists even as the daze of stasis nearly sweeps him off his feet, the whole of him tensing in a Pavlovian response to fight, fight back at being presented a face that he knows too well.
A face that he might not, not when it doesn't twist with the known and ugly lines of patronization and mockeries despite Noct's poor attempts at pleasantries ("cool bird," ugh). It's like looking at a picture backwards, a face that he should know as well as his own for all the hate that it induces made blurry and incongruent. Like looking at a picture made right, somehow removed from the taints of history and grief.
Just. What the hell.
A lack of recognition is precisely the problem, because even as Noct lets the silence stretch in-between them, he can see nothing that may give this away as a farce, a ridiculous joke. (And Ardyn hadn't been in any mood for jests, had he? Not when he'd been as angry as Noct had been, so incomprehensibly maddened). He can feel nothing of the suffocating darkness that he'd just been drowning in, his ring resting docile in a way that it hadn't since he'd put the damned thing on, and that--
That was the most confusing thing of all. ]
... I'm fine. [ After all the screaming, the demands for him to submit to the weight of their respective roles. Just, what--
He takes a step forward, momentarily unfettered by any attempts at looking anything but as lost and confused as he is, as tired, as progressively panicked. Trying to push back the words, the hell are you playing at? Where the hell did you even get a chance to get that bird, what the hell just happened? Where are we, what the hell is going on here? ]
I'm looking for someone. Looks-- [ Exactly like you. Might even be you, you-- ] He's about your height. Bad hair, ugly scarf. You've see him?
[ It's ruder than he intends, but he's still too tense to offer otherwise. A wounded animal braced against another attack. It's all that he can manage, really, to humour the gut feeling that tells him, wait. Play along. ]
[And even stranger, he thinks, is the boy's reaction. There's a still moment where Ardyn finds he cannot help but compare him to a wounded, frightened animal. Pain, confusion, and was that... anger? It was truly difficult to tell from a distance, but the boy's body language was easily read from where he sat. Tired contours turning rigid, fingers flexing into fists. Even Ardyn, a bit unflappable even thousands of years in the past, feels confusion rise up in him at the display.
But then the young man steps forward, almost as an act of defiance. Ardyn's chocobo gives a small kweh, indulging in a small shake of its head, feathers floofing out in every direction as it does so. Ardyn idly allows a hand to scratch at its neck, watching Noctis draw nearer. He's less apprehensive than he is curious.]
Bad hair, ugly scarf. [He breathes out, echoing the words back, and there's an underlying amusement to such a... description that he can't stop from eking out.] I've certainly not seen anyone with an ugly scarf, no. [Because Ardyn is definitely, totally wearing a scarf even now. It's different, perhaps, in color and design than what Noctis is used to seeing, but old habits (very, very old habits) die hard.]
Friend of yours, lost in the wilderness? Or are you the lost one, I wonder?
[ Yeah, he sees that scarf, especially now that he's starting to become quite capable of squinting past the blur of pain. Growing numb to it, maybe, with how the world is starting to fade in and out of focus. No more than a low-burn ache against the questions, the sheer volume of what the hell, that he can't seem to shake. That he probably can't dismiss even if he gave in, to throwing out his angry demands at dropping this ridiculous attempts at screwing with him.
(Which is always an option, which is always an option. It wouldn't be entirely surprising, but what purpose would this serve? What more of him was there for Ardyn to stab, to infect? There was no-- no more Lunas to hurt, no Promptos for Noct to be tricked into pushing. Just himself and Noct, left to wander a land that might or might not actually exist, no more than an illusion cast into their minds by the grace of the Crystal.)
And no matter which way he spins it, it's too strange. Too weird. (And Gods, that scarf. That was somehow even worse than the one that he'd been trying to set aflame by the heat of his resentment, no longer buffered by the cushioning of familiarity.)
Noct shakes his head, trying to focus on the outlines of Ardyn (not? Ardyn? Different clothes, same face, different expressions, somehow softer, same voice but without the patronization) and his chocobo, the lines of which were both starting to blur. ]
Look, can you help me or not? [ By letting him watch you like a Griffin for the next little while, until the proper flavour of Ardyn popped up-- right, good plan. ]
[Ardyn’s brow only arches higher — it’s not often that he’s spoken to in such a manner, but the man is unaffected enough to not think much of it, other than wondering what’s managed to get under the boy’s skin. How could he have possibly offended him in such a short time, in an exchange of barely more than a handful of sentences?
The Ardyn that Noctis knows (the Accursed, the Usurper, the walking embodiment of the Starscouge itself) would retort with words that cut as sharp as any blade. This Ardyn, whose edges are not so rigid and broken and piercing, only seems to let Noctis’ attitude slide right off him, with no small amount of grace and lingering patience.]
I can help you to the best of my ability. [An offer that sounds quite humble, when it reality is beyond generous in the capacity that he can truly offer.] If that’s what you want.
[A beat, and then:]
You can come closer, you know. I won’t hurt you.
[The irony behind that statement is so acute that it might as well manifest itself and laugh in both their faces. But Ardyn remains blissfully unaware.]
[ Or it could manifest in the sympathetic ache of Noct's entire right side, his wrist, his ribs, as he's startled into a scoff, a knee-jerk reflexive. Every inhale feels sharp, an effortful rattle. It could manifest in the way that Noct snorts, dismissive and disbelieving, only to regret with how he's forced to curl a little, to curl his one good arm around his middle as (not-)Ardyn blurs away. Blurs back into focus. ]
You've got to be kidding. You expect me believe that after-- [ After all you've done. After what had just happened. Ah, how quickly his attempts at civility begins to crack. Right alongside the integrity of his breathing. ] ... Nevermind.
[ This was messing with his head. Was that Ardyn's plan? Was this a plan? Should he be yelling, after all? Should he be attacking, aiming to tear down an expression that looks-- sincere, more sincere than he's ever seen on the man? (Even back in Galdin Quay, the very first time, Ardyn had filled him with a sense of unease and suspicion that he hadn't been able to shake, one that had only grown with every reveal, with every layer peeled back. And this-- this wasn't that. Not quite. His ring sat quiet, even now, and if it hadn't been for the weeks of taunting from that face, the months of pain brought on by that voice, years of backstage planning that was now coming into light, Noct would have almost thought--
Ardyn almost looked--)
He runs a heavy hand through his hair, the skin between his eyes wrinkling with the force of his confusion and frustration. ]
... Are you always this helpful? To people you've just met? [ Not like he can point fingers, but. Still. Still. ]
[More than his actual words, Ardyn focuses on Noctis’ body language. It was far more disconcerting, anyway, every passing moment telling him that the boy was harboring some sort of injury — bruises, cracked bones? Bleeding, perhaps, underneath those black clothes? He wouldn’t know, not unless he drew closer.]
Actually, yes. [He can’t help but try to sound a little wry, a little lighthearted, as if doing so would ease the boy’s uncertainty. Like trying to coax an irritated, injured cat from its hiding place.] I wouldn’t be much of a healer, otherwise.
[Also lending to the implication that yes, he will help you if you let him, Noct.]
Are you injured? [He asks, before he can really give the other a chance to respond. Ardyn knows that he can at least ease the pain long enough for him to be properly looked at by a proper sort of physician, depending on the nature of the injury.] Let me look at you.
... A healer. [ A healer, like Luna. A healer, like Bahamut had said, in-between its words of condemnation and afflicting him of Providence. He blows out a breath in between his mutter, ] Right. Of course you are.
[ Of course.
He's but a collection of all the things that could poison a man from the inside when he finally comes to a decision: contempt for Ardyn (for who he is, had been, could have been), contempt against the Gods, the Crystal. Contempt for himself, who could no longer find a reason to do as directed by the muted shrieks of instinct to stay at a distance that Ardyn could close with just one-third of a warp. This was a stalemate that he needed to end, one way or another.
And so the cat approaches, tip of its tail pointed to the ground in continued aggression, dragging each heavy step after the next. Driven by both curiosity and exhaustion, a need to find answers, no matter how minute and inconsequential it may be in the long run, it brings him close enough to be finally, properly seen, ragged breathing and all. ]
There, happy? [ He's more tired than derisive now, aching for reasons beyond the way that the world was doing nothing but sway. ] M'fine, like I said. Just... need some--
[ Sleep, he means to say. Doesn't quite manage to say, deterred by how his body chooses that moment to crumble into the grass as a heap of black over the blue of his injuries, eyes forced shut. Just another bad life decision, falling unconscious at the feet of a (not-)stranger. Great. ]
[Noctis is just barely being pulled down by gravity when Ardyn’s already shifting his weight, preparing himself to watch the boy tumble to the ground. He’s seen it all too many times before — individuals trying to force themselves through the pain, as if the more stubborn they were, the higher chance of them staying cognizant, staying conscious.
And in his experience, rarely does it ever work. Often it ends up as it does now, with the person’s body demanding that enough is enough, one way or another.
It’s this foresight that allows to Ardyn to break Noctis’ fall before the boy falls completely to the grass, catching him in his arms, and leaning in to just… gently place him on the ground instead. Brow knitted in concern unfettered now, he allows himself an exhale.
It may be a blessing in disguise; after all, the proverbial cat may be easier to tend to when he’s asleep, rather than awake and frowning at him, mewling with irritation the whole time. And this close, he now would have a chance to see if he was bleeding somewhere excessively, or perhaps just worn from exhaustion, and if there are any broken bones, and—
(By the Six, this boy looks an awful lot like Izunia, now that he has time to examine his face in more detail.)
Ardyn lets out a laugh, though its humor is replaced by a disbelieving sort of confusion. Just who was this young man? There’ll certainly be more than a just a few questions to ask, when he decides to grace him with consciousness once more.
And so time passes, immeasurable in the mind of someone sleeping. Hours, perhaps, because when Noctis does come to, the brightness of day has shifted to dusk. The campfire still blazes, as if continually tended to for a reason; that reason being that Ardyn could not leave with an unconscious guest in his presence, and so he had stayed and tended to the young man to the best of his ability.
Tended and healed.
And when his guest stirs awake, Ardyn sits nearby, his chocobo still near him. Noctis will have to peel himself out of a bedroll to sit up properly, though, to glance around and see Ardyn looking at him with a raised brow. Concern still ekes from his tone.]
You’re awake. How are you feeling now?
Edited (when u find typos the next day) 2017-03-23 19:42 (UTC)
[ What he expects to see when he opens his eyes: not this.
Not the fall of dusk, the curl of warmth against the half of him that had thought to turn towards the campfire, tucked into a bedroll without the tellings of a clusmy hand. He doesn't expect to have found his eyes capable of peeling open at all, for himself to wake, to have the awareness necessary to blink past the blurry crust of sleep. He expects to ache, but not ache like this, with the soreness that came with rest and care.
He expects nothing from the wrist that he remembers to have been brutalized before he'd fallen, expects nothing but pain when he pulls at his arms. Stretching out his fingers, his jaw clenches with the preemptive discomfort of having to work with a limb that had so carefully skirted at the edges of being broken in a loving reminder of a fight that he remembers in a distant sort of way. (Like a dream, misplaced.) Followed shortly by a startled intake of breath when his fingers do nothing more than obey, curling the ring closer to the edge of a knuckle, still cool, missing the vitriol with which it had responded to Noct's disarrayed rejections of fate.
A dream, much like the world that he'd fallen asleep to, had awoken to, where a chocobo of that colour could sit, relaxed and curled, around a man that should have repulsed it for what he embodied. What he expects is not Ardyn, ever persistent with that strange look to his face that sets Noct off-kilter with the wrongness of it, something that felt about as off as the olive scarf that the man was still rocking with the black of his attire. (Which: gross. Still gross.)
Because looking like that, cast in the warmer light of the campfire, Ardyn looked like he actually-- ]
... Better.
[ His voice is little more than a rasp when he pulls it to curl around the syllables, as he sits himself up with a twist of a body that felt lighter. (Healed.) Hoarse with the slow burn of his disbelief that his -- sleep? state of uncomfortable and embarrassing unconsciousness? -- awakening hadn't dispelled. ]
Guess I have you to thank for this. [ Except it's still hard, thanking a face that had taken so much. He curls a hand into a fist. Releases it. ] You... really weren't kidding about the healer thing, huh.
[The flickering flame casts the occasional odd shadow across Ardyn’s face, though even that cannot make him appear as disdainful as Noctis remembers him — the tired lines on his face, mostly around the eyes, are wrought not from bitterness, but from the weariness of long travel.]
Kidding? Not at all. It’s hardly anything to joke about. [-he says, with the intonation of it being amusing that he would ask. (Some things, it would seem, don’t ever really change, even with the unrelenting hand of time.)
The black chocobo, curled around Ardyn in an almost comical manner, breathes quietly in its drifting sleep. The Lucian king continues.] That being said, you should still consider having a physician look at you. I can heal, but its focus is on a different ailment altogether — your pain may be gone, but your body might need tending to when we return to the city.
[I mean, you’re coming back to him with the capital, aren’t you? Surely you are, Noct.
Ardyn shifts a little. He’d been patient before; he feels as if now is as good of a time as any to ask.]
You’re a bit of a contradiction, you know. You act as if you don’t know who I am, but — [A pointed glance at the ring on Noctis’ finger. The same that rests comfortably on Ardyn’s own.] —you adorn yourself with particularly interesting choices of accoutrements.
[The implied question of who are you and where did you get that hangs in the air, but there’s no pressure behind it, no tinges of an interrogation. Just unbidden curiosity, the kind that he can't keep locked away even if he tried.]
[ The wrinkle to his nose is a foregone conclusion, an exercise in the trappings of his age despite all that had transpired to deepen the lines around his eyes, between them. No more mature than the way in which he looks down at his hand, twitches as if to resist the urge to pull it under the bedroll, to hide it (it doesn't exist if you can't see it), even if he manages to-- not.
To not do that. Curling his fingers into a fist, to make the ring stand out even more and ever prominent, though. He does that just fine. Oh, and lifting his chin in challenge. He's not short on that, either. ]
Yeah? What about it? It's just a-- [ Just a ring, may his ancestors forgive him where they must surely be rolling over in their graves.
--Actually, nevermind. Given what his ancestors had enabled, Noct couldn't care less. ] Not like you could talk in the fashion department.
[ There. That was marginally better. More... appropriate. Probably. ]
Anyway, back up a sec. What city? [ Because surely not? Who the hell died and crowned, recrowned, Ardyn as King? ] What makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?
[Ardyn continues to find it odd that the boy seems to treat everything he says as a challenge -- as if he's offended him to the very marrow of his bones for some inexplicable reason. This borders on the knife-edge of confusing and amusing, and while Ardyn is not one to shrug off the defensiveness so easily (watch him loop back around to the subject of the ring, for instance), he decides to comment on Noctis' question first.]
The capital city. [Said as if this should be obvious. Said with the subtle intonation of wonder if the young man had hit his head rather hard before stumbling across Ardyn.] And I'll admit, I'm not going to command you to come with me, but-- well, are you saying you have somewhere better to be?
[An incline of the brow.] Or is it so terrible for you to be traveling with someone as fashionably impaired as I?
[How dare you, Noct? He's dressed like a hobo king!]
[ Nope, definitely a hobo. A hobo in the royal black, now that he finally has the coherency to realize the significance of it. The chocobo-- probably of the same vein. Black for the King that Noct is supposed to be, that Ardyn had supposedly been. It's something that deserves pause, and Noct grants it, a moment to bask in the realization and understanding and a deja vu of what the hell.
Then it's a matter of putting two-and-two together (finally putting his rusted sense of logic to use, no longer muzzled by pain and the shock of waking up inside what had to be the Crystal), fitting black to Lucis, to Insomnia. The capital city. The outline of which he could faintly see past the horizon of trees, if his head was angled back just right. The ache that came with the mention of home. ]
It wouldn't be as impaired if you lost the scarf. [ The point: not that. Noct flushes with it, curling his fingers in and out, just to feel the weight of the ring shift against his knuckles. ]
... Just. Answer me something. [ He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek. Uses the sting to ground himself even as he drops his eyes in a sudden bout of uncertainty. Kindness from strangers is a strange and welcomed thing, something that would have had him flounder on a good day. Kindness from a stranger wearing Ardyn's face was just strange. Strange and difficult. ] Why keep helping me? What if I was a-- [ A... uh. ] A thief? Or whatever.
A hand reaches up in an idle manner, fingers feeling at the fabric of said scarf. He doesn't do it knowingly, instead taking in Noctis' words while he speaks. One might even call it a self-conscious response, if not for his personality -- flippant, unbothered by normal criticisms directed at his attire. Perhaps he's heard it all before, implied or otherwise. Ardyn doesn't care enough to take offense to any of it.
The same applies to this boy, though he speaks to him with more of an edge than he's used to.]
You were injured, and obviously very lost. Not to mention you seem to be confused and disoriented. [It's spoken with more concern than criticism; more drawn out worry than a jab at Noctis' current state.] And if you were a thief, you've chosen an unfortunate target.
[The implication being that Ardyn has nothing on him really worth stealing, and that he's not as defenseless as he seems. But Noctis would already know all about that, wouldn't he?]
Maybe I should ask instead why it is you seem so suspicious of me.
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no subject
His destiny is providence. Ordained, foretold. Foreseen as the blood price has been foreseen, inked into history alongside the tales of the Accursed. The Usurper. The one that had caused the death of so many, the one responsible for the depthless grief and anguish and anger that bleeds out from between his fingers even as they curl tightly into the collars of a coat that he'd wanted to twist around an immortal's neck, to test just how many times that he could sin before his three better halves came to his rescue.
Even as the Astral releases him into the light with the screech of metal on metal, as the Crystal shrieks with its revulsion.
As Noct falls through the many revisions of colour and his fingers scrape for walls that won't exist, for the purchase of steadier ground as he falls. Falls like one would fall through the crumbling foundations of a tower built on quicksand, falls like no metaphor could ever describe, because what Noct does next isn't to land.
He opens his eyes. Stirs against a mouthful of grass and sun. Stirs against the light that feels like fingers pressed against the skin of his back, seeping through the black of his clothes, a touch that feels foreign for how nostalgic it is, with how much he'd been unaware of having missed it until after having crawled through a fortress of metal and daemons and a train ride through the waning hours of the day.
He rolls onto his back and blinks blearily up at a canopy of trees, familiar and green like how Lucis had been before they'd set sail to Altissia. (Altissia. How long ago had that been, exactly? How many days that felt closer to years than a handful of hours?) He rolls his head to his right and blinks at a figure that he'd somehow twisted his knuckles into, to damn them both to fall onto wherever they were now.
Which. Great. Of course. (And the anger, the need to rend and ruin, burns at the back of his throat like acid. Present and unavoidable for as much as it can be contained. He could ignore it, if for the moment. If for the need to gather his thoughts, the new bibles of knowledge that tries to shake that anger apart.)
Noct sits up with a wince. The ache of his bones hint at weeks of disuse, weak and thready despite the way that he'd clawed his way through to the Crystal that brought him nowhere near the answers that he'd thought he'd sought. Nothing made sense. Everything made too much sense, and Noct wasn't-- he wasn't going to think about it. Not until they were both awake and moving. And to that effect, he kicks out. Hits a shin with the sole of his boots. ]
... Hey. Chancellor Useless. [ An old nickname from what felt like an even older time. ] Feel free to stop playing dead. Anytime now.
[ Just because he was The Chosen to Ardyn's Accursed did not denote a need to be more mature. Well, not yet. The taste of his losses was still too bitter at the back of his tongue, made his fingers itch for the aether of his armiger. But that would accomplish nothing, and so: the kick. A second kick. Incoming. ]
no subject
It had been the grip around his coat that had brought him in, brought him close, that wretched grasp belonging to the soon-to-be Chosen King; the most pivotal piece of the game, the very focal point of his years upon years of planning — the same man who had unravelled these plans with an impulsive reach, a staggering pull inwards, and suddenly Ardyn’s very being felt like it was on fire.
The Crystal’s light raked against him, and every atom that made up his physical form, every not-atom that made up his soul writhed against the brightness. Cried foul against the warmth, and the endless fall. The swirling colors, both unmoving and vacillating, the kind of spectrum that played bright behind his eyelids, even as he kept them shut. Even as he’s sure that he had cried out in something beyond anger, leagues above bitterness, no sound is made. There’s only the feeling of eternity, and the eyes of an Astral upon him, transient. Tangible.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The thought reverberates in the vastness of the Crystal, and it carries loudly and carries nowhere. The darkness within him swirled more fervently than before, he could feel it churning in the pit of his chest, heavy and suffocating, wanting to flee the Light, but with nowhere to escape to. He shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t allowed here. And Noctis, he who had disassembled all of his careful planning with one simple action, he… he—
Eventually, Ardyn stops fighting against the fall. He lets it take him, lets himself tumble, and float, and dream — empty dreams, visions of a star entrenched in the black of night, bursting with light at its edges and cracking with color. A promise of sleep, finally, after all this time, a rest.
He hears the sway of trees above. Grass tickling his skin, a breeze playing at his hair. He hears a familiar voice, tinged with impatience and anger. A sharp bitterness, he knows that feeling, he lives it in spades all the time. Ardyn Lucis Caelum then feels… a kick. A dull pain throbbing on his shin. He opens his eyes and sits up, expression sharp with a frown, having no time to conceal it with patronization and condescension.
A hand reaches out to stop the boot, clutching at it tightly. Slowly but surely, anger seeps back into him, unbidden and unwound by confusion. For the first time in what must be centuries, Ardyn is utterly lost.]
Noct… [He hates that feeling, he needs a purpose to drive him, his needs it to keep him going, it had been his fuel for so long — running on spite, knowing that there would be an end to him and his family line. The promise of release and in turn, a revenge. Now what? A not-life lost in a Crystal with the family he hates so much? Watched over by a god that had a hand in his eternal pain?
No.
Ardyn’s not letting go, even as he turns his gaze upon the boy, losing all pretense.]
What have you done?
no subject
Acceptance feels sour on his tongue. Distantly sour, still tinged with the sweetness of his ignorance, his previous manifestation of having known nothing of a tragedy that he'd beeb expected to somehow make right.
Noct curls his fingers into the grass beneath his hands, simmering with anger of his own. With bitter loss that he will carry into whatever destiny that he will be expected to fulfill. With exhaustion, with the lingering ache and echo of the Crystal's rejection, burned into his ears, into the very fabric of his being, into somewhere deep and permanent. A damning mark for this failure, as punishment for not letting go when he should have. Punishment for daring not to fall alone.
Punishment for grappling with the small, small need to somehow set a few things right by taking advantage of the Crystal's favour of him, however unwittingly. ]
Something that didn't take me two thousand years to get done. [ Something that had needed doing for all of its initial claims to impossibility. Something that, even now, even in the aftermath of Bahamut's voice and his whispered truths, that he can't quite grasp or understand. Can't quite appreciate the ruin that he had ushered in stead of the dawn.
There's enough strength left in his boots that Noct can only feel the peripheries of that grip, the slow and fatal bleed of an anger that he can't hope to defuse, but will damn will try to match. He kicks out, attempt the third, with the same foot, caught boot. Chin tipped up, eyes ablaze. The line of his lips pressed tight into something that denotes nothing but challenge. ]
You wanna let go?
no subject
Ardyn practically snarls, his thin veneer of good-humor so far gone that one might wonder if it’ll ever be seen again. So yes, he lets go, timed just perfectly to swipe away the third kick with the back of his hand.
And then, in a surprisingly fluid motion for a man of his build and stature, Ardyn stands, his boots bending blades of grass under his weight. A hand reaches out — much like a hand had reached out for him moments ago (an eternity ago?) — and scoops up Noctis by the front of his shirt, forcing him to his feet. His fingers are bundled in the material, his grip is so tight, and whereas Noct’s eyes are ablaze with anger, Ardyn’s reflects it equally with his own.]
Didn’t you want to save your precious Eos? Let the Light consume you, so that you can finally fulfill this wretched Prophecy of ours?
[Not of his. Ours. The burden was shared equally, opposite ends of the spectrum playing their respective parts on the grand stage of Providence. Of destiny, a twisted, unfair thing. Ardyn’s words come without thinking — a true rarity for him — and the only thing he can settle on, in such a state, is venom. A desire to hurt, the same way that he hurts.]
Or did your father and Lady Lunafreya sacrifice themselves for nothing? What a shame that would be.
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He can't know the consequences of a story that he'd done nothing but been born into, born into a life with the sole purpose of relinquishing it to right the wrong of two thousand years. For the man that stands before him. That all but holds him up with rage that Noct can only attempt to match, snarling back as he twists his own fingers into the fabric of anything that he can reach -- coat, scarf, skin, all. It brings their faces closer, allows them an easier avenue in which they can snap out hurt for hurt. As nothing more than mere (im)mortals that must dance to the tune set and decided by the divine.
And yet, Noct finds that he doesn't care. Can't bring himself to, not when Ardyn invokes the essence of those that he'd stolen, those that he'd sacrificed in the name of this Six-damned Prophecy, this Prophecy that is as wretched as Arydn speaks of it to be. This vile and disgusting thing that still rests as a place where they can offer their necks to be broken under the weight of it.
So he grips back, almost on his toes. With shaking fingers, with shaken confidence and clarity. ]
Don't you dare say her name, you piece of shit. You have no right-- [ He can't decide whether he wants to press closer with the burn of his anger or shove away. Can't decide whether this is anger or pity that he feels, if it's pity for Ardyn or for himself. (For how could he hope to ever fight back against a destiny that the Gods had set up, a destiny so oppressive that even the greatest victim of its story was made an accomplice?) ]
They shouldn't have-- they wouldn't have died at all if you weren't so willing to roll over and take it.
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And when the prince tries to turn the blame around on him in retaliation, Ardyn’s grip on the would-be-King’s shirt becomes deathly tight. His knuckles are almost white with tension, and he makes the decision to push, but not let go. Pushing him until Noctis’ back slams into a nearby tree, its leaves shaking suddenly with the impact.]
Do you think I had a choice? [He doesn’t raise his voice, he hardly ever does, even now. But his words are both acrid and cold, flitting on the edge of dangerous. His free hand twitches with the temptuous pulse of an armiger just brimming under the surface, and it’s by some strange miracle that Ardyn doesn’t call upon it. Shadows cast through the sprawling branches above snake their way across his face at odd angles.]
Do you think that this is what I wanted? [“Roll over and take it.” Like he was fine with being burdened with the dark, like he didn’t feel something akin to sorrow (an emotion now so far away) when everything had been stripped from him, for merely using the blessing he had been given. The gift that had been bestowed upon him, only for the Astrals to deem it his curse.] This was the hand that I was dealt, and I’ve had to bear it for millennia, waiting for you to come along. And you don’t even have the resolve to do what’s required, Noctis. You’re a sorry disappointment.
no subject
It's overwhelming. It's too much. He needs to let go, can't let go, he needs to breathe, can't. Suffocated by the way that those words sears him, through him, burning him with sentiments that he'd been harbouring like poison inside his chest. Sentiments that Gladio had all but said with his frustration, sentiments that may as very well have been the reason that Ignis had been made blind, why Noct had been unable to grab a hold of Prompto when he'd been fallen away from the roof of the train.
He doesn't bare his teeth like the wounded thing he is, but it's a near miss of an attempt. ]
Yeah, to you and everyone else. [ And if his voice cracks, splintering under the cumulative effect of self-deprecation and his failure to shoulder the burden of expectations, then he lets it. He lets it break, lets it go a pitch higher as he twists his hands into his grip a little tighter before trying to shove Ardyn away. Throwing out with limited momentum, but also with the strength that came fueled by the infection of his hurts. ]
But what's that say about-- about you, huh? Did you even try? At least I did something, while all you'd done was to ruin everybody's lives for-- for what? To do exactly what those who screwed you over want.
[ Pathetic, he doesn't have to say. The air shakes with how his voice begins to rise in volume, a hoarse shout that all but flails about without aim. No longer sure and certain of whom to turn the acid of his anger (because who was truly at blame here, the Gods? The Crystal, Ardyn, himself?) and what could one do but oscillate when there is no longer a direction, no more faith in what's right? Break a little, that's what. ]
I'd rather be a disappointment than what you are.
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Ardyn can’t tell if the surge of anger that breaks the surface is due to a self-loathing, or a defiance. A figurative baring of his fangs at Noctis’ own assault, so beyond anything resembling sympathy to linger on the way the boy’s voice cracks, the way the guilt spills from him without Ardyn having to try any harder.
He allows himself to be pushed back, releasing his hold on Noctis, but his heels dig into the ground defiantly. The hand that had been tempted to call upon a sword, an axe, a spear, anything that would hurt is no longer merely tempted; it’s convinced now, blinded with disgust at the unfairness of Noctis’ words. In a spark of shattered light, an ancient blade flashes into existence in his hand, and his fingers grasp at its hilt. Its edges gleam bright in the light.]
I know what I am! [So, perhaps it isn’t true. Perhaps Ardyn can raise his voice, when he’s running on pure, furious impulse. Here comes the swing of the sword, aiming straight for the boy, a vertical slice that’ll get caught in the trunk of the tree if Noct dodges or otherwise phases out of the way.
No matter the result, he’ll continue regardless:] What would you have me do? Linger in the dark for an eternity? Until Eos itself collapses into dust? You don’t know what this burden is like — how could you? Have you even accepted your own? [Because that’s what this Prophecy is, a burden and nothing more. He’s carried it long enough to make what he believes is his peace with it. Noctis, perhaps, doesn’t have that advantage.]
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He doesn't see the blade, not at first. Feels only the shiver with which the air seems to shake, a shimmer of light that had once belonged to him (to his father, to his bloodline) alone, the manifestation of the Crystal's blessing and favour. He doesn't see it, but he hears it, and instinct does what instinct wills, grabbing him by the throat to make him phase, weaving his body away from the arc of that slice.
It sends him a few desperate steps away to his right, bouncing on the soles of his feet as his eyes grow brighter, larger, with realization. With true understanding of the name that he'd been told in passing, as he'd fallen through the long passages of history and exposition. Through the light that he's meant to champion even as that very light, that very same magic, creates matter out of nothing in Ardyn's hands.
Lucis Caelum. Yet another piece of this goddamn story. He's starting to get sick of it. ]
Accept it? Accept it and give up like you? [ Mere minutes to Ardyn's millennia.
Noct hisses out a breath and lets the weapons of his inheritance dance around him, a burst of magic and aggression. It feels right, somehow, that his father's blade is what finds itself in his hands, powerful and ever-heavy with the loss that it symbolizes. It feels right that it would come down to this.
It'd feel good to have something solid to meet and clash and destroy, to unleash this restless, helpless energy that he can't seem to shoulder aside. ]
No. No, screw that! You might've spent the last thousand years doing nothing but messing things up, but I won't. [ Mere minutes to try and understand the words, the meaning. Mere minutes to come to the decision to go head-to-head with the futility of fighting fate, young and foolish and desperate. ] I won't roll over. Not like you, who won't even try.
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Try. [He echoes the word back, sword now settled perfectly in his iron grip once more. The word is practically spat out as he faces Noctis properly, shifting his weight in order to do so. When the prince’s own blade — King Regis' sword — settles into his hand, he doesn’t even care that it all seems very appropriate. The son and the symbol of his father come to clash with the Usurper. Present versus the past, tearing into one another until they both fall.
Except Noct would be the one to fall, not him. He wasn’t powerful enough to defy fate even he wanted to; it’s because he hopes to defy it that he’ll remain weak, and it’s this singular thought alone that allows a twisted sort of grin to seep back into Ardyn’s features. He feels no real humor, only an unrivaled severity in his patronization, but some habits die hard.]
What is there to try and fight against, when the wrongs have already been placed upon me? When there’s no turning back? Destiny has written me in as a villain, fate has twisted me into something inhuman. So, why not give Eos, the Astrals, and my family line exactly what they wanted?
[An acceptance born of resigned hate. Of a betrayal that ran too deep, enough to scar the very soul.]
Exactly what they made me out to be! [-is his final cry, crescendoing into something disturbing in its resoluteness, as Ardyn warps away and reappears above (leaving a trail of red to Noctis’ blue), and letting gravity guide his blade and body to come crashing down towards the boy's head.]
no subject
Seeing him now, Noct thinks: ah. It hadn't been an issue with Ardyn but an issue with the weapon, an issue of incompatibilities borne of unfamiliarity. Because with that blade, a weapon that may well as be thousands of years old, Ardyn finally looked right. At home. Stripped down to the basics of what he'd used to be.
Noct flinches at the reminder of their shared blood as Ardyn disappears, eyes swinging up at the urging of a voice that sounds suspiciously like Gladio, ringing in his ears to dodge, to phase, to get the hell away. He sets his jaws and does none of the above, grits his teeth as he pushes himself into a warp of his own, blue to Ardyn's red, meeting blow for blow mid-air-- ]
Yeah? Well, congratulations!
[ It's all the he manages before gravity grabs hold and yanks him down, brings them both down as Noct plummets from the force of Ardyn's strength. He jerks the whole of himself to the side just as Ardyn, too, must land, narrowly avoiding the fate of being skewered with but a minor cut to show for it. A cut that he dismisses with no more than a wince, rolling away and rolling back onto his feet as allowed.
He breathes, deep and grappling, in and out. Two cycles before he holds out his father's blade, leveled and ready, focused by a defiance that he refuses to lose grip on. The only thing holding his head above water in a world that threatens to drown them both, that had drowned one of them already. ]
Does that make you happy? Proud? To be their plaything, to do what they want-- To drag other people into it-- [ People like Luna. His friends. Everyone else that did not suffer under the weight of their name. ] Why--
[ His turn. To disappear into the grip of blue, blue magic, to let momentum and all things unsaid carry him forward into a point-blank warp that aims to clash his blade against Ardyn's yet again. ]
Why won't you try to change this?
no subject
Ardyn is cognizant enough of the pain of landing on sharp blades that he releases his weapon, letting it disappear into shattered light mid-air. The man grunts as he hits the ground, shoulder-first, but it's immediately through grit teeth that he's forcing himself to his feet.
He hasn't even brought his gaze back to Noctis before he hears that telltale sound of a warp, feels the subtle pressure of magic emanating once more. It's by instinct alone that he calls forth another weapon from his arsenal of phantom blades, and appearing in his hands with just enough time to block the attack. A greatsword, as ancient-looking as his previous choice, its weight wielded and manipulated with an unnatural ease.
The force pushes him back nearly an entire yard, but Ardyn stands his ground.]
There's nothing to change, Noct. [The nickname is used with no lack of condescension.] Everything that has been done cannot be undone, and we're so close to the end. [The end of the Starscourge, the end of the Prophecy, the end of his accursed existence on Eos. The end of a dynasty, the Lucis Caelum line finally put to rest.
There's something increasingly unsettling about his expression, belied in the way that the ground around him begins to seep with dark, wisps of something abyssal rising up from the ground itself. The way the air around them seems to recoil, the way the light itself feels like it would revile it, if it were a living thing.] And why would I want to change anything, when this way causes you the most pain?
[(There it is, then, that admission of wanting revenge, eating away at his core, and yet pushing, pushing him forward throughout the millennia. Where would he be, without it? A hollow husk of a man, lost to sorrow. This way, at least, he has motivation. He has purpose.)
The darkness swirls at their feet in a perfect circle; Ardyn doesn't feel the way it suffocates (Noctis might), he's far too used to the sensation. He wonders how stubborn the prince is, if he'll have the sense to move, or if his anger will keep him planted to the ground in defiance against him. The latter would be quite the unfortunate decision for him, he thinks, in a few moments' time.]
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His knees do buckle then, and he can hardly feel the ache and tingle of a nerve pinched wrong as he grips the handle of his father's sword, the tip of it stabbed into the ground as his support. And on his finger, the ring continues to burn. Around them, the world continues to scream its rejections, shaking with its threats of collapse. To crumble them both into the abyss of the Crystal's magic for daring to bring something so accursed into a place where only the blessed light should breathe.
The very same magic that urges him at him now, to rise and face a darkness too vast for him to purge by himself, as he is. ]
You really-- don't get it. It's not just me that you're hurting, it's--!
[ What was he missing? How could they see the same snapshots of history and come to such different conclusions? Ardyn, blessed by the Gods. Ardyn, the Accursed for daring to do their bidding. Ardyn, the reason that the Prophecy had been constructed at all, the very reason for Noctis' own birth, his allowances to power.
He comes back to his feet with much effort and labour, jaws clenched so tightly that his teeth feel fused together. ]
... You wanna dance to their tune? Fine. [ It's just bravado now, all of it. But with his father's sword in hand and the ring burning something fierce on his finger (flickering with the Crystal's magic, shredding his insides to pull at the years of his life), with nothing more than no, not like this echoing in his ears as his last bastion of free will, it's all he can do.
He breathes out. Tips up his chin in challenge even as the light attempts to writhe against the darkness as it's meant to, the Crystal against the Scourge. ]
But you're going to be waiting a lot longer than forever if you expect me to join in.
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The pool of darkness at his feet seems to dissolve, but instead snakes up and around his greatsword, pulsating with the daemonic power, twisting and heaving with the Scourge itself. The air around it appears to recoil and burn, with the same intensity that must burn around Noctis' finger; opposites, and yet the same in potency.
He hears Noctis' exclamation about hurt, but Ardyn isn't listening. He's more than aware of the spread of pain he's caused, and of how much further he plans on taking it, to allow an endless dark to blanket Eos. But right now that doesn't matter. He hurts, so much more than anyone could imagine, years upon years of pain stacked all the way up to the sky itself, weighing on his shoulders. He's tired, so very tired, and now Noctis' defiance has thrown anger and an unending sense of self-loathing into the mix.
His grip on his weapon becomes tighter as he speaks. His power swirls around the blade, dances around it.]
But you've already joined in, whether you like it or not, Noct. The Crystal will lend you its power regardless of your stubbornness, or your stupidity; it wants what I want just as much. [His death.
And in a sudden, arcing motion, Ardyn tosses the dark-infused blade towards the would-be Chosen King -- an action heralding a warpstrike. The blade flies at the boy with frightening momentum behind its massive weight, with its suffocating corruption eagerly intensifying as it disappears then reappears, directly in front of Noctis. Ardyn does the same, warping in, and suddenly his hand is around its hilt once more as the weapon is mere inches from slamming into him.]
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When the world trembles, when the blackness poisons a blade that mirrors one of his own, Noct thinks: I get it.
He side-steps without thought, a slight slide to the left in wild approximation of the trajectory of that greatsword's flight. Objectively, he knows what will follow, what does follow in the form of Ardyn, overwhelmingly at his ease with their shared and inherited ability. It's the last thing that he comprehends for a moment (or more), even when instinct and desperation jerks up his father's blade, flat-side up to absorb the weight of the swing.
It's the last thing that he sees between the bursts of painful colour that explodes behind his eyelids as he's thrown back, landing on his side to roll a good distance away with a punched gasp of pain. There's no blade in his hand when he twists onto his stomach, his father's sword disappearing in pieces of glass and magic around him, leaving him defenseless save for the ring that only continues to burn. Collecting magic and the Crystal's blessing as Ardyn had proclaimed, ready to come to his aid if (when) Noct was willing to reach for it.
It's all enough to make him hiss, to make his eyes burn in frustration as he pulls himself back onto his feet, calling for the Sword of the Tall than the power that sits on his finger. ]
Well, that's-- that's just too bad, isn't it? [ They're more gasps than spoken words, more posturing against a tide of events that he'd no chance at herding. And yet. Even still-- ]
You picked the wrong guy to be your Chosen if that's what you want!
[ (Even if he wants nothing more than Ardyn's death himself. Even him, Six damn him, even now, knowing what he does. Knowledge hadn't stripped him of his hate, only blunted it; he wants Ardyn to die as much as the rest of them. And yet. Even still. He'd seek to bare his teeth at it. The way that the Prophecy and its Gods try to lay them out as victim and sacrifice for their own mistakes. The way that they try to blanket his thoughts into thinking, this is how it must be.)
Something in his shoulder creaks with pain. The whole right side of him burns with the onset of an early bruise. His magic feels dry and shallow as he throws himself into a warp of his own, appearing in a streak of blue that releases the greatsword as a battering ram of a projectile against Ardyn's own, seeking to disarm him even when being physically disarmed meant nothing to them at all, trying to create windows of opportunity while drowning in quicksand and fate. ]
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When Noctis flies towards him, warping in a flicker of blue (he can feel the boy’s weariness already, so easily drained from him, he was too weak to fight him now), he raises his blade again. The force of impact is nothing short of head-on, and while it shakes his grip on the blade’s hilt, Ardyn keeps hold of his weapon. Fingers taught, knuckles white. Eyes cruel, words meant to shear at his heart, to push him to acceptance via anger if obligation did not affect him.
And so instead, they find themselves with their blades crossed, having been slid back a few feet from the force, but little else. His grin is a sneer, showing teeth.]
Don’t put up such a facade, Noct! I know you want to kill me; I can see it in your eyes. That burning hate.
[And he pushes harder, clearly attempting to overpower the young prince.]
How does it feel? It hurts, doesn’t it? I know it does. You’d kill me right now if you could. [He breaths out a laugh, hollow and misleading.] That should be motivation itself, never mind whatever the Prophecy demands from you.
Or should I recount to you the look on your betrothed’s face, when I sunk my blade into her flesh? Or how much of a fool your father was, a weakened, tired old man, hoping to bring peace to Lucis only to invite war to its doorstep?
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There's enough anger in him to stabilize his knees even as he grits his teeth against Ardyn's strength. A few seconds of meeting hate for hate, evenly matched, before he finally buckles (it was no contest, not really, not when his was a fresh wound and Ardyn's was a deep, festering lesion), hands trembling with the effort of keeping his balance against the push-back. Trembling with the effort of just keeping his blade corporeal, of keeping the whole of himself together as he grinds his hate between his teeth, spitting it out between his words. ]
Of course I hate you [ of course it hurts-- ], how-- how could I not after all you've put me through?!
[ He adjusts his foot, pushes. Adjusts again and throws himself into one last warp, point-blank, blade to blade, burning with the need to silence the mockeries of all that he's lost. The hurt that edges ever closer to becoming an infection, burrowing into the very marrows of who he is (the King of Kings, to stand right where he is now, to do exactly as Ardyn wished--), even when he fights to breathe. Fights to remember, grappling for the only advantage that he had-- ]
But I won't kill you, I won't give you the satisfaction to just die after what you've done, I won't--
[ He slides back a step. Swings. ]
I won't let you toss me around like a puppet, your Prophecy be damned!
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(Ardyn remembers a time from millennia ago, being granted a power to heal, to stop the onset of corruption spreading across the land. His goal, his motivation, driven by something long lost — sympathy. Empathy. A man who hated to see others suffer for nothing.
Now, he’s been twisted into a mirror image of his past self. Hatred, darkness, spite, burdened with a self-loathing that festers forever within him, scarred over and over but never healed. Even then, in all this irony, perhaps there’s the smallest amount of comfort he’ll take in more than just his own demise. Maybe, just maybe, his selfless ambitions from thousands of years ago will still come to fruition. The circle will complete itself, and the Starscourge will finally end with his death. With the compliance of the Chosen King.)
A compliance that he will pry from Noctis’ hands, whether it be from words or physical pain itself. If he won’t understand, if he won’t be instigated, he’ll just have to be convinced through suffering. Ardyn has all the time in the bloody world for it.]
You’re pathetic. [He spits venom at Noctis, only to grit his teeth against the jarring clash of a point-blank warp against his blade, his wrist straining.] What will you do then? Let the world linger in the dark, only because you can’t be bothered to finish what I started?!
[His greatsword disappears in shattered magic, dissipating away as Ardyn phases through the attack, stepping to the side and in, closer to Noct. Close enough to avoid the swing of the blade completely, close enough to knee him in the gut with unfortunate fervor, then grasping at his sword arm, fingers clenched tightly around his wrist to stop him from swinging further. Force enough to cause bruising, pain, enough to make ligaments and bone scream.]
Just like this family, so eager to leave me to my fate. Nothing’s changed.
[He wants to kill him. Right now, his rage flares so hot that it’s nothing short of a miracle that he shows even a modicum of self-restraint.]
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Pathetic, he had(n't) called Ardyn, only moments before. Pathetic. For not daring to thrash against the only solution that the man must have been able to grasp after two thousand years, for not having the foolish (pathetic) notion of change that Noct entertains with every defiance. The hopes of accomplishing his duty, to take his throne without further sacrifice, much less his own for a man that he can't find within him to forgive. (Not yet. Not for a very long time.)
But in the place of such words is no more than a wheeze, stripped into silence by pain that blinds him with a moment of white unconsciousness for how overwhelming it is, a moment of blissful oblivion from which he's yanked by the scream of his wrist, in resistance to that grip. How he has to swing his other hand up and over to grapple at the arm that holds him prisoner, fingers spasming into the fabric of Ardyn's coat as his own greatsword disintegrates into flecks of light and dust as it's released.
He manages to stay to stay upright only by the pain of Ardyn's grip alone, the bite of his glare clipped by how his expression twists into a wince. ]
You got some nerve, talking about change without changing anything yourself. [ His head. His head, it feels light. Pain and magic, warring for space, the weight of the ring doubling into something hot and searing, imprinting the patterns of its presence into his skin. ]
Accomplishing nothing for all the pain that you've caused, doing nothing but waiting for the day that'll have you dying like a dog. [ Without even the slightest bit of of a chance at finding peace for that hurt. To find justice for it. Dying with nothing but spite (spite that had beckoned to spite), dying as the villain that his ancestors had thought to create in their narrow-minded jealousy. A plague that the Gods so desperately wanted to purge at any consequence. ]
... I'll end it. Everything. [ Everything, including you, including this damn Prophecy that still spins between them. ] But we're doing it my way, so you can just deal!
[ Tightening his grip on Ardyn's arm, gritting his teeth through the way that the world feels to explode into pieces of glass, leaving only the brilliance of the ring to focus on, Noct pushes. Pushes forward all the light that had been curling at the base of his spine, forces it through the conduit of his ring. And it comes to him, readily and easily, that old, pure magic that must have once blessed Ardyn with its favour once upon a time, the very same that now seeks to bite into the darkness that Ardyn carries in him. Biting into it, tearing out pieces of it for Noct to shoulder and share.
(And it feels like he's touching the abyss of something terribly sad and horrifyingly maddening at once, the nucleus that the Scourge had curled itself around. Stifling. Smothering. Suffocating.) But if there were reasons to pull back, Noct can't remember them. He feels like he's drowning, gasping for air as the magic tears at the darkness that it meets, tears at it, tearing it out, letting it implode and stop his heart for the moment that a piece of that darkness chips out and goes screaming through Noct. ]
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It isn’t Noctis’ grasp around his arm that makes him grit his teeth, fighting back nothing short of an actual, horrendous sort of scream. It’s that light, that blasted light, reaching out to him, through him, at the Chosen King’s beck and call. A knife, cutting swift, cutting cleanly, shearing at the suffocating, inky black that thrived around his very core. Pulling, tearing, rending — it hurts, having this part of him stolen. Because it was a part of him, wasn’t it? A part that he hated, that he cursed, but a part that time had made him grown accustomed to. A festering acceptance of a wound that would never heal, and quietly embraced to be a piece of him forever, until finally vanquished.
Vanquished. Snuffed-out in a final, decisive blow. Wiped clean, totally and utterly, the dark and his soul and his consciousness all at once. Not this. This… brightness lancing through him, chipping away at the weight of obsidian sickness, a Scourge, that made its home within him.
Maybe he does scream. With the world shattering around them like fractured glass, beautiful yet terrifying, it’s difficult to be cognizant of any of his senses, other than the invasion tearing through him.
You’ll not end anything this way, no, not like this, Ardyn says. Or he thinks it, he can’t be sure, yet he’s sure that Noctis can hear him. He must, he was so close to him now — not only physically, but closer than that, borrowing a piece of himself, he dared to be so bold, so ambitious to think that he could handle even the slightest drop of what was his pain, an old sorrow that had hardened into spite and bitterness. He’d do nothing more than poison himself, and surely the Light would only reject him then, just like it had rejected him, surely—
Their surroundings dissolve into blinding white, and it’s time for another awakening.
There’s still grass, and trees, and the sun shining brightly above. The wind still pushes the clouds idly across the light, casting the occasional lazy shadow that cruises over a figure lying on the ground.
When Noctis awakens, the sight he’s afforded with will be both familiar, yet completely alien. He lies just beyond the far outskirts of Insomnia, his home. It must be, for the landscape itself hasn’t changed — the topography, if one pays attention, is the same, the familiar incline and curves of the land. (For nature itself only concedes inches at a time throughout the ages.)
It’s the city itself that is obscenely different. It’s modernity is anything but, tall structures made of ancient architecture no longer seen in present day, casting a strange silhouette as it reaches towards the great maw of the sky. From such a distance, technically in the wilderness proper, seeing this in its completeness may be jarring, as if time itself has rewound, thousands of years.
Ardyn, the Accursed, is nowhere to be found. Not yet.]
memoryville with ardyn
(For it'd been no more than a scrap that he'd torn out. No more than a sliver despite how overwhelming it'd been as it'd coursed through him, filtered through the sieve that was the Crystal's magic, tearing it asunder. The greatest gift laid upon Eos deigned to the role of a scavenger, ripping apart mere pieces of a greater, fouler whole. Trying to mend a great chasm of sickness and sorrow with bandaids applied two thousand years too late.)
There's no sense of time in the plane on which he floats, cradled and put back together as a precious piece to redemption despite his hoarse protests, his defiance against the unfairness of his (their) fate. A sickness of his own that (re)builds alongside the rest of his body until he's re-equipped with all of his cuts and bruises, his trophies and losses. Recreating him as he'd been only moments before he'd found himself here, lost within the depths of light and magic to return him to a state where he'd been lost in desperation instead. (Desperation for something, anything, for any semblance of a chance at steering the Prophecy awry.)
It's a slow process. An instanteous one.
One that leaves Noctis to gasp into yet another mouthful of grass, gasping and groaning into the aches that leaves him shuddering for purchase as he's ejected from the anaesthesia of that nothingness. He blinks awake to starbursts of pain that forces him to crumble just as soon as he dares to press any amount of weight onto his (broken? shattered?) wrist. ]
--Shit. [ Right, so he won't be using that hand anytime soon. Still, the pain isn't entirely unwelcomed. It forces him to grit his teeth and focus, grit his teeth and remember--
Remember absolutely nothing since his hand had met Ardyn's arm. Since the Crystal had come at his beckoning, to his aid.
A quick glance around finds him alone, and that's-- more worrying than he cares to admit. Not so much for the wellbeing of the man (because he was immortal, wasn't he, because nothing could be more vicious than the darkness that he carries) but because of an ingrained discomfort at the prospect of being alone. At having to wander past this strangely familiar wilderness for however long that the Crystal (the Gods) wished that fate upon him, which he's not thinking about as he pulls himself onto his feet. As he stumbles a few steps forward, a few distances, a few miles (he couldn't tell, he'd no idea) until he stumbles into a small clearing.
A small camp, set for one person whose back is turned to him and a-- chocobo? A. Black. Chocobo, which was-- really? Cute? Wow. ]
Hey, uh. Cool bird. [ Wait, that's not-- ] No, sorry, I meant. You mind if I ask a few questions?
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His chocobo sits next to him, curled up as they often do when they sleep. It’s only when the bird raises its head at the new individual, black feathers ruffling only a little with the movement, that Ardyn shifts his weight, twisting around to face the voice that emanates from behind him.
He’s surprised, honestly, to see someone wandering all the way out here in the wilderness that isn’t him. But he had a purpose, an almost-pilgrimage that forced him to travel miles, to make far-too-many camps, to follow both roads and beaten paths to his destination. And then, to another destination, a cycle that repeated itself, and one that he was more than glad to oblige.
It’s obvious in the lift of his brow how he finds this surprise a very odd one; a boy, it appeared, dressed quite strangely. (All black, however. Curious.) Still, he offers a lopsided sort of smile to the stranger. One look at him told Ardyn far too much — he was tired, confused. (“Cool bird,” he had said, after all.) Injured, he wondered? Recognition as to who Ardyn was obviously wasn’t present, but that wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, this far out from the capital.]
You may. You’ll find that I welcome all manner of questions, especially from strangers wandering this far out from civilization.
[The question is clearly implied, but it lacks the sharpness of patronization that Noctis might be all too familiar with.]
Sit if you like. My chocobo companion makes for something good to lean on, if you’re tired.
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A face that he might not, not when it doesn't twist with the known and ugly lines of patronization and mockeries despite Noct's poor attempts at pleasantries ("cool bird," ugh). It's like looking at a picture backwards, a face that he should know as well as his own for all the hate that it induces made blurry and incongruent. Like looking at a picture made right, somehow removed from the taints of history and grief.
Just. What the hell.
A lack of recognition is precisely the problem, because even as Noct lets the silence stretch in-between them, he can see nothing that may give this away as a farce, a ridiculous joke. (And Ardyn hadn't been in any mood for jests, had he? Not when he'd been as angry as Noct had been, so incomprehensibly maddened). He can feel nothing of the suffocating darkness that he'd just been drowning in, his ring resting docile in a way that it hadn't since he'd put the damned thing on, and that--
That was the most confusing thing of all. ]
... I'm fine. [ After all the screaming, the demands for him to submit to the weight of their respective roles. Just, what--
He takes a step forward, momentarily unfettered by any attempts at looking anything but as lost and confused as he is, as tired, as progressively panicked. Trying to push back the words, the hell are you playing at? Where the hell did you even get a chance to get that bird, what the hell just happened? Where are we, what the hell is going on here? ]
I'm looking for someone. Looks-- [ Exactly like you. Might even be you, you-- ] He's about your height. Bad hair, ugly scarf. You've see him?
[ It's ruder than he intends, but he's still too tense to offer otherwise. A wounded animal braced against another attack. It's all that he can manage, really, to humour the gut feeling that tells him, wait. Play along. ]
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But then the young man steps forward, almost as an act of defiance. Ardyn's chocobo gives a small kweh, indulging in a small shake of its head, feathers floofing out in every direction as it does so. Ardyn idly allows a hand to scratch at its neck, watching Noctis draw nearer. He's less apprehensive than he is curious.]
Bad hair, ugly scarf. [He breathes out, echoing the words back, and there's an underlying amusement to such a... description that he can't stop from eking out.] I've certainly not seen anyone with an ugly scarf, no. [Because Ardyn is definitely, totally wearing a scarf even now. It's different, perhaps, in color and design than what Noctis is used to seeing, but old habits (very, very old habits) die hard.]
Friend of yours, lost in the wilderness? Or are you the lost one, I wonder?
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[ Yeah, he sees that scarf, especially now that he's starting to become quite capable of squinting past the blur of pain. Growing numb to it, maybe, with how the world is starting to fade in and out of focus. No more than a low-burn ache against the questions, the sheer volume of what the hell, that he can't seem to shake. That he probably can't dismiss even if he gave in, to throwing out his angry demands at dropping this ridiculous attempts at screwing with him.
(Which is always an option, which is always an option. It wouldn't be entirely surprising, but what purpose would this serve? What more of him was there for Ardyn to stab, to infect? There was no-- no more Lunas to hurt, no Promptos for Noct to be tricked into pushing. Just himself and Noct, left to wander a land that might or might not actually exist, no more than an illusion cast into their minds by the grace of the Crystal.)
And no matter which way he spins it, it's too strange. Too weird. (And Gods, that scarf. That was somehow even worse than the one that he'd been trying to set aflame by the heat of his resentment, no longer buffered by the cushioning of familiarity.)
Noct shakes his head, trying to focus on the outlines of Ardyn (not? Ardyn? Different clothes, same face, different expressions, somehow softer, same voice but without the patronization) and his chocobo, the lines of which were both starting to blur. ]
Look, can you help me or not? [ By letting him watch you like a Griffin for the next little while, until the proper flavour of Ardyn popped up-- right, good plan. ]
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The Ardyn that Noctis knows (the Accursed, the Usurper, the walking embodiment of the Starscouge itself) would retort with words that cut as sharp as any blade. This Ardyn, whose edges are not so rigid and broken and piercing, only seems to let Noctis’ attitude slide right off him, with no small amount of grace and lingering patience.]
I can help you to the best of my ability. [An offer that sounds quite humble, when it reality is beyond generous in the capacity that he can truly offer.] If that’s what you want.
[A beat, and then:]
You can come closer, you know. I won’t hurt you.
[The irony behind that statement is so acute that it might as well manifest itself and laugh in both their faces. But Ardyn remains blissfully unaware.]
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You've got to be kidding. You expect me believe that after-- [ After all you've done. After what had just happened. Ah, how quickly his attempts at civility begins to crack. Right alongside the integrity of his breathing. ] ... Nevermind.
[ This was messing with his head. Was that Ardyn's plan? Was this a plan? Should he be yelling, after all? Should he be attacking, aiming to tear down an expression that looks-- sincere, more sincere than he's ever seen on the man? (Even back in Galdin Quay, the very first time, Ardyn had filled him with a sense of unease and suspicion that he hadn't been able to shake, one that had only grown with every reveal, with every layer peeled back. And this-- this wasn't that. Not quite. His ring sat quiet, even now, and if it hadn't been for the weeks of taunting from that face, the months of pain brought on by that voice, years of backstage planning that was now coming into light, Noct would have almost thought--
Ardyn almost looked--)
He runs a heavy hand through his hair, the skin between his eyes wrinkling with the force of his confusion and frustration. ]
... Are you always this helpful? To people you've just met? [ Not like he can point fingers, but. Still. Still. ]
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Actually, yes. [He can’t help but try to sound a little wry, a little lighthearted, as if doing so would ease the boy’s uncertainty. Like trying to coax an irritated, injured cat from its hiding place.] I wouldn’t be much of a healer, otherwise.
[Also lending to the implication that yes, he will help you if you let him, Noct.]
Are you injured? [He asks, before he can really give the other a chance to respond. Ardyn knows that he can at least ease the pain long enough for him to be properly looked at by a proper sort of physician, depending on the nature of the injury.] Let me look at you.
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[ Of course.
He's but a collection of all the things that could poison a man from the inside when he finally comes to a decision: contempt for Ardyn (for who he is, had been, could have been), contempt against the Gods, the Crystal. Contempt for himself, who could no longer find a reason to do as directed by the muted shrieks of instinct to stay at a distance that Ardyn could close with just one-third of a warp. This was a stalemate that he needed to end, one way or another.
And so the cat approaches, tip of its tail pointed to the ground in continued aggression, dragging each heavy step after the next. Driven by both curiosity and exhaustion, a need to find answers, no matter how minute and inconsequential it may be in the long run, it brings him close enough to be finally, properly seen, ragged breathing and all. ]
There, happy? [ He's more tired than derisive now, aching for reasons beyond the way that the world was doing nothing but sway. ] M'fine, like I said. Just... need some--
[ Sleep, he means to say. Doesn't quite manage to say, deterred by how his body chooses that moment to crumble into the grass as a heap of black over the blue of his injuries, eyes forced shut. Just another bad life decision, falling unconscious at the feet of a (not-)stranger. Great. ]
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And in his experience, rarely does it ever work. Often it ends up as it does now, with the person’s body demanding that enough is enough, one way or another.
It’s this foresight that allows to Ardyn to break Noctis’ fall before the boy falls completely to the grass, catching him in his arms, and leaning in to just… gently place him on the ground instead. Brow knitted in concern unfettered now, he allows himself an exhale.
It may be a blessing in disguise; after all, the proverbial cat may be easier to tend to when he’s asleep, rather than awake and frowning at him, mewling with irritation the whole time. And this close, he now would have a chance to see if he was bleeding somewhere excessively, or perhaps just worn from exhaustion, and if there are any broken bones, and—
(By the Six, this boy looks an awful lot like Izunia, now that he has time to examine his face in more detail.)
Ardyn lets out a laugh, though its humor is replaced by a disbelieving sort of confusion. Just who was this young man? There’ll certainly be more than a just a few questions to ask, when he decides to grace him with consciousness once more.
And so time passes, immeasurable in the mind of someone sleeping. Hours, perhaps, because when Noctis does come to, the brightness of day has shifted to dusk. The campfire still blazes, as if continually tended to for a reason; that reason being that Ardyn could not leave with an unconscious guest in his presence, and so he had stayed and tended to the young man to the best of his ability.
Tended and healed.
And when his guest stirs awake, Ardyn sits nearby, his chocobo still near him. Noctis will have to peel himself out of a bedroll to sit up properly, though, to glance around and see Ardyn looking at him with a raised brow. Concern still ekes from his tone.]
You’re awake. How are you feeling now?
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Not the fall of dusk, the curl of warmth against the half of him that had thought to turn towards the campfire, tucked into a bedroll without the tellings of a clusmy hand. He doesn't expect to have found his eyes capable of peeling open at all, for himself to wake, to have the awareness necessary to blink past the blurry crust of sleep. He expects to ache, but not ache like this, with the soreness that came with rest and care.
He expects nothing from the wrist that he remembers to have been brutalized before he'd fallen, expects nothing but pain when he pulls at his arms. Stretching out his fingers, his jaw clenches with the preemptive discomfort of having to work with a limb that had so carefully skirted at the edges of being broken in a loving reminder of a fight that he remembers in a distant sort of way. (Like a dream, misplaced.) Followed shortly by a startled intake of breath when his fingers do nothing more than obey, curling the ring closer to the edge of a knuckle, still cool, missing the vitriol with which it had responded to Noct's disarrayed rejections of fate.
A dream, much like the world that he'd fallen asleep to, had awoken to, where a chocobo of that colour could sit, relaxed and curled, around a man that should have repulsed it for what he embodied. What he expects is not Ardyn, ever persistent with that strange look to his face that sets Noct off-kilter with the wrongness of it, something that felt about as off as the olive scarf that the man was still rocking with the black of his attire. (Which: gross. Still gross.)
Because looking like that, cast in the warmer light of the campfire, Ardyn looked like he actually-- ]
... Better.
[ His voice is little more than a rasp when he pulls it to curl around the syllables, as he sits himself up with a twist of a body that felt lighter. (Healed.) Hoarse with the slow burn of his disbelief that his -- sleep? state of uncomfortable and embarrassing unconsciousness? -- awakening hadn't dispelled. ]
Guess I have you to thank for this. [ Except it's still hard, thanking a face that had taken so much. He curls a hand into a fist. Releases it. ] You... really weren't kidding about the healer thing, huh.
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Kidding? Not at all. It’s hardly anything to joke about. [-he says, with the intonation of it being amusing that he would ask. (Some things, it would seem, don’t ever really change, even with the unrelenting hand of time.)
The black chocobo, curled around Ardyn in an almost comical manner, breathes quietly in its drifting sleep. The Lucian king continues.] That being said, you should still consider having a physician look at you. I can heal, but its focus is on a different ailment altogether — your pain may be gone, but your body might need tending to when we return to the city.
[I mean, you’re coming back to him with the capital, aren’t you? Surely you are, Noct.
Ardyn shifts a little. He’d been patient before; he feels as if now is as good of a time as any to ask.]
You’re a bit of a contradiction, you know. You act as if you don’t know who I am, but — [A pointed glance at the ring on Noctis’ finger. The same that rests comfortably on Ardyn’s own.] —you adorn yourself with particularly interesting choices of accoutrements.
[The implied question of who are you and where did you get that hangs in the air, but there’s no pressure behind it, no tinges of an interrogation. Just unbidden curiosity, the kind that he can't keep locked away even if he tried.]
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To not do that. Curling his fingers into a fist, to make the ring stand out even more and ever prominent, though. He does that just fine. Oh, and lifting his chin in challenge. He's not short on that, either. ]
Yeah? What about it? It's just a-- [ Just a ring, may his ancestors forgive him where they must surely be rolling over in their graves.
--Actually, nevermind. Given what his ancestors had enabled, Noct couldn't care less. ] Not like you could talk in the fashion department.
[ There. That was marginally better. More... appropriate. Probably. ]
Anyway, back up a sec. What city? [ Because surely not? Who the hell died and crowned, recrowned, Ardyn as King? ] What makes you think I'd go anywhere with you?
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The capital city. [Said as if this should be obvious. Said with the subtle intonation of wonder if the young man had hit his head rather hard before stumbling across Ardyn.] And I'll admit, I'm not going to command you to come with me, but-- well, are you saying you have somewhere better to be?
[An incline of the brow.] Or is it so terrible for you to be traveling with someone as fashionably impaired as I?
[How dare you, Noct? He's dressed like a
hoboking!]no subject
Then it's a matter of putting two-and-two together (finally putting his rusted sense of logic to use, no longer muzzled by pain and the shock of waking up inside what had to be the Crystal), fitting black to Lucis, to Insomnia. The capital city. The outline of which he could faintly see past the horizon of trees, if his head was angled back just right. The ache that came with the mention of home. ]
It wouldn't be as impaired if you lost the scarf. [ The point: not that. Noct flushes with it, curling his fingers in and out, just to feel the weight of the ring shift against his knuckles. ]
... Just. Answer me something. [ He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek. Uses the sting to ground himself even as he drops his eyes in a sudden bout of uncertainty. Kindness from strangers is a strange and welcomed thing, something that would have had him flounder on a good day. Kindness from a stranger wearing Ardyn's face was just strange. Strange and difficult. ] Why keep helping me? What if I was a-- [ A... uh. ] A thief? Or whatever.
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A hand reaches up in an idle manner, fingers feeling at the fabric of said scarf. He doesn't do it knowingly, instead taking in Noctis' words while he speaks. One might even call it a self-conscious response, if not for his personality -- flippant, unbothered by normal criticisms directed at his attire. Perhaps he's heard it all before, implied or otherwise. Ardyn doesn't care enough to take offense to any of it.
The same applies to this boy, though he speaks to him with more of an edge than he's used to.]
You were injured, and obviously very lost. Not to mention you seem to be confused and disoriented. [It's spoken with more concern than criticism; more drawn out worry than a jab at Noctis' current state.] And if you were a thief, you've chosen an unfortunate target.
[The implication being that Ardyn has nothing on him really worth stealing, and that he's not as defenseless as he seems. But Noctis would already know all about that, wouldn't he?]
Maybe I should ask instead why it is you seem so suspicious of me.